Eps 78 – Guest, Peter Rollins on Lacking the Lack, Fighting Ghosts, and Reveling in the Raveling

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SHOW NOTES:
So many show notes!

Peter Rollins
Peter Rollins

MIN 1:30
How the use of story enhanced Peter’s talks.

Video Example:

The Power of Parable from Peter Rollins on Vimeo.

His book containing parables:

His “friend” Sheamus

Pints and Parables events

4:30
Pub culture in Ireland and not running from doubts and pain.
(Repression is the term in psychoanalysis)

Sharing in each other’s suffering.

[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]Parables are a technology that help us look at painful things not directly so we can cultivate a grace in our lives and toward other people.[/ictt-tweet-inline]

(You can instantly tweet this quote above by clicking the blue bird. Look for other blue birds in these show notes.)

9:00
JRR Tolkien
Eucatastrophe  (a good undoing, like the kind that happen in Fairy Stories)
Irish culture / music / art

Shane Tucker’s podcast

Green Belt Festival

The 18 foot woman in a dress at IKON. Ravel and unravel.

13:30 Pete’s Memento Mori

happyreaper
Pete’s Happy Reaper jacket pin

Something to remind you of death.
• Pete’s happy reaper memento mori.
• Lack and nothingness has a painful side but there is a way to find a fuel from it for life and living.

The painters called the Dutch Masters featured a theme: Vanity / futility of life.

Pieter Claesz, "Vanitas" 1630
Pieter Claesz, “Vanitas” (1630)

The authentic, lively and cohesive pub [juxtaposed with] the vacuous and lonely night club.

The IKON community

[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]We already are depressed and don’t know it.[/ictt-tweet-inline]

We say “Gone and not forgotten.”
The truth is usually “Forgotten but not gone.”

19:00
Believing in ghosts and hauntings.
A ghost is the presence of an absence.

Community can help us with our ghosts and make peace with them.

22:00
Friendly Fire Event (link)

Pyrotheology from Peter Rollins on Vimeo.

PyroTheology – Theory and Technology
5 academics

Engaging the Journal looking at the 5 critiques

Atheism for Lent course

Facebook LIVE events (link)
Philosophy for the streets

26:00
WAKE (2017) Festival in Belfast

Irish way to remember the life of the one who has dies and celebrate life for the living.

30:30
The Divine Magician (book link)


“God talk is often talk about ourselves with a megaphone “ -Karl Barth

The Vanishing Act of God the purposeful ambiguity in the title (Is God vanishing or doing the vanishing?)

Who is the magician? The Priest? The believer? God?
Liturgy is the technology of Theology.

The sacred object: The Forbidden Fruit is the first sacred object.

Video of Pete:

Tearing The Temple Curtain from Peter Rollins on Vimeo.

[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]God is not an object that we love. God is that which we find in the act of love itself.[/ictt-tweet-inline]

3 Elements of the magic trick: The Pledge (The Object), the Turn (The Disappearance), the Prestige (The Object returns as something else)

[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]The Eucharist includes the 3 parts of the magic trick.[/ictt-tweet-inline]

40:00
Pete’s event and speaking schedule

On naps!

45:00
Costs of living and why he lives in LA now.
Freedom from the pursuit of what will make you happy.

[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]The tyranny of happiness is at its worst in Los Vegas and LA[/ictt-tweet-inline]

47:30
The serpent says,
“If you eat the fruit then you will be like God.”
(To lack the lack that we feel.)

• The serpent is called the superego in psychoanalysis.

Crush the head of the serpent.

49:00
Why and how Pete jogs in LA

Some other books by Pete you should check out!

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Episode 16 – It’s Apophatic, not Apathetic, Prayer

Shownotes Episode 16 – Apophatic prayer explained in a conversation with Dr. Laurie Mellinger.

LaurieMellinger

Laurie Mellinger, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Spiritual Formation and Christian Theology
Dean of Academic Programs
B.A. Millersville University; M.A.R. Evangelical School of Theology; Ph.D. The Catholic University of America


Get your spiffy guide to the ancient Christian prayer practice of praying using Scripture called Lectio Divina (latin for “sacred reading”). It’s the perfect go-to reference and resource to get started with the four movements of Lectio that lead us to praying without words and listening to God.

A donation of 50¢ or more will get you this essential Lectio Divina resource.
Click HERE to download it now!


Encountering and examining Apophatic (contemplative) Prayer

Conversation Notes

MINUTE 2:00 Apophatic not to be confused with apathetic

3:00

2 main ways of understanding God

Via Eminencia -The way of eminence

The highest of something we know as humans and elevating it. Power, strength “The most powerful”, omnipotent)

Via Negativa – The way of negation (Denying the limited or bad we can observe. God is Immortal (NOT mortal).

5:00

Katophatic (or cataphatic) vs. Apophatic Prayer

Katophatic  – What we can see and say in prayer.

Apophatic – We we cannot see and bri; and without our senses.

6:00 Meditation and how it relates to apophatic prayer

6:30 What is Lectio Divina

Reading scripture and prayer as we seek relationship with God

The four movements of this form of prayer.

12:00

Eastern vs. Western styles of Meditation

Experiencing vs. Word-driven forms

15:30

Contemplation 2 going definitions

1. To observe

2. Contemplative to look at with continued attention.

16:00

Contemplative vs. Discursive prayer

18:00

Breath prayer

21:00

Apophatic prayer as a way to pray without ceasing

22:00

Allowing God to be in every moment, even with every breath.

Laurie’s experience with the Jesus Prayer

Being carried along through pain knowing experiencing that God was with her.

Celebration of Discipline-Richard Foster

24:00

Prayer as a habit that changes you.

…Like holding hands as you walk…

25:00

What happens after the questions like: “I’m I allow to do this?”

The distractions and a flood of thoughts become the hardest part.

How to help that…

Examples: “eye floaters”, “balloons”

27:50

on being patience with yourself

28:00

Brian McClaren getting distracted and quoting from the dessert fathers.

28:30 Turning our face back to God

Patience

Persistence

Presence

29:30

The discipline of being attentive to God allows us to be more present and attentive with others as well. 

30:00

People crave presence and can even be (un)used to it.

31:00

Learning how to listen. Simone Weil.

Mindfulness

34:00

How we are over-stimulated. Children get overstimulated and need naps which means they get silence and solitude and lack of stimulation. Silence and solitude are restorative.

37:00

The demons we encounter in solitude or in the desert.

38:30

A clean and swept room, removed of clutter makes us more aware of new things that might be wrong.

39:00

New Testament Professor Douglas Buckwalter

41:00

Spiritual formation is not doing disciplines.

One kind of prayer isn’t better (per se), but God is forming and reform and transforms us back into the image of Christ. God must reform us. In God’s presence we will feel more loved and acceptance and he might put his finger on something to take care of.

Luke 11:24-26

24“When the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and not finding any, it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ 25“And when it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. 26“Then it goes and takes alongseven other spirits more evil than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.”

43:30

on…The messy interior work needed to be more like Jesus.

Letting God dig around.

43:30

Helpful and practical advice for getting started with apophatic and contemplative prayer.

Practice reading the Bible and using the text to help you pray and wait.  (Lectio Divina)

“That waiting (in prayer) is the entry into apophatic prayer.”

Breath Prayer

Centering Prayer (using a word to focus)

“Be patience with yourself. Just do it and God will meet you there”

Using a candle to bring our attention back.

47:00

Good focus is ill-fitting at first until you commit to the process.

Leonard Sweet

(paraphrase) “If you are still counting the steps, you aren’t dancing yet. You are still learning to dance.”

47:30

Prayer can become flow.

48:30

Union with God – The traditional understand of the goal of apophatic prayer.

50:00

God invites us corporately and individually as human beings into that (triune) relational and our participation in that relationship is what I mean by union with God.”

Sensing the presence and love of God more fully, and more and more fully. This is union with God.

51:00

Western goal in Christianity is often understand (first) as Salvation in terms of Penal Atonement and payment for sin. It is a more judicial angle compared to what Eastern Christians do. It’s much more about relationship restored.

Funny Friday: When Sleep is Boss (photos)

Have you ever fallen asleep in an odd place?

Standing up?

In the bath tub?

At the movies?

Sometimes, I get sort of a “sleep attack”. I don’t think it’s narcolepsy, but I’ll feel my brain start going into delta waves or something–like a sheet is being pulled down over me. It’s almost like passing out slowly.

If a cat is deprived of sleep first it goes insane and then it dies.

Cat naps are essential.

As fellow-mammals, I’m not sure that we are so different.

Sometimes sleep is the boss of us.

That’s why these 3 images were my favorites from a slew I came across. Which one do you like best?

sleepcat1Was this a wet cat trying to dry out?sleepcat2

Not sure about the lumbar support situation here, but I see a supple feline in complete relaxation.

 

sleepcat3

Waiting for hotdogs? (This could end poorly)

What Quiets You?

Sorry to send you into a sugar coma with the cuteness today!

 

Today’s question is “What Quiets YOU?”

I was pleased to hear blogging and leadership superstar Michael Hyatt give out some serious props recently for naps and people who take them. I like working late, but my family needs me early. I need my naps. No, I don’t get them regularly. When I don’t something happens. I fall asleep reading. I go right into REM sleep too…as you might imagine.

Except for when I’m exhausted I can only nap when one other thing is in place:

I must feel safe.

If threats loom I am disquieted.

Trust is what quiets down my soul so I can wade through the rest of it, and lay me down to sleep. Trust in God, Trust in myself, and Trust in others.

In finding what quiets our souls we find not just peace, but vitality, and fullness. (click to tweet that reminder)

The hush may come from acceptance, wonder, rest, or satisfaction from a job well done, but it must be found.

Without it we just keep on wandering.

So ask yourself. “What Quiets Me?” How and where am I most settled?

Write down one word to remind yourself, and tape it up somewhere.

It will help you not just remember to find it, but it’ll help you remember who you really are.

 
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Feel like sharing? What surprising thing calms your soul?