worship

I found this on Dave Walker's cartoon blog. It is a good visual of where I have been and where I am now.

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

violence

Violence begets violence, I am extremely saddened by todays violence in Virginia. I pray for all touched by this savage act.

I say the following not to be casual about the murder of anyone, but to be serious about all murder

Today I read a blurb about Bush's "outrage" at the violence on the Virginia Tech Campus....
In my mailbox was a piece about 57 people slaughtered in Iraq on Saturday!! Where is the outrage about that? A life is a life Mr. Bush You are responsible for all of the deaths in Iraq, and I have to wonder does your cavalier approach to violence somehow allow this kind of thing to happen.......

Resurection cats and friends

Alleluia Christ is risen!!!

I am grateful for the resurrection, for the hope that it brings. When every place I look is dark and all seems lost, in the resurrection there is hope.

Is it a fact? Did it happen exactly as we have been told? I don't know. Is it truth? Yes!

Today my friend Michelle's cat Trouvee, started eating. Trouvee was ill and unable to eat, Michelle has been tube feeding her for weeks, today she ate.

Today I heard about a young woman, a teenager, who wrote a book for children about the disparity between the haves and the have nots.

Today a friend who has MS and was severely anemic was released from the hospital, her strength renewed.

It has been a difficult holy week for me, in the past it was business as usual teach people about the atonement how lucky we are blah blah blah.....This year it was real, I wept, I yelled and shared in the suffering of Christ, which is what I prayed for. Silly me...god always answers

Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia Alleluia

Greetings

After ranting on the atonement let me introduce myself..... I am a mother a nurse and a pastor. After many years in the charismatic/evangelical tradition I made the break. My reasons for leaving are many including but not limited to: the religious right, peace and social justice.
I am a member of The Lindisfarne Community a new monastic community based in Ithaca New York, we are a community in the "broadly Anglican Celtic tradition" to quote our Bishop Abbot Andy. I was ordained a priest 2 years ago. My life consists of trying to balance work rest prayer and study.... I struggle to be the same all week as I am on sunday right now that just isn't happening. Or maybe it is, I've been grouchy to everyone all week.....So I'm human

Currently I am studying ethics through the Lindisfarne School of Theology. I live in California so we have class via IM and iChat.

I'm reading "The Last Week" by John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg.

I am listening to protest music on my ipod

my rant on the atonement

I've been struggling with the holy week scriptures and liturgies for the past several years. Up until 3 years ago everything I had been taught about Christ's death was vicarious atonement. God made rules (laws) that are impossible to keep. We have broken laws that are impossible to keep and we know we broke them cuz no one could keep them. Because we can't keep them then we shall be put to death because "the penalty for sin is death" God has to have a blood sacrifice because the law says so. Some one has to pay but it has to be someone who was perfect...so god thinks "hmmm.. maybe I'll kill my son to satisfy my legal need for blood." Now that Jesus is dead, God isn't mad at us for not doing what we can't do. So as long as we are grateful to god for his mercy we can live with him forever....if we say the right prayer or are baptized with the right words.
Divine child abuse.....
Some say that it is silly to refer to substitutional atonement as child abuse, I disagree. When my now almost 16 year old daughter was young, there was a "Christian" program for raising children which was very popular in evangelical circles. It taught that the parents must be in charge from the beginning. Parents were told to feed their children only on a schedule, when the child cried and it wasn't time to feed the parent wasn't supposed to pick the child up or feed it. The premise was that because God turned his back on Jesus when he cried out on the cross we should turn away from our children when they cried. As the child began to eat table food they were hit if they played with the food and had their faces flicked if they didn't look strait ahead.

Is that the nature of our all-loving God? The father/mother who we love because she/he first loved us? The God that loves us and calls us children? Jesus said (my paraphrase) "would a father give his child a stone instead of bread?' Would a parent turn their back on on a child's suffering?

Many of the children whose parents subscribed to the Growing Kids God's way program developed failure to thrive. They didn't get enough to eat as infants, the parents didn't know how to respond to their child's cues. Babies with failure to thrive (ftt) don't gain the weight they should they are unable to consume enough calories. A baby's brain grows as much in the first year as it will grow the rest of the child's life, often there are long term developmental problems. How many christians do we know who have growth failure? How many could never connect with God? How many young adults walk away because of divine child abuse?

Is there an alternative? Can we conceive of a non violent transforming model of the atonement? Was Jesus death on the cross the ultimate act of non violent resistance? Walter Wink says that when Jesus said to turn the other cheek he was saying that he refused to be humiliated. In that culture one could only hit someone lower than ones self with the back of the hand to turn the cheek would mean the person would either have to break some of the ritual purity rules and hit him with the back of the left hand or hit him with his palm or fist something that would never be done to someone not their equal. There are many more examples from Wink and others but to many for this short email

Christ came to show us how to live how to break the cycle of violence. We are taught that Christ reveals God to us. Jesus taught us non violent resistance, Jesus came to set the captives free....So it doesn't work for me God would use the violence that Jesus taught against to bring us redemption.

Jesus was faithful even to death on the cross, a death perpetrated by humans (for you trekkies I guess God had a prime directive of non interference with lower life forms) Through his life and death we have a pattern for our lives, through his resurrection we have hope We know that shit happens but God is able to turn it around.

So back to failure to thrive or growth failure. I wonder how many people who have been in church exhibit the signs of growth failure.
Lack of interest in surroundings
irritability
inability to walk in the knowledge of God's love

I wonder if it would be different if we got rid of the language we use, language we may not even believe but use because we always have. I wonder what would happen if we responded to the cues people give us rather than a formula given by the church. I wonder if we got rid of divine child abuse, would people be able to receive the nurture that they need to grow.
I'm rambling I need to come to terms with the fact that I taught substitutional atonement for years when I was a pastor in the charismatic church and when I taught in the evangelical church I need to forgive myself

Maybe now is the time to repent to turn around to change the way we think. Maybe it is time to show radical love and non violence. Maybe it is time to move from the 12th century to the 21st.

With all of that said here are some books I have read recently

The Last Week by Borg and Crossan

Steve Chalke's book "The Lost message of Jesus

Who really killed jesus by John Dominic Crossan