Today on Soul School I am sharing a version of a presentation on prayer that I gave to the inmates at Federal Prison FCI Schuylkill who (voluntarily) attend ongoing LIFE Ministry(Christian)classes.
My book on prayer is called LIFE AS PRAYER:
My book was inspired by Brother Lawrence and this book:
The Letters of Brother Lawrence
BIO:
Brother Lawrence was a man of humble beginnings who discovered the greatest secret of living in the kingdom of God while serving as a brother in a monastery near Paris. For Lawrence his life was involved the art of “practicing the presence of God in one single act that does not end.” Lawerence often stated that it is God who paints Himself in the depths of our soul. We must only open our hearts to receive God and God’s loving presence. For nearly 300 years this unparalleled classic (which is mainly a collection of letters from him and remembrances of him) has given both blessing and instruction to those who can be content with nothing less than knowing God presence in all God’s majesty and feeling God’s loving presence throughout each simple day.
DETAILS:
• Each FRIDAY, guests join me in a conversation.
• Come back each Wednesday
(on “Hump Day” aka Midweek) for a brief Soul School “lesson”–something for your interior world and common life.
Spark My Muse is LISTENER supported.
Will you help me?
Today my guest is Jessica Aguilar-Christy. Jessica’s many talents, diverse background and work in the Detroit area got my attention, through our mutual connect Charlie Porter (host of Fable podcast). Our meandering conversation will give you a sense of the rebirth of Detroit as well as some surprising ways spiritual traditions and practices can cohere for a richer and more integrated life and service to others.
If you find anything good or helpful in Spark My Muse, please give any amount to keep it going.
Thank you.
SHOW NOTES:
For the later half of the 20th Century people would refer to a phenomenon of undergoing a “mid-life crisis”. After growing up, getting an education, having a career or family, or both, people would get to about mid-life and not be sure why they were doing what they were doing; or what any of it meant anymore, or who they really were anyway. Some would buy sports cars, or run off with their young secretaries, or quit their jobs, go back to school, start writing poetry, start a new hobby, revive their religion or start into a new one, or go on a motorcycle ride across the country. Many others would trudge, more quietly, through it until it was over and they found their way again.
But, in the last 20 years along came another term “the quarter-life crisis”. This referred to people at the beginning of adulthood–perhaps just out of college or working for a few years, or recently married, or putting off marriage. The angst and the quandaries were similar and these people struggled deeply wondering what they should do and be in the world.
Now, these types of Identity Crises periods seem to happen often to people–even every few years, and this episode of Soul School goes into why and what can be done about it.
DETAILS:
• Each FRIDAY, guests join me in a conversation.
• Come back each Wednesday
(on “Hump Day” aka Midweek) for a brief Soul School “lesson”–something for your interior world and common life.
WILL YOU HELP ME? Spark My Muse is LISTENER supported.
Background… interests and the journey to create a podcast.
EXPLAIN Catacombic Theologian /
A desiring theology of becoming.
MIN 3:00 Education and a distaste for academia and models and formulas created there.
4:30
Explaining the name “freestyle Christianity”
experimental and a space that is open and with no doorkeepers.
And giving up the name
7:30 Religious background in childhood and how that’s changed
YWAM (Youth With a Mission)
10:00 Reading apologetic and learning about the boogie men of Evangelicals
Philosophy and Theologian as neighbors and a matter paychecks
12:30
Catacombic Theology explained in brief
asking to explain in old categories
Henri Berson
Taught to answer specific questions to guide our search for truth…. we should be shaping the questions.
We confuse the less with the more.
15:30
Why is there always something NEW?
17:30
• [Society] becomes oppressive because eventually the powerful decide the categories.
Sacrifice and squeezing in other groups into a form that wasn’t ever might for them and oppressive.
19:00 Cathedrals – catacombs in the basement. It may not reflect truth. It reflects what is being preached.
Re-present what we think is the truth. Not trying to re-present something.
Our theology (our cathedrals represent the people who built it.). We build boards (whether we see them or not and they function in an exclusive fashion.
The proclamation the church made that the spirit doesn’t move outside the Father or Son and the Son is found in the Church. (inside)
In theology, difference is looked at as if is presupposes opposition.
But it’s the other way around, opposition presupposes difference.
Novelty
26:00
EXAMPLE: the Internet and new categories .
The Pope follows no one back on Twitter, because an old institution is misunderstanding a new category of communication.
27:30
How do the people of the Church gather in a way that works?
PETE ROLLINS episode & pints and parable
HERE THE EPISODE WITH PETE ROLLINS:
Twitter democratizes people and strips off labels of an old (pre digital) world.
New hierarchies are being created online where added a meaningful contribution makes you an important member.
Humans continue to have the same desire to connect (in-person) and gather.
