Saturday, 20 June 2009
This week at Still Waters - 6/21/09
Topic: Lectionary
This week’s Lectionary: psalm 9.9-20, 1 samuel 17.1a, 4-11, 19-23, 32-49, mark 4.35-41, & 2 corinthians 6.1-13
Working on a Tabernacle message about how we think that we need to defend God; violence, arrogance, separatism, hatred, war, & politics. Christ calms the storm and expects us (in the boat) to have “faith.” Seems, as His “Body,” we sleep at the wrong times, we panic at the wrong times (exhibiting little faith), rush to conquer and control, and if we are His representatives, why do we not calm the storms of those around us?
"Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" (mark 4.40)
Posted by Pastor Kork
at 11:55 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, 20 June 2009 11:57 AM EDT
Sunday, 10 May 2009
What is happening when God forgives our sins?
What do you think happens when God forgives our sin? Is it God changing and suddenly, reassessing us? Is it God deciding to waive some eternal and required punishment? No! Nothing happens in God. God is a perfect given-ness, totally and always given, literally fore-given, ahead of time, before our act of receptivity.
God does not change; we change. Here is what’s happening in the experience of forgiveness: When God’s arms are tight enough around us, when for a moment we can believe in love, when we let God gaze into your eyes deeply enough and are ready to believe it, than we’re able to let God rob us of our sins! God pulls them out of our pocket while holding us in an intimate and intense gaze. It is the only time we are quite happy to be robbed!
From Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 294, day 307
(Source: Days of Renewal)
Posted by Pastor Kork
at 12:34 PM EDT
Thursday, 23 April 2009
Who are the children of God?
Topic: Life In The Kingdom
We cannot achieve our inherent dignity—our divine sonship and our divine daughterhood. All we can do is awaken to it and start drawing upon it, appreciating it, reveling in it. We know we live in an inherent dignity, a dignity that no one has given to us and no one can take from us. -Fr Richard Rohr
Posted by Pastor Kork
at 9:16 AM EDT
Sunday, 22 March 2009
Lent 4 - Tabernacle Service
Topic: Taberncale Services
Lent 4 Message is up at: http://www.besidestillwaters.net/ppt.html
Interested in comments not controvery... Very interesting time, leading up to Holy Week.
Posted by Pastor Kork
at 12:01 AM EDT
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
SUFFERING
Topic: Sound Bites
Suffering is the necessary feeling of evil. If we don’t feel evil we stand antiseptically apart from it, numb. We can’t understand evil by thinking about it. The sin of much of our world is that we stand apart from pain; we buy our way out of the pain of being human. Jesus did not numb himself or withhold from pain. Suffering is the necessary pain so that we know evil, so that we can name evil and confront it. Otherwise we somehow dance through this world and never really feel what is happening.
Brothers and sisters, the irony is not that God should feel so fiercely; it’s that his creatures feel so feebly. If there is nothing in your life to cry about, if there is nothing in your life to complain about, if there is nothing in your life to yell about, you must be out of touch. We must all feel and know the pain of humanity. The free space that God leads us into is to feel the full spectrum, from great exaltation and joy, to the pain of mourning and dying and suffering. It’s called the Paschal Mystery.
The totally free person is one who can feel all of it and not be afraid of any of it.Fr Richard Rohr, from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 209, day 218
Posted by Pastor Kork
at 10:40 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 10 March 2009 10:43 AM EDT
Friday, 6 March 2009
Tent fire destroys homeless couple?s shelter
Topic: Life In The Kingdom
Our friends, Bernie & Rhonda, had a fire. They are safe and in a room now. This article discusses our shelter, the struggle to “call in” our tent city friends, and our struggle with North Coventry Township’s bigotry toward those with less. Have a read, and don’t forget to comment…
KM
POTTSTOWN: Officials said two people who were living in a makeshift tent in the woods behind a Verizon building on Robinson Street lost all of their belongings Wednesday in a fire. For more of this story, click on or type the URL below:
http://pottsmerc.com/articles/2009/03/06/news/doc49b11ddba8d75818895654.txt
Posted by Pastor Kork
at 12:01 AM EST
Updated: Monday, 9 March 2009 8:30 AM EDT
Monday, 5 January 2009
Not Knowing = Faith
Topic: Church & Culture
Your great spiritual teachers always had to balance knowing with not knowing and knowing that you don’t know. This has been almost totally lost. Even the Christian churches largely define faith as knowing, when in fact; biblically it means exactly the opposite. Faith is being willing not to know, and still being content, because God knows. Now that’s a gift from God—to be able to live with the freedom not to know.--Fr Richard Rohr
Posted by Pastor Kork
at 11:20 AM EST
Tuesday, 16 December 2008
A Very Difficult Circumstance... At Christmas
Topic: News Items
A dear friend runs a very compassionate shelter. I
’ve watched her pour her very life into the hardships of others for years as God’s instrument of peace. Her shelter and ours, work very closely together, and in fact our MAIN Street shelter exists, in all too many way, because of her and her compassionate vision.
At the beginning of December, and very good man named Pastor Paul arrived from Kenya. He was here to do some speaking engagements at some local churches that are friends of his, trying to raise money for his very poor church, and at their invitation. He is poor and his ministry is to the poor and handicapped back home. When he came here, he had a host, or so he thought.
He needs our help.
Click to read his story: http://www.besidestillwaters.net/stories.html
Posted by Pastor Kork
at 8:12 AM EST
Friday, 12 December 2008
Pro-Life & And In Favor Of Keeping Abortion Legal
Topic: Church & Culture
Fresh Air from WHYY, December 9, 2008
Frank Schaeffer's parents, Francis and Edith, were best-selling authors who were instrumental in linking the evangelical community with the anti-abortion movement.
But after coming of age as an evangelist and helping to organize religious fundamentalists politically, Schaeffer had a crisis of faith: Though he is pro-life, he decided that abortion should remain legal.
Very interesting interview: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97998654
Posted by Pastor Kork
at 8:57 AM EST
Updated: Friday, 12 December 2008 8:59 AM EST
Thursday, 20 November 2008
A Prayer
Topic: Life In The Kingdom
We have a friend who loves us the way that she can. I feel honored when she is free enough to confide the most horrific episodes of her life to me.
She lived in a box in New York City for more years than she can remember, with her husband. Her life, as early as she could remember, was filled with the most disturbing kind of abuses you ever heard. I am nauseated and repulsed by the extreme pain she was forced to endure. This stuff makes people react very differently, to every circumstance, than what you or I would consider normal; a type of primitive self preservation. Her moods swing from elation to abject fear in one instance. Her impulses are more in control than her conscience. A word can conjure up the worst memories that become real to her within. She is more like a wild animal than civilized; more like a child than an adult.
Her church experience has been people becoming exhausted in helping her, with comments like, “she just keeps making bad decisions,” and “why can’t she just act right?” She has 48 years of trying to survive in the most primitive ways. She can’t.
Another good friend rescued her. She took her into her home, managed an arsenal of drugs that would boggle the mind and keeps her alive, navigated doctor appointments, HIV treatments, and put up with the most difficult rejections of God’s mercy and impulses that I’ve ever seen; and working tirelessly as Christ’s representative in an 83 year old container.
We’ve needed to help to modify things for them, but we must not allow either of them to feel as though their great gains amount to loss. We must work to keep our dear friends connected to each other and us. We trust God that the strides that they made together, will move her ever closer to Christ’s healing.
How much love will help her? How much inconvenience will we need to endure to comfort her? How much love will be needed to assure her of Christ’s love? Isn’t this who HE is? Isn’t this who we must become?
Posted by Pastor Kork
at 12:53 PM EST
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