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Friday, September 06, 2002 |
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A relevant passage (for the previous blog) from the book I am reading "By Grace Transformed" by Gordon Cosby
We sense and feel keenly about the whole because we know that everything is interconnected. Any gift we have is seen as a gift to enhance the total family of humanity. We are here to move the totality toward the Shalom, the completion, the fulfillment, the coming into her or his own of every person who is living and has ever lived, and every person who will ever be born into the future.
In reality, we are not separate individuals, as we often feel ourselves to be. We are meshed, we are intertwined, we flow into and out of one another and all others. There is no way to fix the boundaries. The Christ who flows into us is simultaneously flowing into the billions of the world's people. Where do we end and they begin? Millions of cells in the human body make up the body's totality. All are working harmoniously on behalf of the whole, unless some of the cells become sick or cancerous. Each of us is part of God's total people, and we cannot separate ourselves from the totality.
Until awareness of this universal belonging dawns upon us we are a hindrance to the human family. It is a great day when the boundaries drop. We are part of others, and they are a part of us. We are constantly flowing into them. We cannot protect ourselves from their sickness and pain and brokenness. Nor can others protect themselves from ours. All become united. The common life of humanity is not an ideal, not something that would be just wonderful if we could but realize it. The universal quality of life happens to be a reality, and we utterly defeat ourselves when we violate that premise. We can live in the illusion of separateness, but it is an illusion.
(p.26 Chapter 3: Servant Leadership -- presented in 1989 at the opening of the Festival Center)
9:00:22 PM 
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I wrote a little article called Islam Hijacked a few days after the attacks, because I worried about the impact of this event on the relationships between the Muslim and Christian worlds, and on Muslims at the hands of ignorance on the part of bigoted people, Christian or not (the "Christian" forms of bigotry REALLY bother me, since I find myself having to defend the Christian faith I adhere to against the faith that these "alien religion" bashers spout as "truth". I find it very bothersome that so many "Christian " people can be so blind to the existence of extremist fanaticism within the ranks of "Christian" factions and sub-cultures of all sorts, like the "survivalist" types and the McVeighs and the Klu Klux KLan. The West Wing episode that aired just prior to their season opener last fall had Josh Lyman's character make a comparison: MUslim extremists are to Islam as ______ is to Christianity. Answer: KKK. Add a healthy dose of apocalyptic fervor, and a few dashes of a Nationalistic sense of destiny, baptize it with theocracy visions, and motivate it all with conquest of the foe, and you get the BinLaden-AlQuida extremism. To sum it all up, you have self-deception of demonic dimensions.
My home page (at least as of 9/2) shows me in a T-shirt sporting several flags of different nations, and bearing the title "Citizen of the World". My Christianity is a tad more universalistic than a good many of other Christians are willing to embrace. For me, Christ is a Cosmic Christ, revealing himself in every culture, even though the spiritual identifications made within differing spirtualities across the world are cast in different characters, each is an attempt to capture the essence of divine revelation.
"Islam Hijacked"story linked here Islam Hijacked
Tony Campolo has an excellent speech on the topic of Christians and Sept 11 , which I link to in this blog
Gordon Cosby reflects on how All Are Connected .....
8:33:40 PM
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