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love & living - part 2
We had a great, encouraging discussion on that last paragraph of love & living in our Tuesday night meeting this week. The plan is to go back to our regular schedule now that Summer is basically over - regular meetings with potluck/party only on the last Tuesday of the month. We're going to use the format we used last time - prayer - Nicene Creed - Reading and discussion - Communion - the Lord's prayer - intercession. We'll be going through each of these paragraph passages from the Merton book and discussing them. Looking forward to it. Here's part two...
The fact that the New Testament provides a theological basis for the practical life of love among men does nothing to weaken that love and certainly does not make it abstract. The Christian loves because God is love, and because God is manifested in actual love, not only in pious ideas and practices. Indeed, God does not wish to remain isolated in a remote heaven. He has willed to come down and "pitch his tent" among men in order to manifest himself in man. Furthermore, he wills to do this only with the free cooperation of man himself. One of the most fundamental ideas of Christianity is that the free decision of men to love one another in Christ enables them to cooperate positively and creatively in the definitive manifestation of God on earth (John 17:3-23).
| posted by + Alan | 6:33 PM | 2 comments |
Sunday, August 22, 2004
love & living - part 1
I found an extensive passage of Merton's book Love and Living that I think will be very good for us all to look at together. So, I'm going to put it up here in pieces so we can reflect together on the implications. Very good, solid stuff. I have this idea that a lot of people may think Merton's stuff, and writing like this, isn't practical somehow. Well, this is nothing but practical for our everyday Christian lives.
How does man attain to a real union of love with his neighbor? Not merely by abstract agreement about truths concerning the end of all things and the afterlife, but by a realistic collaboration in the work of daily living in the world of hard facts in which man must work in order to eat. This is clearly shown in St. Paul's Epistles to the Thessalonians, among whom a certain type of apocalyptic thinking tended to substitute the speculations of pseudomysticism for the everyday task of Christians in his world (1 Thes. 4:11; 2 Thes. 3:6-15). We find here that Paul protests against a religious alienation which substitutes a mental life of religious ideas for a practical Christian life of love in the midst of everyday realities.
| posted by + Alan | 10:29 AM | 0 comments |
Thursday, August 12, 2004
schola stuff
I do believe I've landed on our beginning text for the community schola. St. Athanasius was a Father of the Church - late 3rd, early 4th century. He was a great defender of orthodox truth. One of the central points of the faith he was instrumentahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.spell.gifl in guarding was the doctrine of the Incarnation - Jesus taking on flesh, actually being both fully man and fully God. That's central business and we'll be focusing on that to get started - St. Athanasius' work, On The Incarnation.
I was able to find the full text free online as a PDF file. We'll start reading on that together in September. For now, though, I've gotten hold of a couple of bios of Athanasius and put them together in a small PDF document. I uploaded it to our site - please download it here - and read over it before we get together on September 12. That way we'll all have a little background on the old dude.
| posted by + Alan | 12:47 PM | 0 comments |
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
He loves because He is
We had a good time last night - prayed the whole Evening Office together. The reading was from Romans 12 (the text that underlies our Rule - still in progress), on letting your love be sincere and anticipating one another in showing respect, etc. Very good and challenging stuff. I also had earlier found a great Thomas Merton quote which happened to fit well as we were talking. I'll share that here for those who didn't get to hear it.
"One of the keys to real religious experience is the shattering realization that no matter how hateful we are to ourselves, we are not hateful to God. This realization helps us to understand the difference between our love and His. Our love is a need, His is a gift. We need to see good in ourselves in order to love ourselves. He does not. He loves us not because we are good, but because He is. But as long as we worship a God who is only a projection of ourselves, we fear a tremendous and insatiable power who needs to see goodness in us and who, for all the infinite clarity of His vision finds nothing but evil, and therefore insists upon revenge."
| posted by + Alan | 9:36 AM | 0 comments |
Monday, August 09, 2004
schola-tized
Well, looks like we're ON! Matt has graciously offered his place for our monthly vbcc schola meetings. So, we'll be meeting on High Street on the second Sunday of each month, at 3pm (say 3-4:30).
Our first meeting will be Sunday, September 12. We will discuss what materials we'll be reading, how thing will work as far as reflection papers, etc. Again, no pressure to be involved. Peace. Looking much forward to it.
| posted by + Alan | 3:15 PM | 1 comments |