Ancient Hebrew translation in Genesis has apparently been wrong .... ALL ALONG!!!

NEWS FLASH:

New light has been cast on an ancient text.  Apparently the Hebrew word for "be responsible" found in Genesis Chapter One (sometimes translated to subdue or tend) really means to:

"trash the place / stand on the backs of the oppressed and disenfranchised / and support unethical corporate greed and wanton pleasure"  

WOW.  

That makes so much more sense.  It also explains a lot.  

It explains why the three major Monotheistic Faiths have not screamed and hollered loudly about corporate greed, wealth-driven lobbyists, and have even denied that there is any truth to climate change, rather than establishing fasting and sackcloth and ashes as a way to go.

Most of the hyper-conservative organizations in those Faiths that allegedly love God so deeply, truly believe that it is ok to live the way we live in America - with no regard for the global picture, but only regard for ourselves.  They teach that they know so much about God and Heaven (which no one can see) but these same people cannot add up the facts right in front of their noses and on the very ground upon which they stand.  Really?  All these tornadoes are meaningless?  There is no climate change?

I challenge all of the American believers of ANY FAITH to collect their trash for one week and leave it on their front lawn.  Then save it for a month and leave that on your front lawn.  Does that seem like a reasonable amount of trash to you?  Now multiply a week's worth by 52.  What does that look like?  How about for your whole neighborhood for 52 weeks?  What does that look like to you?  Does that look like a gift you would give to the Father of Creation?

 Nice Gift!!!

That is just trash.  We still have to look at emissions, toxic waste, overcrowding, disease...on and on.

It is sad that the military is responding before the church...it says a lot: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/20/climate-change-climate-change-scepticism

God blessed them: "Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth." Genesis i, 28.

From Chapter Three of My New Book - Cairn-Space

A Quote from Chapter Three of my new book:

There is an peninsula in Greece known as Mount Athos. The “Holy Mountain” or “Garden of the Virgin”—as it is also known—is peppered with monastic houses, kelli (small groupings of individual monastic“cells”), and caves for hermits. Each gathering of monastics has its own “rule of life”; its own way of living together.

Some monks gather often for meals and prayer. Others only weekly. Still others only for major feasts or sporadically. Some monks live their rule alone; completely by themselves.However they are organized as communities the goal is the same.The monks seek to perform some sort of spiritual practice and also to enter “hesychia”—the stillness/silence of God. There are as many forms for this as there are monks. They truly live in cairn-space.

In the Western Church, Saint Benedict and other “Rule” writers, focused more directly on the pattern of living that monks shared with one another in their monastic enclosures. The “Rules” looked at the apostolic notions hidden in a common life together: how much should people eat, how many items of clothing should they have, how often should they pray, how should they treat guests. Although these “rules” inhabit the communities on the Holy Mountain, they are not the focus of Eastern monasticism. The focus of the Eastern Orthodox monk is tending the heart and making it a place for the Divine meeting. Spiritual practiceand stillness: prayer and hesychia. The writing of “Rules” and the living of rules does not predominate.

The work that the monastics perform in their spiritual struggle is seen as therapy. It is what restores them to full health in their lives in the Spirit of God. In Classical times, spirituality and religion were seen as daughters of medicine. The spiritual life was a journey in the healing of the soul. It was a medical science. Today we have all but lost that diagnostic approach to faith.

As you begin to unpack the writings found in the Philokalia—the monastic guidebook second only to the Holy Scriptures—you do get a sense that the writers were addressing illnesses within man. Their spiritual athletics in the arena of asceticism were directed at helping believers to find the antidote and cure for their spiritual illnesses. All of the writings approach spirituality with an eye toward removing the things that block us from becoming whole and healthy in the Spirit.

The writings speak a lot about getting back to a simple practice when we have lost sight of the silent stillness of God. Return to a simple method when you are distracted and start again. Fall and get up. Fall and get up. Fall and get up, again.

This was what they taught as a model for growth. This perpetual return to purification in the life of the ascetic moved them into a place where enlightenment and union could unfold without interruption.

Where much of the Church today has been at a lack for an organized schema or anthropology of man—one that permeates the denominational traditions—the Orthodox Monastic Tradition has maintained a consistent and growing body of knowledge of what it means to be human and how to bring human beings back into rightful homeostasis; centered in God. The path toward wholeness clearly requires spiritual practices and the stillness/silence of God—“hesychia.”

The Holy Mountain continues to be a place in space and time in which men still hear the cry of God, “Flee, hide from men, be silent.” The monastics believe it is this medicine that will heal the world.

This peninsula is cairn-space. These monks are cairn-space.

Ciao!

TJM+

Cairn-Space

It is not uncommon to find stone cairns that have been set up as trail markers. These geologic GPS coordinates, piled on the ground, help us to find our way. We remember our way in life because of the piles all around us.

The photo albums that lay about our home are GPS co-ordinates to other places in time and space. Each picture, a cairn that marks whole chapters of life that have seemingly disappeared. The birth of our sons, the hiking of a trail, a trip to the Isle of Skye; they are not gone. The photos remind me of the place in my consciousness within which I have planted those days and ways of life. As I water the seeds of my past, I am informed with a whole new vigor that my life has led me to this moment.
This moment is built on so much more than I can see; but it is available within me.

We are called to pull the past into the present in order to shape our future—in our remembering. This is always the power of signs. They lead us to our future, by way of our past. We stand at a cairn and remember; we dream, we hope, we become.

This is not unlike the call of Jesus to “do this in memory of me”; to celebrate the Eucharist. The cairns in this Jesus-meeting are the species of bread and wine. They bring clarity to this moment and present us
with images and facts that may not be visible, but live deeply in us as realities we assent to. We learn that we are to be broken and poured out for the life of the world as these Jesus-meeting cairns suggest. The words
“in memory” or “in remembrance” of Jesus in this short passage come from the Greek word “anamnesis.” This word is all about the concept of bringing the past into the present and the present into the past. It is a
merging or confluence of time.

The cairns we speak of from this time forward will be cairns that may embody all of this. They may mark off God-space, heart-space, memories, or ideas. They may reveal hidden causes in the fabric of our
phenomenology, or hint for us to listen for the whispering wind; sacramental cairns on the landscape of our lives. They may point to interior dimensions we had no idea existed within our heart, and mind, and
soul. We will amble around the ideas of sacred-space, prayer-space, and sacramental living. We will encounter and wrestle with God all along the way. We will look for and stop at the cairns along the geography of our spiritual heritage.

...from the Introduction to Cairn-Space

click for details

The Moral Outrage of Oil Consumption

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote of the responsibility of all men in a free society (Heschel insisted that in a free society where some are guilty, all are responsible) in "The Moral Outrage of Vietnam".

"It is weird to wake up one morning and find that we have been placed in an insane asylum while asleep at night. It is even more weird to wake up and find that we have been involved in slaughter and destruction without knowing it."

The words may be about Vietnam, but there is a taste of crude oil in it when I hear it. There is a truth to the weight I feel when I wake up and remember that my need for fuel and energies of fuel has been responsible for the fuel leaking into the Gulf right now. I am the one responsible. We are all responsible.

People of faith - particularly the religious leaders - should be making more noise about this tragedy. Can't we see that the "waters are turning to blood" again. We have seen this before, this type of destruction and greed. We have allowed too much "fast technology" to tread in areas they obviously have no business treading.

There should have been a few - if not more - viable options on standby for such a hideous occurrence. Have we learned nothing from the Exxon Valdez incident.  This oil leak is not a spill, this is a horror. The religious leaders should be down on the Gulf calling people to fast and pray, begging for an answer and challenging people to put on sackcloth and ashes and call on God. There should be no silence.

Fast from one meal a day and call on God for an answer and a repairer of the rig. Pray the arterial surgeons would share how they stop arterial leaks with these oil hounds. Pray that people would be able to clean up the horrible affects of oil and for the countless people whose lives will be altered beyond recognition.

Fast and Pray because of this moral outrage - and don't sit still.  Get others involved.

Ciao!

TJM +

The New Monasticism

When the dregs of depression over the state of the denominational churches takes hold of your hungry heart, have faith.  There is hope.  There is a whole new wave of spiritual life dawning for the Church Universal.  All over the nation, and the world, pockets of intentional communities are emerging and calling themselves a New Monasticism.

Combined with the crest of the Emergent Church, this New Monasticism is build on some simple basic rules of community.  They are:


1) Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire.
2) Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us.
3) Hospitality to the stranger
4) Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities
combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation.
5) Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church.
6) Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the
community along the lines of the old novitiate.
7) Nurturing common life among members of intentional community.
8) Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children.
9) Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life.
10) Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economies.
11) Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18.
12) Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.

WOW is this something, or what.

A community based on the sharing of things in common, prayer, poverty, intentional formation and contemplation - this sounds like the SECOND CHAPTER OF ACTS.  It is worth looking into.  Just google the words NEW MONASTICISM.

I am including a link to a publisher that is carrying some of the best mongraphs the movement has produced.  Check them out:  Wipf and Stock Publishers

Ciao!

+Tom