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.
you can also follow this series on Substack: https://bosanders.substack.com/
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’.
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!
Advent is on the way! I thought you might like to try something different this year and join an online reading group that meets every Thursday evening.
What better way to practice the holy waiting of this Advent season than streaming weekly with some Wise-ish Nerds on the internet?
Each week Tripp and Bo will be looking at the liturgical texts for the upcoming week of advent and using a different theologian to dig deeper into the themes of the week.
Expect to encounter Jack Caputo’s discussion of the ‘to come,’ Catherine Keller’s Parabolic Christology, Kathryn Tanner’s incarnational Christology, reflections on Ebenezer Scrooge, New Testament fun with Borg, Wright, and Horsley & hopefully Tripp will talk Bo into reading his theologically revised version of ‘The Night Before Christmas’ in a deep sultry radio voice.
Each session will be at least 90 minutes, maybe 2 hours, that covers a bible episode and a theology episode, and available as a live stream or as a download afterward. We will post some readings for each week and will be taking questions before and during each session. We hope the mix of theology, bible and liturgical season makes this a sermon or small group leader prep session and for the many Deacons without a faith community a chance to find some online partners during the advent season.
Head over to the High Gravity class page and sign up today!
Thursdays @6pm (pst) / @9 (est)
- 11/27
- 12/4
- 12/11
- 12/18
Bo Sanders: Public Theology 