Today is an exceedingly sad day for happy reasons. Lisa and I are driving our youngest child, our daughter Casile, to university. It’s only 2.5 hours drive away, but we won’t be seeing her for a while. She’s a wonderful daughter and has become a great friend. So I’m going to be gone for the whole day. I’ll do my best to check emails and respond to nakedpastor, Facebook, Twitter and emails.
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I have often been in situations were there has been a strong disagreement and the distancing of parties. I have experienced broken relationships and long-lasting division. I have also witnessed this up close. As a result, I am very interested in and I could even say passionate about reconciliation. How can two parties come together again? What practical steps can be taken to bring reconciliation where there is brokenness?
Here are some very practical steps that can be taken. They are by no means easy. However, if we value peace over the privilege of being right, if we long for relationship over rights and unity over being understood, then these are valuable steps we can take to make manifest the unity that we value:
Wise people understand that guilt in the human race runs very deep and wide. Even in the bible, the wisest and most spiritual people acknowledged their participation in the guilt of the whole world. These discern that as one follows our roots deep into the ground of human history and experience, we are all complicit in the state of this world, including the fractures in human relationships.
By the way, these steps apply not just to individuals, but to larger groups and I believe even races and nations.
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There are all kinds of obstacles to your success. If they are not in your own mind, then they are in the minds of others. There are some people who encourage success. But there are also a lot of nay-sayers out there. As Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid would say: “Ignore everybody!” (Get the book! It’s a good read.). I don’t know how many times in my life I have run into the attitude, “Who do you think you are?” Most people don’t say it, but they think it. Talk of success is really cool until one experiences it. Then many others grow resentful and suspicious.
I heard an interesting statistic the other day: people tend to pull away from friends who are very generous to others. The reason? They don’t like to be made to feel guilty for not being generous. They don’t want to be reminded of their lack of generosity. So the conclusion was that if you decide to become generous, be prepared to lose some friends.
But you will make new ones.
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It is often said that our god is too small. It may also be said that our world is too small. We start with the good news that the whole world is loved, that Compassion is for all things, and we end up with tiny, myopic, self-centered worlds, all separated from each other by our own categories and boundaries.
There is a Beloved reality that permeates all things… above, below, around, within and through. We must begin to detect it! This Compassion has thoroughly flooded everything and carries all in its current. This is the major theme of the New Testament. Is it not?
This truth… that all are now included… is what caused such consternation among the gate-keepers and joy among those who received it.
How can we build local spiritual communities that can enjoy the intimacy of relationship, mutual support and unity, while at the same time appreciating within these small communities a comprehensive and compassionate embrace of the whole world? How can we understand this Love as particular as well as universal, personal as well as common?
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If you like what nakedpastor has to say, your support is appreciated.My 23 year old son Joshua has given himself the enormous task of raising a significant amount of money for the Kids Help Phone over the next two days. I normally don’t do posts asking for money. But… this is my son who has started an incredible project… and this is a worthy charity to donate to.
Watch this video and pass it on, post it on your blog or your FaceBook page, Twitter about it… get the word out:
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One of the questions I was asked in my interview for my new job teaching international students was, “How easily do you adapt to change?” I answered that there are two kinds of change: one that you don’t ask for but happens to you; and the kind you initiate. I told them that I was good and experienced at initiating change I thought was necessary and good. And I told them that I’ve learned to handle the stress of unwelcome change and negotiate my way to tranquility again.
My life has changed. But both at the same time: initiated by me, but not entirely welcome or easily negotiable. I’m experiencing a bit of trauma.
I realize I could no longer work for and receive my income from the institutional church. I also realize that I need to responsibly support my family and provide income. I do feel this job is a gift and I receive it with deep gratitude and joy. However, I told Lisa that I couldn’t see the big picture right now. How does this fit into the story of my life? Or, how does this fit under the blessedness of my life? That’s something I simply have to entrust right now.
She figures something like this: I have always contemplated, worked toward, and write about unity. Even my Z-theory is an attempt to articulate a unifying theory for the Spirit of Jesus and all religions and philosophies. I have also been very frustrated with the church’s general reluctance or even refusal to see the Spirit of Jesus beyond its walls. And here I am plopped into the middle of a wide range of international students from all over the world: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bangladesh, China, Korea and Japan, to name a few… and all the religions and philosophies these students represent.
Today was my first full day on the campus. It is wonderful to discern the Spirit of Jesus in every person one encounters. Somehow this is going to help me articulate something my spirit wishes to understand and say.
The painting pictured here, Mystic North #2, is available HERE. It is a watercolor measuring 4″x8″ (10cm x 20cm).
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This week’s Illustration Friday theme is “immovable”. I thought, “What is the most immovable thing in the world?” I immediately thought of prejudice. Hence the cartoon.
Wikipedia says that prejudice is a prejudgment: i.e., an assumption made about someone or something before having adequate knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy. It includes unreasonable attitudes or a priori beliefs that are unusually resistant to rational influence.
The problem with prejudice is that the one who is prejudiced usually doesn’t know it. He thinks he already has all the information needed to have the attitude or belief. So the trick that prejudice plays in the mind is: rather than knowledge leading to the attitude or belief, the attitude or belief pre-exists and forms the so-called “facts” that shape the prejudice and fuel it into action. It is a vicious circle rotating around the axis of illusion which always gains momentum. Prejudice, as in this cartoon, lodges in the mind and pretends to be informed knowledge.
How do I move the immovable in my own mind? The secret of prejudice’s power of immovability is my blindness to it, my ignorance of it. So the first thing I have to do is see this thing called prejudice in my mind, or at least see that it is possibly there. Once this is admitted as possible, once it is acknowledged and even seen, then the prejudice begins to lose its power.
But this is most difficult because it may mean that those attitudes we relish, those facts we hold fast, those beliefs we hold to be true, may all be false.
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Lots of drama in my life right now. None of it is to do with me. Everyone else around me. Although I do start my new job on Monday teaching international students at Saint John College in the University of New Brunswick. ‘Nuff said.
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I am pleased to announce the winner of yesterday’s FREEBIE FRIDAY contest. I entered everyone in the number generator and the winning number belongs to Kristie Hammond in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. I listed my newest drawing of Jesus, Age 12. But I gave the winner the option of choosing a fine art print of any image from my online stores here or here. Kristie chose the one below, a print of the original painting, “Northern Lights Return”, measuring 4″x8″ (10cm x 20cm).
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(Click on image for a larger picture in order to see the detail in his eyes.)
I am giving away a 7.5″x9.5″ (19cm x 24cm) fine art print of this portrait of “Jesus, 12 years“, OR: any print of your choice from my cartoons or from my fine art. Read the instructions on how to win below.
I recently had a dream in which I saw the face of Jesus at 12 years of age. He was standing in sunlight against a white wall. He was tanned with black hair and freckles. His eyes were very peculiar. There was a cross in his eyes. It had to be drawn. It is pen and ink, graphite pencil and charcoal on Strathmore vellum.
Something I learned in the church: organizations and the cross don’t get along. Like the human being, at the core of an organization’s spirit is the overpowering need to survive and not die. The protection of the organism is the primary impulse of the human mind. It is the same with organizations like the church. The cross is antithetical to this. The cross may be hung, adored, preached and heard, but it is rarely taken up.
“As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set his eyes toward Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51).
Luther says the same of Paul: “In every creature Saint Paul, with his sharp, discerning, apostolic eye, perceived the holy and beloved Cross.” What was different about Jesus, however, was that the cross he foresaw shaped his present life. The social philosopher Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy wrote: “Man as an animal organism lives forward from birth toward death, but, as a soul who knows beforehand that he will die, he molds his life looking backward from the end.” The gospels indicate that the reality of the cross permeated the life of Jesus from the beginning. And he allowed it.
Singer/songwriter/poet Leonard Cohen said, “Mankind must rediscover the crucifixion as a universal symbol, not just an experiment in sadism or masochism or arrogance. It will have to be rediscovered because that’s where man is at… on the cross!”
All you have to do to enter the contest is 2 things:
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