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Why Musings?
- The Musings Page will be a place to consider thought-provoking, evocative, sometimes polemical but not overtly political, writings, quotes, ideas, and poetry on the Christian life in all its facets: spiritual, religious, ethical, and practical.
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As long as this exists
posted on April 30, 2012 by Musings
As long as this exists,” I thought, “and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts, I cannot be unhappy.” The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature, and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles. ”As long as this exists…” by Anne Frank, excerpt from The Diary of a Young Girl. © Bantam Books.
Anne Frank ’s diary was first published in English on this date in 1952. What’s now known as Diary of a Young Girl was first published in Dutch in 1947, under the title The Secret Annex (Het Achterhuis in Dutch). Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp about two weeks before the camps were liberated in 1945. After the war, Anne’s father, Otto Frank, was given the diary, along with some other papers, which had been left behind when the family was taken in 1944. He wasn’t able to read it for a while because it was too painful, but when he did, he believed that his daughter meant the diary to be published. From: Writer’s Almanac April 30, 2012
Learn more at the Anne Frank House and Museum
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Filed under: Faith, Global
Taking Christ’s gift of grace out into the world and sharing it
posted on April 27, 2012 by Musings
The Thinking Outside the Pews amateur video series celebrates the vitality with which our congregation lives out its core values and invites all to join us in that celebration. The video link below features Rev. Bryan McDowell sharing how worship extends beyond the pews at 900 Jordan St, including sharing the sacrament of communion with folks who can’t join us physically on Sunday mornings.Bryan reminds us that:
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Thinking Outside the Pews: Communion
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Never
posted on April 21, 2012 by Musings
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith for ever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live
as long as God Himself.
Never.
Never Shall I Forget from Night by Elie Wiesel.
WHY WE REMEMBER THE HOLOCAUST
This video describes the Holocaust, Days of Remembrance, and why we as a nation remember these events
http://www.ushmm.org/remembrance/dor/video/?content=whyweremember
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Filed under: Faith, Healing
National Days of Remembrance
posted on April 19, 2012 by Musings
April 15 – 22 marks the 2012 National Days of Remembrance, when as a nation we remember the events of the Holocaust. There are events throughout the Shreveport-Bossier community (Learn more at: http://www.centenary.edu/news/2012/0000087) Dutch scholar David Barnouw will give the keynote address at the Shreveport-Bossier Holocaust Remembrance Service on Sunday, April 22, at First Presbyterian Church. His address will focus on “The Importance of Anne Frank” and will begin at 4:00 p.m.David Barnouw is the premier scholar on Anne Frank and head archivist and critical editor of her surviving writings. He holds an appointment at the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and works at the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation. He has published extensively on the Occupation period. Barnouw is frequently invited on national and international radio and television to speak as a World War II expert.
Over the next few days we will posting material related to the remembrance of the Holocaust. Today we feature two poems that give us potent reminders of why we must remember.
You Who Live Secure
You who live secure
in your warm houses,
who return at evening to find
hot food and friendly faces:Consider whether this is a man,
who labors in the mud
who knows no peace
who fights for a crust of bread
who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
without hair or name
with no more strength to remember
eyes empty and womb cold
as a frog in winter
Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
when you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
when you go to bed, when your rise.
Repeat them to your children,
or may your house crumble,
disease render you powerless,
your offspring avert their faces from you.
Primo Levi
In the Presence of Eyes
In the presence of eyes which witnessed the slaughter, which saw the oppression the heart could not bear, and as witness the heart that once taught compassion until the days came to pass that crushed human feeling, I have taken an oath: To remember it all, to remember—not once to forget! Forget not one thing to the last generation when degradations shall cease,An oath: Lest from this we learned nothing.
when the rod of instruction
shall have come to conclusion.
An oath: Not in vain passed over the night of terror.
An oath: No morning shall see me at flesh-pots again.
Abraham Shlonsky
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Filed under: Faith, Global, Healing
The ‘ands’
posted on April 16, 2012 by Musings
In a recent post for the On Faith Guest Voices Blog on The Washington Post website, the author Diana Butler Bass reframes the discussion about spirituality and religion. The article is entitled ”Is Religion Dying –or Reinventing?”. An excerpt of the post is below and the full post can be found here: http://wapo.st/y0lba3
For decades, Americans have been turning toward spirituality as a protest vote against conventional religion… The bored and wounded have fled religion seeking new spiritual connections. Some 30 percent of Americans now identify as “spiritual but not religious,” around 9 percent are atheists and post-theists. But the growth of these two groups is not news. Their numbers have been rising for thirty years.
What is new? In my research, it’s the “ands.” Those who say they are “spiritual and religious.” In 1999, 54 percent of Americans said they were “religious but not spiritual,” while six percent said “spiritual and religious.” By 2009, the percentages had reversed: “religious but not spiritual” fell from 54 percent to nine percent as the “spiritual and religious” rose from a mere six percent of the population to nearly half, an astonishing 42 point change.
“Ands” want religion revolutionized by spirituality; they want spirituality grounded upon (but not guarded by) ancient wisdom, theologies, and practices. They demand more authenticity, meaning, justice, and community from religious institutions, not less. In these longings, the “ands” voice an older way of understanding religion, where faith should and must be an experience of God that transforms one’s life for the sake of the world. If the “ands” are the vanguard of change, then the great religious recession is about to give way to a great spiritual awakening. Is this the end of religion or only the beginning of a new, and better, form of faith?
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Filed under: Community, Emerging Church, Faith
What Happens Now?
posted on April 10, 2012 by Musings
“Road to Emmaus” COPYRIGHT DANIEL BONNELL WWW.BONNELLART.COM
On the resurrection:
I have no idea what happened except, as I say, what really matters is not so much what happened there as what happens now — what happens in your life and my life, what happens in the world, what happens the next five days, five years of human history. Is God making himself known in some powerful and saving way among people, even [people] who don’t give a hoot about God? Is this still a reality which is part of the madness and self-destructiveness and darkness of the world? That’s what really matters.
From: An Interview with Frederick Buechner
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“All Shall be Well”
posted on April 8, 2012 by Musings
“Resurrection” COPYRIGHT DANIEL BONNELL WWW.BONNELLART.COM
The writer and minister Frederick Buechner speaks about the Easter message. From: An Interview with Frederick Buechner.
The essential message is that nothing, no horror can happen that can permanently, irrevocably quench the presence of holiness that is always there “underneath the everlasting arms.” No matter what dreadful things take place, that remains the heart of reality. There is that wonderful thing from the British saint, Julian of Norwich: “All shall be well, and all manner of things will be well.” That somehow remains true no matter what. That’s, I think, the message of Easter.
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Filed under: Bible, Faith
“What Comes Out of That Time?”
posted on April 7, 2012 by Musings
The writer and minister Frederick Buechner speaks to the power of recognizing the darkness and uncertainty of Holy Saturday.Which of us has not suffered one way or another? We’ve all had our crucifixions, where God seems to be absent and light seems to disappear, and the world is dark and terrifying. Anybody with faith or without faith has had somehow to live through that kind of a time. The question is, What comes out of that time?……Chrysalis by Sieger Köder
I can hardly imagine anybody not going through a Good Friday, one way or another, going through the darkness, one way or the other. I can’t. In fact, I would be a little bit leery of anybody who felt that he or she had somehow come straight to a kind of faith having had no suffering at all. I’d think, well, you don’t really know what life is all about. You don’t know what faith is all about, if all you know is little goody two-shoes kind of version of reality.
From: An interview with Frederick Buechner
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Filed under: Faith, Lent
What’s NEXT?
posted on March 19, 2012 by Musings
Musings from Pen Peery about the NEXT Church:
In late February, 11 people from FPC Shreveport traveled to Dallas to join a conversation about what God is doing with the church. The conversation is based in two convictions. First: things are changing, and the church needs to respond to that change. Second: God is faithful, and whatever the future of the church will be is securely in God’s hands. We are continuing the conversation this Tuesday March 20 at 6:00 p.m. at Giusseppi’s on Line Avenue. Come join us!
NEXT Church is a congregationally led movement intended to embrace what God is calling the Presbyterian Church to become. Our mission statement reads: The mission of NEXT Church is to foster relationships among God’s people: “Sparking imaginations, connecting congregations, offering a distinctively Presbyterian witness to Jesus Christ.” There was a time when the Presbyterian Church knew how work together in mission to effect change. We built hospitals. We chartered schools. We coordinated efforts to eradicate hunger. We responded out of our faith by coming together in action. These connections brought our churches together in one purpose. Yet, over time, the bureaucracy of the way we “do church” has made it hard to keep these types of mission initiatives at the forefront of our connectional identity.
Three years ago, I gathered with a group of pastors who shared similar frustrations and similar trust and hope that God could still use the Presbyterian Church to participate in Christ’s mission. Last March we hosted our first conference in Indianapolis with about 350 people. In February, we gathered in Dallas with about twice as many people. The purpose of these conferences is to focus on where innovative mission is happening and to equip churches to join in those missions. NEXT Church recently moved to a higher level of organization. I serve on an eight person strategic team whose goal is to advance our mission statement by generating 15 new mission initiatives within the Presbyterian Church (USA) in the next year.
Three years ago, I gathered with a group of pastors who shared similar frustrations and similar trust and hope that God could still use the Presbyterian Church to participate in Christ’s mission. Last March we hosted our first conference in Indianapolis with about 350 people. In February, we gathered in Dallas with about twice as many people. The purpose of these conferences is to focus on where innovative mission is happening and to equip churches to join in those missions. NEXT Church recently moved to a higher level of organization. I serve on an eight person strategic team whose goal is to advance our mission statement by generating 15 new mission initiatives within the Presbyterian Church (USA) in the next year.
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Filed under: Community, Faith, Presbyterian Church
Shaping and Reshaping Faith with Cynthia Ribgy
posted on March 9, 2012 by Musings
The 2012 Spencer and Flora Murray Lecture Series features the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Rigby, the W. C. Brown Professor of Theology at Austin Seminary.
Professor Rigby is a contributer to the Dallas Morning News Texas Faith blog. One of the topics in December was “How did your faith shape — or reshape — you in 2011?” Below is a thought-provoking reply….
CYNTHIA RIGBY, W.C. Brown Professor of Theology, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
One of the most significant religious insights I had in 2011 came while reading Annie Dillard’s “Living By Fiction.”
“Who will tell us the meaning of the raw universe?” she asks.
This question follows from her observation that you can find plenty of people who can talk a lot about “artifacts,” but very few who will say something about “what we really want,” Dillard explains. And what we really want is for someone to say something about everything.
Theologians should help us interpret the universe, says Dillard, but instead “they keep on saying the same hard words.”
Since reading Dillard earlier this year, I think about what it would look like to say something about everything without speaking in a way that is “hard.” I wonder if a secret to this might be always to remember that to try to say SOMETHING ABOUT EVERYTHING is very different from presuming to say EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERYTHING or, even, EVERYTHING ABOUT SOMETHING.
Religion that forgets the mystery and infinite character of its subject matter clearly does more harm than good. But what Dillard is pointing out is equally true: religion that is so stymied by mystery that it over-qualifies everything it stands for is worthless.
Dillard’s question has reoriented me, as a theologian and as a Christian person. I’m always thinking to myself: “Now, what does this theological idea or teaching have to say about EVERYTHING?”
Along these lines, this year I have worked with renewed energy on the doctrine of the Trinity, exploring what it has to say about the default reality of all existence. In sum, the Trinity tells us that we exist as distinct individuals (“3″) in union with one another (“1″), mutually affecting one another (a theological word for this is “perichoresis”).
One of the interesting insights that comes with looking at who we are, in community, through a trinitarian lens is that our distinctions and our unity are not meant to be in conflict with one another. What does the doctrine of the Trinity say, then, about the meaning of the whole, raw universe? It says (among other things), that we are meant to be individuals-in-harmony with one another, reflecting the image of the God who is 3-in-1.
