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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



Tuesday, November 26, 2019

The Gospel, Period


“I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, ‘Now is that political or social?’ He said, ‘I feed you.’ Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.” - Desmond Tutu
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What do we do with the lump in the throat that is God?
What do we do when the wind of the Sacred roils through our souls,
turning us inside out and our world upside down?

What do we do when we come awake to that infinite, immanent One
When that transcendent intimate reality
Who loved the world into being
And sustains it still

And realize that we carry divine DNA
That we carry Sacred Presence (to put it bluntly)
and are
Sacred Children?

The answer should be obvious

We enter into a new way of doing life!
a radical
profoundly new
way of being in this world

this is about Love
that Love which is woven into the fabric of our being
by the one who is love 

oozing out of our very pores
shaping our thoughts, our perceptions, our feelings
and above all
our actions

Dallas Willard once put it very well

“Jesus does not call us to do what he did,
but to be as he was, permeated with love.
Then the doing of what he did and said
becomes the natural expression of who we are in him.”

Indeed!

Jesus was so permeated with Sacred
that the distinction between sacred and common (human)
was meaningless

I will never get there
I will always be painfully human

but I am a Sacred child
and I carry Sacred Presence
and I can
do live a different way

“The Spirit of the Lord is Upon Me”
Jesus proclaimed

‘That I might proclaim good news to the poor.
proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free”

The presence of the Sacred is in us
that we might do the same
that we might not only proclaim good news
but that we might BE good news

faith is lived
faith is most manifest not in holy songs
and rituals
but in acts of compassion and kindness

faith is most manifest not in sanctuaries
but in soup kitchens
and immigrant camps
and yes, perhaps, voting booths

and “preaching the Gospel”
is not about sharing ideology
or “magic” formulas that “save”

it is about meeting people where they are at
and touching their lives
at their point of need

it might be about healing a soul
it just might

but it is just as likely to be about
bread
and clothing
and housing

it is just as likely to be about
justice or equity

What do we do with the lump in the throat that is God?
What do we do when the wind of the Sacred roils through our souls,
turning us inside out and our world upside down?

What do we do when we come awake to that infinite, immanent One
When that transcendent intimate reality
Who loved the world into being
And sustains it still

The answer should be obvious

We enter into a new way of doing life!



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