When you hear a quote from a theologian or a voice from Christian history – when you read something like chapter 9 in this book … it asks for something from you.
Our moment is asking us a question and providing for us an opportunity. The times that we live in call for a re-evaluation of priorities and an examination of our relationship to power.
2 quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer for your Advent week 1 reflections.
Words are powerful: both in their elemental nature & as floating signifiers. Some people protest the fluid nature of language – but this lens can be helpful to understand why.
What if ‘hope’ is like a memory: it is not located in any one place but is created and accessed what a constellation (configuration) or elements are activated at the same time?
3 minutes – let me know what you think.
Sidenote: Day 6 was actually about chapter 7 (sorry for the confusion)
We never start from scratch. There is no blank slate. We don’t operate in a vacuum.
Our work as humanity, communities of faith, and activist-organizers is working with what is to bring about what can be.
It is like a cosmic Scrabble game.
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Elizabeth Johnson was right – our language about God functions.
I am reading two ‘advent’ devotionals and they both quote Bonhoeffer.
and I am just not sure that I am there.
There is a metaphorical – demythologized – deconstructed – linguistic turn that can be really helpful to the way that we conceptualize and talk about ancient concepts.
Event, in philosophy, is a happening whose outcome exceeds that which one would expect if you just added up the smaller component parts.
So the ‘miracle of birth’ is not super-natural … but actually the most natural thing in the world. The same for the ‘the miracle on the Hudson’.
We can use that same permission to address the antiquated notion of ‘spirits’.
What IF we took each other seriously?
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or the FB: https://www.facebook.com/BoSanders.public.theology
Let me know your thoughts!
On day two of our Advent Reflections, I want to ask the question, do our bodies matter?
In the second chapter of the book that we are reading, the passage comes from John chapter 10, where Jesus wept.
And this is an active and lively debate in my circles – whether bodies matter- because earlier in John chapter six, Jesus makes the comment that the flesh basically means nothing, that it profits nothing, but it’s the spirit that matters.
I am a big fan of bodies and the concept of incarnation. The idea of ‘spiritual’ is very elusive and abstract. This is one of the reasons that I tell people “I am religious, but not spiritual”
It is the embodied and enacted nature of religion that appeals to me.
Bodies, in this sense, matter.
It might be your greatest vehicle to experience divine revelation
It might be Your best opportunity for service and participation
It might be your greatest obstacle to overcome, depending on your circumstances
In the end, your body – the good and the bad – matters.
They matter in the religious life.
They matter in the human experience.
They matter in community.
So, at every level, I can say resoundingly that the answer to the question on day two, “do
bodies matter?” is a resounding yes for multiple reasons at multiple levels
Your body matters!
Bo Sanders: Public Theology 