Bloody Jesus

Andrews put on a walking play...and outdoor, walking play. i took some pictures; a guy in our class played Jesus for one of them...

Play is a feeling to be learned

A few quotes by Jurgen Moltmann in The 'Theology of Play':
"have the old pharisees and the new zealots, with their conservative and revolutionary legalism, scared us away from freedom, from joy and spontaneity? it is unlikely that anything good or just will come about unless it flows from an abundance of joy and the passion of love."
... Is life something to be celebrated or endured?
... william james said that faith is either a dull habit or an acute fever
... we have become so compulsively utilitarian that we can scarcely hear, see, or feel the world about us without having to attach a purpose to it.

... a young jewish girl, surrounded by the horrors of a nazi concentration camp, had the grace and composure to write the following poem - 'from tomorrow on/ i shall be sad/ from tomorrow on-/ not today. / today i will be glad,/ and every day/ no matter how bitter it may be/ i shall say/ from tomorrow on i shall be sad/ not today.' although we live in the wealthiest nation in the world, during a time of relative peace, in an age of overwhelming opportunity, we have written a less grateful adaption of the above poem, which goes like this: from tomorrow on i shall be happy, from tomorrow on. not today. and every day, no matter how good things may be, i shall say from tomorrow on ill be happy not today.

...i wish i was like...

i want to become the most whole, complete person i can...i want to go inwards and understand why i struggle with this and why i am like that...i am sick of wishing i was like so & so, wishing i was funny like those guys, wishing i woulda came up with that one, wishing i could be confident or speak well in front of others like that guy or have deep friends like they are or be as self motivated as she is. i want to be done with these feelings. i want to move past this, because i know if i stay here, stay in this whirlwind of "i wish i was more like...", it will drown me and ill never really be able to live.

it is possible to be a christian and be saved and be involved in a church or lead a group, sing all the right songs and smile at all the right times and can have saved a lot of people...and still be miserable. this is because salvation is not just about a ticket; its not to keep in the back pocket until 'that day' comes...salvation is wholeistic. salvation is for today, here and now, just as much as it is for later. and its not about covering things up and storing these things in the basement...its about dusting them off and bringing a light into these areas and getting dirty, digging into these things.
where is my ego getting in the way? where is fear getting in the way?


LISTENING TO "wholeness" by Rob Bell Jr.

Ghandi understands...

ghandi story Mr. Soper (one of our teachers) shared with us...

a mother had a son, who had just recently been diagnosed with Diabetes. the problem was that she could not get him to stop eating sugar. no matter how hard she tried, no matter what she tried, it just didn't work. so, in desperation for her son's health, she took her son to ghandi to see if he could help. so he listened to the mom's concern and told them to come back in two weeks.

so two weeks later, they came back...and ghandi called the boy over and had a conversation with him. after that conversation, the boy stopped eating sugar - cold turkey. the mother later asked ghadi why he didn't just talk to the boy the first time they came. he replied, "i had to give up sugar to understand, first."


a story i was just listening to on tv...this guy (a family psychologist of some sort) had a troubled teen daughter, so all his training gave him the idea to sit her down in front of the whole family and have each person tell the girl how what she was doing was adversely affecting them.

she went out that night and did the same thing as always.

a while later, he heard a story about a remote village whose people had a way of approaching "delinquency". they would bring the offender in front of the whole village, have each person exasperate every positive thing they could about the offender. the process is not hurried or rushed and this could last for days.

this process did not have to happen very often.

by the way, the daughter of this guy now counsels troubled kids just like she used to be.