Spiritual life is physical

Human dualism drawing

In “Loss of shared space: the second pandemic” (4/17/2020), I wrote:

Our brains are hardwired so that the mere sight of a face [online] in real time minimally satisfies the need for a sense of presence with each other. But, our brains are in bodies in the material world. And our bodies need more than that minimal sight on a screen in order to feel—to know in the blood—that we are really in the midst of other people.

Continue Reading

Being with

Even as I was completing the final part of my “Am I a nontheist…?” series, I knew that the editorial constraints I had imposed to keep those posts focused might create a false impression.

They could be read as describing a hermit, or at least someone who relies solely upon what Liz Opp has called “spiritual individualism” (“The slippery nature of corporate faith“), rather than someone for whom worship and daily life with others are essential.

Granted, I

Continue Reading

Am I a nontheist…? (Part III)

Part I: Languages of belief
Part II: Survival faith and practice
Part III: “Someone should start laughing”

“Someone should start laughing”

I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:

How are you?

I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:

What is God?

If you think that Truth can be known
From words,

If you think that the Sun and the Ocean

Continue Reading

But not alone

In my previous post, I mentioned my wariness of both orthodoxies and gnosticisms, and I affirmed the primacy of an individual’s immediate experience of Divine Presence in daily faith and practice. A number of challenges complicate the effort to live by such an affirmation.

Over the past three decades, I have taken refuge in the paradoxical religious life of a solitaire.

My faith and practice are rooted in the Christ-centeredness of my Lutheran upbringing and

Continue Reading

Where to start

On Easter of 2006, I began making my way, chapter by chapter, through The Complete Gospels: Annotated Scholars Version, that 1994 publication of the Jesus Seminar which gathers together new translations of the canonical gospels, the reconstructed Signs Gospel and Sayings Gospel Q, the Gospel of Thomas, and fourteen others from the first three centuries of the Common Era.

It was as I began reading the second century gnostic Christian Secret Book of James, just this past week,

Continue Reading

Site Footer

Verified by MonsterInsights