In order to reach people that no one is reaching, you’ll to have to do things that no one is doing. But in order to do things that no one is doing, you can’t do what everyone else is doing.
“Once you domesticate Jesus, he isn’t there anymore. The domestic Jesus may be an interesting fellow, a good friend, a loyal companion, a helpful business associate, a guarantor of the justice of your wars. But one thing he is certainly not: the Jesus of the New Testament. Once Jesus comforts your agenda, he’s not Jesus anymore.”
-Andrew Greeley
To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely — to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep on stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away.
Beauty, art and our ignorance
Bethany shared this on Facebook. It has really got me thinking today about all the places I miss the beauty that surrounds me - seems an especially apt question for this advent season.
Vanity Fair: Who are your heroes in real life?
John Cusack: Let’s go with Jesus. Not the gay-hating, war-making political tool of the right, but the outcast, subversive, supreme adept who preferred the freaks and lepers and despised and doomed to the rich and powerful. The man Garry Wills describes “with the future in his eyes … paradoxically calming and provoking,” and whom Flannery O’Connor saw as “the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of [one’s] mind.”
[He] depends for his power on his ability to make other people powerful … i realised my job was to awaken possibility in other people!
// Leadership//
“To lead is to live dangerously because when leadership counts, when you lead people through difficult change, you challenge what people hold dear – their daily habits, tools, loyalties and ways of thinking – with nothing more to offer than perhaps a possibility.”
Heifetz and Linsky - Leadership on the Line p2
// The Radical Tension//
The Kingdom is both now and not yet; here and yet still to come. Some push all in for the now, others resign themselves to the not yet. Somewhere in the middle is a space where seeming contradictions hold in tension, where mystery is embraced, where God’s goodness is championed, where disappointment is mourned and transformed, where faith is strengthened and tested, where life on earth meets with life from above. In this space anything can happen. This is a bounded space, bounded by God’s love, faithfulness, justice, generosity, mercy and grace. Within such limits the impossible is possible.
// Christmas is coming!//
Now that Halloween is out of the way, there is a steady increase of tinsel, fake snow, Santa Claus and other assorted Christmas nonsense.
Jason sums up far more eloquently than I could how I feel about Christmas.
So in the UK we spent over £85 billion last Christmas on Christmas. That’s over £1,300 per person, £3,300 per household, and £1,750 per adult on average.
I increasingly struggle with Christmas, with how it has almost nothing to do with the Advent of Jesus, and we too often spend money and time we don’t have, on things we don’t need to impress people we too often don’t like.I’m not a scrooge, yet I despise the relentless pull into spending, and giving of ourselves to something so….well so pagan. And I’m not naive to want everyone to not spend and see the further collapse of the UK economy.I’ve found some hope in the Advent Conspiracy. The call to spend less, just one present less, so that we might then give more, of ourselves to others in relationship, mission and worship, and to place worship together at the centre of our Christmas experience.How are you preparing and facing Christmas this year, or am I the only one wanting the ride to stop and to get off?
via Jason Clark - Stop the Ride I want to get off.
Perhaps think about looking at Advent Conspiracy as a way of subverting the consumerist approach to Christmas.
