When I Rise and Fall

When I rise up
let me rise up joyful
like a bird

When I fall
let me fall without regret
like a leaf

~Wendell Berry, Earth Prayers, p. 367

Nature takes care of and grows up humans. ~jpc

We are part of nature. Namaste.

image: a falling sweetgum leaf by Anna Hess kitenet.net/~anna/recentpaint.html

Contemplative and Activist

[Bonhoeffer] was both a contemplative and an activist..., who showed, as Thomas Merton later did, that you really can’t be one without becoming the other. ~Jim Wallis, Foreword, A Year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. vii

Contemplation without action ... action without contemplation: either way, like a vehicle with one good wheel. ~jpc

What will it take to grow up many more effective humans? Namaste.

image http://tinyurl.com/3mh76h

The Heart of Matter

Within every being and every event there was a progressive expansion of a mysterious inner clarity which transfigured them.... The Diaphany of the heart of a glowing Universe as I have experienced it through contact with the Earth – the Divine radiating from the depths of a blazing Matter. ~Teilhard de Chardin, The Heart of Matter, p. 16

This is the witness of one who was at one with the heart of creation in his mundane living, in this same universe we live in. ~jpc

It does have a heart. Namaste.

image: "Slow Burn," Mark A. Chapman http://tinyurl.com/49aes7

Sunday Dialogue CII

Journer: Do you think we need a new Reformation?

Nez: My student* said, “reformation is a permanent movement.”

Journer: But why not a new set of 95 theses on a symbolic church door somewhere, like in Vatican City?

Nez: Reforming spirit is hammering on every door of creation every day.

______
* H. Richard Niebuhr, “Reformation: Continuing Imperative,” Christian Century 77 (1960): 250, via Lonnie Kliever

image: "The Power of Spirit: and Its Relationship to the World of All Living Things," by Tadashi Hayakawa http://tinyurl.com/45pgqs

Emerging Paradigm

There is a way of seeing Christianity that makes persuasive and compelling sense of life in the broadest sense – a way of seeing reality and our lives in relationship to what is real.... [This] “emerging paradigm” has been developing for over a hundred years. ~Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pp. xi-xii

Borg and a host of others have been on a mission to present the heart of reality, from their faith perspective, in our worldview so that we can respond with our full being, including our intellect. ~jpc

We no longer have any excuses. Namaste.

image: Jenny Holzer http://tinyurl.com/45a2pq

Beyond the Symbols

Joseph [Campbell] taught me to see beyond the symbols to the riches they represent. Those who cannot see beyond the symbols, he remarked, are “like diners going into a restaurant and eating the menu,” rather than the meal it describes. ~Diane K. Osbon, introduction to Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion, p. 9

My mentor threw the Bible on the chapel floor to make his point: that book is a symbol, not the feast. ~jpc

We cherish the symbols, but, ever so much more, the truth they point to. Namaste.

image: "Eating the Menu," by Richard Cody www.flickr.com/photos/rcody/159769674/

Strong as Its Spirit

[This dug up Torah from a grave at Auschwitz] is a very concrete, tactile ... remembrance – of what people, some of whom [Nazis] did it in the name of Christ, did to people who were Jewish.... [This restored holy book] enables us to be prepared to prevent that from happening again.... The Nazis really thought they had wiped Jews off the face of the earth, and Judaism. Here we are taking the ultimate symbol of hope and of Judaism and rededicating it.... And we’ll take it to Auschwitz. You can’t beat that. ~a Lutheran Pastor and Jewish Rabbi speaking in “From Auschwitz, a Torah as Strong as Its Spirit,” by James Barron, nytimes.com, 4/30/08

Symbols for a new future, born out of evil from the past, raise consciousness. ~jpc

Let us never forget. We rededicate ourselves to living and let live. Namaste.

image: Running with the Sefer Torah http://tinyurl.com/4qlcls