Category: Personal

community?

I have not posted anything for a long long time! So I am going to post some quotes from SK for your upbuilding.

I am preaching this Sunday and watching shows on “cults” – a dangerous mix.

Christianly, struggling is always done by single individuals, because spirit is precisely this, that everyone is an individual before God, that “fellowship” is a lower category than “the single individual,” which everyone can and should be. And even if the individuals were in the thousands and as such struggled jointly, Christianly understood each individual is struggling, besides jointly with the others, also within himself, and must as a single individual give an accounting on judgment day, when his life as an individual will be examined.

Practice in Christianity, 223

… the abstraction of leveling is a principle that forms no personal, intimate relation to any particular individual, but only the relation of abstraction, which is the same for all.

Two Ages, 88

freedom

Do you believe in fate/destiny?

I thought I would answer this prompt. Not because I have any profound ideas or anything. Just because!?

So, do I believe in fate? First I think the question is using “believe” differently than I would. “Believe” is about living with paradox rather than making it something I know. It is a resolution to move ahead even if the end is uncertain. Maybe a little, “Just live as if”!?

Second is the issue of “fate”. The short answer is “no”. Why? Where is freedom if all is set in stone? The long answer? Where is my accountability for my actions if they are from outside? Freedom is radical and scary if it is real. Fate, to me, is an escape from “me”.

So, anyway ….

4am start

So I started my day at 4am. I had the most beautiful time of meditation and then said Morning Prayer. I watched the sunrise across the Bay. But now, at 10am, I am ready for lunch!

I really like an early start to the day. By nature, I am an early bird. The great thing about being solitary is that I get to organise my day my way. So lunch at 11am is ok. And, btw, I have a rest after lunch.

tea

What is your favorite drink?

Well, it is still tea but I have given it up for a little. My stomach needs a break from it. So at the moment, it is “water with bubbles”.

But, once a week, I have a macchiato at my coffee shop. It is pure delight! And my head spins for the rest of the morning.

no ball

If you had the power to change one law, what would it be and why?

So a law I would change? Well, I think there is a law in cricket that needs an update: the no ball law in Test cricket. I think, since the majority of no ball calls are made by the third umpire after the delivery, the next delivery should be a free-hit. Yes, I know that is how the white ball game is played. I just think it needs to be introduced into the longer form of the game.

The Anchorage

Write about your dream home.

The house I live in right now! I know that is a little boring but it is actually true. And it is not about the physical side of the house. It has a place to pray, a useful kitchen, and a place to sleep. It also has room for my books. What makes it a home is the connection to the community of faith – past, present, and future – that it proclaims to me and to the community that walks past the front door.

While I do not see or interact with a lot of people, I know I am part of a community. And that is what moves it from a physical house to a home. Yes, the community stresses me (“me” as a particular individual with their own problems) but it also protects me and helps me to truly find myself.

I am truly in love with this place. It is also a house that is set aside by the faith community for prayer and solitude. It is a liminal space – in the world but not of the world. In fact, I am very much hoping to end my days living here in this community.

catch?

You get some great, amazingly fantastic news. What’s the first thing you do?

For the outside world, I would say that I would thank God. And I would pray and try to be thankful in my heart. I know (intellectually) that all good has its origin in God. I would make a real effort to move from my heart to my head.

Why? Because my head is going into overdrive and asking, “So what is the catch?”. My heart knows it is from God but my head is wondering if people are just having pity on me. My head would wonder if I was being “sold a dummy”, if this is a joke or a conspiracy.

So I sit in the middle of the conversation between my heart and my head and just do NOTHING!

people!

Is there anything you feel too old to do anymore?

Ok, I’ll bite – what am I too old to do anymore? People! Not that people are “wrong” or I am a misanthropist. I like people. But only in small amounts.

I find an “encounter” with a person very draining. That is a real interaction which is not transactional. To put it another way, to see a person as an end in themselves and not a means to an end for me. Not what I can get out of the interaction but what I can give to the other person as a person and not an object. Yes, I can transact business with people – I can go to the shops or get a coffee and not freak out. But I do not want to transact with people, I want to encounter people. And that means I can only take so much!

That sounds like a backhanded compliment to myself!? It has taken me a long time to work all of that out. Aloness, for me, is not about the evil of people but rather about being ready for the goodness of people.

Sorry if that makes no sense.

witness

The true knight of faith is a witness, never a teacher, and therein lies the deep humanity that is worth more than this frivolous concern for the welfare of other people that is extolled under the name of sympathy but is really nothing more than vanity.

Fear and Trembling

A believer was bestowed the title of red martyr due to either torture or violent death by religious persecution. The term “white martyrdom” was used by the Church Father Jerome, “for those such as desert hermits who aspired to the condition of martyrdom through strict asceticism”. Blue (or green) martyrdom “involves the denial of desires, as through fasting and penitent labors without necessarily implying a journey or complete withdrawal from life”.

Christian martyr