ORDINARY LIFE - Thoughts and Ideas to Help You Live a Happier Life
* * *
Summary of Ordinary Life for September 5, 2021
* * *
Dear Folks -
We began this week’s time in Ordinary Life by reading the first six verses of the Gospel of John, some of the best known verses in the Bible. It is very difficult to capture in English the meaning of these words. The message of Jesus was a call to “authentic existence.” What is that? We have become more wedded to doctrines about Jesus than committed to living out his teachings. John is written to and about a community that had a deeper and newer vision of God and of themselves. This resulted in a new story of Jesus. Shelby Spong, whose book on John we are referencing a lot, was reluctant to write his book and did so because of the insights of evolutionary cosmology. I tell about how Jim Finley, one of our contemporary mystics, came to have Thomas Merton as a spiritual director. In Merton Finley experienced God. The goal in studying John is that we begin to see ourselves as part of who God is and to experience God as part of who we are. We called the time -
How Do You Express Yourself?
That’s a brief summary of the time in Ordinary Life this week.
You can find the text we had in front of us, the presentation slides and the audio version of the talk using the links below.
Our podcast, “In Between,” can be accessed through the Ordinary Life web site.
If you would like to know how to make a contribution to Ordinary Life, click here for video instructions.
As COVID guidelines continue to change, please continue to register for Ordinary Life. In order to register for Ordinary Life this coming week, click here. There is, of course, no need to register for live streaming.
Be well and much love,
Bill Kerley
In order to read or download the text of the talk, click here.
In order to view or download the presentation slides, click here.
In order to access the audio version of the talk, use the link below.
To watch the video of today’s talk, please use the YouTube player link below.