Saturday, July 31, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
My Place Tonight...At Pizza Luce in Duluth with Brooke at Michelle's Going Away Party...
Sent via DROID on Verizon Wireless
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Some Thoughts and Bar Church...
"Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them."
~ Jesus (John 7:37b-38)
Michelle Singing...
Well I haven’t blogged for awhile, have been busy with life – reading some, working ambulance shifts, making a few trips back and forth between Minneapolis and Two Harbors and hanging out with the girls and Cade.
As far as reading goes over the last few weeks I have read, Not the Religious Type: Confessions of a Turncoat Atheist, by David Schmelzer, The Divine Conspiracy, by Dallas Willard and Life Together, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer – all great books!
This past Sunday was the first Bar Church Gathering at Dunnigan’s Pub in Two Harbors and it went very well! Inspiring music, community, talk about the true thirst quencher, sharing of stories of life, coffee, donuts, food, drinks. The Kingdom of God breaking through!
Michelle Jordy sang and played guitar and shared some of her journey with everyone…we will all miss her as she is leaving this Friday to move to Atlanta to minister to the homeless and drug addicts and do street ministry.
One of the barishioners wrote this on her Facebook after the gathering,
“They open (Dunnigan’s) at 11 for church. It was a great service too. Mostly it is a good place to sit back and meet new people and kind of find yourself again. It’s not traditional, its not judgmental, but more a relaxing and accepting community of people that would normally not be together sharing their lives and helping each other. Overall, this was the best Sunday morning in a very long time for me.”
All that were there thought everything went very well and we are going to keep meeting on Sundays and continue to see and experience what God is and will continue to do.
More stories will be coming soon…hopefully…
Here are some of the barishoners hanging out after the gathering...
~ Jesus (John 7:37b-38)
Michelle Singing...
Well I haven’t blogged for awhile, have been busy with life – reading some, working ambulance shifts, making a few trips back and forth between Minneapolis and Two Harbors and hanging out with the girls and Cade.
As far as reading goes over the last few weeks I have read, Not the Religious Type: Confessions of a Turncoat Atheist, by David Schmelzer, The Divine Conspiracy, by Dallas Willard and Life Together, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer – all great books!
This past Sunday was the first Bar Church Gathering at Dunnigan’s Pub in Two Harbors and it went very well! Inspiring music, community, talk about the true thirst quencher, sharing of stories of life, coffee, donuts, food, drinks. The Kingdom of God breaking through!
Michelle Jordy sang and played guitar and shared some of her journey with everyone…we will all miss her as she is leaving this Friday to move to Atlanta to minister to the homeless and drug addicts and do street ministry.
One of the barishioners wrote this on her Facebook after the gathering,
“They open (Dunnigan’s) at 11 for church. It was a great service too. Mostly it is a good place to sit back and meet new people and kind of find yourself again. It’s not traditional, its not judgmental, but more a relaxing and accepting community of people that would normally not be together sharing their lives and helping each other. Overall, this was the best Sunday morning in a very long time for me.”
All that were there thought everything went very well and we are going to keep meeting on Sundays and continue to see and experience what God is and will continue to do.
More stories will be coming soon…hopefully…
Here are some of the barishoners hanging out after the gathering...
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Buechner on Worship...
“Phrases like Worship Service or Service of Worship are tautologies. To worship God means to serve him. Basically there are two ways to do it. One way is to do things for him that he needs to have done - run errands for him, fight on his side, feed his lambs, and so on. The other way is to do things for him that you need to do – sing songs for him, create beautiful things for him, give things up for him, tell him what’s on your mind and in your heart, in general rejoice in him and make a fool of yourself for him the way lovers have always made fools of themselves for the one they love.
A Quaker Meeting, a Pontifical High Mass, the Family Service at First Presbyterian, a Holy Roller Happening – unless there is an element of joy and foolishness in the proceedings, the time would be better spent doing something useful.”
A Quaker Meeting, a Pontifical High Mass, the Family Service at First Presbyterian, a Holy Roller Happening – unless there is an element of joy and foolishness in the proceedings, the time would be better spent doing something useful.”
Community, The Imago Dei, and "...the words of the prophets...."
While at the Thirsty Pagan last Wednesday night I noticed something written on a piece of paper behind the bar up on the wall - and the lyrics from a Simon & Garfunkel song, The Sound of Silence came to mind,
"'The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.'
And whisper'd in the sounds of silence…"
What was written on the wall there was this, "Religion is for people that are afraid of going to hell and spirituality is for people who have been there..." I thought about that and realized the profoundness in it and then I wanted to change one word to make it more true and relevant. So I re-wrote it with Jesus rather than spirituality.
So now it is, "Religion is for people afraid of going to hell and Jesus is for people who have been there..." Simon and Garfunkel were right about where you may find the words of the prophets?
"Blessed..."
“The religious system of his day left the multitudes out, but Jesus welcomed them all into his kingdom. Anyone could come as well as any other. They still can. That is the gospel of the Beatitudes.
Just look at the list of the ‘written off,’ of the ‘sat upon, spat upon, ratted on.’ It is interesting that Simon and Garfunkel got Jesus’ point in their old song, even though many of us ‘scribes’ miss it."
~Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy
Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit
Blessed is the lamb whose blood flows
Blessed are the sat upon, spat upon, ratted on
O Lord, why have you forsaken me?
I got no place to go
I've walked around Soho for the last night or so
Ah, but it doesn't matter, no
Blessed is the land and the kingdom
Blessed is the man whose soul belongs to
Blessed are the meth drinkers, pot sellers, illusion dwellers
O Lord, why have you forsaken me?
My words trickle down, from a wound that I have no intention to heal
Blessed are the stained glass, window pane glass
Blessed is the church service makes me nervous
Blessed are the penny rookers, cheap hookers, groovy lookers
O Lord, why have you forsaken me?
I have tended my own garden
Much too long
~ Simon and Garfunkel, Blessed
Just look at the list of the ‘written off,’ of the ‘sat upon, spat upon, ratted on.’ It is interesting that Simon and Garfunkel got Jesus’ point in their old song, even though many of us ‘scribes’ miss it."
~Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy
Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit
Blessed is the lamb whose blood flows
Blessed are the sat upon, spat upon, ratted on
O Lord, why have you forsaken me?
I got no place to go
I've walked around Soho for the last night or so
Ah, but it doesn't matter, no
Blessed is the land and the kingdom
Blessed is the man whose soul belongs to
Blessed are the meth drinkers, pot sellers, illusion dwellers
O Lord, why have you forsaken me?
My words trickle down, from a wound that I have no intention to heal
Blessed are the stained glass, window pane glass
Blessed is the church service makes me nervous
Blessed are the penny rookers, cheap hookers, groovy lookers
O Lord, why have you forsaken me?
I have tended my own garden
Much too long
~ Simon and Garfunkel, Blessed
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
A Cup Of Grace...Revisted...
“The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
~ Psalm 34:18 TNIV
I have been reading Dallas Willard’s, The Divine Conspiracy and this afternoon I came across a couple of interesting things that he wrote in light of this blog “A Cup of Grace” and especially the original inspiration for the blog. Almost a year ago now, while on a short-term Youth Works mission trip to inner city St. Louis I was struck by what I have borrowed from Brennan Manning – the notion of the "divine milieu." Manning wrote, “Living by the gospel of grace leads us into what Teilhard de Chardin called the divine milieu – A God filled, Christ-soaked universe. A world charged with the grandeur of God. How do we live in the presence of the living God? In wonder, amazed by the traces of God all around us.” In a similar way Willard commented on the world in which we live in this way, “Jesus’ good news about the kingdom can be an effective guide for our lives only if we share his view of the world in which we live. To his eyes this is a God – bathed and God – permeated world.”
Each morning while on the missions trip I would wake up early and make a pot of coffee and in a quiet corner of the old run down Baptist church that we were all staying in I would sip my first coffee of the day and there was grace in it and it brought some peace and clarity before I would read and pray. It was in those early morning moments that the idea of “a cup of grace” first came to my mind – the grace was tangible. This was, I believe, a result of the experiences in, or an awaking to, or an increased awareness of the “divine milieu “or “a world charged with the grandeur of God” and in that cup of coffee or at least in the space that the time drinking it provided each morning there was grace.
In connection with those mornings in St. Louis I found these words that Willard wrote interesting:
“The novelist Vladimir Nabokov writes of a moment of awakening in one of his characters who, watching an old woman of the streets drink a cup of coffee given to her,
...became aware of the world’s tenderness, the profound beneficence of all that surrounded me, the blissful bond between me and all of creation; and I realized that joy…breathed around me everywhere, in the spreading street sounds, in the hem of a comically lifted skirt, in the metallic yet tender drone of the wind, in the autumn clouds bloated with rain. I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all, or a predacious sequence of chance events, but shimmering bliss, beneficent trepidation, a gift bestowed on us an unappreciated."
(Quoted in Dallas Willard’s, Divine Conspiracy, p. 62 from Vladimir Nabokov, from his story “Beneficence,” as quoted in Books and Culture, November/December 1995, p. 26.)
~ Psalm 34:18 TNIV
I have been reading Dallas Willard’s, The Divine Conspiracy and this afternoon I came across a couple of interesting things that he wrote in light of this blog “A Cup of Grace” and especially the original inspiration for the blog. Almost a year ago now, while on a short-term Youth Works mission trip to inner city St. Louis I was struck by what I have borrowed from Brennan Manning – the notion of the "divine milieu." Manning wrote, “Living by the gospel of grace leads us into what Teilhard de Chardin called the divine milieu – A God filled, Christ-soaked universe. A world charged with the grandeur of God. How do we live in the presence of the living God? In wonder, amazed by the traces of God all around us.” In a similar way Willard commented on the world in which we live in this way, “Jesus’ good news about the kingdom can be an effective guide for our lives only if we share his view of the world in which we live. To his eyes this is a God – bathed and God – permeated world.”
Each morning while on the missions trip I would wake up early and make a pot of coffee and in a quiet corner of the old run down Baptist church that we were all staying in I would sip my first coffee of the day and there was grace in it and it brought some peace and clarity before I would read and pray. It was in those early morning moments that the idea of “a cup of grace” first came to my mind – the grace was tangible. This was, I believe, a result of the experiences in, or an awaking to, or an increased awareness of the “divine milieu “or “a world charged with the grandeur of God” and in that cup of coffee or at least in the space that the time drinking it provided each morning there was grace.
In connection with those mornings in St. Louis I found these words that Willard wrote interesting:
“The novelist Vladimir Nabokov writes of a moment of awakening in one of his characters who, watching an old woman of the streets drink a cup of coffee given to her,
...became aware of the world’s tenderness, the profound beneficence of all that surrounded me, the blissful bond between me and all of creation; and I realized that joy…breathed around me everywhere, in the spreading street sounds, in the hem of a comically lifted skirt, in the metallic yet tender drone of the wind, in the autumn clouds bloated with rain. I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all, or a predacious sequence of chance events, but shimmering bliss, beneficent trepidation, a gift bestowed on us an unappreciated."
(Quoted in Dallas Willard’s, Divine Conspiracy, p. 62 from Vladimir Nabokov, from his story “Beneficence,” as quoted in Books and Culture, November/December 1995, p. 26.)
Monday, July 5, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Independence Day...
"Jesus' Declaration of Independence: 'Loose Your Life, Become a Servant, Pursue the Kingdom.' THAT, folks, is REAL freedom!!!"
~ Greg Boyd
~ Greg Boyd
Friday, July 2, 2010
Wake Up...Stay Awake..."Ya, sure...I'll go..."
"The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed."
~ Paul from Romans 13:11 TNIV
“You ever have that feeling where you are not sure if you are awake or still dreaming?”
~ Neo
“Ya, sure…I’ll go…”~ Neo
~ Paul from Romans 13:11 TNIV
“You ever have that feeling where you are not sure if you are awake or still dreaming?”
~ Neo
“Ya, sure…I’ll go…”~ Neo
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Maggie..."Know, You Are Loved...As Are All That Are In The Dirt"
"While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, 'Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?' On hearing this, Jesus said, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.'"
~ Matthew 9:10-13 TNIV
“Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.”
~ John 19:25 TNIV
“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.”
~ John 20:1 TNIV
“Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb…”
~ John 20:11 TNIV
“Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: ‘I have seen the Lord!’ And she told them that he had said these things to her.”
~ John 20:18 TNIV
~ Matthew 9:10-13 TNIV
“Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.”
~ John 19:25 TNIV
“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.”
~ John 20:1 TNIV
“Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb…”
~ John 20:11 TNIV
“Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: ‘I have seen the Lord!’ And she told them that he had said these things to her.”
~ John 20:18 TNIV
Jesus...
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
~ Jesus
"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me."
~ Jesus
"Only in their own towns, among their relatives and in their own homes are prophets without honor.”
~ Jesus
~ Jesus
"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me."
~ Jesus
"Only in their own towns, among their relatives and in their own homes are prophets without honor.”
~ Jesus
Kris Kristofferrson....They Killed Him....
“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.' But wisdom is proved right by her actions."
~ Matthew 11:18-19 TNIV
~ Matthew 11:18-19 TNIV
Hmmm...Thoughts From Tonight...And What It Is All About - Not Law But Amazing Grace...
“This is what the LORD says: ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?’ declares the LORD. ‘These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word.’”
~ Isaiah 66:1-2 TNIV
"My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.”
~ Psalm 51:17 TNIV
“A Message from the high and towering God, who lives in Eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I live in the high and holy places, but also with the low-spirited, the spirit-crushed, And what I do is put new spirit in them, get them up and on their feet again.’”
~ Isaiah 57:15 The Message
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” ~ Matthew 5:3 TNIV
"A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory."
~ Matthew 12:20 TNIV
~ Isaiah 66:1-2 TNIV
"My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.”
~ Psalm 51:17 TNIV
“A Message from the high and towering God, who lives in Eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I live in the high and holy places, but also with the low-spirited, the spirit-crushed, And what I do is put new spirit in them, get them up and on their feet again.’”
~ Isaiah 57:15 The Message
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” ~ Matthew 5:3 TNIV
"A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory."
~ Matthew 12:20 TNIV
Divine Millieu...Kris Kristofferson with The Highwaymen - The Best Of All Possible Worlds...
"I said, 'It's nice to learn that ev'rybody's so concerned about my health.'
Cause there's still alot of drinks that I ain't drunk
And lots of pretty thoughts that I ain't thunk..."
~ Kris Kristofferson
Cause there's still alot of drinks that I ain't drunk
And lots of pretty thoughts that I ain't thunk..."
~ Kris Kristofferson
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