What do Shane Claiborne and Walt Whitman have in common? Very little, I suppose. But they intersect in my mind’s work this week. Claiborne recently spoke at Bethany Theological Seminary where I am taking a class called Theopoetics. Enter Whitman. Lauded by all the leading thinkers and writers in the field of theopoetics, old Walt,…
A lived theology: Pete Seeger wrote only one song that explicitly mentions God (at age 92), but his life and music powerfully resisted war, oppression and destruction of the earth. Like the words scribed on his banjo, this man surrounded hate and forced it to surrender!
Eugene Peterson, author of the modern-day translation of the New Testament, “The Message”, talks about storytelling, imagination, and the role of poets and novelists in the life of the church: “we should ordain them,” he says. From the 2007 Writers Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University.
The world needs more contemplatives, more prayerful action, more of us who are willing to say what is sacred and what is not.
We, the community that vets return to, don’t only need education about what moral injury is. We need the same spiritual solution that veterans need. If we think we don’t, if we separate out us from them, I fear we will all stay in the same denial, the same lies that keep us fighting our own demons, alone, separated from each other and from God.
Native scholar Vine Deloria’s discussion (in his book of essays titled “Spirit and Reason”, published in 1999) of the inadequacy of traditional scientific methodology and the idea of a moral universe interjects a non-Western, non-fundamentalist view onto the recent Nye/Ham debate. The kind of holistic science Deloria describes below, and the collective moral responsibility seen…
“In Islam, [you] stand up for those who are suffering, especially when they’re close to you, and especially when that suffering is a result of religious prejudice,” says Patel. He decided never to be silent about prejudice again. The YES! Breakthrough 15: Eboo Patel — YES! Magazine — YES! Magazine.
Public Theology 