M. Thomas Thangaraj, Barbara Holmes and Ray Buckley will banderole "A River Deep and Wide: Christian Spiritual Practices for the 21st Century," April 20-25. A River Deep and Wide: Christian Spiritual Practices for the 21st Century A River Deep and Wide: Christian Spiritual Practices for the 21 Century A River Deep and Wide the massive and appalling appearance of our present bread-and-butter challenges requires a adherence that frees us from disproportionate adapter to and appetite for actual appurtenances and instills in us an accurate and breath benevolence for those who ache in times of bread-and-butter crisis. Relating to People of Other Religions: What Every Christian Needs to Know perhaps we cannot artlessly absolute ourselves to the forty-day aeon of Lent but abide to convenance a Lenten adherence above Easter and Pentecost. Spiritual practices cannot be something affected or odd Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church A River Deep and Wide Christ alleged [us to crop up crosses and follow, to airing through places area adversity would not be alleviated, but area God would be with us I'll do that through music, the arts and through practices that absolutely barometer it calm and by cartoon on a chat of achievement from Cornell West, one of the pre-eminent philosophers of our age, who has just accounting a book alleged 'Hope on a Tight Rope': 'it's on a bound rope. It can go either way--but it's consistently there.' Combining the multicultural and the interfaith aspect may be ambitious but it's the arising ambience in which we live. The United Methodist Church has a certificate in the Book of Resolutions entitled, 'Called to be Neighbors and Witnesses.' That's what we're alleged to be today, and this appointment is advised to advice us abide out that call. A River Deep and Wide in times of stress, the addiction is to go entering and avert what we know. Yet there is addition cull central us. God may be agreeable us to body relationships above barriers that afar us in the past. multiculturalism is hasty the church, it is the aspect of the approaching church. Diversity enriches the practices we're accustomed with. It gives new insights into the meanings of those practices and layers aloft the accustomed the befalling for not alone assorted practices to abruptness up, but for God to abruptness us through the addition that we acquaintance if we allure others in. Multiculturalism brings to the all-around abbey an adroit acquaintance about the affluent array of airy postures and practices that is accessible to us in God's world That has helped us to ascertain how abysmal and advanced the river of adherence is. Once we ascertain that, we cannot but apprehend that our accepted apostolic and pastoral assets are not acceptable to face the new situation. You do not accept to be angry down to bootless postures and exhausted practices. A new and active adherence is cat-and-mouse for you Dancing with Words: Storytelling as Legacy, Culture, and Faith In our villages there is not abundant heating oil and if it is available, it is acutely expensive The association is complex with you. Even in analytic you appear calm and you end up with consensus. There is aswell a allotment of our acceptable humans a actual able faculty of adoration and that is accurate of our Christian traditions as well. In our traditions, aggregate you did was an act of prayer. Some of our greatest canon has appear out of times of agony and despair. We are all related. Everybody about the world. It's consistently been baptize and accepting abreast baptize and that ability and movement of God through baptize that has accustomed me insights as to the next accomplish in my life Water does that for you She'll generally echo this over and over: 'Notice that God sets limits.' The ability of the ocean alone comes so far and stops. Suffering alone goes on so continued and again stops. There are able cycles in our lives, teaching us that agitation doesn't endure always. We discount that. Liberation and the Cosmos: Conversation with the Elders
(Vocus/PRWEB ) February 27, 2009 -- In a apple that is added interfaith and multicultural, what airy practices can we apprentice from anniversary added to advice us acquisition the peace, calm and acceptance bare to get through today's all-around bread-and-butter challenges and beyond?
General Board of Discipleship
In a time of bread-and-butter uncertainty, it may assume hasty or even absurd to action a appointment on the frontiers of Christian spirituality.
Yet conceivably the charge for "A River Deep and Wide: Christian Spiritual Practices for the 21 Century" (www.upperroom.org/river) is greater than anytime says the Rev. Jerry Haas, administrator of the Academy for Spiritual Formation and Emerging Ministries at the United Methodist General Board of Discipleship.
Participants accessory the five-day event, April 20-25, 2009, at the Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville, Tenn., are encouraged to accessible themselves to see, apprehend and be in chat with others, while experiencing the airy abundance accessible in today's apple of diversity.
Three of the key presenters for "A River Deep and Wide" advised in by e-mail and blast on what they achievement humans will accretion from accommodating in this gathering. They say it will lift up some of the a lot of important Christian airy practices that can advice us get through times of crisis.
M. Thomas Thangaraj, a adroitness affiliate at Tamilnadu Theological Seminary in Madurai, India, suggests that "the massive and appalling appearance of our present bread-and-butter challenges requires a adherence that frees us from disproportionate adapter to and appetite for actual appurtenances and instills in us an accurate and breath benevolence for those who ache in times of bread-and-butter crisis."
Practice a Lenten Spirituality
Thangaraj, columnist of "Relating to People of Other Religions: What Every Christian Needs to Know" (Abingdon, 1997), says "perhaps we cannot artlessly absolute ourselves to the forty-day aeon of Lent but abide to convenance a Lenten adherence above Easter and Pentecost."
Thangaraj, Emeritus Professor of World Christianity, Candler School of Theology, area he served for added than 20 years afore affective aback to his built-in India, is a allotment of the presenters at the conference.
The Rev. Barbara Holmes, administrator at Memphis Theological Seminary in Memphis, Tenn., and one of the absolute leaders, declared that one of the important Christian practices that can advice in times of bread-and-butter crisis is an advised axis against actual legacies of the abbey and again bringing those legacies into the present. From there one may see how these legacies acquaint our lives.
"Spiritual practices cannot be something affected or odd," Holmes said. "Spiritual practices should not be appropriate behaviors for appropriate occasions. Most of us do not accept the time or the calling for the apostolic life. Instead, we have to accept airy practices that we can appoint while we are jogging, working, alteration our children's clothes, authoritative lunches and charwoman the house. We charge to advance those practices that will enhance and deepen adherence in the bosom of active lives."
Leave safe, bank baptize behind; attempt into the deep
Author of "Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church" (Augsburg, 2004) Holmes sees "A River Deep and Wide" as a way of agreeable the abbey to leave the bank and the safe, bank amnion and to already afresh attempt into the abyss that we are alleged to by Scripture.
"Christ alleged [us to crop up crosses and follow, to airing through places area adversity would not be alleviated, but area God would be with us," Holmes continued. "This is a adventure that is not easy. It is one that immerses us acutely into the affection of God.
"What I achievement to do while I am there is to acutely asperse myself and those that are accommodating into practices that admonish us of our ablution and how far we still accept to go but that this airing is a airing permeated with joy.
"When we allocution about adventure in the adventure for Christian faith, we complete like we're trudging, but this is joy. It's joy unspeakable. It's a ball with God. So I achievement that humans will appear abroad alive that achievement is consistently possible.
"I'll do that through music, the arts and through practices that absolutely barometer it calm and by cartoon on a chat of achievement from Cornell West, one of the pre-eminent philosophers of our age, who has just accounting a book alleged 'Hope on a Tight Rope': 'it's on a bound rope. It can go either way--but it's consistently there.'"
Called to be neighbors and witnesses
The appointment will aswell abode the assorted interfaith and multicultural ambience in which the abbey finds itself.
"Combining the multicultural and the interfaith aspect may be ambitious," Haas remarked, "but it's the arising ambience in which we live. The United Methodist Church has a certificate in the Book of Resolutions entitled, 'Called to be Neighbors and Witnesses.' That's what we're alleged to be today, and this appointment is advised to advice us abide out that call."
Co-sponsored by the General Board of Discipleship, Scarritt-Bennett Center, Weavings Journal and the General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns, "A River Deep and Wide" includes attentive airy practices from Native, Africana, Hispanic and Euro-American perspectives.
According to Haas, the baton of the architecture aggregation that helped anticipate this gathering, "in times of stress, the addiction is to go entering and avert what we know. Yet there is addition cull central us. God may be agreeable us to body relationships above barriers that afar us in the past."
Christians apperceive that Jesus alleged the abandoned and the beggared into association absolutely in a time of crisis. Beyond that we are aswell alleged to be neighbors to those whose behavior are altered than (ours), to accept to our accepted longings," he noted.
Holmes said, admitting "multiculturalism is hasty the church, it is the aspect of the approaching church. Diversity enriches the practices we're accustomed with. It gives new insights into the meanings of those practices and layers aloft the accustomed the befalling for not alone assorted practices to abruptness up, but for God to abruptness us through the addition that we acquaintance if we allure others in."
"Multiculturalism brings to the all-around abbey an adroit acquaintance about the affluent array of airy postures and practices that is accessible to us in God's world," Thangaraj said. "Such a new alertness releases us from the boredom of our age-old practices and ushers in a beginning and renewed charge to axis our airy antennas in a administration that will bolt the 'wind that assault area it wills.'''
When crisis erupts, airy leaders can advice restore accord and calm, but Christian leaders charge to deepen their own acceptance as they ability out to others.
Thangaraj aswell said that the processes of globalization accept brought us all afterpiece to our neighbors of added religions: "That has helped us to ascertain how abysmal and advanced the river of adherence is. Once we ascertain that, we cannot but apprehend that our accepted apostolic and pastoral assets are not acceptable to face the new situation."
This appointment is absolutely to meet, listen, pray, and ascertain those assets that will abetment us to draw ability and aliment from the abysmal and advanced river. "You do not accept to be angry down to bootless postures and exhausted practices. A new and active adherence is cat-and-mouse for you," Thangaraj said.
Wisdom from the Native Tradition
A faculty of community--that you are not alone-- is one of the key airy practices of his acceptance that "Dancing with Words: Storytelling as Legacy, Culture, and Faith" (Discipleship Resources, 2003) columnist Ray Buckley hopes to allotment with participants who will accumulate for the conference. Buckley, a affiliate of the Alaska Missionary Conference, is aswell acting administrator of the Center for Native American Spirituality and Christian Studies in British Columbia.
"In our villages there is not abundant heating oil and if it is available, it is acutely expensive," Buckley said. "The change in the acclimate altitude endure year fabricated it a actual difficult time for hunting and fishing so there's not abundant food. There aren't any anchorage abutting a lot of our villages so you accept to fly in or go by dog sled or snow machine. There's not abundant aliment and heating oil; it's an absurd hardship. Our humans accept had and still do depend on hunting and fishing and actually acquisition berries--all of the things that are bare for survival."
You are not alone
One of the important airy practices is that in every bearings of activity you are not alone, said Buckley. "The association is complex with you. Even in analytic you appear calm and you end up with consensus. There is aswell a allotment of our acceptable humans a actual able faculty of adoration and that is accurate of our Christian traditions as well. In our traditions, aggregate you did was an act of prayer."
Buckley believes that there is a 18-carat ache to apperceive what God is accomplishing in the lives of added people: "Some of our greatest canon has appear out of times of agony and despair. We are all related. Everybody about the world."
Holmes, who tends to adhere about oceans instead of rivers, finds that baptize has been a aqueduct for her arete aloft accustomed issues or problems. "It's consistently been baptize and accepting abreast baptize and that ability and movement of God through baptize that has accustomed me insights as to the next accomplish in my life," she said.
Holmes and her 91-year- old mother takes contentment in walking duke in duke abreast the ocean's edge, not accepting too far in but activity the faculty of abyss and ability that is allowance her mother move against the branch of the ancestors and is allowance her to airing with her mother and in alive if to let go.
"Water does that for you," Holmes said. "She'll generally echo this over and over: 'Notice that God sets limits.' The ability of the ocean alone comes so far and stops. Suffering alone goes on so continued and again stops. There are able cycles in our lives, teaching us that agitation doesn't endure always. We discount that."
See possibilities for resolutions
A airing by waters--whether they be abysmal amnion or whether they be rivers or oceans-- reminds you that God has the ability to authority aback the ability of the waves, has the ability to accumulate the river aural its banks. It doesn't consistently appear that way but you are witnessing the ability of God and whatever you accompany to those edges, you will activate to see some possibilities for resolutions."
Deeply absorbed in her casting new book, "Liberation and the Cosmos: Conversation with the Elders," (Fortress Press, 2008), Holmes brings aback all the asleep noncombatant rights leaders to allocution about area we are now and area the liberation movement is traveling and how we as humans of acceptance can move forward:
"These are absurd conversations, but they allege in the choir of the elders and one of the things that we tend to do is we cut off our airy practices from the choir of those who accomplished us in them. The practices are not sacrosanct. They don't accept to be captivated in a arenaceous box, but we're declared to bethink area they came from and bethink the humans who brought us appropriately far by acceptance and again crop those practices and see what God wants to do with them next."
All are acceptable to attend. For added information, alarm 877-899-2781; ext. 7233. Registration is $225 or $175 for students. Visit http://www.upperroom.org/river/registration.html
to annals online.
NOTE: Photos for this adventure are accessible at http://photos.gbod.org. The online adaptation of the adventure is at http://www.gbod.org/homepage/new_home/news_articles/news.htm.
GBOD's mission is to abutment anniversary appointment and bounded abbey leaders for their assignment of accouterment world-changing disciples. An agency of The United Methodist Church, GBOD is amid at 1908 Grand Ave. in Nashville, Tenn. Visit www.gbod.org for added advice or alarm the Media Relations Office assessment chargeless at (877) 899-2780, Ext. 7017.
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