A Hodge Podge of Logic and Leftovers from 2007

[Joe & Carol Ricciardi]

Well 2007 was an excellent year for foraging far and wide and my boots are well muddied and the lab is quite piled high with artifacts for collating and codifying. Here is a brief sample of some of the diverse discoveries, still covered in dust and in no particular order, from a year spent well:

The pastor went on to describe the process of dying that historically has occurred in the institutional church. You may be familiar with the example he cited of those magnificent cathedrals all through Europe, many of them built to accommodate congregations of four thousand, where the average Sunday attendance is about twenty-eight. This was his summary of their decline: God invests his message in a man, which becomes his ministry. Then the ministry becomes a movement, implemented by machinery. Then a monument is built to an institution. And finally it becomes a mausoleum.

Excerpt from Dying in the Institutional Church – Elaine Stedman, Ray Stedman’s wife – Peninsula Bible Fellowship, Palo Alto, CA

Without Dad to confirm his manhood, the boy over-bonds with Mom, and later looks to women to define his destiny and save him from the crippling shame of fatherlessness. He's afraid to get close to a woman, for fear she'll discover his inadequacy and reject him. He's afraid to get close to a man, for fear men will take advantage of his weakness. It's hard for him to grasp a sense of calling or purpose in life.

Blaming Dad, who was himself abandoned by Grandad, only leaves a man alienated, bitter, and angry. Who can a man go to in order to get what he missed from Dad? Many of us have tried to get our masculinity from women, but it doesn't work. But we can't get it from other fatherless men, either.

When a man realizes that no human being can meet his need, he's ready to get real at last and cry out for his true Father God.

I think I got this from Gordon Dalbey at http://www.abbafather.com

There are two spiritual forces at work in the Universe. One is only Good and the other is a deceptive power, using good only where and when it fits its greater destructive purposes. And make no mistake about it, the contrast between these two forces is extremely PERSONAL.

Much of contemporary wisdom tries to convince us that there are spiritual forces and principles that once you unlock the secret, can be utilized at your beck and call. Modern teachers refer to these like George Lucas does in Star Wars as a kind of universal force with a light and a dark side. This portrayal renders the force itself impersonal, a kind of universal mind or law that works like gravity for saint and sinner alike. THIS IS A LIE.

Beginning to a yet unpublished essay (of mine) entitled: The Uncertain Way: The Art of Living the Spiritual Life in a Deadly World

“The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity… By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it…By dipping them in myth we see them more clearly.”

C.S. Lewis speaking of Tolkien’s work on The Lord of the Rings

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps.
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now—
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

Poem Mother to Son by Langston Hughes

I hope we’ll all be able to meet again at the end of 2008 and the best meeting place would be at the Lord ’s Table when he returns to bring the Kingdom of God to earth. But if we are not so blessed, then I hope that each one of you keeps climbing and, for God’s sake, don’t turn back.

King of Jesters and Jester to the King!

Then Jesus said to the Twelve, Do you also wish to go away?
Then Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go?
You have the Words of eternal life. John 6:68