Resurrection: Beyond Ghosts and Ghouls

MORE THAN A fact or doctrine, the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth embodies personal and historical hope. While reading a variety of viewpoints on the resurrection, I have been alternatively confused, comforted, restored and unexpectedly devastated by this theme. Internally and subjectively the resurrection is an encounter with the epicenter of meaning and significance. Without a living encounter and reliance on the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, spirituality amounts to little more than armchair speculation. This strikes at the root of my fears because my intellect hesitates to believe that a person whose bodily functions had ceased, whose tether to

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The Stranger's Gospel: The Modern Magi

Quadra is the kind of place where you hear the oysters pop as you stroll down the beach, breathing in the fresh sea air. Vestiges of turbulent times are found in the cafeteria on the ferry from Campbell River. Under the ly lacquered trim, scrawled like a fossil, is an ancient peace symbol, or an upside down chicken track as the early locals saw it. From a table filled with laughter comes an anachronism of an early time, "That's really right on!" The slip doesn't go unnoticed, everyone groans. The men's hair is still long but groomed

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Watershed Spirituality

We can't help being thirsty, moving toward the voice of water. Milk drinkers draw close to the mother. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, shamans, everyone hears the intelligent sound and moves with thirst to meet it. - Jeladuddin Rumi (1207-1273) The Image Unveiled James Hillman, the founder of Archetypal Psychology, has become convinced that individual and corporate spiritual growth is made through the meditation on images. The image of what I refer to as Watershed Spirituality comes from the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel. It has to do with rejuvenating waters which make stagnant things fresh, have healing properties, and perpetuate life

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An Unmerited Unity

I began my current exploration of the life and theology of Martin Luther by reading Richard Marius' Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death. I am glad I did. Marius doesn't idealize Luther in the least. His meticulously reed biography raises a raft of doubts about Luther's place in history. Marius interprets Luther more as a schismatic than a reformer. Luther comes off as a character-disordered individual. While creative, brilliant and earnest, Luther nonetheless displayed a boorish and pugnacious attitude toward all who disagreed with him, a fawning dependency on political 'father-substitutes', and a life-long morbid fear of death

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Christianity and Culture

We've been looking at how Christianity is interpreted differently by different groups of people. I find this fascinating because it always seems easy to think that how I define Christianity is simply THE definition that's out there. But there are so many ways. Richard Niebuhr identifies fives ways that Christianity gets expressed in the world: 1) Christ Against Culture - The easiest way to describe this definition is that it's the one that we grew up in. It's the way of the Anabaptists who chose to reject the close relationship that Luther supported between the church and state, and struck

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Defining Christian Spirituality

We're basing our studies on the book Christian Spirituality by Lawrence Cunningham. Our focus is trying to figure out what Christian spirituality means. Spirituality is a phrase that's pretty common these days, as people like to use it instead of religion. Religion feels boxed in or institutional whereas spirituality feels more open and interpretive. But Paul talked about how the way that we enter spirituality needs to engage the tradition that we're part of. Having a general definition of spirituality (such as having a sense of a higher benevolent power) is good in that it allows connection to people of

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Introduction to Origen

Last class we studied Origen, a guy who was dedicated to understanding the Christian message at its depths and contributed the first systemic theology of Christian thought. Origen lived from 185-251 in Alexandria, a city rich in learning. The wealth of his family allowed him to study, and the martyrdom of his father for his Christian faith must have encouraged his own devotion to the message. Up until this time no one had really sat down and made sense of Christian thought so one of the responses to Christianity was a mocking disdain of it as a folk religion. Origen's

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Types of Christian Spirituality

We started on the interesting note that if you were to bring up the topic of spirituality 30 years ago, there wouldn't necessarily be a lot to talk about: one definition of spirituality existed. This was because in general people weren't talking about spirituality except in Roman Catholic circles. Protestants tended to avoid the term spirituality. They were more likely to use the terms holiness, godliness, or discipleship in describing a life lived in relationship to God. But now you can't say the word spirituality and expect Christians to know what you mean because there are so many different expressions

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