Bullies.

What is it that makes us close our hearts and hide our true selves?

It is fear.

Our early experiences of community teach us fear.

We may be O.K. while we are with our family but the schoolyard teaches us fear.

And fear begets fear.

Bullies are people who are afraid of being bullied.
They have to look tough so that the bigger bullies will not attack them.
And they do this by bullying more vulnerable people.

It is a vicious hierarchy with fear at the top.

If you want to stop bullying talk to the bullies about fear.
What are they afraid of?
And don't create more fear by threatening them.
That will only make it worse.

Many people portray God as the ultimate bully.

This is not helpful.

Closer contact with God helps us to lose our fear.
All people become our brothers and sisters.

And love helps us to lose our fear of God.

God will not punish us for our mistakes, which are made in ignorance and fear.

God is our loving Father.

And He will not reject us.  


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My Beloved.

"My beloved speaks and says to me:

'Arise, my love, my fair one,
  and come away;
for now the winter is past,
  the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth;
  the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtle-dove
  is heard in our land.

The fig tree puts forth its figs,
  and the vines are in blossom;
  they give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my fair one,
  and come away.'"

Song of Solomon 2:10-13 (NRSV)


[Scripture quotations (marked NRSV) are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission.  All rights reserved.]

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Men of Mercy.

Be men of mercy,

and families of forgiveness.


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Fear or Love?

The pattern which we find in our Churches is this: good works done out of fear of hell followed by a triumphant entry into heaven.

While it is not for me to deny them this I don't think that this pattern is what God intended.

Spiritual development is about the heart.
Opening the heart and giving love.

While good works may resemble acts of love and compassion the motivation is fear not love.

And rather than emptying ourselves out (kenosis) in order to be a channel of divine love we should open our own hearts and give our love to God and to others.

In this way we make heaven around us.


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Worship.

We worship

the God

who is

everyone.


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God's Will.

God's Will

is that we love

one another.


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Searching.

Post-Modernism is the time when it became apparent that science was not the answer to human suffering and people began to search.

We rejected the moralizing and authoritarian approach of the Churches and began looking at Eastern religions, ancient mythology, yoga, astrology, tarot etc.....

Without knowing what we were looking for we vaguely aspired to some answer that was connected with the Divine.

This is spirituality not religion.

Not wanting to enter a church for fear of being indoctrinated or castrated we searched in vain.

When, in the end, I returned to the Church through Progressive Christianity I found by following the teaching of Jesus to love God and love your neighbor that God was a God of love and forgiveness.

The angry, punitive God of the Old Testament and the old Churches was a projection of earthly authority figures and not the reality at all.

God is transcendent, sublime, non-violent, even small.....

God will not reject you.


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