books and community

You may have noticed that i linked Hearts and Minds Bookstore. And if one must buy books, there is no better place, i think. But if one also notice a link to Ron's blog titled "how much is enough," one might wonder whether i really think buying more books is a good thing. It can be, if one shares.

So: before running out and buying more books, check if the Holy Cross Library, a part of Community of the Cross, has it, which you can do by e-mailing me, or see if it's at the Brendan Center, or check the public library, which in Bellingham is quite good, actually.

mary magdalene and community

Last Friday a few of us celebrative types gathered at the Brendan Center to celebrate the feast of the Apostle to the Apostles and inventer of the Easter egg, and to discuss the proper role of women in the contemporary Church.

Mostly we had a good time, ate a few madeleines and some cheese, and enjoyed wonderful music provided by Carol Reed-Jones and the Hildegard singers.

But we also decided that what women have provided and continued to provide, far better than all the old men in strange suits, is a much clearer vision and much more determined formation of community.

Thanks to everyone who came and shared.

mary magdalene and community

Last Friday a few of us celebrative types gathered at the Brendan Center to celebrate the feast of the Apostle to the Apostles and inventer of the Easter egg, and to discuss the proper role of women in the contemporary Church.

Mostly we had a good time, ate a few madeleines and some cheese, and enjoyed wonderful music provided by Carol Reed-Jones and the Hildegard singers.

But we also decided that what women have provided and continued to provide, far better than all the old men in strange suits, is a much clearer vision and much more determined formation of community.

Thanks to everyone who came and shared.

coffee shop trinitarianism

A young friend of mine who is interested in what he calls "theistic understanding of the world," having grown up within the " consumeristic understanding of the world," said to me that he is having a problem: he has read enough C . S. Lewis to know that to be a christian, he must believe in the trinity. My first response to him was, "why would you want to be a christian?" We have had some interesting dialogue following.

But a reflection i have had from this interchange is that most of the people i know who consider themselves practicing christians do not seem to believe in the trinity. God for them is Big Daddy in the Sky with all the goodies. The Son is not God the Son but the son of God, as often as not a sort of cosmic whipping boy, willing to run interference for us at our asking. The Holy Spirit is a sort of heavy breathing, not the Lord and Giver of Life, but something that proceeds from the Father the same way exhaling does. Certainly not the sort of equal Persons of the creeds and of the Ruvelev icon.

As i talk to people about the Trinity, i try to describe the experience the early Messianists had, nearly all jews by birth or baptism, who were accustomed to beginning their day with the shema: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One." It was their profound experience of the holiness of Yeshua which led them to the God-talk (theology) that resulted after more than 400 years, in what has become for most of us today, I'm afraid, the doctrine of the Trinity.

But how do we really experience the Holy One in Three Persons? What is the praxis of the Trinity?

best psalm

(allright: the field is crowded; but for me this little jewel is very big:)

Yahweh, my heart is not haughty,
I do not set my sights too high.
I have taken no part in great affairs,
in wonders beyond my scope.
No, I hold myself in quiet and silence,
like a little child in its mother's arms,
like a little child, so I keep myself.
Let Israel hope in Yahweh
henceforth and for ever.

the cappadocians and we neos

When the Byzantine Empire was the last word in new world orders, a group of family and friends in worked to forge a language to express their understanding of what the Holy One was doing in their lives in Christ, through the Holy Spirit. Makrina, her brothers Basil and Gregory of Nyssa, and Basil's close friend Gregory of Nazianzus as much as any group of believers set the tone for how the faith would be discussed as it spread beyond the area of Jerusalem and Judea and into the whole world.

There is a new world order in the making now, and it is exciting that there is a large group of family and friends trying to find new words to express their experience of the Holy One in their lives.

Even more important than new words is how to act in response to our experiences. Hopefully this blog will be a part of the conversation to lead us to new acts of today's apostles.