"La sagesse, c'est d'avoir des rêves suffisamment grands pour ne pas les perdre de vue lorsqu'on les poursuit." Oscar Wilde.
"Wisdom is having dreams that are sufficiently big so as not to lose sight of them as we are pursuing them." My own translation because I can't find the original.
This fits in nicely with ONE - the last Vitality Workshop to help churches put their Strategic Ministry Planning projects into place as a healthy, missional church should.
Another piece of wisdom to help Vitality in our churches; goes with "...if your memories are bigger thn your dreams, you have already begun to die", Howard Hendricks. and "those who neglect the past are doomed to repeat it". (Vitality Team Field Guide p 12)
And because I was browsing to find the original quotes, I note these for fun, all from Oscar Wilde :
"Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”
“With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?”
“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time
to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
The Wisdom of Others 2
"Bien-être : état d'esprit produit par la contemplation des ennuis d'autrui." Ambrose Bierce
“Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.”
This is from the man who said: "“You don't have to be stupid to be a Christian, ... but it probably helps.”
Actually starting to like the man as I read on ....
“Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.”
Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.”
Go look for yourselves on this site : Ambrose Bierce quotes
It's always a challenge to me when I read intelligent criticism of Christianity, because I feel that we are partly responsible for the bad image Christianity has. If we were truly representative of God's Kingdom values, there would be much less legalism, hypocrisy, laziness, spiritual misery.
Or am I too much of an idealist ???
“Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.”
This is from the man who said: "“You don't have to be stupid to be a Christian, ... but it probably helps.”
Actually starting to like the man as I read on ....
“Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.”
Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.”
Go look for yourselves on this site : Ambrose Bierce quotes
It's always a challenge to me when I read intelligent criticism of Christianity, because I feel that we are partly responsible for the bad image Christianity has. If we were truly representative of God's Kingdom values, there would be much less legalism, hypocrisy, laziness, spiritual misery.
Or am I too much of an idealist ???
The Wisdom of others 1
"La bouche garde le silence pour écouter parler le coeur." Alfred de Musset
"The mouth keeps silent in order to hear the heart speak."
French poet who started with the Romantics but was part of a literary group that didn't want to be categorized.
He became a member of the famous, prestigious Académie Française. Died youngish having led an increasingly dissolute life which sapped his creative energy.
I don't know the context of this saying, so I will just explain why I like this phrase.
I am a talker. I always seem to have something to say. And I love knowing things and finding things out. However, I have realized that it doesn't really matter if others don't know what I know. I don't have to inflict all my fascinating thoughts on others!
From a psychological/emotional point of view, my need to talk and to share comes from a need to be recognized and appreciated. But also comes from an innate desire to share with others and to bond through common experience and knowledge. So if I stop talking long enough, I can hear what my heart (our way of describing the seat of our emotions) is really saying.
Having heard, and defined my real need, I can tailor my response so as to be more considerate of the people around me.
But, more importantly, I can let my silence be an invitation to the Holy Spirit to minister to me and to help me in my need. In this way I can develop my dependance on God the Father instead of being yet another needy person others have to deal with.
In Christian Counselling, in any form of therapy in fact, we aim to help the client/patient understand what his/her psyche is really expressing in order to find a way to be more balanced and to find a certain freedom in well-being. So silence and reflection are vital to the process of listening to one's heart. Yet after that, we encourage words because they are therapeutic.
"Be still and know that I am God" is one of the most healing phrases I know.
(Psalm 46:10)
"The mouth keeps silent in order to hear the heart speak."
French poet who started with the Romantics but was part of a literary group that didn't want to be categorized.
He became a member of the famous, prestigious Académie Française. Died youngish having led an increasingly dissolute life which sapped his creative energy.
I don't know the context of this saying, so I will just explain why I like this phrase.
I am a talker. I always seem to have something to say. And I love knowing things and finding things out. However, I have realized that it doesn't really matter if others don't know what I know. I don't have to inflict all my fascinating thoughts on others!
From a psychological/emotional point of view, my need to talk and to share comes from a need to be recognized and appreciated. But also comes from an innate desire to share with others and to bond through common experience and knowledge. So if I stop talking long enough, I can hear what my heart (our way of describing the seat of our emotions) is really saying.
Having heard, and defined my real need, I can tailor my response so as to be more considerate of the people around me.
But, more importantly, I can let my silence be an invitation to the Holy Spirit to minister to me and to help me in my need. In this way I can develop my dependance on God the Father instead of being yet another needy person others have to deal with.
In Christian Counselling, in any form of therapy in fact, we aim to help the client/patient understand what his/her psyche is really expressing in order to find a way to be more balanced and to find a certain freedom in well-being. So silence and reflection are vital to the process of listening to one's heart. Yet after that, we encourage words because they are therapeutic.
"Be still and know that I am God" is one of the most healing phrases I know.
(Psalm 46:10)
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
We have to talk about sin ....
Here is a link to an article by Pastor Mark Driscoll. Don't really know him or follow him, but given he started off on the Paris terrorist attacks, I kept reading. And I appreciate the way he talks about sin ... we mustn't forget that recognising what it is is a key to understanding faith in Jesus Christ. We need to find new ways in which to present it so we don't get blasé or too tolerant of things which are really wrong.
Paris, God and the Garbage Disposal
I just read an extract of a book about compassion. (Etienne Séguier : a French author). He is also on a bit of a campaign to revive real compassion in a world where we are fast becoming immune to all the evil and tragedy reported to us.
Pratiquer la miséricorde
Amazing phenomenon : the #prayforparis
Do you realize what this means ? The French are grateful for our prayers, thankful for the solidarity we are showing and prepared to turn to God for comfort.
Some are reporting that many have rejected prayers because they've had a gut-full of religion.
Others are pointing out the prayers which come from Buddhist philosophy and are not the same as Christian prayers.
But isn't it interesting that this time around, the slogans are not "We are Paris" like it was "Je suis Charlie" in January ? The slogans are looking upward and outward.
And, as one of our pastors pointed out in our Regional pastoral meeting yesterday, people haven't necessarily rejected God, but they have definitely learned to mistrust organised religion and that has been over many CENTURIES, not just recently.
More agnostic than atheist then ?
What is our Christian response ???
Paris, God and the Garbage Disposal
I just read an extract of a book about compassion. (Etienne Séguier : a French author). He is also on a bit of a campaign to revive real compassion in a world where we are fast becoming immune to all the evil and tragedy reported to us.
Pratiquer la miséricorde
Amazing phenomenon : the #prayforparis
Do you realize what this means ? The French are grateful for our prayers, thankful for the solidarity we are showing and prepared to turn to God for comfort.
Some are reporting that many have rejected prayers because they've had a gut-full of religion.
Others are pointing out the prayers which come from Buddhist philosophy and are not the same as Christian prayers.
But isn't it interesting that this time around, the slogans are not "We are Paris" like it was "Je suis Charlie" in January ? The slogans are looking upward and outward.
And, as one of our pastors pointed out in our Regional pastoral meeting yesterday, people haven't necessarily rejected God, but they have definitely learned to mistrust organised religion and that has been over many CENTURIES, not just recently.
More agnostic than atheist then ?
What is our Christian response ???
Monday, November 16, 2015
An accurate analysis from my point of view.
This is a big extract fromThe Guardian, Sunday 15th November 2015
"So how do we account for the way that terrorism has been nurtured in assimilationist France too? And how different are French assimilationist and British multicultural policies?
Many of the French criticisms of multiculturalism were valid. British policy-makers welcomed diversity, but tried to manage it by putting people into ethnic and cultural boxes, defining individual needs and rights by virtue of the boxes into which people are put, and using those boxes to shape public policy. They treated minority communities as if each were a distinct, homogenous whole, each composed of people all speaking with a single voice, each defined by a singular view of culture and faith. The consequence has been the creation of a more fragmented, tribal society, which has nurtured Islamism. The irony, though, is that the French policies, from a very different starting point, have ended up at much the same place.
There are, it is often claimed, some five million Muslims in France, making it the largest Muslim community in western Europe. In fact, there are five million people of North African origin in France. Most are secular. A growing number have, in recent years, become attracted to Islam. But even today, according to a 2011 poll by the l’Institut Français d’Opinion Publique (Ifop), only 40% call themselves “observant Muslims” – and only 25% attend Friday prayers.
First-generation postwar immigrants to France faced, just like their counterparts in Britain, considerable racism. The second generation, again as in Britain, was far less willing than their parents had been to accept passively social discrimination and police brutality. They organised, largely through secular movements, and took to the streets, often in violent protest. In autumn 2005, riots swept through French banlieues and cities as youth and police fought pitched battles, much as they had in Britain two decades earlier.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, the French authorities had taken a relatively laid-back stance on multiculturalism, generally tolerating cultural and religious differences, at a time when few within minority communities expressed their identity in cultural or religious terms. The then president François Mitterrand even coined the slogan “droit à la differénce” – the right to be different.
As tensions within North African communities became more open, and as the far-right Front National emerged as a political force, so the “droit à la differénce” was abandoned for a more hardline assimilationist approach, with the problems of North African communities presented in terms of their “difference”. Few of the youth who rioted in 2005 saw themselves as Muslim. But the authorities portrayed the riots and the disaffection they expressed less as a response to racism than as an expression of a growing threat to France – that of Islam. In principle, the French authorities rejected the multiculturalist approach that Britain had adopted. In practice, however, they treated North African migrants and their descendants, in a very “multicultural” way – as a single community, and primarily as a “Muslim” community. Islam became symbolic of the anxieties about values and identity that now beset France.
A much-discussed 2013 poll conducted by Ipsos and the Centre for Political Studies Sciences (Cevipof) found that 50% of the population believed “the decline of France”, both economic and cultural, to be “inevitable”. Under a third thought that democracy worked well, while 62% considered most politicians to be corrupt. The report described a “fractured France”, divided into tribal groups, alienated from mainstream politics, distrustful of their leaders and resentful of Muslims. The main sentiment driving French society, the report concluded, was fear.
Faced with a distrustful and disengaged public, politicians have attempted to reassert the notion of a common French identity. But unable to define clearly the ideas and values that characterise the nation, they have done so primarily by creating hostility against symbols of alien-ness, the most visible of which is Islam.
The irony is that not only is France’s North African population predominantly secular, but even practising Muslims are relatively liberal in their views. According to the Ifop poll, 68% of observant women never wear the hijab. Fewer than a third of practising Muslims would forbid their daughters from marrying a non-Muslim. Eighty-one per cent accept that women should have equal rights in divorce; 44% have no problem with the issue of co-habitation; 38% support the right to abortion; and 31% approve of sex before marriage. Only on homosexuality is there a deeply conservative stance: 77% of practising Muslims disapprove.
Yet, far from including North Africans as full citizens, French policy has tended to ignore the racism and discrimination they have faced and institutionalised their marginalisation. Many in France look upon its citizens of North African origins not as French but as “Arab” or as “Muslim”. But the second generation within North African communities are often as estranged from their parents’ cultures and mores, and from mainstream Islam, as they are from wider French society.
Consider, for instance, the Kouachi brothers,. They were raised in Gennevilliers, a northern suburb of Paris. Cherif Kouachi, who appeared to mastermind the operation, only rarely attended mosque and appeared not to be particularly religious, but was driven by a sense of social estrangement. He was, according to Mohammed Benali, president of the local mosque, of a ‘‘generation that felt excluded, discriminated against and, most of all, humiliated. They spoke and felt French, but were regarded as Arabic; they were culturally confused.”
According to Benali, Kouachi was most affronted by the imam’s insistence on the importance of political engagement. “When the imam told everyone to enrol on the register of electors so they could take part in elections, and play their part in society, he refused. He said he wasn’t a French citizen and wanted nothing to do with the democratic process. He then walked out of the mosque.”
Kouachi’s story is not that different from that of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7/7 bombings in London. They are of a milieu caught not between two cultures, as it is often claimed, but between no cultures. As a consequence, some of them have turned to Islamism and a few have expressed their rage through jihadi-style violence.
There are aspects of both the multiculturalist and assimilationist approaches that are valuable. The multicultural acceptance of diversity and the assimilationist resolve to treat everyone as citizens, not as bearers of specific racial or cultural histories, are both welcome. And there are aspects of both that are damaging – the multiculturalist tendency to place minorities into ethnic and cultural boxes, the assimilationist attempt to create a common identity by institutionalising the differences of groups deemed not to belong.
An ideal policy would marry the beneficial aspects of the two approaches – celebrating diversity while treating everyone as citizens, rather than as simply belonging to particular communities. In practice, though, Britain and France have both institutionalised the more damaging features – Britain placing minorities into ethnic and cultural boxes, France attempting to create a common identity by treating those of North African origin as the Other. The consequence has been that in both Britain and France societies have become more fractured and tribal. And in both nations a space has been opened up for Islamism to grow."
Kenan Malik
"So how do we account for the way that terrorism has been nurtured in assimilationist France too? And how different are French assimilationist and British multicultural policies?
Many of the French criticisms of multiculturalism were valid. British policy-makers welcomed diversity, but tried to manage it by putting people into ethnic and cultural boxes, defining individual needs and rights by virtue of the boxes into which people are put, and using those boxes to shape public policy. They treated minority communities as if each were a distinct, homogenous whole, each composed of people all speaking with a single voice, each defined by a singular view of culture and faith. The consequence has been the creation of a more fragmented, tribal society, which has nurtured Islamism. The irony, though, is that the French policies, from a very different starting point, have ended up at much the same place.
There are, it is often claimed, some five million Muslims in France, making it the largest Muslim community in western Europe. In fact, there are five million people of North African origin in France. Most are secular. A growing number have, in recent years, become attracted to Islam. But even today, according to a 2011 poll by the l’Institut Français d’Opinion Publique (Ifop), only 40% call themselves “observant Muslims” – and only 25% attend Friday prayers.
First-generation postwar immigrants to France faced, just like their counterparts in Britain, considerable racism. The second generation, again as in Britain, was far less willing than their parents had been to accept passively social discrimination and police brutality. They organised, largely through secular movements, and took to the streets, often in violent protest. In autumn 2005, riots swept through French banlieues and cities as youth and police fought pitched battles, much as they had in Britain two decades earlier.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, the French authorities had taken a relatively laid-back stance on multiculturalism, generally tolerating cultural and religious differences, at a time when few within minority communities expressed their identity in cultural or religious terms. The then president François Mitterrand even coined the slogan “droit à la differénce” – the right to be different.
As tensions within North African communities became more open, and as the far-right Front National emerged as a political force, so the “droit à la differénce” was abandoned for a more hardline assimilationist approach, with the problems of North African communities presented in terms of their “difference”. Few of the youth who rioted in 2005 saw themselves as Muslim. But the authorities portrayed the riots and the disaffection they expressed less as a response to racism than as an expression of a growing threat to France – that of Islam. In principle, the French authorities rejected the multiculturalist approach that Britain had adopted. In practice, however, they treated North African migrants and their descendants, in a very “multicultural” way – as a single community, and primarily as a “Muslim” community. Islam became symbolic of the anxieties about values and identity that now beset France.
A much-discussed 2013 poll conducted by Ipsos and the Centre for Political Studies Sciences (Cevipof) found that 50% of the population believed “the decline of France”, both economic and cultural, to be “inevitable”. Under a third thought that democracy worked well, while 62% considered most politicians to be corrupt. The report described a “fractured France”, divided into tribal groups, alienated from mainstream politics, distrustful of their leaders and resentful of Muslims. The main sentiment driving French society, the report concluded, was fear.
Faced with a distrustful and disengaged public, politicians have attempted to reassert the notion of a common French identity. But unable to define clearly the ideas and values that characterise the nation, they have done so primarily by creating hostility against symbols of alien-ness, the most visible of which is Islam.
The irony is that not only is France’s North African population predominantly secular, but even practising Muslims are relatively liberal in their views. According to the Ifop poll, 68% of observant women never wear the hijab. Fewer than a third of practising Muslims would forbid their daughters from marrying a non-Muslim. Eighty-one per cent accept that women should have equal rights in divorce; 44% have no problem with the issue of co-habitation; 38% support the right to abortion; and 31% approve of sex before marriage. Only on homosexuality is there a deeply conservative stance: 77% of practising Muslims disapprove.
Yet, far from including North Africans as full citizens, French policy has tended to ignore the racism and discrimination they have faced and institutionalised their marginalisation. Many in France look upon its citizens of North African origins not as French but as “Arab” or as “Muslim”. But the second generation within North African communities are often as estranged from their parents’ cultures and mores, and from mainstream Islam, as they are from wider French society.
Consider, for instance, the Kouachi brothers,. They were raised in Gennevilliers, a northern suburb of Paris. Cherif Kouachi, who appeared to mastermind the operation, only rarely attended mosque and appeared not to be particularly religious, but was driven by a sense of social estrangement. He was, according to Mohammed Benali, president of the local mosque, of a ‘‘generation that felt excluded, discriminated against and, most of all, humiliated. They spoke and felt French, but were regarded as Arabic; they were culturally confused.”
According to Benali, Kouachi was most affronted by the imam’s insistence on the importance of political engagement. “When the imam told everyone to enrol on the register of electors so they could take part in elections, and play their part in society, he refused. He said he wasn’t a French citizen and wanted nothing to do with the democratic process. He then walked out of the mosque.”
Kouachi’s story is not that different from that of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7/7 bombings in London. They are of a milieu caught not between two cultures, as it is often claimed, but between no cultures. As a consequence, some of them have turned to Islamism and a few have expressed their rage through jihadi-style violence.
There are aspects of both the multiculturalist and assimilationist approaches that are valuable. The multicultural acceptance of diversity and the assimilationist resolve to treat everyone as citizens, not as bearers of specific racial or cultural histories, are both welcome. And there are aspects of both that are damaging – the multiculturalist tendency to place minorities into ethnic and cultural boxes, the assimilationist attempt to create a common identity by institutionalising the differences of groups deemed not to belong.
An ideal policy would marry the beneficial aspects of the two approaches – celebrating diversity while treating everyone as citizens, rather than as simply belonging to particular communities. In practice, though, Britain and France have both institutionalised the more damaging features – Britain placing minorities into ethnic and cultural boxes, France attempting to create a common identity by treating those of North African origin as the Other. The consequence has been that in both Britain and France societies have become more fractured and tribal. And in both nations a space has been opened up for Islamism to grow."
Kenan Malik
How do we cope with recent tragic events ?
Australian Christian friends sent the following message of support to us who are ministering in the Lord's name here in France. We are far away from the Parisian epi-centre of these tragic, violent events and physically safe. However, along with the whole population, we are trying to understand why, and what should our Christian reaction be.
These friends expressed some of what I would have liked to have put into words. After their words, you have my reply.
You have said exactly what I have been trying to put into words. Our prayer, Pascal's and mine, is that people will fall on their knees and worship God. Many of our parishioners are on a different level of understanding and are talking against the refugees arriving, the North African population from former colonies.... not really questioning the moral position France has maintained since the Revolution ! as well as the militant secularism. So the verse we had at our women's retreat last week was very apt :
2 Chronicles 7:14
if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Thank you for upholding us in France.
Be blessed,
Jennie
.
These friends expressed some of what I would have liked to have put into words. After their words, you have my reply.
"Bonjour Jennie and family,
Everyone is grieving here. Turn by turn, the evil
one is bent on destroying as many people
as possible....but God is still in control and
promised to work all things together for good.
Perhaps
for France it means a return to God. We pray it
will be so. One young lady from Hobart is still
in hospital with gunshot wounds, and a Melbourne
woman escaped by pretending to be dead.
We pray for all who are in a critical condition
there. May the Lord heal them all.
When tragedy hit Job - he knelt and worshipped
God. This must have been a very hard decision
for him to make....but it was the right one. Your
people will need to do the same...with His grace"You have said exactly what I have been trying to put into words. Our prayer, Pascal's and mine, is that people will fall on their knees and worship God. Many of our parishioners are on a different level of understanding and are talking against the refugees arriving, the North African population from former colonies.... not really questioning the moral position France has maintained since the Revolution ! as well as the militant secularism. So the verse we had at our women's retreat last week was very apt :
2 Chronicles 7:14
if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Thank you for upholding us in France.
Be blessed,
Jennie
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