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Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Monday, May 30, 2016

The Extremism we can't seem to grasp

From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

Extremes to the right and to the left of any political dispute are always wrong.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower
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I have been thinking today about extremism

In general I am against it
Political
Religious

I am against food fanaticism (sorry)

In general I am for the middle way
which is an old an honored path

it is not that there is no place for extreme

Jesus was extreme
and called for an extreme way of life

servanthood
death of ego
sacrificial giving
unconditional love

a difficult way for sure

and what have we done with his call to be
“ordinary radicals” (Shane Claiborne)?

we have moved to
extreme hate
exclusion
judgment
extreme enmeshment with the cultural status quo

we have even decided that greed is OK

many of those who say they follow Jesus
are now willing to follow a person who is the antithesis of all Jesus stood for
extremely

Those who would be progressive followers of Jesus have now become
as pious and rigid as those they just

we do not handle extremism well, and
it appears that we are willing to adopt any form of extremism except one

extreme love

Oh beloved one
deliver us from ourselves


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