Digging Christmas

Dear Folks -

The title of the "life talk" this week is "Digging Christmas."

To "dig" Christmas has, for me, two meanings:

First, to understand.

Second, to delve deeply into.

My goal in this talk was for us to understand both the context in 
which the Christmas stories were conceived and told and to understand 
the context in which we live. Our times and our lives are much more 
like those who were in power at the time of the birth of Jesus than we 
are accustomed to thinking. The talk I gave amplifies on these matters.

The text I used for the talk is below. The audio version is different 
somewhat. You can listen to it by going to the Ordinary Life website 
where you will also find the overheads, including cartoons, I used in 
the talk.

Much love,

Bill Kerley

Click here to Download text 20101212.pdf

 

 

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Outside the Box

Dear Folks -
In the "life talk" I gave this week in Ordinary Life, I dealt with the need to think and live outside the box in both our religious and spiritual lives. I used the birth stories of Jesus as an example of doing this.

The two birth story we have are very different from each other and we must get "outside the box" to hear them correctly. Most approaches to these stories consider them as either factually true or as fables. There is a third approach and that is the one I suggest taking.

Because of the Enlightenment, people have confused truth with factuality. They are not the same. We suffer from "fact fundamentalism."

This talk is about what kind of literature these stories are and what do they mean. I contend, along with most contemporary biblical scholarship, that these stories are parables. They were and are intended to turn the world view of those who heard them and those who hear them upside down.

These stories are about joy, gratitude, hope and meaning.

Much love,

Bill Kerley

Click here to Download text 20101205.pdf

Click here to Download Presentation Slides 12:5:10 - Outside the Box.pdf

Click here to Download audio 20101205.mp3


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Peace On Earth

 Dear Folks -

This week in Ordinary Life I began a series I intend to carry out through the first of the year. I will be focusing on the birth stories of Jesus as found in the Christian tradition and seeking to see what those stories might mean for us in the here and now.

This week's talk introduces the series. The birth stories we have are very different from each other and were originally intended to be heard not only as personal stories but also - and perhaps primarily - as political stories. We are very unaccustomed to hearing these stories this way. The primary point of this talk is that whereas our primary interest is in having "peace of mind," God's primary interest is in having "peace on earth."

Much love,

Bill Kerley

Click here to Download text 20101128.pdf

Click here to Download Presentation Slides 11:24:10 - Peace on Earth.pdf

Unfortunately, the audio from this week is not available.

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The Trouble With Grace

Dear Folks -

The "life talk" I gave this week is about grace - the most important and central concept of spiritual and religious work. Certainly this is true for the Jewish-Christian traditions.

Our culture, working as it does on a system of reward and punishment, easily misunderstands grace. We are used to thinking of injustices (usually those we think done to us), justice (usually those people we think deserving of punishment) and just rewards. It is only when we step outside of this system can we begin to understand the notion of grace.

This is a summary of the talk I gave in Ordinary Life this week. The full text that I used is below. The overheads and cartoons I used, along with the ability to download an audio file of the talk, can be found below as well.

Much love,

Bill Kerley

Click here to Download text 20101121.pdf

Click here to Download Presentation Slides 11:21:10 - The Trouble with Grace.pdf

 

Click here to Download audio 20101121.mp3

 

 

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