October 27-November 2: “Stay United with the Larger Body”
This week we will be covering the chapters from “Live Patiently with the “Not Yet” through to “Allow Yourself to be Fully Received” (pages 49-66). The chapters for our discussion will be “See Yourself Truthfully” (page 53), “Stay United with the Larger Body” (page 57) and “Stand Erect in Your Sorrow” (page 61). Please share your thoughts and comments. And if you have a chapter in this section that you want to comment on, please e-mail me (jackgiven@comcast.net) your comment and I will include it as we go through this thought provoking, challenging and life-enriching way of exploring The Inner Voice of Love.
Stay United with the Larger Body
How is it that our own growth cannot take place without the growth of others? What does Jesus’ journey teach us about this?
6 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
October 29th, 2008 @ 10:00 pm
Henri tells us; your journey is not just for yourself but for all who belong to the body. Your own growth cannot take place without growth in others. Your choices call your friends to make new choices.
I have always felt that no ONE can succeed without ALL of us succeeding, (success in this case means the return of Jesus in joyful proclamation of the Kingdom.) This seems to me to be God’s plan for us. We must lift each other up, give hope to one another, to live a life that speaks to others and calls them to follow.
Jesus lived his journey open, in love, in such a way that we His followers wanted to live as and with Him. It is not necessarily Jesus’ God-ness that makes Him a human we (I) want to imitate. We (I) see the possibility that He lived a life I can live. It is possible for me to speak of love, be a witness to love and put the Father at the center of my life.
By understanding that those around me are in the community of God and acting as if they actually are my brother and sister, who I love – I can bring paradise, on earth as it is in heaven.
Peace
October 29th, 2008 @ 8:06 pm
I have been betrayed and very hurt by the church as institution. But I have been learning to broaden my understanding of Church. To see it not as an institution, but a Body and to realize that this Body nourishes and sustains me in wonderful and surprising ways. While my family and I attend a church, most of the care I receive is from other sources. I pray that someday I will be able to attend a church that sustains me, that is the Body of Christ for me. I’m not looking for perfection–just someplace where I feel like I belong, someplace where I can safely be myself.
October 28th, 2008 @ 11:56 pm
This really hits home with me. I lived in Florida for 14 years and was part of a dynamic church. I was a member of a Ladies Only Sunday School class that really loved me after my divorce. My mother, father and 6 siblings lived here in Missouri, but I never felt lonely. After my father died I came home to visit and saw that my mother needed help so I sold my home in Florida and moved back to Missouri to “help”. I was finishing my Bachelors of SW degree as I lived with her. We attended a local church together and it was so toxic (hurtful) that I don’t think I have recovered from it, truly. And other disappoinments on top of that ensued from someone in authority at a church I attended who should have known better. I have not attended a church faithfully since. I know that we are to fellowship, God commands it, which I do here and there, now and again. And then I cry out because I am lonely. There is a lesson for me here but will I take heed. Please pray for me that I will.
October 26th, 2008 @ 9:16 pm
Greetings. From a very young age I have had a deep sense of call to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. As life has progressed so too has my involvement in Church life. My call has taken me to coarses, university, institutes hoping that with each new piece of information/formation my thirst for knowledge and my drive to serve would be satisfied. I have enjoyed the support of many along the way through prayer and presence. This group of people I know as Church have loved me and I them - this is our call ‘to love’. The toughest part and most confusing part for me has been the betrayl that I have suffered on the lips of these very same people whom I have loved. I have found my Institutional Church to be quite cruel and lacking in justice. While experiencing the humanity of church I have been graced with a deeper connection with the man I know as Jesus. I have turned much of my reasoning to follow as he led (Henri’s book In the Name of Jesus) has affirmed what my descipleship will look like. Although frightening to stray from the safe environment of rules and dogmas, I have discovered through scortching pain that first and foremost I am a Child of God and a Desciple of Jesus. I have come to be a leader through following what I understand to be the path of Jesus. Compassion for myself and compassion for the humanity of God’s church has been my saving grace. It has allowed me to continue to love through the storm of church life and draw nearer to the One, whom I know will not foresake me ever.
October 26th, 2008 @ 6:36 am
Our small struggling congregation is trying to deal with changing demographics in the community. Through an interim period between called Pastors we identified ourselves as being a congregation in which the majority are permitting and a minority are participating. For some of us who spend a lot of time at church, this can cause us to be disillusioned with church. But I know, deep in my bones, that church is different from any other institution. Other institutions can have leadership and membership actually divorced from each other, maybe even with no point of contact between their different goals and missions. The majority permitting in our church, while they may yet even now not be fully conscious of why we called the Pastor we have called, nevertheless deep down inside I believe it is true that our Pastor was called from among us, the church, because we want and need to know how to change and discern a path more obedient to God’s purposes in the world. church helps us to know ourselves and to know we are Church and the fact that I’m still in it hoping and praying all through this faith journey, I consider just as much of a miracle as all of those devoted people tagging along after Jesus, grieving over His death, rejoicing at the resurrection. It’s all more real than anything else I know and depends upon the Whole Body of Believers.
October 24th, 2008 @ 12:44 pm
Although he doesn’t use the word (at least not in this section) Nouwen is talking about the church. “The New Testament [to use still another quote by Mr. Anonymous] is all about Christ, Christ, Christ and church, church, church.” The former is the Head and the latter
is His Body…and you can’t be attached to the Head without also joining the other parts of the Body…
And yet the church has often disappointed us (or even abandoned us in our journey). Are any of us willing to share negative experiences? How about positive ones? For me, I know that my trip through “the valley of the shadow of death” after my wife died over 8 years ago would have been much longer (I might still be there) and more painful
if it were not for other members of that Body.