zéteó

Our Father

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 18:35:00 +0000

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins

as we forgive those who sin against us.

Lead us not into temptation

but deliver us from evil.

For the kingdom, the power,

and the glory are yours

now and for ever.

Amen.

Sunday...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 28 Aug 2022 14:58:00 +0000

Sitting in a new church building on Sunday morning. It's interesting how rhythms, cultures, expectations can vary place to place. It's quiet here at this time... I like it. I know in just a few clicks on the clock it will be busy. The building will be busy doing. I've been a pastor in one role or another for half my life. Sundays are rarely restful or easy. There are moments of chaos, peace, uncertainty, doubt, happiness, fear, joy, hope, failure and so much more. Groups of people come together with their own muddled expectations. It's rarely peaceful for a pastor. But it's good. I think its good, maybe I hope it's good.

So I will sit here in this quiet for just a little longer before the place wakes up.

Painting by Claude Monet

New Season...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 03:31:00 +0000

A Friend

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sat, 13 Mar 2021 13:31:00 +0000

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”

-Henri Nouwen,

Family

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 22:49:00 +0000

Is Christianity GOOD NEWS for your family?

This is the question I have been wrestling with the last few days.

It's hard to even know where to start when talking about Christianity and family... Many much smarter people than me have written about it, preached and taught about it, and many more experienced problems and joys of the Christian faith in their family.

If we are honest so much 'christianese' language has been used when discussing this topic. So much so that I often feel we lose the power and significance of what actually happened to families in the 1st century Roman Empire when they began to experience the Christian teaching on family and life. For one, the Roman empire adopted their family system from the Greeks and valued a system for strength and growth but within the system the dysfunction was toxic. The view of women was very low, almost putting women on an animal level, and the structure operated on husband disciplining all members of the family, wife, kids and slaves. All were subordinate to to the oldest male in the house. This family system today we would call toxic, abusive, manipulative and of course unacceptable. It’s important to understand this toxic environment is what Paul is speaking into and against. Paul is undoubtably taking a stand for women, children, slaves. Pulling the new Jesus communities and us into what a new humanity and a new family looks like in Christ.

In contrast to Roman family, the new family, the new humanity, the church in Christ, was a family where all were given dignity, hope, a voice, a purpose, a place of value. This IS why Paul can say to the Galatians; "So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise." (Gal 3:26-29 NIV) This new way of living tied so significantly to Abraham's family, Jews and Gentile Christians were also having disagreements of what it looked like to follow Jesus, but this new reality, THIS was GOOD NEWS. I mean think about growing up in that time in that culture; you might be at the top of the pyramid and life is a gem of a time or you are absolutely nothing, no voice, no say, no significance, nothing, in the family, in the city in the world. To now have this dignity was/is Good News, no wonder people were rushing to Christianity, no wonder this was good, this was better.

So is Christianity still Good News for my family in a post-christian world? With all our dysfunctions and toxic behaviours that darken our days and souls, is there a place to be reminded that you are significant, that you matter, that you have a voice?

Today I am reminded that Christ is the good news, for me, for my family, for us, that Christ levels the playing field and sheds light on the fact that you are the image bearer of God Himself, that in fact you matter.

For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you.

- Psalms 139:13-18 (NIV)

Contemplative Life pt. 2

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 21:56:00 +0000

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. " - John 15:5

I'm struck again that doing something, anything that is well... worthwhile... of value begins with remaining, abiding... making a home in God. Being in God.

The life of a contemplative, being in God, one finds their fuel, their source from the nourishment of the vine. All else fails and becomes nothing. All else does not produce fruit worth mentioning.

But a side from the fruit it is in the vine that one is fully nourished, enriched, strengthened, equipped.. and most importantly at home. Everything else is an aimless search that disappoints, stretched in all directions never quite having enough nourishment, never enough energy, never enough.

Yet in God, the source of life is the fuel and nourishment. If you remain in me and I in you... you are at home.

Contemplative Life

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 02:59:00 +0000

There's a difference in the Christian life... Being in the world for God is not the same as being in God for the world...

Christian formation asks us to abandon the idea of being in the world for God and to engage us to be IN GOD for the world.

Salvation = Healing

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 03:53:00 +0000

winter

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 15:49:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 29 Aug 2018 17:37:00 +0000

Crossroad...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 17:53:00 +0000

Mood

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 03:24:00 +0000

Matejko's Stanczyk

Victory

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 20:24:00 +0000

Psalm 31

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 04:28:00 +0000

Lent

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sat, 24 Feb 2018 21:10:00 +0000

Some thoughts...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Thu, 15 Feb 2018 17:53:00 +0000

A while back I decided to return to a paper journal for thoughts, devotions, scribbles, muddling, work notes and all that comes to my mind while I read, write, listen or watch... because of that this space has been left empty, forgotten and neglected. At one point I was simply going to delete it since I was not using it and likelihood of anyone reading this is zero, and thats not why I had it anyways...

But then there are all these archives of nonsense, insightfulness, memories, confusion, quotes and so much more that I recorded at some point and this messy, bad, decent, ok, good and terrible collections are what make up my journey and thoughts... and so I leave it, and once in a while return to re-read, laugh at what I had thought at one point but also I get encouraged and surprised about things I thought about and wrestled with in my soul. It's good and healthy (in a broken sort of way).. and so I keep this.

So here is some of my updated wrestling and thoughts as we enter Lent today (Feb. 15, 2018) ... I have never been very good at Lent, that is I have great aspirations and intentions of observing Lent in the most "spiritual" way, but so often fail on these intentions and aspirations, and frustrate my self and get so absorbed into my self in the midst of a time where my journey ought to lead me to death, burial and most importantly the resurrection of Jesus. So today, I promise nothing, that feels so unspiritual to even type. But I promise nothing. I will muddle and remember and write and read and look up and cry and laugh and get mad and get up and sit down. I will live freely and love freely and I will embrace the fact that all is spiritual and that Jesus just loves me... and you and us and them.

The practice of resurrection is an intentional, deliberate decision to believe and participate in resurrection life, life out of death, life that trumps death, life that is the last word, Jesus life.

-Eugene Peterson

art by Makoto Fujimura, Walking on Water

Richard Rohr

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 19:54:00 +0000

Quotable...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Mon, 04 Jul 2016 17:47:00 +0000

The crucified, resurrected Jesus shows us how to transform pain without denying, blaming, projecting it elsewhere. - Richard Rohr

Wendell Berry quotes

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 20:15:00 +0000

We are now living in a sexual atmosphere so polluted and embittered that women must look on virtually any man as an assailant, and a man must look on virtually any women as a potential accuser. The idea that this situation can be corrected by the courts and the police only compounds the disorder and the danger. And in the midst of this acid rainfall of predation and recrimination, we presume to teach our young people that sex can be made ‘safe’ - by the use, inevitably, of purchased drugs and devices. What a lie! Sex was never safe and it is less safe now than it has ever been…

What we are actually teaching the young is an illusion of thoughtless freedom and purchasable safety, which encourages them to tamper prematurely, disrespectfully , and dangerously with a great power. Just as the public economy encourages people to spend money and waste the world, so the public sexual code encourages people to be spendthrifts and squanderers of sex…

In sex, as in other things, we have liberated fantasy but killed imagination, and so we have sealed ourselves in selfishness and loneliness. Fantasy is of the solitary self, and it cannot lead us away from ourselves. It is by imagination that we cross over the differences between ourselves and other beings and thus learn compassion, forbearance, mercy, forgiveness, sympathy and love - the virtues without which neither we nor the world can live…

- Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays

History Repeats...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 19:33:00 +0000

History repeats, it's cyclical they say. It repeats with the good and the ugly, the storms rise, calm and repeat. Awful things like abuse, murder and wars continue despite our historical consciousness of how terrible they were and are, they become again and continue. We do them for many reasons, sometimes out of necessity some times for the greater good, there is always a reason to continue them. In the olden times child sacrifice for example was something horrifically done to appease the gods, so that one would have a good life.

This unimaginable, misguided, broken system was interrupted when God tells Abraham that He is NOT to kill Isaac his son. The fact that He is asked to do it in the first place is NOT the issue or the point of the story, in fact it may have been somewhat ordinary to the culture of that time, gods were demanding child sacrifice all the time, then! The significance is that God interrupts and triumphantly puts an end to it, and provides a lamb. In this, foreshadowing the ultimate sacrifice by God-Himself, for us, to come. The answer; was, is, and will be Jesus...

Today we live in a new age of child sacrifice, we may not be doing it to appease the pagan god(s), but, but we are sacrificing children to the gods of selfishness. We easily explain away life, personhood, humanity to satisfy the selfish and ignorant desires. We don't want anything... even life to disrupt, or get in the way of us enjoying our good life. We don't want anything in the way of finding ourselves, or maybe we are waiting for a time to be more mature, seduced by a lie that - youth is all that matters. So we don't want a child to get in the way of, our life, so we sacrifice children (read abort) them for the good life.

I know its not always this simple, I realize there are plenty of stories of rape and abuse and constant horrors that are forced on someone, and non of them are ok, and non of them should be explained away. They are unjust, wrong, horrible, sad and broken. But perpetuating one horror because of another is repeating history. The answer today; was, is and will be Jesus... The one who was abused, scorned and broken, the one who weeps with us, but offers His life for us... so that we could have life, to the fullest... a life from death.

There Is No Pro-Life Case For Planned Parenthood, Read:
http://nyti.ms/1MMMfPg

quote...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 21 Jun 2015 21:37:00 +0000

“Christianity has from its beginning portrayed itself as a gospel of peace, a way of reconciliation (with God, with other creatures), and a new model of human community, offering the 'peace which passes understanding' to a world enmeshed in sin and violence. ” David Bentley Hart

Suffering, David Bentley Hart, Quote

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 06 May 2015 08:01:00 +0000

"As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that He will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, He will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes”and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and He that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new.”

-(http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/01/tsunami-and-theodicy)

-David B. Hart’s most recent book is Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies.

quotable...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 17:54:00 +0000

“If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible what was the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men had forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.' ”

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Bear Grylls // Alpha

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 23 Dec 2014 00:51:00 +0000

Sharing a friend's blog post...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 16:50:00 +0000

Sharing a post from a friend, pastor Ryan Dueck whose writing everyone should read and can find HERE. Here is his latest post:

I Don’t Understand

by Ryan on December 10, 2014

I didn’t really understand what you were talking about the other night.

The comment was simple, innocent, straightforwardly honest. It was an utterly unremarkable event in the life the church. Indeed, it was a gracious invitation for further clarification and conversation. And the comment wasn’t even in response to a sermon or lecture that I had poured hours of time and energy and emotional investment into, but a rather light-hearted devotional at a social function. But for some reason, this simple statement came crashing over me like a tidal wave.

You didn’t understand me?! How could such a thing be?! Especially when I am in the habit of communicating with luminous clarity and transparency? And humility. Without exception. Especially when it is self-evidently true that every topic that I choose to speak or write about ought to matter to each person present to the same degree and in the same way that it does to me?!

This was my (mercifully internal) reaction to being misunderstood in a relatively trivial matter. What must it be like, I later wondered, to be misunderstood in deeper, more persistent and painful ways?

What must it be like to be an indigenous person who frequently finds themselves on the receiving end of insulting, racist language and attitudes that demonstrate little to no understanding of or interest in the social realities that have done such incalculable damage to their people?

What must it be like to be the kid who acts out impulsively and violently in school settings because he has only ever known dysfunction and abuse at a string of foster homes? Because from his earliest memory he has always found himself on the outside looking in?

What must it be like to be a sexual minority who is frequently looked at with a combination of suspicion or condemnation by those who have always and only been “normal,” who have no categories for such threatening difference, who prefer debating “issues” to interacting with real human beings?

What must it be like to the person who struggles with addictions—alcohol, drugs, food, sex, entertainment, media, whatever—who daily fights against the self-loathing that isolates, shames, and relentlessly chips away at the possibility of a hopeful future?

What must it be like to be the inmate at the correctional centre who has grown accustomed to having their identity and worth being consistently pinned to their worst decision(s)?

What must it be like to be senior citizen, buried away in an institution, often treated less like a human being than as a problem to manage, struggling daily for dignity, fighting daily with the question of whether or not their life has value, living long days of loneliness and sadness while the losses accumulate, watching friends die regularly?

What must it be like to be the person whose political/religious/ideological views we like to ridicule and heap scorn upon? What factors might have contributed to the tenacious manner in which they cling to ways of looking at the world that seem obviously misguided to us?

The only way we will ever know the answers to any of these (and other) questions is if we ask. And, more importantly, if we listen.

I am convinced that one of the greatest gifts that we can give other human beings is that of trying to truly understand their experience.

Not to hear their story in order to bolster already-embraced opinions or to legitimate tired assumptions.

Not to listen while already formulating a response.

Not to filter their words and actions through established categories, existing ways of compartmentalizing human beings so as not to have to deal with real stories, real hopes, real fears, real struggles.

Not any of these and the countless other ways that we listen and engage with other people without really listening or engaging.

What would it look like to truly put ourselves in the place of another? To discipline ourselves to make our default question, What does the world look and feel like from your vantage point?

This is hard and holy work.

In Matthew 5:41, Jesus says these famous words:

If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.

The immediate context of these words is a difficult teaching about how followers of Jesus are to treat our enemies. But I wonder if we could apply them more broadly. I wonder if we could interpret Jesus’ words here as a simple exhortation to go above and beyond what is obligatory and expected in all our relationships with others, to walk further along the road than is strictly necessary in our attempts to understand the experience of another.

Or, to put it more simply yet, to truly love our neighbour as ourselves.