Dear Folks -
One of the reasons, I contend in this "life talk," that the outer world in which we live is in such a mess is because we ourselves are in a mess internally. We project onto the outer world of others those aspects of ourselves that we have difficulty with. It is when we learn to go within and keep company with ourselves that we can begin to be of use in healing the various alienations that exist in the outer world. That's this week's talk in summary.
As usual, the written word varies from what was said so if you want to hear the audible version, go to the links below.
Much love,
Bill Kerley
Click here to Download 20090301.pdf
Click here to Download 20090301.mp3
Read moreDear Folks -
Once again my own feeling is that the audio version of this week's "life talk" in Ordinary Life is better than the text.
In summary: I am talking about the morality teachings of Jesus. In one he says that we are not to be led astray by our anger. Our culture immerses us in a culture of anger and "being against" others. The only way out of this stance is to experience the Sacred in the way that Jesus did. To do so leads to the understanding and practice that we are each part of each other and what we do to others we do in fact do to ourselves.
I'll remind you again that you can subscribe to audio versions of these talks through iTunes. See instructions at
http://www.ordinarylife.org/ol_weblog/resources.html
A full copy of the text I spoke from is below.
Much love,
Bill Kerley
Click here to Download 20090222.pdf
Click here to Download 20090222.mp3
Read moreDear Folks -
This week in Ordinary Life I began to introduce the “morality” teachings of Jesus. I begin by raising the questions: what does morality come from and what make us moral people? As I have talked about some before, there are two ways of thinking and living: with the du-alistic mind or with the non-dualistic mind. In this talk I will argue that dualistic morality keeps us stuck in a “matrix” that is not real life at all. True morality comes when we are willing to step outside of the matrix in which we live and when we are more will-ing to live the questions than to assume we have the answers. A complete copy of the text I used follows. As is most often the case, I feel the audio version, which you can find now on iTunes.
Much love,
Bill Kerley
Download 20090215.pdf
Download 20090215.mp3
Read moreDear Folks -
Last summer I had planned to take some time off and spend it in much
different ways than events dictated. One of the unexpected things that
happened during that time was Ike. Ordinary Life was cancelled for
that Sunday. The speaker scheduled to speak was The Reverend Bill
Lawson.
We wanted to reschedule Bill to speak for us on a Sunday when I could
be present to introduce him and, perhaps, for the to have a bit of a
dialogue. I'm grateful for Joan Scales for arranging this.
I have known Bill for well over 40 years. In 1967 he and I gave a
dialogue sermon together called "The Salt and Pepper of the Earth." It
made the papers! He is an amazing speaker and has an incredible record
in the field of social justice and civil rights. Among other things,
he founded the Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church that now has over 7000
members. He is now retired from that position and now teaches at Rice
University. In 1996 the Houston community honored him with the
creation of a non-profit advocacy agency called the William A Lawson
Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
The title he has given for what he will share with us this week in
Ordinary Life is -
"Bridging the Gap Between the Powerful and the Powerless to Achieve
Peace and Prosperity."
Trust me on this: you don't want to miss hearing Bill Lawson speak.
Much love,
Bill Kerley
Click here to Download 20090208.mp3
Read more