Spirituality

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The Puzzle of The Trinity

Is the idea of the Trinity just some outmoded bunkum, an insistence that people believe "three impossible things before breakfast"? Wouldn't it make more sense to think about God as one thing, rather than with all this theological nonsense? These are all good questions - some of which I daresay I'll have a bash at answering, and some I will ignore, this coming Tuesday (2/6/20) at Cafechurch. Hit us up for a Zoom link - and there is some limited space available in housegroups for those who never want to Zoom ever again in their entire lives.

I suggest this for a change gear

Abundant Life?

Jesus said that he came to bring life in abundance. I don't know know about you, but I don't feel like my life is especially abundant right now. I feel like I'm stuck in the belly of a giant fish like Jonah. What does it mean to have an abundance of life which isn't crushed by something like COVID-19? What does abundance look like in the midst of suffering?
Tuesday 5/5/2020 at 7pm via Zoom https://us02web.zoom.us/j/190315168?pwd=eEV1QkZ5Mi9BK25hWVE4K25DYVltQT09

Practice Resurrection

On Tuesday morning Australian Time we woke up to shocking news. Notre Dame Cathedral was on fire. For a while it looked as though the whole thing was about to collapse into complete ruins, or that the amazing medieval rose windows and great organ would be destroyed. Thousands watched, cried, and sang as the central spire came crashing down and red fire bloomed into the night sky. Heroism, and great organisation prevented the worst from happening, but the cold, blackened embers of the roof, and the huge amount of damage, serve as a reminder of how fragile things are.

Spiritual Growth

Is spiritual growth more like climbing a ladder or like being a plant? A lot of us have come from churches where a linear model of spiritual ascent was more or less explicitly at work. As well as being a human-centric ego project, it is a profoundly un-scriptural way of looking at spiritual growth. Rather than think of the spiritual life as a sort of ladder to heaven, Scripture is full of images of growth and fruitfulness. To grow spiritually, to bear fruit, is to be much more like a tree than a ladder.

Anne's session from 5/3/19 explores this idea more thoroughly

God is calling you: are you paying attention?

A couple of weeks ago we had a session on the whole "call of God" idea. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a lot more to be said than we had time for. So this week, we're having another bash.  If God were calling you, would you notice? Or, more exactly, God is calling you: are you paying attention? How do you go about discerning what God is calling you to? And what if God is calling you to something unpleasant? All this and more will be explored this week - 6/2/2017.

 

Jonah and the Night Journey

The story of Jonah and the Whale is complex. It leads us to ask: where is God in suffering? When Jonah is sitting in the pitch dark in his whale, with only the smell of decomposing fish for company, a long, long way from the light of the sun, he sang a psalm of both lament and praise. Is God somehow active in the dark night of the soul?

Wellness and Christianity

What is the relationship between Wellness and Christianity? What does California have to do with Jerusalem? In this presentation we think about the similarities and differences, and consider how we might integrate wellness with our faith, without identifying the one with the other. Here is the presentation:
Sign on the wall at my gym in Preston

Baptism and Identity

Right before Jesus heads off to the wilderness, he is baptised and hears God's affirmation: "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." But what does this mean for our identity as baptised persons? This session follows the first chapter of Rowan Williams' excellent book Being Christian

 

Baptism of Christ

Hate and Love

Jesus said, shockingly, "‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26.)

What are we to make of these strange, paradoxical words? One way into it is to take a look at what Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said about the three modes of life - the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious.

While not wanting to domesticate these strange words, we can perhaps get a better insight into what they might mean for us today.

Deep Desire

How do you get in touch with your desire for God? We pay lip service to the idea that God is the end of all our desiring, but how do we make that real in our life?

One way, a little surprisingly, involves both imagining yourself as a tree, and using fariy tales. What do the fairy tales you remember from your past tell you about your desire for God - and, indeed, about God's desire for you?

You may like to use the following exercise from the presentation:

Deep Desire

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