http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=168

I say of the heart, because religion does not consist of right opinions or orthodoxy. While such matters are not necessarily outward things, they are not of the heart, but of the understanding. A person may be orthodox in every point, espousing right opinions and zealously defending them; he may think correctly concerning the Trinity, and every other approved doctrine taken from the Scriptures; he may agree with al of the historical creeds, and yet have no religion at all. He may be as orthodox as the devil, and still have no more religion than a pagan. He is indeed a pagan if he is a stranger to the religion of the heart.

This alone is religion as it is truly so-called. This alone is of value in the sight of God. Paul summarized religion in three particulars: righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

~John Wesley, “The Way to God”

http://itsadance.net/perichoresis/2008/03/02/religion-of-the

I say of the heart, because religion does not consist of right opinions or orthodoxy. While such matters are not necessarily outward things, they are not of the heart, but of the understanding. A person may be orthodox in every point, espousing right opinions and zealously defending them; he may think correctly concerning the Trinity, and every other approved doctrine taken from the Scriptures; he may agree with al of the historical creeds, and yet have no religion at all. He may be as orthodox as the devil, and still have no more religion than a pagan. He is indeed a pagan if he is a stranger to the religion of the heart.

This alone is religion as it is truly so-called. This alone is of value in the sight of God. Paul summarized religion in three particulars: righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

~John Wesley, “The Way to God”

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=169

Colossians 2:6-7

“As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”

I really try to live my live in him, and have developed deep roots and have become well established in the faith. But sometimes I forget to abound. So, I think it’d be nice to abound a bit together.

What are you thankful for?

Me? I’m thankful for the beauty of nature I can sit amidst today, inspiring and renewing. I’m thankful for diversity of thinking that we all bring to God, all of us taught by God and able to bring a distinct piece to conversations, making learning about our savior always a potluck. I’m thankful God has called me to be his, even as sometimes I feel this to be more of a weight, I know that there is a freedom that cannot be matched and which is leading me to something so wonderful in knowing him ever better.

I’m thankful for my family and my friends, who support me and encourage me and who help me refocus as I should. I’m thankful for the internet, where I’ve met amazing friends, people who have been more encouraging, enlightening, and close than I could have ever imagined.

I’m thankful for God’s work in ways I can’t even see, for how he’s moving and shaping and guiding.

God is good. May I abound in thanksgiving!

What are you thankful for?

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=170

A good friend sent me this today and it very much was what I was needing to hear and be reminded about.

The High Calling

If God has called you to be truly like Jesus, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility and put on you demands of obedience that sometimes will not allow you to follow other Christians. In many ways He will seem to let other good people do things He will not let you do.

Other Christians, and even ministers, who seem very religious and useful may push themselves, pull strings, and work schemes to carry out their plans, but you cannot do these things. And if you attempt them, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you [deeply remorseful]. Others can brag about themselves, about their work, about their success, about their writing, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing; and if you begin bragging, He will lead you into some deep [humiliation] that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.

Others will be allowed to succeed in making great sums of money, or having a legacy left to them, or in having luxuries, but God may only supply you daily, because he wants you to have something far better than gold - a helpless dependence on Him - that He may have the privilege of providing your needs daily out of the unseen treasury.

The Lord may let others be honored and keep you hidden away in obscurity, because He wants to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade.

God will let others be great, but keep you small. He will let others do a work for Him and get the credit for it, but He will make you work and toil without knowing how much you are doing. And then to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work which you have done, and this will make your reward ten times greater when Jesus comes.

The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch on you, with jealous love, and rebuke you for little words and feelings or for wasted time, which other Christians never seem distressed over.

So make up you mind that God is an infinite Sovereign who has a right to do as He pleases with His own and needs not explain to you a thousand things with may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you.

God will take you at your word; and if you absolutely sell yourself to be His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and let other people say and do many things you cannot do or say.

Settle it forever that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes in ways that others are not disciplined.

Now when you are so possessed with the living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Hold Spirit over your life, you will have found the [entrance hall] of heaven.

~Anonymous

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=171

I’m leaving on a jet plane, be back late Sunday evening.

Going to the Society of Pentecostal Studies annual conference, out in North Carolina–at Duke to be more exact.

Should be a grand time. I’m giving a little presentation on emerging pneumatology, in which I take the traits of the emerging church and view them through the lens of Moltmann’s theology to identify these traits as an emerging pneumatology.

In other words, the same thing I did with my book.

This morning I practiced and recorded it. I need more practice, and I need to get over this cold and cough, but for the most part I’m happy with what I’ve done. The book is 270 pages. The paper I wrote for the conference is 27 pages. The text of the presentation I will be giving on that paper is 13 pages. Editing down is fun!

Here’s the 1/2 hour presentation.

Or you can visit me on youtube.

Part I, Part II, Part III.

If there is good access I’m going to try to do regular posts from the conference, and maybe get some video. We’ll see.

Cheers!

http://itsadance.net/perichoresis/2008/03/17/an-irish-prayer

A fitting prayer for this St. Patrick’s Day:

O Holy Spirit of Love

In us, round us, above;

Holy Spirit we pray

Send, sweet Jesus, this day.

Holy Spirit to win

Body and Soul within,

To guide us that we be

From ills and illness free.

From sin and demons’ snare,

From hell and evils there,

O holy Spirit, come!

Hallow our heart, Thy Home.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=172

Last Wednesday I flew out to Durham, North Carolina to attend the Society of Pentecostal Studies annual meeting. Though there was wireless in my hotel room and at the conference I didn’t check in here. I guess it’s the same part of me that tends not to take pictures at big events. I want to enjoy the moment, be in the moment, rather than be thinking how to document the moment.

I guess it’s another sign that I studied history rather than journalism in college.

That being the case, now that the trip is in the past I can begin to document the goings on.

My dad took me to the airport early on Wednesday morning, on his way to work. Which was nice, though his work and my flight time didn’t exactly match up. I got there round about 7. My flight took off at 11:40. Plenty of time to get to know the Ontario International Airport. I walked for long while. And I read for a long while, read a book I was hoping to re-prime me for theological conversation. It certainly did. The Holy Spirit in the World is a wonderful, wonderful book, though very dense, and got my brain moving again. It even ignited thoughts about new trails of study.

The time went by fairly quickly. Hardly felt like a wait at all. I boarded my flight, a very new Delta 757, and had a 4 hour ride to Atlanta, in which I mostly read some more, listened to a lot of classical music, as well as one of my favorite people in the world.

Landed, then I had to go from one side of Atlanta to the other for my next flight. Well, one side of the airport to another, Terminal A to E, which involved a mile+ walk and riding a train for ten minutes. Then onward to the Raleigh/Durham airport. Totally uneventful, entirely full, flight.

Landed. Was picked up by my good friend Maria, who used to be a SoCal resident before finishing up her degree at Fuller and wandering over to see what kind of extra education she can pick up at Duke. We first met at the church I used to go to/work at, and had good long conversations about very intellectual things as well as less intellectual things. She was, without a doubt, one of my earliest and most encouraging cheerleaders when I began my writing in 2003. That she’s brilliant and exceedingly well read with a superior grasp of English (despite being born and raised in Austria) made the encouragement all the more encouraging. So it was nice to see her. And not have to walk to the hotel.

She made me a turkey sandwich, because it was late and she thought I would be hungry. I didn’t know I was, but it turned out I was more hungry than I knew.

Got to my Quality Inns and Suites, right next door to the Durham Hilton, checked into room 103 and proceeded to immediately not fall asleep. Sure it might be 10:30 local time, but it was just starting out the evening in my time. Add the fact I was really suffering from a cold and a bad cough… well, I didn’t get to sleep until around 1.

Woke up wide awake at 6. Round about 7:30 I walked over to the Hilton, checked into the conference, opened my little packet of materials and was happy to see me staring back. A flier on It’s a Dance was included. Made me smile. I also got a couple of free books, which occupied my time until the shuttle came to take folks to Duke. Sat next to one of the main organizers of the conference, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, not until he stood up at the main session that evening.

Did I say I’ve not been real involved in academia for a while and don’t really know anyone?

A new session had been added at the last minute. I decided to go. The Rev. Eusebius Stephanou spoke on his charismatic conversion in the early 60s and his subsequent ministry within the Eastern Orthodox church for the last forty years.

My thoughts on that will be in the next post.

Oh, and I forgot to mention. The night before my flight to the conference I got some nice news which helped my attendance take on more substantive meaning. I got a note from Dr. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen that I had been accepted as his PhD student at Fuller Theological seminary beginning this Fall, and more that I had been awarded by the School of Theology a scholarship that entirely pays my tuition.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=173

Completely random here.

Put the first 10,000 digits of pi to music. You choose the notes to correspond to each number. I wish there was a way of changing the length of some notes to help make for a more interesting rhythm, but still… oddly entrancing.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=174

It was added late to the schedule so I’m really glad I noticed it. I was wanting to jump right in and this was a perfect way to do it, albeit rather unexpected.

I’ve long been interested in the Orthodox church. Well, not really all that long. Ten years or so. When I was first really introduced to it I wasn’t interested at all. It was in my Historical Theology class. Robert Webber was very interested in Orthodoxy and brought in a man who was once an Evangelical firebrand and then converted to the Orthodox church.

I didn’t find much to like about the presentations in that class. Of course, I was still myself wholly Evangelical with all the biases that meant, so I wasn’t quite listening with an altogether open mind. I wonder what I would think now. I suspect I still wouldn’t like it, but I would have a better sense of the specifics.

Here’s why. Because the stories and presentation in that class were about Orthodox ecclesiology. The man who became a priest loved the Church, the history, the formality, the liturgy, the whole Apostolic succession that maintained a strict, orderly hierarchy. He was in love with the form of church the Orthodox presented.

I did, though, come out of that class feeling like the Orthodox had a much better claim for real succession than does the Roman Catholic church, whose theology likes to claim early centuries but is really late medieval. The Orthodox think the 4th and 5th century were worth keeping around for a good while longer.

Since that time I’ve done a lot of reading. I’ve done a lot of reading of early church sources, and many of the very sources that the Orthodox raise as their sources. And it hit me again and again.

Where’s the passion? Where’s the real presence of the Spirit?

What I saw was all the theology of the Spirit, this elegant, wonderful, deep theology of spirituality and holiness being poured into yet more justifications of hierarchy, and power, and church politics. The theology doesn’t match the expression. I’ve little interest in forms or power structures or thinking that I need a man in a beard and dark outfit to somehow be my connection to the living Christ and his ever present Spirit. I believe in apostolic succession but it is through the Spirit that this is conveyed, not in the structures. I wondered where the living power of the Spirit that is so present in the early church writers has gone. Why is there such political battles even as they claim to be bearers of the one who has upset all those politics?

The presentation was on the charismatic renewal in the Orthodox church. So, given all my thoughts, I was interested.

And I was in turn absolutely delighted. Father Eusebius Stephanou spoke on his own realization of the living power of the Holy Spirit forty years ago and then on his, as he terms it, prophetic ministry within the Orthodox church to bring this renewal to all. It is, as he puts it, not a matter of bringing something new to the church. The Orthodox church, he said, is the Pentecostal church, it is the church that began on Pentecost, but has lost its way for all kinds of reasons and all kinds of distractions.

He told the story of how he had absolutely no interest in those from other churches, thought them (us) all heretics. A charismatic group of Orthodox began to include him, and he was entranced by their passion for God. He didn’t feel the same warmth they did, even after they prayed over and with him, but he knew there was something there leading him to greater depths. One evening, while eating alone as he usually did, the Spirit met him. Came over him with an overpowering love for Jesus, a passion for Jesus, a love for the work of God, and began to see and think with a profound new awareness of God’s work. This was the beginning of his ministry.

What’s so interesting to me is how so much of what he said, beginning with the absolute emphasis and adoration for Jesus, were points that I talk about in my book. He expressed what I was thinking we should see when the Spirit came. He emphasizes Jesus, he wants to participate with all those who call him Lord, he sees the frustrations that a rigid hierarchy can lead to. He is filled with this love for God, and is coupled with an absolute love for his church.

In this love, in this passion, in these emphases I resonate so strongly. He is the expression of what I read in the works of Symeon the New Theologian, or Nikitas Stithatos, or any of the other absolutely profound Christian Orthodox writers who have been so central to my developing faith.

I feel a bond of unity with Father Eusebius that goes beyond so much of what I’ve felt with so many Evangelical pastors.

And so, the conference started out well for me. And it was only my first taste of orthodox and Pentecostal dialogue.

But in between I got a taste of Peace–Baptist, Quaker, Pentecostal pacifism.

Which will be the subject of another post.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=175

Good Friday

O my chief good,

How shall I measure out thy blood?

How shall I count what thee befell,

And each grief tell?

Shall I thy woes

Number according to thy foes?

Or, since one start show’d thy first breath,

Shall all thy death?

Or shall each leaf,

Which falls in Autumn, score a grief?

Or cannot leaves, but fruit, be sign

Of the true vine?

Then let each hour

Of my whole life one grief devour:

That thy distress through all may run,

And be my sun.

Or rather let

My several sins their sorrows get;

That as each beast his cure doth know,

Each sin may so.

Since blood is fittest, Lord, to write

Thy sorrows in, and bloody fight;

My heart hath store, write there, where in

One box doth lie both ink and sin:

That when sin spies so many foes,

Thy whips, thy nails, thy wounds, thy woes

All come to lodge there, sin may say,

No room for me, and fly away.

Sin being gone, oh fill the place,

And keep possession with thy grace;

Lest sin take courage and return,

And all the writings blot or burn.

~George Herbert

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=176

This has long been one of my favorite religious days. Because it is the one that makes sense to me. It is the one that fits with my life thus far. As I see new changes ahead, and, in some ways, begin to maybe even see Easter’s dawn, I think it right to remember what I’ve written in the past on this holy day.

Here’s one from 2004:

There is a slight haze in the sky, some stars shining through, many not. All is quiet, not a sound, odd for a holiday weekend. No wind, no movement. Perfectly still, the noise I make echoing through the silence.

I felt this a day of rest, and rested accordingly, going for a wonderful jog through the hills, enjoying the beauty of the day. My soul felt at ease, and I let it enjoy the feeling.

It is Saturday, between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. This day has more and more meaning to me as the years go by, some of which I’ve written about in other places, some of which still I reflect on.

This being a journal of my spirit and soul I think it’s good to say how much I identify with this day more than tomorrow or yesterday. I feel forgiven, I have no guilt, I do not feel the weight of my own sins. They have been released and I am a slave to nothing. And yet, I do not feel resurrected. The weight of life’s difficulties weighs on my soul, my doubts and confidence balance each other out, each gaining sway for their own time. I taste of new life, I do not dwell in new life. Much has begun, nothing is resolved. I live in utter faith that the work God has started in me will be finished, with wonderful results. There is no actual indication this is the case.

Indeed, with all of the pomp and celebration of Easter, I feel myself distant from it, not because I do not understand the significance of the day, I just wait for my own Easter, along with the ultimate Easter. Today is my day.

Because I’ve been saturated in the Christian world for so long I wonder if it is not just overexposure. I was born into the church, and have no memory of not being a Christian. Thus that transition is missing for me. So, the joy and celebration of Easter is something I taste, but have more contrived emotions in celebration than real excitement.

Of course I live the Easter life in part, the presence of the Holy Spirit in me is a result of Easter. Had Christ stayed or not risen, the Holy Spirit would not have been sent. So, that is a consideration.

But, too much of me now identifies with those dark words of Wesley and others, who miss God even as they seek him the most. It is Saturday, and all I have to do is wait, and pray, and continue to believe. Christ, we say tomorrow, has risen indeed. So too he rises in each of our lives. That is the wonder of Biblical prophecy and imagery, it means more than it means, though it does not mean less. Christ and Easter are the history, the depth of the theology of the Faith, and yet they still speak to us, meaning more than just what they meant 1,970 years ago.

The disciples sat together in someone’s house, weeping and remembering, hoping that something would happen, not yet fully without hope, still lost in the sudden change. The women were ready to go to the tomb as soon as it turned light, to do what they could, the next step they saw. That’s all I can do, the next step before me, whatever it is. For one day, I will be going about my tasks, and Easter will come, a power beyond me, changing all in an instant. He does make all things new, is making all things new.

It is Saturday, however, and all we have on this day is a promise. Such is our lives, such is my life. Praise be to the Three-in-One.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=177

This is one of the more unusual days in the religious calendar. Friday is the crucifixion, that day in which we say that our sins were cleansed by the sacrifice of the Lamb. He took on the burden so we would not.

Tomorrow we celebrate the resurrection, the time in which death itself lost its sting, so that we who are of the Faith fear Sheol no more. To live is Christ, Paul says, and to die is gain. Death is but a transition from life to Life.

Saturday, today, is in between. Why didn’t Jesus come out on the Sabbath? Was it out of respect for the Law? Sunday had no special relevance until he made it so. Yes, the prophecies mention three days… why? Christ is not beholden to the prophecies, they are beholden to him. A curious consideration, and unknowable.

What were the disciples thinking? The Twelve, the others? Years of their lives had been spent with the man now dead. They could not return home, for traveling was forbidden for the most part. So they stayed, their lives lost, dead even though still alive. Already Christ had died on this day, he had not yet risen. They didn’t know he would. He told them, but they didn’t understand.

How many cursed Christ on this day for being deceitful? How many felt really bad about it after he rose again?

We live in the middle of the three days of the Passion, the time between times, Christ has come, Christ will come again. Already, not yet. Hoped for realities which are not apparent, no longer slaves to sin though sinners indeed, free and not free, alive and not alive, strong and weak, hopeful and fearful, that is our state. Yes, keeping the eye on the end is what helps us through the now, transforming our perspective even in the present so as to anticipate the future, letting us see time beyond time while we walk through time.

But we are living in the Saturday, the day between a day and a day, in which we expect everything and feel the loss of everything. Christ has told us what to expect, but we don’t really understand or believe it… just look at our lives, our hearts.

Saturday is an awkward day, neither here nor there. And so, it is a day of rest.

For a lot of reasons Holy Saturday is my most precious religious holiday. It is the one which I live with and the one which suits my soul. This is the day in which I resonate with the meaning in a profound way. This is Holy Saturday. My whole life thus far is lived on this Saturday. Christ has died. May Christ be resurrected. May the peace of God come into our hearts, and help us wait patiently for the fullness of Christ to enter our world for all eternity. Amen and amen.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=178

Christ is risen.

Happy Easter!!

The Stations of the Cross are an important meditation. But focusing so much on that leaves out so much of what we really are about. We’re not only forgiven, we are now free to really begin to live, live free now and through eternity.

In thinking of this, after several years of focusing on the Stations of the Cross as both a physical experience at the church I worked at and as a written exercise I thought it worthwhile to have a go at the Stations of the Resurrection. I’ve heard since there are other forms of this, but as I was going by my own inspiration and couldn’t find guidance at the time I have chosen these fourteen emphases, beginning with Easter and ending on Pentecost.

Someday, given the space and opportunity again, it might be fun to put these into some kind of physical, sensory, experience.

For now… writing and art. Enjoy these Stations of the Resurrection.

He is risen indeed.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=179

The painted lady butterflies are migrating. And it might be the biggest migration ever seen.

Millions of painted lady butterflies that fluttered into California’s Central Valley in the last week of March could be just the advance guard of one of the largest migrations of the species on record, said Arthur Shapiro, a professor and expert on butterflies at UC Davis.

“This may be the biggest migration of modern times,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro said he is getting reports of “billions” of butterflies around Trona, near Death Valley, and in the San Fernando Valley. More waves of butterflies are likely to appear in central California over the next few weeks as the insects take wing.

Painted lady butterflies, known by the scientific name Vanessa cardui, spend the winter in the desert. As caterpillars turn into adults in the spring, they migrate north in search of fresh food and breeding grounds, powered by a supply of yellow fat they have built up over the winter.

Painted ladies migrate every year, but usually less conspicuously and in far fewer numbers. This year, however, exceptionally high winter rainfall in southern California has created a bumper crop of plants for the caterpillars to eat, fuelling a population boom, Shapiro said.

The butterflies take about three days to reach the Central Valley, and the current generation will fly as far as southern Oregon. Their offspring will fly on to reach British Columbia by summer, before heading south again in the fall.

I’m sitting in the middle of a thoroughfare. A constant stream, hundreds going by, a dozen at a time, coming from the south east and heading north west. Off to the Central Valley of California apparently. They don’t stop. They are flying with purpose.

My camera batteries died when I tried to take pics. But for now, a portrait from elsewhere.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=180

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=181

I got back into posting and then fell off. Well, there are a few reasons for that. One is because of that Amazon Vine program I talk about occasionally, where I get a few free items each month in exchange for a review posted on their website. A few days ago I got Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 and between the weather being extraordinary and having to unload programs, do a fresh install of a new operating system, and reload programs on my desktop I’ve not been thinking about the usual posts. Vista works quite wonderfully, by the way. Very beautiful. I’m quite impressed.

Now I feel better about avoiding the ostentation of the white middle class bourgeoisie that is Macintosh.

The other reason is because I’ve a post brewing in my head on my conference experiences that relates to the session on peace. I very much enjoyed the session, but have some questions and thoughts which are, well, political. I’ve a political side to me that I don’t often express any more, not least because most of those who I know and who I resonate with on so many other issues tend to have sharply different political opinions. And being that my publisher is associated with the Quakers, it’s not entirely fitting that I spend time talking about my various thoughts on war and peace.

I’m somewhat in a murky middle on that issue, and might be offensive to different sides. So, that post is still brewing. And the brewing process tends to get in the way of other thoughts.

But I do have a few pictures of a chipmunk that I’ll be posting today.

The weather is quite cold and overcast this morning. Though, yesterday I did get some more software in the mail: CorelDraw Suite x4. It seems quite, quite user friendly and robust (without having the dreaded Adobe bloat) so I might get caught up in that instead.

http://itsadance.net/perichoresis/2008/03/30/here-and-there/

I should probably note, especially given the consistency of posts I’ve attained here, that I have another blog, my personal blog, where I spend a lot of time and have a lot of posts relating to the topics in It’s a Dance. I’m still trying to figure how to make the best use of this site, so it might be sporadic yet here. But, wander over to Ravens if you’re so inclined to hear more of my ponderings.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=182

Spring has arrived, and that means the wee birds and beasts are quite active. Some days more than others. Last week while sitting outside there were 4 chipmunks gamboling about the yard, and the deck, and all about, chasing each other, constantly moving. They came pretty close to me without too much concern, up the stairs, behind the kayak, out on the other side.