Part of Us Always has to Die –Richard Rohr
Whenever we’re led out of normalcy into sacred space, it’s going to feel like suffering. It’s letting go of what we’re used to. That causes suffering. Part of us always has to die. If that readiness isn’t there, we won’t enter into sacred space. The prophet leads us into sacred space by showing us the insufficiency of the old order; the role of the priest is to teach us how to live in the new realm. Unfortunately, the priest too often operates separately from prophet. He talks of a new realm but never leads us out of the old order where we are still largely trapped. Such priesthood is commonly ineffective, although quite popular. In this new realm, everything belongs. The awareness is often called a second naiveté. It is a return to simple consciousness. The first awareness is a dangerous naiveté. It doesn’t know but thinks it does. In second naiveté the darkness and light coexist, paradox is revealed, and we are finally at home in the only world that ever existed. This is true knowing. Here death is a part of life, and failure is a part of victory. Opposites collide and unite, and everything belongs.
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: the Gift of Contemplative Prayer
Finally, an Awesome Backgrounds Bible!
One of the great publishing delights of 2016 is the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible. Zondervan, of course, is the publishing house. The NIV 2011 is the translation employed, one that is faithful to the meaning of the Greek and Hebrew and communicates clearly to English-speakers of the 21st century. This is truly a landmark publication; the subtitle says it all: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture. The dense, nearly 2400-page Bible is packed with notes, graphs, photographs, sidebars, tables, charts, maps, and cross-references. It would be difficult to find two more qualified general editors than John Walton and Craig Keener. These two scholars live this stuff. They are giants in the field. Kudos to Zondervan for signing them on for this project. Their names alone are a solid recommendation of this Bible.

Virtually every page brings fresh illumination to the text of Holy Writ. The NIV…
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A Curator’s Guide — An Exploration into Matthew and Mark
Across the next few weeks, I will be publishing a series of blog posts celebrating the work of Robert M. Bowman, Jr. in creating helpful bibliographies on books of the Bible. Bowman is a very careful and well-researched theologian, exegete, and author, having published many articles and books on religion, theology, and apologetics. In particular, I’d like to highlight a book he co-authored with Ed Komoszewski, Putting Jesus in His Place, which is the most accessible introduction to the deity of Christ published in the last several decades. Each week I will upload new posts with the bibliographies of certain New Testament books compiled by Bowman. This first post will feature the bibliographies for Matthew and Mark, and subsequent posts will provide bibliographies for books up through Revelation. Rob has done his homework and I am grateful for the opportunity to post this bibliography of resource tools for studying the New…
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This Is How Sand Looks Magnified Up To 300 Times | Bored Panda
Comparing something to a grain of sand is usually supposed to mean that it’s small or insignificant, but Dr. Gary Greenberg’s microscopic photography aims to turn this stereotype on its head. His photographs of miniscule grains of sands reveal that each grain of sand can be beautiful and unique. The sand in his images is full of remnants from various tropical sea organisms large and small.
Source: This Is How Sand Looks Magnified Up To 300 Times | Bored Panda
The White Horse and the Humvees—Standing Rock Is Offering Us a Choice by Robin Wall Kimmerer and Kathleen Dean Moore — YES! Magazine
A Christian Asked Ashton What To Pray For, His Response Stunned The Room
Ashton Kutcher is a successful actor, prominent businessman, and proud family man. To top things off, he and his wife, Mila Kunis, share two beautiful children. But aside from his Hollywood career, Kutcher is also a venture capitalist. The famous actor has successfully invested in various high-tech startups including Skype, Foursquare, Airbnb, Path, and Fab.com. Indeed, there is …
Source: A Christian Asked Ashton What To Pray For, His Response Stunned The Room
God is Love–C.G. Jung
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![]() I sometimes feel that Paul’s words—“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love”—might well be the first condition of all cognition and the quintessence of divinity itself. Whatever the learned interpretation may be of the sentence “God is love,” the words affirm the complexio oppositorum of the Godhead. In my medical experience as well as in my own life I have again and again been faced with the mystery of love, and have never been able to explain what it is. Like Job, I had to “lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer.” (Job 40:4 f.) Here is the greatest and smallest, the remotest and nearest, the highest and lowest, and we cannot discuss one side of it without also discussing the other. No language is adequate to this paradox. Whatever one can say, no words express the whole. To speak of partial aspects is always too much or too little, for only the whole is meaningful. Love “bears all things” and “endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:7). These words say all there is to be said; nothing can be added to them. For we are in the deepest sense the victims and the instruments of cosmogonic “love.” I put the word in quotation marks to indicate that I do not use it in its connotations of desiring, preferring, favoring, wishing, and similar feelings, but as something superior to the individual, a unified and undivided whole. Being a part, man cannot grasp the whole. He is at its mercy. He may assent to it, or rebel against it; but he is always caught up by it and enclosed within it. He is dependent upon it and is sustained by it. Love is his light and his darkness, whose end he cannot see. “Love ceases not”—whether he speaks with the “tongues of angels,” or with scientific exactitude traces the life of the cell down to its uttermost source. Man can try to name love, showering upon it all the names at his command, and still he will involve himself in endless self-deceptions. If he possesses a grain of wisdom, he will lay down his arms and name the unknown by the more unknown, ignotum per ignotius—that is, by the name of God. That is a confession of his subjection, his imperfection, and his dependence; but at the same time a testimony to his freedom to choose between truth and error. Jung, C.G.; Jaffe, Aniela (2011-01-26). Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Kindle Locations 6147-6163). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition. |
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James Kelly added a new photo. |
Secret Believers | Open Doors
Source: Secret Believers | Open Doors




