Rod White's Blog, page 57
December 22, 2009
A Fast with Shalom House
We had a great blessing-of-a-feast last night – turkey, all the accoutrements, Gwen's famous (or should be) dessert punch, amazing friends and comrades. Now for the fast.
The people of Shalom House have called for a fast today. Our friends over in their West Philly outpost are proactive peacemakers who just seem to get more devoted, creative and assertive all the time! They bless me. At our feast last night, as we toasted 2009 in various ways, someone got us to raise our glasses to the great...
December 14, 2009
Trying to Stay Unscrambled
Last night at the PM the team lead us in O Holy Night. At the first meeting we discovered that a "rogue" version had wormed its way into the powerpoint presentation. I'm not sure how this happened, but it was as if the pieces of the song had been dropped on the floor and been reassembled out of order.
It was something like the funny a capella choir doing their famous all-in-one Christmas carol. ().
The songs that come out of storage at Christmas time don't always get the...
December 7, 2009
Bad News from John
They rebelled against God's sayings,
Psalm 107:11-15
Psalm 107 sounds like basic lore for John the Baptist. "You have...
December 2, 2009
For the Cadets on Jean Donovan Day
Last night the president had some uphill sledding to do with his speech to the cadets at West Point. I admit I did not listen very well to every word, since I was also reading a magazine and writing our Christmas letter (sorry Barack). But I did notice that the poor man could not get any applause for the longest time! And, if nothing else, he is a good applause-getter! He finally loosened them up with the sheer power of a great speech. But the cadets didn't get their hands moving until he...
November 30, 2009
Intimacity
I would like to hear what you think about my new word: intimacity. (Actually, the word is googlable, but they usually mean intimacy.) I am working with it this way: intimacity is our capacity for being intimate.
During the Advent retreat, I had a moment of clarity on the prayer walk I was assigned to complete. I realized that I and the others I had been talking to were all struggling with getting to the place where we could connect. Most of us were relatively obsessed with it – clinging to...
November 24, 2009
Nonconformity– a doorway to eternity
When the November wind and waves threatened to capsize my little kayak on the Great Egg Harbor, I wondered if I could be taking nonconformity too far. Sunday was not the usual weather for water sports. But I enjoyed it. As Elbert Hubbard said, "Conformists die, but heretics live forever." As the wind pelted me with spray off the bay, I pondered a weekend full of realizations about how God has opened eternity to me.
One doorway turns out to be my rebellion against flab. Mind you, I was on a...
November 16, 2009
On Hild Day — in praise of women leaders
[In honor of Hild Day, today, and in honor of the good women leaders among the Circle of Hope, I thought I'd re-do a piece written in 2008 and share it with you:]
Leadership makes a difference
When I say that, a good 90% of us probably automatically tune out. As far as the organizations we understand and the church as it is, we already have a lot of leaders over us and we don't see room for many more, certainly not ME.
We don't imagine Jesus calling us into leading, either. When Jesus talks...
November 9, 2009
The Heart of Good Dialogue
"Let the peace that Christ gives control your thinking. You were all called together in one body to have peace. Always be thankful." Colossians 3:15 (International Childrens Bible)
After something like fifteen hours of intense dialogue this past weekend during the Discerning Retreat, I felt like I needed a silence transfusion. But that need did not diminish my joy over the radical thing I got to do. We were definitely "called together in one body" – for real, not just in theory. And we had...
November 2, 2009
Being Built Together as Living Stones
As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house… 1 Peter 2:4-5
As we come to our Discerning Retreat We find ourselves in the sometimes-absurd-feeling position of taking the verse above with radical seriousness. Let me rephrase that, we are not just seriously considering being living stones; the event presumes that we are living stones being built into a spiritual house. There is a...
October 26, 2009
A Stance: How Jesus Acts on His
This post is more in the vein of "What does Jesus do and how" as we are looking at Mark these days.
And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' But you say that if a man says to his father or mother: 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is Corban' (that is, a gift devoted to...
