REPLAY of the LIVE class (on Periscope)! with notes!

I was a sweaty, nervous wreck on my first periscope.

It’s comical…did anyone ever see Broadcast News (the movie)?
I needed two tissues for my sympathetic nervous system.

(Some technical difficulties threw me just before broadcast and I talked SO VERY fast.)

If you didn’t get to see it here you go!
(Twitter pulled the plug on this feature – sorry everyone)

 

 

NOTES:

THE #1 Myth about the SOUL…

is that we have one.

But first….we should get on the same page…

WHAT IS A SOUL?

(what are we talking about?)

This is how I’m describing it:

Titanic-style…

In the Old Testament the Hebrew word for soul is nephesh. We might use it this way, “1,517 souls were lost in the Titanic disaster.”

SOUL ≠ dead BUGS BUNNY …like a floating ghost and that sort of stuff.

Not a faint rendering of bugs bunny leaving his body to play a harp on a cloud with Porky Pig. Not something that is ghosty and haunting a house or helping Demi Moore on a Pottery Wheel. (Patrick Swayze-style..google it, young people.)

 

Ancients thought of the mind and heart differently (the will and the emotions)…

Maybe these verses come to mind…but you’ve been thinking about them in your own context instead of the ancient context from which they were written.

 

Remember this one?

The heart is deceitful and wicked above all things JER 17:9

(Guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life)

or Proverbs 4:23 

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

….The writers of these scriptures were not talking about emotions and feelings when they said “heart” (like we associate the heart today…they were talking about the HEART as one’s will and control center of a person…(the thing we now associate with the mind.)

For them, the emotions (the heart for us in our context) were associated, instead, with the bowels. Perhaps a bit gross..but there is some

MEDICAL TRUTH/correlation : anxiety and stress are closely associated with disease and problem that happen in the intestines…like….ulcerated colon, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (bloating, constipation, gas, and other fun things), digestion issues, food sensitivities and problems in that part of the body. These are extremely related to one’s emotions and levels of stress.


The GEM MODEL of the Soul (my version)

 

Think of the SOUL as a gem and the facets are ways to see the soul.

You can go as far as saying other things beyond these are facets:

family of origin, social economic situation, skin color (if that has been a defining factor in your life)

education, the country you live in,

Even Christianity is a facet. A worldview is a facet that we can gain a kind of look at who we are.

Grace is central to Christianity, for instance. We can look at our soul through the facet of grace.

When light is added to a stone you can see its flaws and imperfections and you can see its quality (color, cut, clarity, caret)

UGLY soul? Is that possible? what do you think?

In his book Care of Souls, David Benner writes, “We can define soul care as the support and restoration of the well-being of persons in their depth and totality, with particular concern for their inner life. Soul care is done in the context of community.”

The vantage point of Soul Care views struggle or failings not as fatal flaws or illness to be “cured”. Not therapy or self-help. 

It’s a sustaining endeavor for our interior lives and our relationships, like water and food is for the body. Incidentally, caring for the body falls within the bounds of Soul Care.

Ten Signs that You Need the Renewal of Soul Care 

1. Fruitlessness. Are there observable deficits in the enacted your Fruit of the Spirit? That means, is there any lack or slack in the

 

areas of love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, and self-control? (If not, I think E.T. went home without you. Phone again. You might want to text, and retweet as well.)

2. You find yourself perceiving things others say as personally offensive, or as direct attacks. 

3. You are “venting” more in person or online.
4. You feel unloved.
5.You feel increased frustration, restlessness, or desolation.

6.Your fears and anxiety are more prevalent.

7.You have increased tension in relationships.

8. You struggle with one or more of the “seven deadly 

sins”: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. 

 

9. You have problems sleeping or bad dreams.


10. You’re in a creative slump. 

RECAP:

THE #1 myth about the soul is that…. you have one. You don’t have a soul you are a Soul. You have a body. George MacDonald, in 1892 (C.S. Lewis quotes him and the quote is mistakenly attributed to him sometimes)

Think of the Soul as “the real you” the essence of you. contained in a body, yes, but made up of everything about you in a pure sense.

Some might say the soul gets extinguished or goes to paradise or gets absorbed into the great Life Force (God) …but in terms of what you need…you always need Soul Care, because you are a soul and that include both the visible and the invisible.

All this more and much more is available in my book. Shame-filled plug.

Episode 7 – Vine Grafting; special guest Ray Hollenbach

Show Notes Episode 7 – On Grafting Grape Vines and Special Guest Ray Hollenbach

Click to listen now:


This episode was brought to you by…

Life As Prayer: Revive Spirituality Inspired by Ancient Piety


Learn about 16th century Brother Lawrence and how his understanding of God’s presence continues to affect lives today.


 

It’s a fact: the plants that produce wine grapes don’t come from seeds. You can’t “sow grapes”. More on that soon.

And later, Student of Jesus blogger and disciple-maker Ray Hollenbach and I talk about the fruit of the spirit (debunking the most common myth about it), and a little bit about the Vineyard church he is a part of, and what his “Deeper” seminars and workshops are all about.

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Wine segment:

Wine grape plants don’t come from seeds, so how are vineyards created?

There are two main ways commercial growers get their fields ready for a grape harvest:

The first way is to plant seedlings taken from healthy and mature grape vines. This means that a harvest of good grapes for wine is 4-5 years away. Booo.

The second way is to use an older and mature vineyard and graft in (attach) new plants into the vine.

They prune down the top of the plant. They chop it nearly down to the ground, and expose some of the top to the vine stem. Then, they graft living plants into it. The grafting process means that whole new varieties of grapes in just one year, using the original root system to obtain all the necessary nutrients. Grafted in plants can also inoculate older vines against certain diseases with disease resistant pants (usually hybrid seedlings) that make the whole system healthier.

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It can cost $150, per plant, to graft in new vines and it’s done in a precise sort of way with notching the root stem, adding in plants and sealing them together so they merge.

André_Thouin_1
(how to graft plants and trees)

Grafting plants has been done for thousands of years. In the bible, the church is compared, by the apostle Paul, to a wild olive plant grafted into an olive tree. The first audience hearing Paul’s words would understand this word picture: the church is an introduction of something very new. Something able to impart a whole new vitality into the current understanding of religion and closeness with God.

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 Sparking your Muse

An interview with Ray Hollenbach

Ray Hollenbach writes at Students of Jesus.com

He does the Deeper Seminar nationwide.

View his YouTube Videos on his new channel.

Interview Notes –

Minute: 4:30

Fruit of the Spirit

Galatians 5:22-23 New Living Translation (NLT)

22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

 

Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

4:48

“Fruit of the Spirit is not a gift that we get; but come as a result or outcome of natural (spiritual) health”. -Ray Hollenbach

6:30 – How parenting matures us in the same way that “making disciples” matures us.

7:30 – The Impossible Mentor 

8:30 –

“The goal of the Christian Life is NOT to get to heaven.”

9:47

The Vineyard Church

• John Wimber

10:06 –

Fuller Seminary

George Eldon Ladd 

Dallas Willard

Richard Foster

Eugene Peterson

NT Wright

12:20

Grape Vines

13:50

Grafting

14:40

“Jesus taught practically and transpositionally.”

(i.e. interacting with the transcendent in a practical way)

15:30

Student of Jesus Videos


I hope you enjoyed the podcast!
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Spark My Muse

The Myth about Roots.

My dad told me that trees have roots that go down as far as the tree is tall. That was an impressive statement and it stuck with me for a long time.

It was, of course, untrue.

He didn’t know much about trees. He was, by his own admission, a “city boy”.

I don’t blame him; lots of people think tree roots go deep.

They don’t.

Any photo of a knocked down tree makes it clear.
See? Roots go out not down.
(The mistake about roots becomes pointedly obvious.)

fallen_tree

Tree roots reach out, not down.

Roots aren’t so much much like anchors hold the tree to the ground, but rather more like feet planted in the soil, in all directions, to create stability and nourishment. They can extend nearly as long as a tree is tall.

The California Redwoods seem even more impressive now, don’t they?

Forests are interconnected places where trees stretch out their roots and touch the other trees nearby, below the surface.

A web of root holds a forrest together as if the trees are playing a long game of forest footsie.


The takeaway:

Like the myth of tree roots, the roots of community don’t go down either–in ideal circumstances.  Instead, they go out, or the forest dies.


On Sunday, I’ll go back to church for the first time in 2 months. My work schedule has kept me away, but I’m happy to go back and remember everything I need to remember all over again:

• Who I am in God, in community, and in the scope of human history and the Church worldwide and over the course of eons.

Maybe I’ll learn something new about me, or about church (God’s people), or about what sacred ritual does for me.

I haven’t been separated from this weekly occurrence (for this long) in over 20 years. I’m wondering what it’ll be like to go back. (The next post -or a short series- will get into that.)

My thoughts are forming like questions:

• Will I sense the roots of others stretching out to meet me?

• Will my absence have been noticed at all?
(If a tree falls in a forest…er, um, never mind.)

• Will everything be the same or nothing, or will I be the only one who has changed?

• Will I realize how much I’ve missed it, or be surprised that it hasn’t mattered like I thought it would or should?

• Am I really part of a forest, or am I more like a lone tree on a hill?

Whatever happens, I want to be the tree that stretches out into the stream, into the living water, for nourishment and life.

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Jeremiah17:7-8
“Blessed is the [one] who trusts in the LORD And whose trust is the LORD. “For [s]he will be like a tree planted by the water, That extends its roots by a stream And will not fear when the heat comes; But its leaves will be green, And it will not be anxious in a year of drought Nor cease to yield fruit.

It’s time for Weird Santa

I had a viral post last week and that was fun! Check it out.

I don’t watch my stats much. It gives me a brain bug. But a few times per week, sometimes, I take a peek and it was cool to see the huge spike upward. Stats used to get me on a roller coaster of moodiness. No more.

A special thank you to Ray Hollenbach and David Fitch who shoved the Myth of Ordinary Time post lovingly into the Twitterverse and also to everyone else who liked it on Facebook and read it and shared it. Was that you? Thank you!

Want a little holiday humor?

Search this site for Weird Santa Photos. 

There’s a trove you’ll love.

(caution: Santa appears to be Caucasian in these photos.)

Here’s one to get you started:

santastress

 

The Myth of Ordinary Time

photoDo you have time to read this?

That may depend on what language you speak.

Have you ever felt like when you’re creating or otherwise “in the zone” you pass into a strange pocket in the space-time continuum (or whatever) where the passage of time appears to almost be standing still. Then, when you’re jolted from your pocket, you find that time has actually moved along far faster than you would have guessed.

That is likely what it’s like (all the time) for someone living near the equator. More on that in a moment.

There’s something about relativity here and we’ll unpack it.

Consider too, the other side. Sometimes you are very conscious of time maybe because you’re in a bad meeting or you’d rather be somewhere else and the hands on the wall clock seem to barely move. That is because you are perceiving time in relation to other things and not experiencing is as it passes.

So, it seems experienced time works in an eerily timeless way (having no easily determinable passage of time), and referred to time (Ex. “That man spoke for 20 minutes.”) is a measurement or qualifier of time, but not at all a direct experience of time. It refers to only a memory of certain period, but one that was not recognized necessarily in the moments in which it truly happened. Time is marked outside of itself. So…

Time is never really ordinary.

Perception is powerful. Here’s some potent proof.

Time near the Equator:

Residents of places near the equator experience time completely differently than people who live in temperate climates. You already know this to be true.

Maybe you’ve heard of “island time”…

…if you’ve ever vacationed on a warm tropical island, things just mosey along. Maybe things will get done and maybe not. People get to things when they do, or whatever. “Hey, Relax Mon”. It can be a hassle when you’re not used to it. However, time is literally experienced differently.

It’s not the heat bringing a lack of motivation. They are used to the heat. It’s not a mere lack of a work ethic. It’s not simply enjoying the weather too much to be bothered with revving up to tackle hectic things.

It turns out that the passage of time is harder to discern because markers are missing.

Most often, for humans, change punctuates time in our awareness.

An event (accident, holiday, birth, death, full moon, dawn, solar eclipse, victory, loss, etc.), or a change in weather are the most common markers. With more changes–especially ones that involve rain and snow, brilliant leaf color changes, or a blast of Spring blooming–that means that our perception of time’s passage are further clarified. Our memories are literally shaped differently and therefore our brains are, at the cellular level, wired differently. Perception is relative. Variety, repetition, and influence change the brain’s capturing of data which determines the comprehending of time. It affects the awareness people have and the activities people undertake.

Seasons, and the things that are attached to them (growing of food, for one example) make the ability to plan more perceptible and pronounced. Need to buy wheat seed for Spring in a few months? Better save now. Plants grow all-year-round? Then, nevermind.

Residents of equatorial climates do not experience the massive change in seasons, plus they do not experience the great shortening of daylight either. For them, unless they’ve been influenced by outsiders, the passage of time happens in the present. Right now, or it’s not really real. 

For pole-dwellers (people living in the northern and southern regions of the globe) time is usually experienced two ways:

1. through remembering past events

(A locked down thing that doesn’t truly exist except in the mind)

Or

2. through planning (projecting to the future to a not yet real time and place).

Pole-dwellers spend far less time–“Zen-like”–in the here and now.

In fact, being “stayed in the present” can be discredited as somehow wasteful by those who like to plan. Interesting argument of which is wasteful, and why, right?

For pole-dwellers it’s an ironic thing too, because if your mind is not attached to the present, you essentially are not fully aware of living at all in real-time…Instead you are aware of life passing in relation to something else. Time perhaps is more like a point on a map–over there–more than an experience. Perhaps a counterfeit experience compared to the real thing or real-time? I’m not sure.

Or on the other side, near the equator, planning might seem pointless or amorphous. A sort of figment.

• Living solely in the present has disadvantages too. It comes packaged with a (undetectable) lack of impetus that can help us make all manner of changes or improvements possible. The checkpoints are missing. Our interaction with time movement is  different. It passes like “being in the zone” or perhaps like standing midstream in an ever-changing flow of water. Motion. Life is in real-time and un-captured.

• Living in the future or past (as I have been trained to do) is like staring off at fixed but ultimately untouchable points. Triangulation.

I mainly live in the “trigonometry of time”. Do you?

Certain cultures actually have no form of future tense.

(Did you absorb that?)

For them, there is no language or solid way to truly express or encapsulate something ahead of this very moment.

BOOM. That’s crazy different.

Sicilian and ancient Hebrew are just two examples.

Now brace yourself. If you haven’t guessed already…

Yes, that means anytime you hear the words “shall” or “will” in Jewish/Christian scripture you are hearing the imposition of your own cultural and linguistic bias placed onto the original text and meaning.

(Thinking of the implications could just blow your mind, right? Now, go ahead, open your Bible and find a few misleading verses and re-understand them.)

Note: New Testament Scripture was written in (ancient) Greek and does contain a future tense. It was however based on beliefs and texts of people who did not have a native reference to an equivalent future tense option nor the applied meaning future tense indicates, necessarily or at all.

Binary vs. the not yet
Often in equatorial geographic regions, there literally is no way to really say “I will work.” Instead it’s “I work.” Binary. Sometimes inflection is used to draw a sort of distinction or a qualifier, like referring to a (future) month or day. That’s a watered down communicative incident compared to the full use of future tense we take for granted in English, and the closest language to English: German.

The language difference has even been studied scientifically to see if things like breaking habits (like smoking), or the activity of saving or spending money, or gaining weight are different because of language. Click the link to see the results.

What are some of your thoughts on the passage of time, future tense, or living right now?
Whew. Ice pack for my brain, please.

IF this post was interesting, please like or share it…now. (In real time.) :)