May 14, 2024

Reaching the Moon

If you wish to view this email on the web, or previous emails, please check them out through our Archives.

There you can also leave a comment and new people can subscribe to the emails.

Names - We have two suggested names for the group. If you would like to submit another please reply to this email or comment and then we can have a vote.

---

First a wee parable from Sheila's son Ged.... !!!!!

In the full bus, packed to overflowing actually, everyone’s attention was drawn to a small boy holding a scrap of wood with extreme care. One lady could not bear it any longer, and asked him why he was being so careful about this worthless scrap of wood.

He explained, “I am taking a little ant for a ride. She is my great friend. It is her first trip in a bus.”

Who would ever have thought the kid could have so much poetry and kindness in him!

I could not keep my eyes off him. When he got off the bus, I got off too. I felt that here was someone I could really talk to.

I explained that I too was very fond of little ants. And I told him about the only time when the ants and I had ever been at cross purposes.

One night, our little ants at home gobbled up our rosebush. Nest morning, I caught Sonja, a little red lady ant and one of the cleverest I ever met in my life. I didn’t squeeze her angrily – for God preserved me from anger! But I did hold her with a certain firmness. Her little foot was trembling and her heart was beating fit to burst.

I asked her why they had gobbled up my rosebush in a single night.

Miss Sonja replied, “Do you think you are the only person to like roses?”

At first I was taken a back, but then retorted, “Eating seems a funny way of loving!”

At which Sonja nearly made me die of shame by asking, “Isn’t that what you do at Holy Communion?”

I apologized to her and set her free, carefully putting her back on the ground. For the next three days, all the ants looked at me askance.

Unable to bear this any longer, I called Sonja and asked her to help me.

And this is how, be means of Sonja, I taught the ants to smell the roses instead of eating them. I explained to them that kissing roses goes on all over the place. But not up here in Nordeste – we just smell them.

I invited the little boy who was taking his ant-friend for a bus ride to come and visit our garden one moonlit night and see all the ants climbing up the rosebush and smelling the roses.

The child did not react like a grown-up: he was not surprised, he did not disbelieve me. He thought it was great!

So I then told him how, one day, I met a young ant called Claudia, who was limping. We were in the garden at home. With her permission, I turned her over on her back to see what was the matter with her tiny foot.

So it was that Claudia for the first time saw the sky – for ants are just like us – go, go, go, run, run, never pausing to look up and gaze at the sky.

On seeing the sky for the first time, Claudia lay open-mouthed with amazement and delight. I soon realized there was no point in asking her about the foot. She was not listening. She was looking at the sky.

I told the little boy as he got into another bus carrying his ant on the bit of wood, “If you come to my house one moonlit night, you may very well find the little ants lying on their backs with their heads in the grass, gazing at the moon.”

Source | Dom Helder Camara, A Thousand Reasons for Living

(Fortress Press, 1981) pages 5-7

---

Phd Thesis  This is a short summary by Charles of a Glasgow University Phd thesis by, Greg Fromholz.

“a filmmaker and theologian based in Ireland who, for over 30 years, has designed and directed communications projects. At home in online, written, visual and in-person settings, he finds innovative ways to tell old — and new —  stories.”

For the film, which is 1 hour and 24 minutes long,

“Podcasting is now what the printing press was to the Reformation. Very cheap to run.  Universally reachable.  Goodness to people who are disenfranchised.  Digital technologies are disruptive forces that level the playing field.  At its worst it becomes a  modern  day Tower of Babel.”                                                          Michael McHargue

Can spirituality be formed in a digital landscape, through podcasting ?   If so what does it look like ?  Also who ARE the leading voices in Christian spirituality in this digital era ? And how are they using podcasts ?  All leaders asked said YES.  These are leaders with millions of followers accessing their podcasts.  The Church has something to learn from them.

Spiritual exiles are looking beyond traditional spirituality to find a spirituality more in tune with their beliefs.  There is a rise in the search for a deeper spirituality.

Michael McHargue     Digital media can be an essential piece of spiritual formation but relying ONLY on digital media in spiritual formation makes things more difficult than they should be.  Why ?   We’re spiritual animals. And community is the essential component of spiritual formation in my mind.

Richard Rohr    Spirituality used to be about receiving information, learning about your religious tradition or the Gospel. About education. I listen to a lecture, a talk.  That’s laughable now.  Now it’s more experiential, about transformative knowledge and experience, about practices that shape our being, who we become.  Amazing how long it’s taken for us to see this.  We kept thinking information would get us there,  but it clearly hasn’t.

Brian McLaren sees spirituality as how I regulate my desires. Spirituality is about the formation of our desires,  intentionally choosing to form our desires. Evolutionarily we inherited a whole set of desires. I have desires for pleasure,  for wealth, for possessions,  security,  even aggression or revenge, justice.  We live in this complicated world of capitalism, which is all about focusing your desires in the interests of profit. Big business puts billions of dollars every day into forming your desires,  politicians the same.  This is about what you want and therefore ultimately who you become.

Discipleship has same root as discipline.  Love is many things, but also about discipline.

Shane Claiborne

  Its about disciplining  yourself to focus more on love or truth-seeking or a moral way of behaving.  This doesn’t just happen naturally,  in fact it’s unlikely to happen that way. People today form groups,  shape their own discussions,  do their own spiritual formation.

People don’t now listen to one person at the top level of a Church. They are curating their own conversations, discussions.  They don’t see the spiritual as just on a Sunday morning, one specific time.  More and more it’s becoming what Miroslav Wolf calls “Thick Faith”  ie people integrate these discussions and focus through the week,  it’s  not just about Sunday  morning.

It’s about what happens when a person is paying attention to their own inner compass,   the way they tell their story,  tell others stories, how they connect with meaning,  whether this is inside religion or outside.   What does it mean to be human,  how do we want to live?

Mike McHargue  Spiritual Formation is learning to understand yourself well enough, and not having to think about yourself all the time, but focus on life itself.  When we learn who we are, what my gifts are, my triggers and weaknesses are, what our trauma is, we can learn to live in a way where we  can receive love and support from others un-self-consciously and we can move through the world in a way which is flourishing.  What is enough is what helps to be who you are, love others well, and not be consumed by the way you’ve been hurt and harmed.

As spiritual director I’m a curator,  introducing you each week to podcasts, speakers, Ted talks, Q talks,  courses,  along your chosen direction of growth and formation, from where you are at,  at this moment.  This can help you extend, broaden and deepen your awareness and knowledge about the world and your place in it.   I can see I’m part not just of a small church but of a larger movement.

I’m not a leader, unless you see this as leading.  I’m a source of solidarity, of connection,  an animator of shared spirituality.  I’m a way-station for people in transition.

Lisa Sharon Harper   Podcasting is  a part of a new constellation of many things coming up online.  I think its happening around the hard questions of today:  eg white nationalism in multiple nations, right-wing extremism, is causing angst, making people go deeper,   feeling challenged suddenly, looking for new answers to new questions.

All I can do is in the present moment.  It is to do what is earnest, genuine, sincere, loving and avoid what is strategic, performative or financially successful.

People come to you with all kinds of baggage, ready to proclaim you as saviour, great teacher,  relate to you as son or daughter or one being healed by you etc. Importance of resisting these projections, expectations,  like these, developing dependency relationships.   We resist the celebrity culture,  deconstruct the projections.

I don’t take in the intense reactions.  I feed back  - “where is this coming from in your experience….or dismantling celebrity culture,   not being a guru,  set up groups or relationships to care for each other. *

The really good podcast leaders resist these trends, Drew Hart, Rohr, Tippett,  Jarrold McKenna etc

Nadia Bolz-Weber   I’ve had many people talk to me about giving up Church.  I’ve never had people say “I don’t like the Gospel   - I’m giving it up.”  People leave the church because they cant stomach an institution that says its about the Gospel and clearly isnt.

Brian McLaren.  “What’s going on in the Christian world is that this new movement is the Christian wing of a larger spiritual movement.  Even that larger spiritual movement is itself the spiritual wing of a larger civilisational shift.  The new consciousness - new paradigm,  part of a universal movement towards the good.”    

The old system was built around the big man, religious strong man. There is today great suspicion of the “big man”   Esp  the big white man.   For feminists the big man of any kind.  Because of multiculturalism there is a  suspicion of any group with all the same culture.  All this will be suspect going forward.   

Problem will be…. either we have a flight of geese, person at front always changing, everybody listening to everybody…or a dictator who decides everything for everybody else.  The down side of this is that it (the consensual) can easily fragment.  But this is closer to real life.  Risk…..etc.    You don’t start by being afraid we’re going to lose things.  You start by being afraid we’re not going to lose enough. but managing danger.

Podcasts play the role the preacher used to play. People are now moving away from church.  They  can get “church” any day of the week.  It’s a new Church.   Yes, dis-aggregated,  widespread, not gathered as before yet,   but having common experiences and a common memory of those experiences.

We harmonise, not homogenise.

Michael McHargue  “I wouldn’t start a church today for any reason.”

Podcasting is now what the printing press was to the Reformation. Very cheap to run.  Universally reachable.  Goodness to people who are disenfranchised.  Digital technologies are disruptive forces that level the playing field  At its worst it becomes a  modern  day Tower of Babel.

It’s brought listening back.  To people who’re excluded,  women, migrants, women of colour,  travellers,  lgbt+ people,  the marginalised.   Brings imagination to people whose imaginations have been chained up.

We have to imagine our faith.