Author: Anne Doyle

Faith · Reflecting · Words

Does this resonate with you?

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Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Church: Old and New

If We Were Christian

Friday, November 1, 2019
All Saints’ Day

“…Quaker pastor Philip Gulley superbly summarizes how we must rebuild spirituality from the bottom up in his book, If the Church Were Christian. [3] Here I take the liberty of using my own words to restate his message, which offers a rather excellent description of what is emerging in Christianity today:

  1. Jesus is a model for living more than an object of worship.
  2. Affirming people’s potential is more important than reminding them of their brokenness.
  3. The work of reconciliation should be valued over making judgments.
  4. Gracious behavior is more important than right belief.
  5. Inviting questions is more valuable than supplying answers.
  6. Encouraging the personal search is more important than group uniformity.
  7. Meeting actual needs is more important than maintaining institutions.
  8. Peacemaking is more important than power.
  9. We should care more about love and less about sex.
  10. Life in this world is more important than the afterlife (Eternity is God’s work anyway).

If this makes sense to you, you are already participating in evolving Christianity. Do read it several times. It only makes more and more sense…

[3] See Philip Gulley, If the Church Were Christian: Rediscovering the Values of Jesus (HarperOne: 2010). This list is adapted from his chapter titles…

Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Emerging Christianity: A Non-Dual Vision,” Radical Grace, vol. 23, no. 1 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2010), 3, 22.”

Feeling · Learning · Reflecting

Studies show people don’t like–even avoid–solitude. Why?

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/smarter-living/the-benefits-of-being-alone.html?fallback=false&recId=492417555&locked=1&geoContinent=NA&geoRegion=NC&recAlloc=random&geoCountry=US&blockId=home-living&imp_id=423177595&action=click&module=Smarter%20Living&pgtype=Homepage

https://news.virginia.edu/content/doing-something-better-doing-nothing-most-people-study-shows

Words

Be who you are

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God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (Riverhead Books: 1996), 88. (as read in “Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation” on October 24, 2019)

Becoming Perceptive · Reflecting · Words

Read about the “Wood Wide Web”–you’ll be glad you did

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ESSAY

The Understory

by Robert Macfarlane

http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=8231

Faith · Love · Reflecting · Words

The Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi

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A prayer attributed to St. Francis

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let us sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is discord, union;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.