Good morning…
Hope lingers from our animated discussion yesterday, as together we unpacked thoughts from the first section of The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian by Brian D. McLaren.
Now up in the middle of the night, I open my book and revisit underlined sentences, sentences which feel essential to God’s living, breathing invitation.
- …the Spirit is calling us, not to dig in our heals, but rather to pack up our tents and move again…as hopeful pilgrims moving forward in the journey of faith. (xii)
- Like flocks of geese migrating in our distinct V’s from different starting points, I believe we will discover that we are being called in the same direction, and if we heed that call, we will discover one another in new ways. (xiii)
- Could Christians migrate from defining their faith as a system of beliefs to expressing it as a loving way of life? (2)
- What would it mean for Christians to understand, experience, and embody God as the loving, healing, reconciling Spirit in whom all creatures live, move, and have their being? (3)
- What might happen if we understand the core Christian ethos as creative, constructive, and forward-leaning…to learn, grow, and mature toward a deepening, enduring vision of reconciliation with God, self, neighbor, enemy, and creation? (3)
- If just a dozen of us here and a handful of us there begin migrating in the right direction, that’s enough to start something. Changing hearts moving together – soon the center of gravity shifts, and soon a migration is underway. (8)
- We’re looking for meaning to guide us in the predicaments of life, to help us know who we are, to help us be better people, so we can heal the world…We see our sacred stories as bottomless wells of meaning. (25)
- …experience something more meaningful than survival and more powerful than revival – namely a great spiritual migration toward love. (66)
To migrate means to move from one place, position, or perspective to another. To relocate and resettle. To emigrate and trek. To pilgrimage and journey. God meets us where we are right now, inviting us into a great spiritual migration – from defining belief to expressing love, from surviving to thriving, from being right to being kind.
Little children (believers, dear ones), let us not love [merely in theory] with word or with tongue [giving lip service to compassion], but in action and in truth [in practice and in sincerity, because practical acts of love are more than words] (1 John 3:18, AMP).
…Sue…
