1. When is theologizing events helpful and when is it hurtful?

I don’t feel right suggesting that God works in history as the text suggests either, but I still wonder if part of the challenge is to hear it in the genre it was intended.  If we are reading poetry, does it give some freedom towards this ‘grand’ language? (It can really be used and abused, that’s for sure.)  I also wonder if it's helpful to remember whom the writer is speaking to. If it's a people in exile who have been living under the thumb of oppression and are left hopeless - does this narrative raise them towards hope? God has been with them in judgement and will now restore them. Would the thought behind the possible liberation that Persia was bringing, be something like the thought for Black people now - that change could be on the horizon after all these years? And would it not make sense for them to see God in that? Spiritually we are always asking, how is God in this? 

One other thought that came to mind was the significance of presence through difficult times - whether that comes through reading spiritual texts, prayer or from one another. It can completely change things - giving courage to face the difficult things, and hope to begin walking again when you’ve fallen. These texts seem to be intended for that.

- Verda

2. Have you ever tried to speak a word of encouragement or hope to someone who was deeply disappointed? What did you say? Did it help?

This is an area where I feel very ill-equipped. Not only do displays of deep emotion tend to make me feel uncomfortable, but my own experience with " being encouraged" has been that when I'm at my lowest, there are no words that help. Some words come across as platitudes and irritations.  So when trying to help others, I try to avoid that, but then don't seem to have anything to say.  Recently, I've tried to accompany a friend going through a real low point, mainly by listening. 

Words of encouragement that have helped are ones that acknowledge my great pain, not trying to say it shouldn't be there.  One friend told me that where the deepest pain is, there also is Christ.  That for some reason was consoling.  I also remember that shortly after Wade's cancer diagnosis when I was feeling very low, I found a small package from Linda at my front door.  It included a small tin wind-up cat that would move in circles across the floor.  I remember standing in the kitchen with tears in my eyes, watching the cat go around and around.  I was so thankful for this new friend who already knew my love of the visual and of the absurd, and cared enough to make this kind gesture. 

So in conclusion, helping another requires all the elements of being a good friend.  The book, "Living Jesus" that Wade and I are reading with Linda and Cal mentions a number of key elements for learning another person, that I think may be helpful in knowing how to encourage them: 

• trust 
• respect 
• attentiveness (alert and receptive) 
• meditating on them in silence 
• time and patience - suffering (learning another requires opening the heart and mind to new truth, which can be painful.) 
• creative fidelity ( being faithful, and adapting to changes in yourself and the other in creative ways) 

I know I have much to learn in all of these areas.

- Penny

4.  Is there a current personal or cultural anchoring moment which reassures you that God’s relationship is still guaranteed and decisive for the present and the future?

Just a quick response here.  What stands out as an anchoring moment is my marriage to Bev which emerged from much heartache around a broken relationship and some psychological/spiritual wrestling with “Who Am I” questions. Add to that the dissolving of Cornerstone and birth of Watershed, a time freighted with crisis and disappointment. Ironically both situations, which were very painful were also paradoxically a time of liberation. Together we began to discover a deeper place to stand and the beginnings of a movement, both personally and communally, that offered hope for a more genuine felt trust with a God that to this day still remains mysterious but incredibly compelling.  A sign of this reassurance is the vision of covenant and how it keeps developing and morphing into a likeness that, in the end, develops and forms us into something beyond our own making and contriving. Over the years we can say with full confidence and grateful hearts that we are in God’s good hands.

- Paul

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