Bishop John Shelby spong, whose book The Fourth Gospel we are reading, died last Sunday at age 90. Although a sad loss, it is also synchronous. A little breath was passed form one life into the next, and his is all of our work to carry on: how to help the church stay relevant in today’s world. I think of our friend Matt Russell, whose definition of church was always beyond walls. Bill said last week, quoting Ilia Delio, “The Cosmos is our monastery.”

Much gratitude to John Shelby Spong and the wisdom legacy he has left. We hope we do you a great service.

We are approaching the Book of Signs in the gospel of John, or the stories of the miracles of Jesus. To engage with these as we believe the writers of John intended, we need to engage our active imagination, a process used by Jung to bridge the gap between the conscious and unconscious minds. It is to let these ancient stories inhabit us and allow them to stir something new in us so that both the stories and the hearer of the stories are changed. When we do our inner work, we change the outer world. I will talk more about engaging with stories on Sunday.

At the end of the podcast I read this poem from Meister Eckhart:

There once was a meeting of theologians,
each one wiser than the others, gathered
to explain what God’s true nature was.
One of the wise ones argued that
God was in the soul, the soul in the heart—
so that God was most truly in the heart.
But I say this: the soul is entirely and
utterly present in every single part of
the body, even in the foot or in the eye.
If this is so, we must say that God is
present in every part of our body equally.
So take care of those toes of yours!

Thanks for listening and “see” you Sunday!

*Thanks to Lucas Moorehead for sharing his photo of his Spong collection!*