The way you tell the Christmas story, it all sounds so simple. So simple. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I really like it. It’s just that for so long now people have been telling my story and the way they tell it, it all sounds so simple and easy, so neat and tidy, that I hardly recognize myself in the story. It’s not your fault. It all started a long time ago. Luke and that other fellow Matthew, they started it all. They wrote my story down and wouldn’t you know it they cleaned it all up. But who can blame them. Nobody likes messy birth stories. And as birth stories go, my baby’s birth was a really messy one.
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Matthew and Luke tell completely different (and contradictory) accounts of the birth of Jesus. Neither are meant to be taken literally. They were writing a theological message (sermon) to introduce their gospels. Where the two agree is that the Jesus they were going to describe was a messenger who would turn the world upside down, casting down the rich and powerful in favor of the weak and poor. There is our real Christmas story, a story of liberation and justice.
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I support very much the call to ‘create new memories’ for Christmas and I believe the place to begin is with children. However, one of the best known children’s Christmas carols is ‘Away in the Manger’, and this much loved carol has many wrong messages imbedded in the words. The second verse of the traditional words speak of Jesus ‘looking down from the sky’ and the last verse has Jesus up in heaven and the singer requesting him to ‘fit us for heaven to live with you there’. I believe my third verse takes the dualism and the ‘away’ Jesus out and replaces it with the Biblical teaching of very last verse of Matthew – ‘And I will be with you always, to the end of the age’. This surely is the Gospel.
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If cobwebs fill the corners
That lurk within our mind
Our faith can help us brush aside
Each clinging thought we find
The Greek word for “faith” in the New Testament is pistis, which occurs 243 times. As a noun, pistis is used as a technical term for “forensic evidence.” In other words, faith is not blind; we must investigate to establish the facts. I agree with retired Episcopal bishop, John Shelby Spong, who writes, “My problem has never been my faith. It has always been the literal way that human beings have chosen to articulate that faith.” To many Christians, faith means believing highly suspect claims, which is a problem for me. Thinking isn’t a sin. God created our minds and I’m certain that we were intended to use them.
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Mindful Christianity is mysticism: the experience of a human being in spiritual union with the divine, seeing each other with the same eye. The observer within you, when you are deep in mindfulness meditation, is God. God is lovingly attentive toward your every experience, every feeling, urge, and thought. In mindfulness practice, God notices all of that is going on inside of you, with deep compassion and without judgment.
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If you want to be happy
Love life more than things
Finding the joys which sharing brings.
If you want to end grieving
For dying or loss
Cry till your tears dissolve your cross.
Part 2 of Sacred Energy (Mass of the Universe) contains the complete text of the mass
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The mass in a form that you can interact with. Each individual musical segment has both an audio file (mp3) and a musical score (pdf).
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The Supreme Court has declared corporations to be people, according to its Citizens United decision. And, likewise, in its Hobby Lobby decision, it decided that a company can be exempted from obeying laws that contradict his/her personal …
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One of the most serious theological conflicts in the history of Christianity occurred more than one thousand six hundred years ago. Known as the Arian controversy, many people who call them-selves Christian have most likely never heard …
read more“Knock, knock, knock and the door will surely open, *
Seek, seek, seek and the questing heart will find,”
All that only seems to lie outside us
Also dwells within our heart and mind.
O God of sky and God of Earth,
We honor your presence
Within us and beyond.
God of sky and God of Earth
Your bright presence we explore
Deep within us and beyond
All our reason’s structured lore.
1. How liberated are those who have learnt to let go;
They shall experience the mystery of God.
We come in sorrow, confronting the fact that life ends. Yet we also know that there is a power stronger than death—the transformative power of love. Love has joined us together…
read more(i) How happy are those who have learnt to let go;
They shall discover the Christ within.
What Does Hebrew Scripture Say about Life After Death? There isn’t much in Hebrew scriptures about life after death. According to Ecclesiastes, death is final: “The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; …
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