The View Up Here

This year's theme was 'Hope: A World Afire!' I'm winding down the weekend after an intense two days at the Religious Education Congress (Friday and Saturday). I only went for two of the three days, mainly because I needed my one day to stay home and gear up for the coming week. I day tripped to Anaheim for the event, which was more of a challenge with Friday traffic both going and coming home, but I definitely feel the 'conference high' even with the commuting and not making it for the last day (which was today).  The sessions I chose back in December and got into (I had to choose my top 3 for each period) seemed to interlock with an ever-unfolding message of forgiveness, reconciliation and God's Love. In fact, it would appear that this Lent, the journey I'm taking with Yeshua is one of forgiveness.  Friday I arrived frazzled from rush hour and Disneyland traffic (the Anaheim Convention Center is across the street from California Advent...

“Son of God,” produced by Roma Downey and Mark Burnett and directed by Christopher Spencer, was an enormous disappointment. Despite some strong performances, including Darwin Shaw (Peter) and Sebastian Knapp (John the Evangelist), it wasn’t even close to being the greatest Jesus movie of all time, and in fact, it wasn’t even a good movie. Not only was it shallow, disconnected, and self-important, it neglected to show a crucial aspect of Jesus’ saving ministry: relationship. Jesus had and has relationships with us, and with the Father, and he invites us into his intimate relationship with the Father. Nowhere did this crucial element of his life and teaching appear in this film.   The-who-what-where-in-the-what-now? (Trying to make sense of this movie) The episodes of Jesus’ ministry were never connected with who Jesus was as a person,  and characters were drawn with neither depth nor passion. They came and went with no explanation and with no real ...

On the wave of exactly the same theme of my last few days, I found this quote on my Facebook feed this morning from Fr. James Martin : "For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self."   -- Thomas Merton Thomas Merton was an American monk, mystic, poet, artist, teacher, and inter-religious dialoguer before it was a cool thing to do. Today would've been his 99th birthday.  I haven't spent an enormous amount of time reading the 20th century greats of theology and spiritual writing (Merton and de Chardin, mainly), though I've read smatterings of both. One of the ideas that resurfaces in both of their work seems to be this notion of living into the self that God made each of us to be. That requires discernment, self-knowledge, and humility. This is really the process I've stepped into  these last couple of years, led by the Holy Spirit....