Being Right

"...not hurting people is ten...thousand time more...important than being right."

-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 118

On being born again and Spirituality

Being born again is the work of the Spirit...Spirituality is midwifery.

Spirituality combines awareness, intention, and practice. I define it as becoming conscious of and intentional about a deepening relationship with God. The words are very carefully chosen. Becoming conscious of our relationship with God: I am convinced that we are all already in relationship to God and have been from our birth. God is in relationship with us: spirituality is about becoming aware of a relationship that already exists.

Becoming intentional about our relationship to God: spirituality is about paying attention to the relationship. Though God is "Mystery," there is nothing mysterious about paying attention to our relationship with God. We do so in the ways we pay attention in a human relationship: by spending time in it, attending to it, being thoughtful about it. We pay attention to our relationship with God through practice, both corporate and individual: worship, community, prayer, scripture, devotion...

A deepening relationship with God: in what is now a familiar theme, the Christian life is not very much about believing a set of beliefs, but about a deepening relationship with the one in whom we live and move and have our being. Paying attention to this relationship transforms us. This is what our lives are to be about: a transforming relationship to "what is," the "More."

-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 120

The Bible and the Emerging Paradigm

Historical: For the emerging paradigm, the Bible is the historical product of two ancient communities, ancient Israel and the early Christian movement. The Bible was not written to us or for us, but for the ancient communities that produced it. A historical approach emphasizes the illuminating power of interpreting these ancient documents in their ancient historical context.

Metaphorical: The emerging paradigm sees the Bible metaphorically, by which I mean its "more than literal," "more than factual," meaning. It is not very much concerned with the historical factuality of the bible's stories, but much more with their meanings.  It is not bothered by the possibility that the stories of Jesus' birth and resurrection are metaphorical rather than literally factual accounts.  It asks, "Whether it happened this way or not, what is the story saying?  What meaning does it have for us?"

Sacramental: The emerging paradigm sees the Bible sacramentally, by which I mean the bible's ability to mediate the sacred.  A sacrament is something visible and physical whereby the Spirit becomes present to us.  A sacrament is a means of grace, a vehicle or vessel for the Spirit.

...the emerging paradigm sees the Bible as sacred scripture, but not because it is a divine product.  It is sacred in its status and function, but not in its origin.

...the emerging paradigm sees the Christian life as a life of relationship and transformation.  Being Christian is not about meeting requirements for a future reward in an afterlife, and not very much about believing.  Rather, the Christian life is about a relationship with God that transforms life in the present.

-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pgs. 13-14.

The great healing of the universe is centered on the breach in our relationship with our God.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 90

"For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him?" In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a serparate language in each of us, also a serparate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful an what is acceptable--which I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live.

Every prayer seemed long to me at that age, and I was truly bone tired. I tried to keep my eyes closed, but after a while i had to look around a little. And this is something I remember very well. At first I thought I saw the sun setting in the east; I knew where east was, because the sun was just over the horizon when we got there that morning. Then I realized that what I saw was a full moon rising just as the sun was going down. Each of them was standing on its edge, with the most wonderful light between them. It seemed as if you could touch it, as if there were palpable currents of light passing back and forth, or as if there were palpable currents of light passing back and forth, or as if there were great taut skeins of light suspended between them. I wanted my father to see it, but I knew I'd have to startle him out of his prayer, and I wanted to do it the best way, so I took his hand and kissed it. And then I said, "look at the moon." and he did. We just stood there until the sun was down and the moon was up. They seemed to float on the horizon for a quite a long time, I suppose because they were both so bright you couldn't get a clear look at them. And that grave, and my father and I, were exactly between them, which seemed amazing to me at the time, since I hadn't given much thought to the nature of the horizon.

My father said, "I would never have thought this place could be beautiful. I'm glad to know that."

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 14-15)

Well, see and see but do not perceive, hear and hear but do not understand, as the Lord says. I can't claim to understand that saying, as many times as I've heard it, and even preached on it. It simply states a deeply mysterious fact. You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 7)