Dear All of Us,
So, come on now.
Fess up.
What's your favorite sin?
What?
You have more than one?
Yah, me too.
We all do -
individually and collectively.
Really messes things up.
Mostly we just don't want
to know about it,
much less talk about it.
Well, let's anyway.
"Confession is good for the soul",
granted not much fun for sure.
Talk about sin is
a hard sell these days.
We want feel good,
"nice, nice" spirituality,
cushy comfy living
inside
outside
The simple reality
though
is that
spirituality is about
what actually
IS
and
what can be,
up or down
Sin "IS."
Sin is a
DECENTERING
DOWNER
That's stink'n sad certain.
Way more certainly,
life is meant to be
vibrantly more than
cushy, comfy,
inane existence.
We can be freed from both
for infinitely more.
That's being saved,
if we face and accept
what sin is and
what can be in better-stead.
When I was a kid
in the 40's and early 50's,
things were the other way round.
We were not only sin sensitive,
we were sin soaked.
Sin made the top
of the top ten played
in most churches.
While lying and stealing
got attention, the real
BIGGIE
centered in our body,
our center zone,
and how we delt with it
"In thought, word or deed,"
"alone or with other."
The church's favorite was
SEX SIN
That fixation on frailty
obscured focus on our
isolating self-centeredness
that morphed into a global
Decentering
of
Creation.
The First Folks
suckered into
a try at being
the center of things.
They couldn't
hold it together,
hold steady,
centered real.
It didn't work.
It worked havoc on them,
on us their children
through the ages,
and for all about us
in Creation.
That First Family was
dysfunctional,
off center.
Paradise lost,
hard labor.
One First Brother
murders the other
They and we germinated
a virus that effects, infects.
to this day.
We call it sin.
They and now we,
their inheritors
and the Creation
we are charged
to care for,
live a
destabilized
existence.
That's sin.
On top of that,
as noted above,
these days facing sex sin
and pretty much
and kind of sin is mostly
not the done thing.
We explain it away,
as primitive myth about
unnecessary worry
and weighty guilt.
That will be our undoing
because
We don't get
Jesus
if we don't face sin.
Let's check it out.
Angel to Joseph:
"...and you are
to give him
the name Jesus,
because
he will save the people
from their sins."
(Mathew 1:21)
Translation Trouble
Our word Jesus
doesn't say it
at all accurately.
We're short changed.
The English name
"Jesus"
comes from
the Greek translation
of the Hebrew name
recorded in
the divine scriptures.
What's in
that original scripture
is
JOSHUA
Joshua means
"THE LORD SAVES"
Here's the point
on the pencil:
Joshua is the
God given
NAME
and
MISSION
It's who Joshua
is and what
he is among us
to do -
SAVE US
from
the disorder and distress
of
SIN
every miserable speck
of it,
SAVE US
by
RECENTERING US
for
REAL RIP-ROARING
ENDLESSLEY JOYOUS
GODLIFE
Off center,
the world still spins,
but it wabbles.
We lose our footing.
We stumble.
We crash and collide:
- truth is destabilized
as is the Common Good,
- racism roils
- anger attacks
- separatism fractures,
- religion goes flaccid
- junk food goes
on the table
and in the mind
- an excess of moshy flab -
body and spirit
- the needy neglected
the pure polluted -
air, water, soil,
- the failure of limiting
The Right To Life
to the unborn and
sanctioning slaughter later,
aborting life after birth -
war, starvation. poverty,
gun mania, capital punishment
- unrestrained individualism
leaves isolating crowds
of loneliness
- life commercialized,
it's richness
drained dry dull
- and so sin spirals us
off center
out of control,
pained and paining.
Joshua
is
God Reality
THE CENTER
of what is
and
personal present
in the mix with us
to center and stabilize.
He sets us
right and real
by incorporating us
into himself,
sharing with us
who he is and
how he is.
That
SAVES US
from the destabilized,
off-centeredness
that pitches us wrong
and wronging.
Much and many
all about us are
spun out of control
It's a sin!
It hurts like hell.
It is hell!
United and centered in
JOSHUA
"The Lord saves"
we are his
presence, person,
power
centering and stabilizing:
- we live a simplified lifestyle
so others can have a life to live,
- we face emerging fascism
with a love centered openness
to all people,
delighting in diversity,
free and freeing,
busy with the weave of unity.
- we find ways
to gentle jarred nature
back to wholesome
freshness and fecundity.
- we gather as
The Body of Christ
to share care and community.
- we live in contemplative intimacy
with The Love Who Is God.
- we decern both our
circumstance and abilities
in tandem with discerning
the needs of the people and place
where we are
as we share extravagantly.
- we refuse the false flooring
of media that maddens and
consumption that consumes.
- we stretch and strive
for social justice
even at the price of
pocketbook or popularity.
Centered
we center
in
JOSHUA
******
In the days and ways ahead
please consider the
Ponder Prayer
that follows.
May it help us hear
deeper and dearer
JOSHUA'S CALL
to centering intimacy.
******
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PONDER PRAYER
Soul Stilled Peaceful,
we hear at our center
Joshua's desire
to be intimate with us,
for us to be intimate with him,
CENTERED ONE
"Live in me.
Make your home in me
just as I do in you...
I've loved you
the way my Father
has loved me.
Make yourself at home
in my love."
John 15: 4 & 9
The Message
Joshua does not say
live "with" me.
That would be close.
Joshua wants more.
Joshua wants intimacy,
more than even
marital intimacy.
Joshua wants us
"In"
him,
our life within his.
Joshua wants us
centered in him,
"At home"
in him
and he
centered in us,
"At Home"
in us
just the way it is
with him and
The Father.
That is so deep,
so divine,
it cannot be described,
but only experienced.
We are welcome
and wanted at
God's Center.
That "centers" us
and we together our world.
Bonaventure said that
God's center is everywhere
and his circumference nowhere.
There are not limits
inward or outward.
That's being centered ,
"saved' from the
off centeredness of sin -
ours and the worlds.
What do you say?
Our "saying" is
our spiritual life.
May it be truly a
Centering Prayer
******
How do we go about
living this centeredness,
this intimacy?
"I am
the way,
the truth and
the life."
(John 14:6)
We go about life the way
the historical Joshua did.
The particulars are different
in time, place and culture.
The truth, the life lived
is one and the same.
To discern we open wide to
the impulse of the Spirit.
We do that in personal prayer.
We do that as "The Gathered",
(English for "ecclesia" - church).
We live out the value system,
the teachings of Joshua
in our time and place.
Slow Soul Soaking
in the Gospels is
indispensable.
We adapt the
words and way of Joshua
to how we spend time,
work, pray, serve,
interact, eat and drink,
drive, bank, buy, treat others,
love, forgive, and...
******
We plumb and lift to our living:
"In him we live
and move
and have our being."
(Acts 17:28)
"...it is no longer
I who live,
but Christ
lives in me..."
(Galatians 2:20)
" ...I came that
they might have life,
and have it abundantly."
(John 10:10)
******
May you and yours have a joyous
Thanksgiving
Love to all
John Frank
******
