Sunday, November 1, 2009

All Saints Day and All Souls Day

Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9
3:1 But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.

3:2 In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be an affliction,

3:3 And their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace.

3:4 For though in the sight of men they were punished, their hope is full of immortality.

3:5 Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself;

3:6 like gold in the furnace he tried them, and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them.

3:7 In the time of their visitation they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble.

3:8 They will govern nations and rule over peoples and the Lord will reign over them forever.

3:9 Those who trust in him will understand truth, and the faithful will abide with him in love, because grace and mercy are upon his elect, and he watches over his holy ones.

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In this my personal Christian blog, I hope to be discursive and now and then critical. What I write here is tentative and tensive. I post thoughts, feelings, and observations somewhat randomly and often in immediate response to current events and posts on other blogs.


"Serendipitous Creativity" from Gordon Kaufman

"I suggested that what we today should regard as God is the ongoing creativity in the universe - the bringing (or coming) into being of what is genuinely new, something transformative; …

"In some respects and some degrees this creativity is apparently happening continuously, in and through the processes or activities or events around us and within us(…) is a profound mystery to us humans(…) But on the whole, as we look back on the long and often painful developments that slowly brought human life and our complex human worlds into being, we cannot but regard this creativity as serendipitous …

"I want to stress that this serendipitous creativity - God! - to which we should be responsive is not the private possession of any of the many particular religious faiths or systems …

"This profound mystery of creativity is manifest in and through the overall human bio-historical evolution and development everywhere on the planet; and it continues to show itself throughout the entire human project, no matter what may be the particular religious and or cultural beliefs."

Gordon Kaufman, Mennonite Life, December 2005 vol. 60 no. 4

Melville is a rational man who

"Melville is a rational man who wants God to exist. He wants Him to exist for the same reasons we all do: to be our rescuer and appreciator, to act as a confidant in our moments of crisis and to give us reassurance that, over the horizon of our deaths, we will survive." (John Updike)

And that is a problem for me.

Fragmented Notions

Fragmented Notions
Copyright © 2007 Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Vanderbilt University

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