interesting quote...

You can either be a Christian school or a school for Christians. You can't be both.
Steve Chalke.
(Quoted in Third Way - December 2008)

more on creation myths

At our last meeting on 19/11/08 we continued to think about creation myths - looking at creation myths from other faiths and cultures.

An interesting evening both to see how the Jewish/Christian creation myth shares ideas with other myths, but also how it is different.

origional sin

meeting last week - 5/11/08

Following on from the prodigal son we all looked at the doctrine of original sin. an interesting talk followed with no firm conclusions or agreements, so no change there. we did spend a fair bit of time looking at the Genesis creation story and this got us to thinking about how other cultures' creation stories might touch on the subject of sin and the way the world is. So that is going to be our topic next time.

praying the labyrinth

meeting 22/10




for this meeting we went to St John's Epping to learn a bit about the labyrinth and how it has been used in the church at different times, but principally it was an opportunity to walk it and spend some time in meditation/quite.

walking the labyrinth is an ancient practice that has been re-discovered by the modern church. a labyrinth looks like a maze but in fact has only one path.

see grace cathedral for more information.

prodigal son

meeting 8/10/08

we looked at the parable of the prodigal son. before looking at the passage we tried to see how much we could remember of the story, when we checked we were pretty close except a few of us had remembered some things that were not there! this got us thinking about sin/forgiveness and so we decided to look at original sin at our next ordinary meeting.

breathe

meeting on 24/9/08

we watched rob bell's dvd called "breathe" which was a meditation on the breath/spirit of god. the word translated breath can also mean spirit and wind - context is very important here!

Archbishops say extreme capitalism has become a new creed | Ekklesia

Archbishops say extreme capitalism has become a new creed | Ekklesia

Thought this was interesting in light of our discussions at house group last Wednesday.

Huw

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

Well this was quite annoying at times, I think he over writes, it could be much more to the point, also he is unnecessarily rude, in particular the names/labels he uses.

As to the arguments, less to fault him here, most of his arguments against "proofs" of God are fine, but familiar from Christian theologians. His arguments about how awful the church can be are also fine but again Wink, Wallis, Mclaren et al have been there before him.

Where I would take issue is with his selective rating of the bible (we all do this!) he talks about the awfulness of the "Old Testament God" but this is not news, he says Jesus is a little better (but can't resist adding "if he existed at all") but that ultimately the Old Testament and New Testament are exclusive, they are about the Jews only. He quotes some verses to back this up, but ignores? all the passages from the prophets that speak of caring for the alien and stranger, he misses Jesus on loving our neighbour and then defining the neighbour as "the other". He misses so much in the gospels that point to this message being for all people. It is annoying as if this is deliberate it undermines his argument and if it is a mistake then he really hasn't done his research.

His arguments about how natural selection could have caused the rise of religion, ie. mems etc. was, for me, not very convincing. Also his explanation for why we are good still leaves morality as some kind of accident of evolution (not that I have a better explanation).

Overall, not as annoying as I thought it would be.

everything must change - jesus, global crises, and a revolution of hope

Brian d. Mclaren
This is a long a detailed book trying to get a handle on the crises that faces the world and what our understanding of Jesus' teaching/message might be able to say about that. It very clearly gets the issues that face us and in particular looks at things in terms of "framing stories" - the idea that our current framing story is leading to the suicide of our world. Mclaren offers an alternative framing story which is a particular reading/understanding of Jesus' message/kingdom. He is very critical both of the existing story and also the existing understanding of Christianity. Part of the existing story is about growth (for its own sake) and consumption, without reference to what the world can produce (raw materials) and cope with (waste). Also the underlying myth that power and violence solve anything and that at the heart of some understandings of Christianity there is a powerful myth of redemptive violence, ie. God needed Jesus to die for our sins.

To finish he calls for action in four areas:
* personal: everything from how we pray to how we spend our money etc.
* community: new kinds of community, eg. emerging church etc.
* public: social movements that to educate and demand change.
* global: NGO's, governments etc.

fresh expresions

meet yesterday and looked fresh expressions of church, the examples we looked at were from the sacramental/Eucharistic tradition. we talked about what church might/could be and about the relationship between believing, belonging and behaving.

the sign at cana

at the last house group we looked at the wedding of cana where jesus turns water into the very best wine. we were using notes that were written up by the people who wrote the studies for the bishops for the lambeth conference.

we thought a bit about what the disciples might have made of what they saw - if they would have related it to passages in the ot that talk of banquets that are about the redemption of Israel. also the significance of john using the word "sign" rather than "miracle" - a sign points to something and in john this is to jesus' glory.

heaven at last?

Last week we finished our look at heaven and to some extent hell, all stemming from Tom Wright's book Surprised by Hope.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Surprised-Hope-Tom-Wright/dp/028105617X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214143551&sr=8-1

This book proved hard to summarise! so I won't try that here (also I have yet to read it). For me the main thing to come out of this was that creation is basically good, that this world is not going to be swept away and replaced by heaven, rather the image is of this world being redeemed & transformed as will people. So what we do here and now is important here and now, the possibility of heaven does not stop us caring and acting for justice in this world.

My thoughts anyway... please feel free to comment/disagree etc.

Huw

A good excuse to play on your computer

If you are looking for a good excuse to spend idle time on your computer go here:

www.freerice.com

The longer you play, the more rice is donated; self indulgent time wasting made good!

what do we think of heaven?

so far in this series we have looked at paradise/eden and then the fall from that paradise. next time we we look at what tom wright has to say about heaven (and how he thinks the Church has got it wrong), but this week we talked about what we think heaven is/is not and what images of heaven we see in popular culture. in particular we looked at how from very early on christians were influenced by greek philosophy and that this may well have contributed to an other worldly non physical idea of heaven and a tendency to equate the physical world with sin and see the soul as something independent of a body.

The Fall

Last house group we continued to look at the creation stories in Genesis. The second story starts from 2.4b (or there abouts) this is generally considered to be a second creation story. This is one the one that deals with the fall - we were thinking about heaven and this story could be seen as a picture of a perfect world, before the fall. We also wondered if this story might be an attempt by the tellers to explain why the world was as it was for them, eg. hard and harsh. We also thought about the nature of Eve and Adam's sin and what it means to be "like God".

Stillness

Habit Three: Stillness |:| Embody : create : coach : venture:

"The guru of stillness was exasperated with his student. The source of this exasperation was essentially that what he was teaching didn’t exist and the student was having a hard time with that. It was more about what wasn’t there than what was. The student couldn’t really handle that; ‘So. What you’re saying is that it is a bit like this? Or like that?’. ‘No, no, not like that! Or this, for that matter. Even a bit!’ He paused and finding depths of compassion and patience asked his student, ‘Are there spaces between your thoughts?’. ‘Well yes’, the student admitted. ‘Then make them bigger’."

Christian Aid Service 11th May 2008

We had the Peace & Justice Christian service tonight. We finished standing around this table after lighting candles and saying together the prayer for Christian Aid week.

God of the rushing wind,
sweep through my indifference.

God of the fiery flames,
ignite my compassion.

God of the many voices,
open my mouth to speak out against injustice.

That through your Spirit
and my actions
this world may be transformed.
Amen.

creation

at the meeting (23/4) we begin to look at the creation story as told in genesis 1 to 2.4a (to be precise!). we talked a bit about how many cultures have creation myths and why cultures have these stories, for example they might be about trying to explain why things are the way they are. the first creation story in genesis seems to give a picture of a world that is good, very good even where there everyone and even the animals live together. see in particular the implication that animals/humans don't eat meat.

somehow we had a very long discussion about what a soul might be and what might continue of a "person" after death. funnily enough we didn't actually come to any definite conclusions.

Human fertilisation and embroys bill

At the last house group (2nd April) we discussed the bill on Human fertilization and embryos. A good debate despite the science being hard to understand!

A complex area to consider, but something we should do. Below is a link to an article by and anglican priest and scientist that argues that such research is playing god and that playing god is precisely what we should be doing.

The Tablet

Right brain - doorway to religious experience?

Have a look at this video ( 18 minutes long)

http://www.microclesia.com/?p=320

This is from the cover of her book:

Jill Bolte Taylor was a 37-year-old Harvard-trained and published brain scientist when a blood vessel exploded in her brain. Through the eyes of a curious neuroanatomist, she watched her mind completely deteriorate whereby she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. Because of her understanding of how the brain works, her respect for the cells composing her human form, and an amazing mother, Jill completely recovered her mind, brain and body. In My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey, Jill shares with us her recommendations for recovery and the insight she gained into the unique functions of the right and left halves of her brain. Having lost the categorizing, organizing, describing, judging and critically analyzing skills of her left brain, along with its language centers and thus ego center, Jill’s consciousness shifted away from normal reality. In the absence of her left brain’s neural circuitry, her consciousness shifted into present moment thinking whereby she experienced herself “at one with the universe.”

it all depends on how you look at it

PeterRollins.net � Blog Archive � What if it was the other way around?

... I was reminded of a story in which the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe said in passing to Wittenstein, “I can understand why people once believed that the sun revolved around the earth”. In response Wittenstein said, “Why is that”? Anscombe looked up and replied, “Well, it looks like it does”. To which Wittenstein said, “yes, yes. But tell me, what would it look like if it was the other way around”?"

The point being that our prior assumptions will determine how we understand something, eg. the bible.

The atheist delusion | Review | guardian.co.uk Books

Below is a quote that made me laugh, but the whole article is very good (quite long).

The atheist delusion | Review | guardian.co.uk Books: "Dawkins's 'memetic theory of religion' is a classic example of the nonsense that is spawned when Darwinian thinking is applied outside its proper sphere. Along with Dennett, who also holds to a version of the theory, Dawkins maintains that religious ideas survive because they would be able to survive in any 'meme pool', or else because they are part of a 'memeplex' that includes similar memes, such as the idea that, if you die as a martyr, you will enjoy 72 virgins. Unfortunately, the theory of memes is science only in the sense that Intelligent Design is science. Strictly speaking, it is not even a theory. Talk of memes is just the latest in a succession of ill-judged Darwinian metaphors."

For peace - John O’Donohue

For peace

As the fever of day calms towards twilight
May all that is strained in us come to ease.

We pray for all who suffered violence today,
May an unexpected serenity surprise them.

For those who risk their lives each day for peace,
May their hearts glimpse providence at the heart of history.

That those who make riches from violence and war
Might hear in their dreams the cries of the lost.

That we might see through our fear of each other
A new vision to heal our fatal attraction to aggression.

That those who enjoy the privilege of peace
Might not forget their tormented brothers and sisters.

That the wolf might lie down with the lamb,
That our swords be beaten into ploughshares

And no hurt or harm be done
Anywhere along the holy mountain.

John O’Donohue, taken from from Benedictus, A Book of Blessings, newly published by Bantam Press. To browse, listen to and buy recordings of the
talks John has given at Greenbelt – in MP3 or CD format – go to greenbelt.org.uk/talks

How do we see the bible?

Interactive Assessment | BuildingChurchLeaders.com

this is quick quiz on how we approach the bible, ie. hermeneutics (to be technical). it's quite fun, i scored 91 by the way...

huw

Small Ritual - Reading the Bible

Small Ritual - Reading the Bible

i liked this and i thought it was relevant to our meeting where we talked about what is scripture, we looked at passages that might or might not have been in the bible and had to decide if they were biblical and if we thought they should be.

loose cannons? thinking about what scripture is

First meeting of the year , January, we used material from the SCM book "Reading the Bible, approaching and understanding scripture".

We had various quotes to look at and decided both if we like them, ie. found them useful, truthful and if we thought they were in the bible or should or should not be in the Bible. This generated a lot of discussion, but few conclusions.

exploring different translations of the bible

Second meeting of the year , January, we used material from the SCM book "Reading the Bible, approaching and understanding scripture" again.

We looked at how the bible has been translated over the years, how people make decsions on hw to translate and how it can be useful to look at different translations of the bible to help us understand what a passage might mean for us now.