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Advent – Remembering the Future

December 4, 2007 / dougfloyd / 0 Comments

Remembering the Future
Looking forward with hope is active resistance the experiences of life. The longer we live, the more we experience the pain, discouragement, disappointment and seeming hopeless of life. People disappointment us. We disappointment ourselves. Nothing lives up to the hype.

Isaiah realized that he was a man of unclean lips and he lived among a people of unclean lips. The very people chosen to reveal the goodness and glory of the Creator could not. They were flawed and failed. Their kingdom split and their history is not a story of ever-increasing glory but a story a darker and darker defilement. They fail God. They fail the world.

Isaiah exclaims that the people have “turned away backward.” They’ve become a desolate nation full of corruptors. They abuse one another. They oppress the weak. They forsake the fatherless. In other words, they look a lot like our world today. Looking around at our world of war, we cannot help but see ripples of unfaithfulness and broken relationships.

Nations war against nations. And this war is not limited to one or two or three geographical regions of the world. We are all at war. We war with our neighbors. We war with our friends. Even in the family and the church we see pain and betrayal. The places that should be provide a place for love to flourish sometimes foster the deepest violations of intimacy. It is easy to become bitter, hurt and lose hope that life can really be meaningful and love can truly prevail.

Facing this dark world, Isaiah remembers. By the grace of God, he remembers the faithfulness of God. He remembers the promises of God. He remembers the longsuffering of God. Looking back through the story of Israel’s failures, he also sees another picture. The longsuffering God prevails upon His people again and again.

Our friends may fail us. Our country may fail us. Our lovers may fail us. We have failed us. For if we are truly honest, we have also failed the people around us. Yet this longsuffering God is still at work in our world and our lives.

In the midst of a bleak, yet honest vision of human failure, we need God’s grace to remember rightly. As we remember His longsuffering, we remember that grace has prevailed and will prevail in our lives and our world. Like Isaiah we see beyond the bleak disappointments of life and learn to hope.

As we wait and long for the fullness of love, let us remember the future with Isaiah and behold the longsuffering love of God prevailing in our families, our culture and our world.

Isaiah 2:2-5
2 Now it shall come to pass in the latter days
That the mountain of the LORD’s house
Shall be established on the top of the mountains,
And shall be exalted above the hills;
And all nations shall flow to it.
3 Many people shall come and say,

“ Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
He will teach us His ways,
And we shall walk in His paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
4 He shall judge between the nations,
And rebuke many people;
They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
And their spears into pruning hooks;
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war anymore.
5 O house of Jacob, come and let us walk
In the light of the LORD.

Advent Dreaming

December 3, 2007 / dougfloyd / 0 Comments

Advent is a time for dreaming. A time for recovering ancient, long forgotten dreams. A time to expect, anticipate, we rejoice in the day when the wrongs will be righted, the righteous will be vindicated, the weak will be made strong, the justice of God will prevail and be revealed to all people. As we dream of a world made right by love, we might just begin to walk and live in the reality of that love in the ways we speak, act and live toward our fellow humans.

I wrote a little story about advent dreaming, but I thought it was too long to post here. If you want to read it, it’s at the following link:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/668203/Going-to-the-House-of-the-Lord-Psalm-122

Advent

December 2, 2007 / dougfloyd / 0 Comments

I invite you to join me this year, as I seek to listen, watch and wait during this upcoming season of Advent. Each year, I set aside time to write reflections during Advent and Lent as way of helping me to remember.

In a world of deadlines and schedules and conflict and struggle, we tend to forget anything older than the latest tidbit of information calling to us from the television, the radio, the street signs and the endless chatter. In a swirl of sights and sounds, truth becomes what I can understand, I can articulate, I can control, I can verify.

In pause of Advent, I am reminded that I do not verify the truth, it verifies me. I do not defend the truth, it defends me. I cannot grasp the truth–for long before I even knew the truth, I was grasped and held in the hands of the One who is and always has been truth.

Advent compels me to look backward and forward at the same time. I look back to a story, the story that sounded long before I walked this planet. And it will continue sounding long after the traces of my footprints have long vanished from this land. This ancient story is a story about the end of this age. The culmination, the grand climax, the glory, the wonder, the hope of the coming of the One through whom all things have been made and all things will reach their fulfillment.

Curb Your Dogma!?

October 26, 2007 / dougfloyd / 1 Comment

When I was in college in the early 80s, Larry Norman had a t-shirt with a picture of Phydeaux and the words, “Curb Your Dogma!” I loved it. With fresh burns from fire-breathing fundies, this little phrase expressed my sentiment completely: too much dogma, not enough love.

I see these same ideas circulating regularly among various Christian/x-Christians groups who are frustrated by the lack of love they’ve experienced in the church. I still related to the frustration, but I believe it is a bit misdirected. Dogma, properly understood, would not restrict love, but provides a channel through which loves flows.

Chesterton says that without dogma, some solid unshakable ideas, man becomes subject to the trends of the moment. So the real problem with the loveless fundamentalists, is not dogma, but possibly a lack of understanding how dogma works in our lives.

Reading a recent issue of Touchstone, I saw a great quote by Flannery O’Connor that perfectly captures the role of dogma in the journey of faith. She says, “Dogma is an instrument for penetrating reality…It is one of the functions of the Church to transmit into prophetic vision that good for all time.” The challenge of dogma is the challenge is taking a stand, and then acting on the basis of that stand.

Some folks would like the freedom to turn right and left at the same time. While this might be an interesting theoretical puzzle for quantum mechanics, I don’t live in a theoretical world. I live in a world where I must chose. Those choices open new possibilities while removing others.

Christian dogma is the freedom to choose to live by a set of ideas that happen to be older than the latest best seller that will soon be on the discount shelf for half price (and may never even see a reprint). Instead of a short-time vision, Christian dogma stretches across centuries and has shaped the formation of cultures and civilizations.

O’Connor continues by saying that “Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.” Over centuries, weak and fallible humans have struggled to see the implications of Christian dogma.

In spite of human flaws and failures, this dogma has reaffirmed a value of human life not tied to status, race or sexuality. We must imagine the struggle of redefining person in a world where landowners alone enjoyed the status of person. Taking Paul’s lead, the Church Fathers wrestled through the implications of their Christian dogma and what it meant for the status of all human beings. Working out their idea, has not always been successful but the world it created is far different from the world where the ideas first emerged.

Each generation of Christians faces this challenge of revisioning their world through the eyes of light that Christian dogma provides. Instead of building fortresses around our ideas, thinking that is what it means to be faithful. We look out upon a world of finance, computers, war, politics, entertainment and more, and we consider how does this dogma enlighten the way, guiding us to be visionaries who do not stumble but are walking (in trust) toward the full light of day.

Vodka Drip Saves Life

October 10, 2007 / dougfloyd / 1 Comment

According to AP (via MSNBC) an Italian tourist was visiting Australia earlier this year, when he almost died from a ingesting a large quantity of ethylene glycol. But his life was saved through quick thinking doctors who promptly administered a vodka drip.

“The patient was drip-fed about three standard drinks an hour for three days in the intensive care unit,” he said. “The hospital’s administrators were also very understanding when we explained our reasons for buying a case of vodka.”

Since this treatment was so ~~successful~~ popular, I guess hospitals all across Australia will now happy hour treatments.

Posting, Journaling and more

October 8, 2007 / dougfloyd / 1 Comment

Lately, I’ve been using this blog to do some journaling. In the past, I tried to limit it to observations, but my mind doesn’t work in the pure blogging form. Sometimes I notice interesting things and trends online that I want to note, but other times I blab way to long for a typical blog. But it gives me somewhere to think out loud. Of course, I might just get tired and quit blogging again for 6 months. As Jeremy says, I am not a blogger but a grogger.

Christian Action springs from a communion of love

October 8, 2007 / dougfloyd / 1 Comment

“Let us not love in word or speech, but in deed and in truth.” 1 John 3:18

Von Balthasar lays out a vision of Christian action based upon the revelation of Jesus and fully revealed in his self-emptying devotion on the cross. This action is rooted in a completely free communion of love between the Father, the Son and the Spirit.

Christian action outside this revelation of love becomes pure ethics and is drained of the relational content of love’s revelation. Without this relation, action can become subject to necessity because it is not free in love. Think of Jesus action in the cross. It proceeds from the love of the Father and returns to the love of the Father. His action is an incarnation of Lover and Beloved. Just as the Son lives in this pure relation of lover and beloved with the Father, He reveals this love to a world at enmity with God.

His incarnation reveals God’s intention to relate to His people as Lover and Beloved. Von Balthasar references the Song of Solomon to emphasize that Lover and Beloved are complete within their mutual reciprocation of love. This love is not dependent upon producing children but is free of necessity and complete in itself.

The love between the Father, the Son and the Spirit is a complete love that needs nothing outside the relation to bring completion. Creation does not make God’s love more real. God’s love does not necessitate creating. The love between the Father, the Son and the Spirit is complete (completely fulfilling and fulfilled).

There is no unmet longing within God. While human happiness necessitates a longing beyond ourselves, the love of God is free of necessity. This is difficult for us to grasp because we do not live in this reality. As result, without something new outside the circle of reciprocal love, we might tend to think this love, this relation will growing tiresome, boring. That reveals our own incapacity for complete love that is free of necessity.

With this idea of a completely fulfilled love within the relation of the Godhead, Von Balthasar continues to lay out a picture of love that has no motive, no unfulfilled eros, no longing beyond the mutual reciprocity of love. For images of this among humans, Von Balthasar turns to Mary when she pours out the costly vial on Jesus’s feet. Her act is pure response to love, thus it appears as useless to outside eyes. (This useless outpouring of love makes me think of Chuang Tzu’s useless tree.)

Christian action springs from the freedom of a loving communion between Lover and Beloved. Enveloped in the ongoing communion of lover and beloved, the Christian moves from love and toward love. Only now can Von Balthasar begin to discuss dogmatic theology and offer his definition that “Dogmatic theology is the articulation of the conditions of possibility of Christian action in light of revelation.”

Thus all Christian action is a secondary reaction to the primary action of God as Lover and Beloved. Taken up into this communion by the Holy Spirit, the Christian simply responds and acts in this self-emptying love as most fully revealed in the cross. In the cross, God reconciles his enemies. When the enemy is not even on speaking terms, God acts to bring reconciliation.

In Christ, He enters into the gulf of sin and suffering that ripples across our world. Entering into the very gulf of death created by such violations of love, God both both judges and offers complete rectitude by taking the division, the suffering, the separation into Himself. The cross is both historical (occurring at a fixed point in space and time) and ahistorical (anticipating the revelation of love’s ultimate triumph when all creation is reconciled to God).

Thus the Christian acts (incompletely and partially) in love at a fixed point in time and space while still anticipating the triumph of love in that action (complete and absolute). Von Balthasar calls this action parousial. The act of love that anticipates the sudden revealing of complete love in all creation.

The Christian also acts in faith. While not ignoring the faults of others in the world around him, the Christian is to look with eyes of faith at Jesus’ action in the cross. By the grace of the Spirit, the Christian is taken up into the communion of suffering found within the cross. Only in the place of the cross, does the Christian begin to behold the knowledge of the love of God. Thus loving action cannot be separated from a loving communion that is rooted in self-emptying love.

Von Balthasar offers many points for consideration and reflection: a love without necessity, loving action that is both universal and particular/historical and ahistorical, action rooted in the communion of self-emptying love, and a knowledge rooted in loving communion as revealed in the cross.

MSNBC Newsvine

October 8, 2007 / dougfloyd / 0 Comments

MSNBC takes a step closer to real interactive news by purchasing Newsvine. This is an interesting news site because it was originally an invite only community. Community members can post, vote and comment on news story. While I mostly lurked through the discussion threads, I always enjoyed the hearty and sometimes volatile discussions.

Read the community’s response to today’s announcement in the Newsvine community.

The Holy Spirit and Hyperlinks

October 8, 2007 / dougfloyd / 0 Comments

Oddly enough, after I posted the social computing diagram (that I picked up from Alex at the TechTarget blog), I thought of the Trinity–and the Holy Spirit in particular. The way the Internet has connected ideas (past, present, and even future) provides an analogy for thinking about who the Church Fathers called the “Fellowship of God.”

Many people pause and question the Christian doctrine of the Trinity (three persons, one God). It doesn’t make sense in a highly individualized world. And in fact, Enlightenment theologians rarely mentioned the Trinity (when compared with the writings of the Fathers).

Coming from the word pneuma, spirit means wind or breath. The wind moves over the surface of the connecting everything. We breathe to live. Breath in-spires or inspirits us. When I speak with another person we share words. The words are sounds carried by breath. Thus we share breath. Some have used the doctrine of the Holy Spirit to speak of a non monist, non dualism–challenging both East and West.

But that’s another story. Back to social computing. The amazing interconnectivity of the web reveals the amazing interconnectivity of humans across the planet (space) and across cultures (time). This provides an analogy for thinking about the Holy Spirit who is present to all particularities at the same time. (Accepting of course that the Triune God is beyond all referents while anticipating all referents.) He is not limited by particularity but can interact with particularity, which is difficult for us to process, so we ask, “How could God hear and answer all prayers at the same time.”

This might begin to help us think about questions like that. The Church Fathers thought about this and used the term perichoresis to discuss it.

Pilgrim Notes