Now Introducing… HopeMob! Get the details & join our team now!:
Miraculously, the team @ Twitter just gave us @hope to use when we launch in March. How cool is that??? I’d love it if you considered donating one tweet a day for @hope when we begin in a few months.
(Via Shaun in the City — The Blog of Shaun King)
From The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey:
Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are— or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms. When other people disagree with us, we immediately think something is wrong with them. But, as the demonstration shows, sincere, clearheaded people see things differently, each looking through the unique lens of experience.
This does not mean that there are no facts. In the demonstration, two individuals who initially have been influenced by different conditioning pictures look at the third picture together. They are now both looking at the same identical facts— black lines and white spaces— and they would both acknowledge these as facts. But each person’s interpretation of these facts represents prior experiences, and the facts have no meaning whatsoever apart from the interpretation.
The more aware we are of our basic paradigms, maps, or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experience, the more we can take responsibility for those paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others and be open to their perceptions, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view. [bold emphasis mine]
Indeed. That is who I decide to be: a person of integrity who takes responsibility for himself with a firm grasp of reality. It is not easy and Lord knows I fail probably more often than I’d care to admit. (Anger is a powerful drug.) If you have ever had a passionate discussion on politics or religion with someone, this difficulty should be apparent. As responsible adults we can overcome this. (You must if you wish to be an effective person by Covey’s lights.)
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I recently finished up re-reading the book The Resurrection: Myth or Reality? by Episcopalian bishop John Shelby Spong that totally consumed my “free” time over the last couple of weeks. Being that it’s Lent, I wanted to, as I got my ashes on Ash Wednesday, “turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel.” Reading religious books (beyond The Good Book of course) is one way I chose to stop and reflect on my faith and what better book than about The Resurrection of Jesus Christ? Spong has always spoke directly to me and help me put words to a faith I find difficult to describe.
I realized that I never really confronted exactly what I positively believe about the resurrection and afterlife. I tend to dismiss literal interpretations of sacred history recounted in The Bible, but that’s a negative affirmation: what I don’t believe. As a Christian, I believe that Jesus is in fact risen and alive though not as I am. He’s alive in a way I’ve struggled to put in words beyond a vague spiritual description, but Spong does better.
It was as if scales fell from his eyes and Simon saw a realm that is around us at every moment, a realm of life and love, a realm of God from within which Jesus appeared to Simon.
As I expected, Spong confirmed that resurrection is not the sort of thing you film and playback on a DVD much less narrate.
Was it real? Yes, I am convinced it was real. Was it objective? No, I do not think it was objective. Can it be real if it is not objective? Yes, I think it can, for “objective” is a category that measures events inside time and space. Jesus appeared to Simon from the realm of God, and that realm is not within history, it is not bounded by time or space.
The crisis of episcopal governance in Philadelphia | National Catholic Reporter
If they can’t get the clergy sex abuse mess right, after all their protestations that they had taken steps to deal with the problem, and all their claims that the Catholic Church was now ahead of the curve on the issue, that our policies were such that the Catholic Church was the safest place for a child to be, nothing else matters.
The New Evangelization? Forget about it. Pro-life activities? Not a chance. Advocacy for the poor? It rings hollow. If the leaders of the Church cannot be trusted to keep their most solemn pledge to protect children, they cannot be trusted at all. If they fail to see this, their moral sensibility is not merely skewed, it is dead. It is not only that they cannot be trusted, it is that they should not be trusted.
They have succeeded in destroying the authority they were so obsessed in protecting.
Smooth jazz is really my Dad’s thing so I’m generally not all that turned on by modern praise and worship music. But the words…Lord, God Almighty.
Dear Friend,
Merry Christmas!
You are receiving this letter because of the sermon I heard preached this past weekend at Mass at St. Raymond Church. Our Pastor, Father Chris Walsh, preached on Matthew 3: 1-12, a part of the Gospel that is about the role of John the Baptist. As you know, John was Jesus’ cousin and was given the job of preparing the way for Jesus. John believed that Jesus was Lord and Savior and wanted everyone to have a relationship with him. In the sermon, Father Chris challenged the congregation to be like John the Baptist and help someone in our life reconnect with Jesus Christ and the Church.
I am happy that you are in my life. You are a good person and have been a real blessing to me. As wonderful as your life has been, I believe it could be even better if you developed your relationship with Jesus Christ and the Church. We all have lots of things that keep us from attending church each week; God knows it is a challenge for me at times too! I guess at times we all need a “John the Baptist” to remind us that our time with Jesus is really what matters most in the end.
I am not sending you this letter to tell you what to do. It is an invitiation. An invitiation to celebrate Christmas in a way that matters most–not with decorations, cookies and gifts–but by focusing on Jesus Christ who came to save us from sin and give us a peace and joy that nothing in this world can give. Please make a real effort to go to Church this year at Christmas. If you have a church that nourishes your soul, great, go there! If you are looking for a new church home, please know that I would love to bring you with me to St. Raymond for Mass on Christmas Eve at 7 p.m. or on Christmas Day at 10 a.m. but can’t as I will be out of town this year. Of course you are welcome to join us every weekend of the year as well, Saturday nights at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 10 a.m. Everyone is always welcome at St. Raymond; it is one of the things that make it such a special place for me.
If you want to talk about this letter, let me know. If you want to pretend you never got it; that is fine too. If you would like to speak with Father Chris, he said you can call him at (215) 549-3760 and he would be honored to speak with you about your relationship with the Lord. As I get ready for Christmas, you will remain in my prayers. I pray that St. John the Baptist will continue to point out Jesus to all of us, knowing that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life!
With love,
Robert
‘What Shall I Say to You?’ | Commonweal magazine: “What did that Latin quotation say to me that afternoon nearly half a century ago? It began, surely, in the notion that God was no mere Big Someone or Something outside of me, the anonymous Ground of Being. Rather, in the words of the great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, God was a fathomless, transcendent ‘Thou’ with whom, even in my moment of wavering, I was still wrestling. But what of it? What, really, did I hear, in the chanted Latin running through my mind that afternoon, to reverse the bleak intuition of the utter emptiness of myself and the mysterious absence of God?”
(Via Commonweal Magazine.)
I can relate. I’m reminded of Genesis 32:29 when Jacob wrestles with God.
Then the man said, “You shall no longer be spoken of as Jacob, but as Israel, because you have contended with divine and human beings and have prevailed.”
USCCB | NAB – September 19, 2010:
Hear this, you who trample upon the needy and destroy the poor of the land! ‘When will the new moon be over,’ you ask, ‘that we may sell our grain, and the sabbath, that we may display the wheat? We will diminish the ephah, add to the shekel, and fix our scales for cheating! We will buy the lowly for silver, and the poor for a pair of sandals; even the refuse of the wheat we will sell!’ The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: ‘Never will I forget a thing they have done!’”
(Via United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.)
This was the First Reading at Mass this morning on the theme of the day: socio-economic justice. I always read this Bible passage as a general attack on the exploitation of the poor and so it is. But it’s worth examining exactly what’s going on here. Diminishing the ephah and adding to the shekel is pretty straightforward: It’s evil to cheat the poor. But buying the lowly for silver the the poor for a pair of sandals hit me because it speaks to the morality of living wages and paying people below them.
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals with facts; religion deals with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.
Take that fundamentalists both of the evangelical and atheist variety.
A friend asked me to comment on why I found the Beck’s connection with Martin Luther’s King speech offensive, I had to take time to explain. I mean to be sure, the “Returning Honor” rally itself was fine and by the accounts I’ve skimmed, was pretty nice and a tamping down of the hatred of the recent past and hopefully a sign of a return to civil discourse. But I found Beck’s connection offensive and below is my explanation.