Christa’s Musings

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

-Marianne Williamson

Maybe most introverts have fear that they recognize, and extroverts have fears that they choose to ignore and forget. I’m reading this book called Art and Fear, and you know… i think at the root of all discontentment, restlessness, sadness… there is some sort of fear. 

What are we all so afraid of?

“I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between Him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.” –Napoleon

Church was really good tonight. Jimbo is the new college minister, and there was just an ambience of goodness and change. Erica went to a leadership meeting and apparently Jimbo was talking about the same things that I was upset about with the church earlier this year- Things about the church being institutionalized and not communal. And he is starting small groups, not for bible study per se, but more just for meeting people and forming community. And I’m very glad. I’ve been going to 180 for three years and I hardly know anyone still.

I have felt very negative and static lately, and I am going to change that. There hasn’t been enough God in my life. My camp director was doing this thing where she wore a bracelet and every time she said something negative, she’d take it off and put it on the other arm- which isn’t a huge deal, but it makes you more aware of the things you’re saying. I think I’m going to do that.

Love.

“The Rennaisance was when they got Man’s relationship with Spirit wrong. They revived the old Pagan idea that man is the measure of all things, which of course is absurd, and that idea did untold damage. Instead of infinity you had to be content with a circle a man could touch at every point.”…”Conjuring the wrong images. Since then we’ve been living in an anthropocentric universe with our eyes and ears and minds shut. What is called religion isn’t about inhuman spirit but about Man and Morals and Progress, which are much less important. And then science came, which should have given them an inkling, an inkling of the inhuman powers that be, but what they did was develoop their anthropocentricity into the terrible idea that Man is the master of all things. Now that, Potter, is black conjuring, that produced Hiroshima and Satanic Mills. Science could have been used, of course, to re-establish the ancient knowledge that man had his place on a scale of being as an intermediary between pure matter and pure spirit. But they talked about the indomitable human spirit and the empty heavens and lost their chances. Including any chance to deal with, or describe, or even recognize experience of the kind you’ve just had.”

-The Virgin in the Garden, by A. S. Byatt (p127 in my copy)

“Does it surprise you that most of what we do in [Christian] religious circles has no precedent in scripture?”…”There were three historical periods when a bevy of changes were made in common church practices: the era of Constantine, the decades surrounding the Protestant Reformation, and the Revivalist period of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But as you are about to find out, those changes were the result of passionate, though often ill-informed, followers of Christ. The believers during those periods simply went along for the ride”…”The preponderance of evidence shows that these perspectives, rules, traditions, expectations, assumptions, and practices often hinder the development of our faith. In other instances, they serve as barriers that keep us from encountering the living God.”

-Pagan Christianity? Viola & Barna, p xxvii

Recently I’ve felt very at odds with the modern Christian Church and I believe it is no longer what it was mean to be, 2000 years ago- And I’m finding out in my research that I’m right. And I feel reassured.

I am realizing that I am all too much motivated by money. In church, Wesley and Ashley were saying that we shouldn’t be motivated by wealth and that we aren’t meant to live a life of comfort, but rather we should follow God with a reckless abandon- We should chose difficult options in life, rather than the safe, boring ones, because God will provide for us.

Matthew 6:25-34
“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

I am finding a lot of comfort in that idea. I feel like I’ve lost my wanderlust over the last year, and I think God is seeking to bring that back out in me. 

So Habakkuk was some minor profit who complained to God because God sicked the Babylonians on the Israelites because they were being idiots. Anyway, the dude talking said thats its okay to complain to God if you do it with sincerity and with faith and humility- Habakkuk was questioning and petitioning God on behalf of his friends. God doesn’t get mad when people question him, he invites it- However, God hates arrogance, so if you tell God he sucks then expect some lightning. Yep. I knew most of that already.
Anyway, then Brian, a fellow student, spoke. He had a really moving story- He brought up Elijah, who was this crazy profit and God sent him out into the middle of nowhere to hide, and Ravens fed him. RAVENS. That would make an awesome painting right there, a profit of God hiding out by a brook with Ravens all around him. Imagine that, just for a second. Then the brook dried up so God sent Elijah off to meet a woman who would feed him and when he found her, she only had enough food for one more meal for her and her son, so Elijah told her if she fed him, she wouldn’t run out of food. So she did what he asked (That takes a lot of faith- if a bum told me If I fed him, and I was about to starve, that I wouldn’t run out of food, I’d probably run away screaming). True story, she didn’t run out so all was well until her son kicked the bucket anyway, so she got mad at Elijah and he was like alright, you need to calm down. So he went into the room with the dead kid and prayed that God would restore his life, and sho’nuff, it happened. I KNOW RIGHT?! Then the lady was like WHAT and everyone thought about how awesome God was. I’ll bet they had a party.

Anyway, Brian said that he has a friend, a girl, who was dying of cancer. She had a party at her house, and she was unconscious for most of it, but it was mostly just tons of people coming in to visit, and Brian was thinking about Elijah’s faith and prayer- and he wanted to cry out to God and ask that she be healed, but he was too scared that nothing would happen. And so instead, he went into her room and spoke to her, saying that she had the choice to stay or go to Heaven, and that he would love her to stay but if she wanted to go, then to do so- and he said she started moaning in her unconsciousness. Anyway, he ended up leaving and she died a few hours later, and while he was in his room that night he had a vision of ceiling lights in the hallway of a hospital, and then he saw his friend in Paradise- she was beautiful again, had her hair grown back, wasn’t sick and she was smiling- and she asked him if he understood why she’d left. And he said he did, and he said “Thank you for being a good sister.” And she replied, “I was a good sister because we have a good Father.”

The point being, God is good and because of this, we too can be good servants to God and to one another- God is present in ALL of creation, and community is part of God’s creation.. and we can find God in other people. God use us to speak through- not just pastors, not just priests and the hierarchy- but all of us. We are the temple, not the churches we build out of stone. The kingdom of God is in us, and similarly, we are part of God because he has restored us.

On an ending note, this was a very dramatic entry to write because I was listening to some really intense piano music.