2009.02.28 (Shelley) Call - Agenda
- Welcome - 5 mins
- Check in and previous homework - 10 mins
- Opening words - 5 min
- Deeper topic conversation - 20 mins
- What's next / homework / assign next call - 10 mins
- Closing words - 5 mins
Welcome
- Brandon: give the context and purpose of these calls
Check-In
- (Re-)Introductions, homework reports, states of being
Previous Homework Assignments
- Brandon WaterProject will make a phone call and be persistent
- Mickki "grow local colorado" 600 new gardens in Denver (behind on building the website) balancing Business Alliance with desire to build website and pass on (yay ... there is ease in connecting)
- Ted "theme of in community again" (met with Shelley and Stacey)
- Shelley (conflict about outreach when not reading personal email (managing personal life) inspired by water project ... more this week perhaps ... personal issue "feeling inadequate" about not having ideas (less this week))
- Arthur ... lots of energy into local capital summit (spirals and flows even when a community is short on money) outreach "flow principles" even without calling them that explicitly
Opening Words
S: Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. . . . E: [Human beings], in contrast to other living beings, ha[ve] spiritual concerns -- A: cognitive, L: aesthetic, B: social, A: political. E: Some of [these concerns] are urgent, often extremely urgent, and each of them as well as the vital concerns can claim ultimacy for a human life B: or the life of a social group. L: If it claims ultimacy it demands the total surrender of [the one] who accepts this claim, E: and it promises total fulfillment even if all other claims have to be subjected to it or rejected in its name. S: Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith.
Today's Deeper Topic: The Ultimate Concern
- What do you hear in this language of Ultimate Concern?
- Does it entice or repulse you?
- As you build your community, are you aiming to speak to Ultimate Concern? Why or why not?
- Can you directly name your Ultimate Concern, or is it ineffable?
- What symbols and rituals do you use, or imagine someday using, to approach or invoke Ultimate Concern in a body of human beings?
Exploring Theology Further (if time permits)
The Church, Spiriata, and the SolSeed Movement are seeking ways to nurture life, and life-giving flows. Many seekers who approach these new movements will have done significant work within other traditions, and they will bring with them many life-giving aspects of those traditions. Our movements have the option of embracing aspects of these other traditions. We also have the option of creating our own constructive theology, building on the wisdom of others.
- Do you intend to construct theology for your movement?
- Does the word "theology" work for what you're hoping to do, or would another term be better?
- What are the risks and benefits of speaking theologically or reading theology as you build a movement?
- I've excerpted a few quotes below from two modern writers to spark thought and conversation.
- What would it be like if someone came to our community speaking in the language of Keller or Starhawk?
- Would we embrace the language? Would we pat the person on the head and say, "that's nice dear" without really engaging?
- Would we really engage (this takes time and resources -- is theology a good use of time and resources?)?
Open-Ended Interactivity
Process Theologian Catherine Keller suggests the language of mystery and metaphor as a way to speak about our ultimate concern without making absolute truth claims:
Speak about the unspeakable in a beautiful metaphor: that of the "the luminous dark." . . . [This is] a way for theology to avoid the garish neon light of absolute truth-claims, which wash out our vital differences. Yet this way will just as firmly elude the opaque darkness of the casual nihilism that pervades our culture -- the "whatever" of indifference.
Faith is not settled belief but living process. It is the very edge and opening of life in process. To live is to step with trust into the next moment: into the unpredictable.
Process . . . means becoming: it signifies the intuition that the universe itself is not most fundamentally a static being or the product of a static Being -- but an immeasurable becoming. Indeed the word genesis in Greek means "becoming." The God of the universe in process may in powerful ways turn out to be a God in process: that is, in open-ended interactivity with each of the gazillions of us creatures. (Keller, Catherine. On the Mystery. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008, p. xii.)
Interconnectedness Early in the morning I take my dogs down to the beach to run in the summer fog. The ocean whispers; all is soft, gray, and silver-blue. . . . Let us imagine that we live in a culture where time is a cycle, where the sand dollar lies beside its fossil (as it does). Where everything is seen to return, as the birds return to sight with the movement of the waves. As I return tot eh beach, again and again. Imagine that in that returning nothing stands outside: the bird is not separate from the waves but both are part of the same rhythm. Imagine that I know -- not with my intellect but in my body, my heart -- that I do not stand separate from the sand dollar or the fossil, that the slow forces that shaped the life of one and preserved the other under the deep pressure of settling mud for cycles upon cycles are the same forces that have formed my life; that when I hold the fossil in my hand I am looking into a mirror. (Starhawk. Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988, pp. 15-16.)
Homework and Planning the Next Call
- Arthur: promise to write up radiance metaphor
- Lion: will do call for Sat March 14, 8 am; will send information to Shelley about Spiriata; introduce these questions
- Brandon: will do call for Sat March 7, 8 am; will do Timebridge for future times;
- Shelley: bring up topics of Ultimate Concern and Process Theology with Book Club; think about language that would be useful within the SolSeedMovement
- Mickki
- Ted
- Ethan
Closing Words
Spirit of Life, come unto me. Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion. Blow in the wind, rise in the sea; move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice. Roots hold me close; wings set me free; Spirit of LIfe, come to me, come to me.