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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/4/2006 11:30 AM (GMT -6) |   | I want you to try something for me. I want you to think some thoughts for a WHOLE DAY...and tell me what you're day is like when you've done this.
Here are the thoughts:
1) God is beautiful.
2) God thinks that I am beautiful.
3) God thinks that everyone is beautiful.
4) God wants us all to see ourselves as beautiful.
5) God wants to help us live out MORE beauty in the world than we do currently.
6) God has been willing to experience pain for us to experience our beauty.
7) God extends loving forgiveness to us every day.
If that's too linear, here's a smaller version:
God really thinks that I am beautiful and wants to me to see myself as beautiful.
I'm being VERY, VERY serious. Think about these things for a WHOLE DAY. If all 7 thoughts are too much to ponder, just take the main thought and use it! If you need to repeat these statements to yourselves EVERY 15 minutes, do so. Just make sure that it's on your mind continually.
After you've done this, go self-reflective. Think about how you have felt about God that day. Did you feel more worshipful? Think about how you felt about yourself? Did you feel grace more prevalent around you? Did you feel deeply forgiven? Think about how you felt about other people? Did you see things differently than you usually have?
Tell me this...
Did you find that part of yourself...some small part...COULD NOT BELIEVE THIS? That such things were just "too good to be true"?
Hmmm...
Just try it. Let's see what happens. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/4/2006 12:08 PM (GMT -6) | | Hmmm...
Dang. I didn't think about the F/T difference. I'm a feeler so I think of these concepts IN TERMS OF how they impact me emotionally. People who are Ts may not do that. Given their thinking nature, they may focus on the concepts themselves rather than emotionally imbibing those concepts.
Check it out, Corey. I think you see what I'm after here. Also, I see you as an essential T. How do I tailor this for Ts?
The newest mantra:
God graciously FINDS us meaningful when God doesn't need to do it and we, in ourselves, can't do it.
"Hmm. Why not? What the hell. Let's try it."
--God
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/7/2006 12:02 PM (GMT -6) | | | God and man...man and God...
Here you go, D.
(o) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/8/2006 10:35 AM (GMT -6) | | Corey:
Alright, here's what was unexpected. I thought I'd start seeing more beauty in people, but I actually started noticing more of the ugliness than I was noticing before. I struggled with how to integrate what I saw on the news that was clearly ugly (don't remember the specifics now, someone died badly, or maybe it was the North Korean missle test.) I had trouble with consistency between this internal vision and my external vision. The beauty that God intends is so obviously in stark contrast with the present situation. When I focus on God's beauty, everything around looks even worse in comparison. Didn't see that coming.
Thanks for your participation, Corey.
I'm glad that you hit this. There's a two-sides-of-the-coin effect, I call it. On one hand, you begin to see and notice the actual beauty and immense potential for beauty in everyone you see, including yourself. On another hand, you begin to see how much of the immense potential beauty is NOT currently being actualized in people, including yourself. And that causes dis-ease.
This, for me, gave me an even deeper appreciation for how much God puts up with in his choosing to have interdependent relationships with our world. He was binding himself to be continually disappointed and feeling the pain of loss.
It's my intution that what you are describing is the prophet's sensibility. A prophet sees the beauty of God and the potential that human beings can achieve through participating in God's beauty and spreading that. They are emotionally (and probably psychologically) affected by seeing the HUGE disparity between divine and human beauty...and the actual ugliness of the world. This is why they end up being quite eccentric people. And why their preaching has the "soul" that it does. Same way for modern day saints.
The newest mantra:
God graciously FINDS us meaningful when God doesn't need to do it and we, in ourselves, can't do it.
"Hmm. Why not? What the hell. Let's try it."
--God
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/8/2006 1:09 PM (GMT -6) | | |
Its fine if you aren't interested in it, or some0how think its not related (I thought it was.) -- but here's the part I tried to leave for you, "Meph."
. . . human nature is a becoming more than a being. It is not locked into a defining set of rigid conditions. On the contrary, human nature always bears within itself the "becoming" that marked its very origin.
this mystery of our original "becoming" is revealed to us in yet another act of becoming, that divine intervention in which our human nature is further altered--namely, our adoption in Christ
Until he passes through this second "becoming"(genesthe--2 Peter 1:4), man is deceived even about his own humanity. He imagines human nature to be defined, closed, sufficient, and unchanging, but it is no such thing. The true destiny of human nature is not determined by man's first creation but by the renewal of his being in Christ.
As a sharer in the divine nature, the human being is made a child of God, so when he addresses God as "our Father," it is no metaphor, no figure of speech. His nature itself, always open to change, has been transformed by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. He is truly God's child. He now regards God through the eyes of Christ and addresses God with the voice of Christ.
This is divine revelation's further answer, then, to the question, "What is man?" In his rebirth, man's very nature has been subsumed into the life of God, sharing by divine grace (energeia) in Christ's relationship to the Father, a temple of the Holy Spirit, a partaker of the divine nature.
http://www.allsaintsorthodox.org/Ponderings/Pondering_2006_07_16.html
(o)Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 7/8/2006 1:13:21 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/8/2006 1:20 PM (GMT -6) | | POW,
Ok. This is what I'm getting. Trying to figure this out.
If people understand that...
1) our personal and corporate nature as human beings is dynamic ("becoming" , not static...
and...
2) our "telos" as human beings is ultimately theosis
...this will have impact for the way that people see God and themselves.
In short, it really is true that we cannot ask anthropological questions without theological reflection.
Is this part of what you were wanting me to see? I've probably missed it still.
The newest mantra:
God graciously FINDS us meaningful when God doesn't need to do it and we, in ourselves, can't do it.
"Hmm. Why not? What the hell. Let's try it."
--God
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/8/2006 3:09 PM (GMT -6) | | MephEternal said... Is this part of what you were wanting me to see? I've probably missed it still.
(o) - You are funny. Stating something, and then saying you missed it. Cute.
.
MephEternal said... it really is true that we cannot ask anthropological questions without theological reflection.
(o) - Well that is certainly true. It also bears repeating that not only does anthropology have a theological grain to it, also, theology must include anthropology. We only know God as revealed in the theanthropos, Christ Jesus.
(o) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/9/2006 8:45 AM (GMT -6) | | POW,
Sweet. Glad I understood. Hey, quick question. What's up with the picture of the Fig Newton? Or is that a Fig Newton at all? It's an interesting picture.
The newest mantra:
God graciously FINDS us meaningful when God doesn't need to do it and we, in ourselves, can't do it.
"Hmm. Why not? What the hell. Let's try it."
--God
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/9/2006 5:14 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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