Monastery of the Holy Spirit

I took a small group of folks from my church to the Monastery in Conyers, GA this saturday. It was a beautiful day and just the thing we all needed. We were there from 10:30 till 3:30 with no agenda but to sit in silence, meditate, and pray. The amazing thing was that I didn't think of football one time all day and couldn't believe that the day was over when it was. The others felt the same as well. There's something about simply being in God's presence in a way that you can acknowledge that is not contrived, shallow, or pietistic. I'm finally beginning to meet the God of my adulthood, though I've known of and worshipped that God for some time now. That God has supplanted the one-dimensional God of my upbringing, bringing me into the complexity of the triune God who stands for everything that God used to be but so very much more.

I read a book on justice and contemplation. I'm really trying to plumb the depths of what it means to pursue the active life contemplatively. The notion of the inward and outward journeys actually being the same path intrigues me. For most of us, if we're even aware of both the inward and outward journeys, our journeys remain disconnected and one of them dominates the other. Works such as Parker Palmer's "A Hidden Wholeness" exemplify this connection.

How do I unifty Mary and Martha? Or how do I find the Martha in Mary and the Mary in Martha? 

Faith, Politics, and Policy Conference

I heard Jim Wallis (of Sojourners) speak this afternoon at the Faith, Politics, and Policy conference at Candler. He mostly reiterated many of his arguments in “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Just Doesn’t Get it.” He did give many hopeful stories about meeting younger and younger teens/children at his speaking engagements (who were not there just because of their parents). He quoted an 8 year old saying, “I asked here what made sense to her today in what I said. She responded, ‘Well, you talked about so many people being poor and I just figured that if I’m a Christian then I ought to do something about it.’ I hope that was true!

In a breakout session Dr. Mary Elizabeth Moore and Dr. Carol Lakey Hess spoke of the spiritual practice of narrativity as a way of experiencing the other in such a way that our perspectives are expanded. So, sharing stories with respect and love is a model for political awareness and collaboration.

Great Wedding

We just went to a very beautiful wedding in Weaverville, NC. Dave and Michelle Garber really picked out a great place. Lots of fun. See more photos on the website:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mattbrich