Why do we need to be Born Again? Why do we need to die to an old way of being and a new identity – into a life centered in God, in the Spirit, in Christ? The reason is because of something that happens in us very early in life and then is intensified in the process of growing up.

What happens early in our lives is the birth of self-consciousness. By this, I mean simply self-awareness, that is, awareness of the distinction between self and world. . . A newborn infant is not yet conscious of being a self. . . But at some point, infants in the process of becoming toddlers become aware that the world is separate from themselves.

Several years ago I was told the story of a three year old girl. She was the firstborn and only child in her family, but now her mother was pregnant again, and the little girl was very excited about having a new brother or sister. Within a few hours of the parents bringing a new baby home from the hospital, the girl made a request: she wanted to be alone with her new brother in his room with the door closed. Her insistence about being alone with the baby with the door shut made the parents a bit uneasy, but then they remembered that they had installed an intercom system in anticipation of the baby’s arrival. . .

So they let the little girl go into the baby’s room, shut the door, and raced to the intercom listening station. They heard their daughter’s footsteps moving across the baby’s room, imagined her standing over the baby’s crib, and then they heard her saying to her three-day-old brother, “Tell me about God – I’ve almost forgotten.”

The story is both haunting and evocative, for it suggests that we come from God, and that when we are very young, we still remember this, still know this. But the process of growing up, of learning about this world, is a process of increasingly forgetting the one from whom we came and in whom we live. The birth and intensification of self-consciousness, of self-awareness, involves a separation from God.

by Marcus Borg from The Heart of Christianity

True community - true church - comes when marginalized people take back the right to fully "be." A people must be encouraged to celebrate not in spite of who they are, but because of who their Creator has made them. The balm that heals oppression sickness is the creation of accountable, responsible, visible, celebrating communities on the margin of mainline church and dominant society.

~The Rev. Dr. (Bishop) Yvette Flunder

The Affirmation of Faith

We believe in God,

whose love is the source of all life

and the desire of our lives

whose love was given a human face in Jesus of Nazareth

whose love was crucified by the evil that waits to enslave us all

and whose love, defeating even death,

is our glorious promise of freedom.

Therefore, though we are sometimes fearful and full of doubt,

we trust in that love: and in the name of Jesus Christ,

we commit ourselves, in the service of others,

to seek justice and to live in peace, to care for the earth

and to share the commonwealth of God's goodness,

to live in the freedom of forgiveness

and in the power of the Spirit of love,

and in the company of all the faithful

past, present, and yet to come,

so to be the Church, for the glory of God. Amen.

It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate son of God, and that only one who believed in him would have everlasting life. If God could have sons, then all of us were God’s sons and daughters.

My Christian friends have told me on more than a few occasions that because I do not accept Christ as the only son of God, it is impossible for me to understand the profound significance of his teachings. I believe that this is an erroneous point of view, and that such an estimate is incompatible with the message that Jesus gave to the world. For he was certainly the highest example of one who wished to give everything, asked nothing in return, and not caring what creed might happen to be professed by the recipient. I am sure that if he were living here now among us . . . he would bless the lives of many who perhaps never even heard of his name, if only their lives embodied the virtues of which he was a living example on earth: the virtues of loving one’s neighbor as oneself and of doing good an charitable work among [others].

My interpretation, in other words, is that in Jesus own life is the key to his nearness to God; that he expressed, as no other could, the Spirit and will of God. It is in this sense that I see and recognize him as the son of God.

M. Gandhi

Our true home is in the present moment.

To live in the present moment is a miracle.

The miracle is not to walk on water.

The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment,

to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.

Peace is all around us –

in the world and in nature –

and within us –

in our bodies and our spirits.

Once we learn to touch this peace,

we will be healed and transformed.

It is not a matter of faith;

it is a matter of practice.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Let nothing disturb you, nothing alarm you:

while all things fade away

God is unchanging.

Be patient

and you will gain everything:

for with God in your heart

nothing is lacking,

God meets your every need.

St. Theresa of Avila

We are a progressive church!

By calling ourselves progressive, we mean that we are Christians who…

1. Have found an approach to God through the life and teachings of Jesus;

2. Recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the way to God's realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us;

3. Understand the sharing of bread and wine in Jesus's name to be a representation of an ancient vision of God's feast for all peoples;

4. Invite all people to participate in our community and worship life without insisting that they become like us in order to be acceptable (including but not limited to):

*believers and agnostics,
*conventional Christians and questioning skeptics,
*women and men,
*those of all sexual orientations and gender identities,
*those of all races and cultures,
*those of all classes and abilities,
*those who hope for a better world and those who have lost hope;

5. Know that the way we behave toward one another and toward other people is the fullest expression of what we believe;

6. Find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty - more value in questioning than in absolutes;

7. Form ourselves into communities dedicated to equipping one another for the work we feel called to do: striving for peace and justice among all people, protecting and restoring the integrity of all God's creation, and bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers; and

8. Recognize that being followers of Jesus is costly, and entails selfless love, conscientious resistance to evil, and renunciation of privilege.

The question is not what you look at but what you see.

~Henry David Thoreau

Jesus said that he came that we might have life, and have it to the full. Fullness of life doesn't mean that everything will always be easy, or that we will never struggle, or that we won't have to work for a living. Fullness of life means just what it sounds like -- living life to the full. It implies a mature adulthood both spiritually and emotionally.

When we enable or rescue other people from the consequences of their actions, or seek to do things for them that they are able to do themselves, we actually diminish them and hinder them from achieving the fullness of life Jesus talked about. Sometimes the most loving, Christ-like thing we can do is stand with someone while they pick themselves up after they fall and resist the urge to do it for them.

+cb

I believe in justice and truth, without which there would be no basis for human hope.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

~Julian of Norwich

Religious stereotyping is one of the most insidious kinds of stereotyping there is, because it not only misrepresents the people we speak of, but it also represents the faith system to which they belong.

We need to become aware of the reality that every major faith system teaches love and compassion as supreme values. Those who use expressions such as "Islamic fascist" to describe people only reveal their own ignorance. No religious system teaches fascism, but there is no shortage of self righteous individuals who would misrepresent the religious beliefs of others in an attempt to diminish them.

+cb

Forgetfulness of self is remembrance of God.

Start learning to love God by loving those whom you cannot love. The more you remember others with kindness and generosity, the more you forget yourself, and when you completely forget yourself, you find God.

~ Meher Baba

For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.

~ Saint Therese of Lisieux

We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.

-Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

If you walk, just walk. If you sit, just sit; but whatever you do, don't wobble.

-Ummon, Buddhist monk and philosopher

Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

-Ludwig Wittgenstein

Anytime someone feels they are too good to do something, it's a pretty good indication they need to be doing that thing on a regular basis until they get over that misperception.

+cb

Peace does not mean an absence of conflicts; differences will always be there. Peace means solving these differences through peaceful means; through dialogue, education, knowledge; and through humane ways.

~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Complacency is the death of any faith community. The second cousin of complacency is comfort. Once we are comfortable we are done, for the comfortable resist growth and change. The comfortable resist new ideas because they threaten their comfort. The comfortable rely on how things have been in the past and tend to not look to the future.

Jesus, on the other hand, is a dramatically challenging presence. Jesus constantly calls us from our hiding places of comfort into an encounter with the holy. While on earth Jesus made quite a few people uncomfortable because he loved the people his society -- and his church -- had declared unlovable. He continues to call us to be a discomforting force in the church and in the world around us.

+cb

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Thought for the Week

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what they have already achieved, but at what they aspire to.