From Frances Young’s Construing the Cross: “In a way I take my cue from the fourth-century writer Ephrem the Syrian… He not only did theology through poetic composition, but even spoke of two divine incarnations; first in limited human language in the words of Scripture, then in the limitations of flesh in Jesus. God speaking to us, he suggested, was like someone trying to teach a parrot to speak by placing a mirror over his face, so that the bird thought it was conversing with one of its own kind. The language in which we speak of the infinite, transcendent God is never adequate, always allusive, suggestive, metaphorical, pointing beyond itself, and, as other fourth-century writers, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzen, suggest, only able to get near its object by a multiplication of images overlaying each other and correcting each other. Insight into the saving mystery of God’s presence in one who cried out in God-forsakenness on the cross requires similar multifarious meditations, as well as a willingness to embrace the possibility of truth in paradox. As with all theological enterprises, construing the cross demands the richness of Scripture, the suggestive wealth of ecclesial traditions, the plurality of experience in different socio-cultural environments, along with endeavors to make some rational sense of it all: in other words, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.”
Roger
From Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart: “Well-being of body is like a mountain. A lot happens on a mountain. It hails, and the winds come up, and it rains and snows. The sun gets very hot, clouds cross over, animals shit and piss on the mountain, and so do people. People leave their trash, and other people clean it up. Many things come and go on this mountain, but it just sits there. When we’ve seen ourselves completely, there’s a stillness of body that is like a mountain. We no longer get jumpy and have to scratch our noses, pull our ears, punch somebody, go running from the room, or drink ourselves into oblivion. A thoroughly good relationship with ourselves results in being still, which doesn’t mean we don’t run and jump and dance about. It means there’s no compulsiveness. We don’t overwork, overeat, oversmoke, overseduce. In short, we begin to stop causing harm.”
From Wendy Farley’s The Wounding and Healing of Desire: Weaving Heaven and Earth: “The habit of egocentrism is supported by the ego’s distinctive mode of awareness. The ego is acutely aware of what it directly experiences, but it is a skeptic and tends to be dismissive of what it does not experience. Pain and pleasure completely dominate the ego’s awareness of itself and of the world. Pain is pain. It is completely real. Pleasure is also completely real. Pleasure, because it is so pleasant, is to be sought. Pain, because it is so painful, is to be shunned, avoided, and feared. Generally speaking, pain and pleasure are good guides for survival. Food and sex are pleasant and help us survive; injury and danger are painful and threaten our lives. But the mind and the heart can move far ahead of its and bring back news of distant joys and sublime risks that awareness of pain and pleasure cannot envision. We have the power within us to overcome our fear of pain and our excessive attachment to momentary pleasure. We can be aware of goods that are infinitely more satisfying, delicious, sustaining, and delightful.”
oalition for Homelessness
rinity perfectly indwells another part of the Trinity. Though they are different and distinct, they are all One. We confess that this One and Three, Three in One God, is a concrete God very much alive and active in the world.
