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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/13/2009 10:04 AM (GMT -6) |   | | Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Minnesota Public Radio Stories
 The myths of the teen mind
For years, teenage impulsiveness and immature behavior was attributed to hormones. More recently, scientists have suggested the teenage brain is the problem. One psychologist says that theory is all wrong, and believes teenagers are capable of being far more mature and productive than we think.9:06 a.m.
Robert Epstein, MD: Psychologist and visiting scholar at the University of California San Diego. He is the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today and author of several books, including "The Case Against Adolescence."
 Compassion key to understanding world's religions
Religious thinker and writer Karen Armstrong argues that the major religions of the world share a view that compassion is essential. But she says those who worship God too frequently forget to practice compassion.10:06 a.m.
Karen Armstrong: Author of many books on Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. Her newest book is "The Case for God"
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Get it today if you can...both of them
and...
| 10/11/2009 – God's Heart For The Poor, Greg Boyd – sermon length is 37:12 minutes |
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We know that we are saved by God’s grace, not our own good deeds—but God still intends that we do good deeds. In fact, God saved us so that we can be restored to right relationship with God and all of creation. This restored relationship includes the activity (good works) that God has planned for each one of us. [Micah 6:8; Ephesians 2:8-10; 6:12] |
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Audio - 4.7 mb
High-Quality Audio - 14.0 mb
QuickTime Video (mp4) - 125.6 mb
Windows Media Video (wmv) - 134.0 mb
Hmmm...Compassion. Yeah. |
Presentation Slides
Individual Study Guide
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"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... Post Edited (One Love) : 10/13/2009 10:32:00 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/13/2009 10:17 AM (GMT -6) | | I would further say that all "mystical" versions of the major religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism [Kabbalah], Hinduism, Buddhism, etc) end up saying that Ultimate Reality is Uncreated Self-Giving Loving Relationship...and that true humanity is living in proper relationship with that Uncreated Presence.
God is Love.
And we are created in the Image of God (which is why the Golden Rule and Great Commandment exist)
We are only truly PERSONS if we are living out our true nature, living in the Image AND Likeness. We choose love, therefore we are. We choose anything other than love (including self-gratification, etc) , we actually choose negation. We diminish our tendency towards personhood in, with, and through the Divine Presence in human constitution...as Creator Spiritus and Logos/logoi.
As we open ourselves for works of the 4 Immeasurables (One of which is compassion (Karuna) ), the Spirit of God empowers us to do so, freeing us to be FULLY human.
Sweet.
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... Post Edited (One Love) : 10/13/2009 10:23:24 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/13/2009 10:34 AM (GMT -6) | | What happens when, by God's Spirit, people really start SEEING God's Image immutably in themselves and all other humans?
What? Hmm...
"Whatever you have done for/to your brother or sister, you've done for/to Me."
"Love your neighbor as yourself."
It makes one thing...When I perform self-destructive thoughts and actions, who've I really hurt?
Yeah....
Think about that the next time you go into any type of self-judgment. This can be mad helpful for learning healthy love of self...has been for me.
If a person doesn't love themselves unconditionally, they will never love anyone else without conditions. That includes God.
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... Post Edited (One Love) : 10/13/2009 10:39:41 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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JET
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2002
Total Posts : 397
| Posted 10/13/2009 10:53 AM (GMT -6) | | | "True humanity is living in proper relationship with that Uncreated Presence."
There are probably lots of ways to relate this thread to scriptural themes, but this is what came to my mind.
To the extent that we live in proper/right relationship with that Uncreated Presence... To the extent that we are "rightly relating" to God who is Love ... to that extent, our lives will be declared "right" or "righteous", correct?
Romans 2: 12All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) 16This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.
There is a tradition that says Paul didn't really mean that our ultimate justification is based on how we live. (According to this tradition, Rom. 2 is somehow "setting up" for an argument that essentially says the opposite.) This tradition is so pervasive in my culture that I couldn't really make any sense of Rom. 2 ... until I started reading NT Wright.
Contrary to the western tradition, perhaps Paul was more of a mystic than a systematic. | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 10/13/2009 12:02 PM (GMT -6) | | Stevie Wonder’s “For Once in My Life”
For once in my life I have someone who needs me,
Someone I’ve needed so long.
For once, unafraid, I can go where life leads me,
And somehow I know I’ll be strong.
For once I can touch what my heart used to dream of,
Long before I knew,
Someone warm like you,
Would make my dreams come true.
For once in my life I won’t let sorrow hurt me,
Not like it hurt me before.
For once, I have someone I know won’t desert me,
I’m not alone anymore.
For once, I can say, this is mine, you can’t take it.
As long as I know I have love, I can make it.
For once in my life, I have someone who needs me.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vxVyaYuGYE (I just love the girls dancing with him!)
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There’s so much we can say theologically about the Stevie’s intuitions here about love, identity, and the manner in which the security of our identity resides ecstatically in relating to others. Wonder celebrates it residing in human-human love relations, but it wouldn’t take much to set his intuitions rightly within the God-human relationship.
I use to cringe just a bit at the words “I can say this is mine you can’t take it” because it appeared to misunderstand personal identity and security individualistically (i.e., I don’t need others). We know how much D objects to saying “mine” or talking about “ownership” of anything. But then while reading Paul in Romans 8.35ff, we see this:
“Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship … No, I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither, etc. … shall separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Paul’s essentially saying that “in Christ” we can say to the world as a source of security for our personal identities, “You can’t take this from me.” Why not? “Because you didn’t give it to me. I don’t get WHO I am from anything in the world.” And the grace of personhood, though it’s ‘given’, is ‘possessed’ (‘held’) by us. That’s God’s desire. As I cleaned out my room today I had Stevie’s Greatest Hits playing and ended up singing this song straight to Jesus.
When we start with the Trinity and God’s inter-hypostatic love and unsurpassable loving sociality, then evil gets defined relationally, i.e., personally, i.e., in terms of what reality and life fundamentally are, that is, a failure of personhood, a failure to have our being in the loving ways of interpersonal love. Misrelation, then, is a choosing to ‘derive’ or ‘dispose’ (to ‘get’ or ‘express’) our identities wrongly. Hence, evil is a kind of ‘identity theft’ (or ‘forfeiture’).
The only thing left is to properly construe the sense in which we’re “needed” by God. We’ve already said that there is a crucial sense in which God doesn’t NEED us. There’s the asymmetry. But if God chooses to make hi s enjoyment of this contingent relation depend upon us (on some level), then we CAN say we are needed (in a carefully qualified sense) by God.
Tom
"Man is a person not by nature but by spirit. By nature he is only an individual." Nicolas BerdyaevPost Edited (Tom) : 10/14/2009 1:10:54 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 10/13/2009 12:15 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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