Tag Archives: hometown church

Humbled

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A shoutout to Reverend Tom today for a good message.

The pastor at my hometown church, the man who dropped everything at all hours of the day and night to be with my family a year ago as my father lay dying, had a few good words to say during Mother’s Day, the last day of the Easter season in the Christian religion tradition.

In reference to the Bible passage that Tom called the “high priest” prayer by Jesus, the 17th section of the book of John, a set of tales told in sequence by a good storyteller, a personal witness of the events, per tradition, Tom said that we should commit to prayer before taking action, just like a Sunday service is itself a continuous prayer — children’s choir, hymnal songs, sermons, prayers, etc. —  in preparation for the rest of the week ahead.

And, as Jesus said, our goal, he prayed, is that we might be one, a species in unity like Jesus was united to God, his father.

Despite our differences.

Unity in Christ is bigger than our differences, in other words.

Unity, not uniform behaviour/looks, in seeking the love of Jesus and our expressi0n of unity through charity.

Ultimately, the question is not that or how we disagree in our forms of prayers and understanding of the words given to us, but on what unity in Christ we agree to share with others.

We are tiny specks, children of the universe, who rarely grasp the intricacies of life, from the interaction of sets of states of energy at subsubsubatomic levels, to daily social problems and solutions, to connections at time scales of galactic levels.

We are, however, members of the same species, regardless of subcultures, belief sets, clothing choices or musical preferences.

Let us treat each other as if we live on the same planet.

I, for one, seek out the best ideas and practices within our species to move us out of the doldrums — away from the tautological chaos (making fun of our seriousness when misplaced), toward the application of useful chaos (where theory meets practicality) — and into the later decades of this century with one word on our lips — success.

Actions speak louder than words.

Thanks, Tom.  Your words today have moved me to action, humbling me out of my selfish, temporary depression, realising even the tiniest speck, me, has a place with all the others to make a worthwhile difference, especially when we work together as one in pursuit of unified motives, allowing subcultures to contribute at their own pace and own voice.

A subculture calls me home…

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Over the past couple of years, I have met with people who’ve asked me to reconsider the subcultural training of my youth in what I see as an attempt to keep me in the fold or bring me back in, depending on their views.

I met my wife at a summer church camp when we were 12, we married in her hometown church when we were 24 and, 26+ years later, we’re still married so I haven’t cut ties from my childhood subculture in any hard, abrupt, total sense.

Over the New Year’s Day extended holiday weekend, a good friend, medical doctor by trade, who with colleagues bought a primary school for a church congregation that has expanded from a few people to over 2000 since 2009, loaned me the following books to read:

Before I read them, I shall provide for myself and the reader a snippet of a review of each book.

  • The first: “Finally, Schaeffer names well, twenty-five years before such things unfolded in Washington, just how societies without a sense of what the political means, would respond to terrorism.  Such societies, Schaeffer writes, because they do not have any sense of liberty as a genuine political good, will “give up liberties” and welcome “a manipulating authoritarian government” (248) when decades of comfort get disturbed and the government promises to destroy evil (a strange promise for a government to make, as I tried to say even back in the last decade, but then again, it was the folks who recommended Schaeffer who seemed most convinced that a government could do just that).”
  • The second: “For Catholics—as well as for Protestants who have kept up contact with their Catholic past—natural law has been the principal vehicle for reflection upon general revelation. Though [John] Calvin accepted the natural law, he did not make much of it—for fear, perhaps, of obscuring the depravity of the mind. Among most of his heirs, the tradition has languished. Some even oppose it as a de facto denial of the fall, a neo–Scholastic treason more in debt to Aristotle than to Jesus Christ. I believe that this is a misunderstanding, and the Colson and Pearcey project would have been impoverished had it enjoyed no access to this great river of thought. [C.S.] Lewis—who, like the authors, only rarely refers to natural law by its proper name—is in many ways its ideal missionary, not only for laypeople who have never heard of it and for scholars leery of its Scholastic form, but also for specialists who have forgotten its roots in common sense. The authors have drunk deeply from his well.”

For recent Christmas gifts, I received two other books:

I contemplate my individual future, compare it to our species’ future, determine where we share goals and plot a true course that benefits us both.