Prayer No. 2

May God grant me just the right amount of Orthodoxy, conservatism, new-ageism, liberalism, Hicksism, Gurneyism, Wilburism, Christocentrism, theism, nontheism, universalism, narrowness, discipline, looseness, humor, seriousness, dualism, nondualism, rationality, feeling, tenacity, surrender and hard-headedness that I need to overcome my tendency to get stuck on Orthodoxy, conservatism, new-ageism, liberalism, Hicksism, Gurneyism, Wilburism, Christocentrism, theism, nontheism, universalism, narrowness, discipline, looseness, humor, seriousness, dualism, nondualism, rationality, feeling, tenacity, surrender and hard-headedness.

Amen.

p.s. This, dear reader is posted here only for my own reference. It was directed to no one other than myself.

p.p.s. Really, and if you think otherwise, I protest much!

Here's to milk out your nose...

Absurdity has a place in the life of the spirit. Dreams seem absurd to the rational waking mind. Yet they help us reconnect to ourselves by erasing the artificially separating lines we draw across our mental landscapes. The best jokes similarly contain spiritual truths -- perhaps the worst ones do as well. Our everyday motives are largely a joke, which is why humor punctures all pomposity and the wise laugh readily.

This wasn't funny and I know that. But I have sat through an entire Unitarian service on humor, and believe me dear reader, you are getting off lightly here.

A prayer

May we turn away from worshipping that god who is a creature of our own imaginations, and toward the worship of the God who is.

And may we be granted the wisdom to see the difference.

Stakes, steaks, jackals & judgments

Kwakersaur asked: "How then do we disagree with each other's interpretation of scripture without threatening to burn each other at the stake?"

I'd like to offer some suggestions:

Unacceptable: "I disagree with your position on atonement, therefor I shall burn you at the stake..."

Acceptable: "I'd be glad to burn you a steak" (in the case of vegetarians such as myself, this could be a Tofu-Steak).

Another approach: "I seem to recall a scriptural passage reciting, '"vengance is yours, Dave," saith the Lord....' Or was it 'vengeance is MINE...' (flipping pages), ah yes, it was indeed the latter. I suppose that would also agree with "judge not" as well as "resist not evil" and even "love one another."

Ive been watching copious amounts of Marshall Rosenberg (of Nonviolent Communication renown) videos lately. I like his approach of dispensing with moral judgments of one another in order to concentrate on what each other feels and needs about a situation. On the surface this may seem amoral, but anyone who's studied it to any degree will find that its really aimed making heart connections that rarely occur in our normal argumentative, diagnosing and blaming mode of conversation(which he calls "Jackal language.") I suppose this method would work just as well discussing theology as marital or tribal disputes.

I do have a reservation or two about NVC - mainly around the problem of a potential over-emphasis on "I" & "my", but I'll save that for another time.