Reading the Bible in 90 Days

Here is a link to the website that talks about Reading the Bible in 90 Days. Here is a copy of the Reading Plan as Zondervan maps it out. (It's a pdf file.) Actually purchasing the special Bible designed for this purpose is not necessary. (Although I am intrigued by the updated translation of the New Internation Version, especially it's commitment to inclusive language.) Let me know if you'd like to embark on this journey with me. Dana suggested that we could start on Easter. I think that's a great idea!

Also there is a blog of folks whom I've come to admire who are nearing the end of their 90-day journey together reading through the Bible. I think it would be pretty cool to follow their model and blog through our journey as well. I invite you to check out their website at Blogging through the Bible in 90 Days.

Disclaimer: This is merely an invitation--not an expectation or another thing to add to your already impossibly full To Do List. :-) I like the way they put it on the Blogging through the Bible website:

We are . . . all coming together to attempt to read the Bible in 90 Days. We figure the external accountability of doing it with a group might help us stay better on track but regardless, we're at least giving it a try.

The key phrase for this group is "It's all good." If you want to post every day or you never end up posting. If you make it through till the end or it ou end up dropping out after Day Two. If you get ahead of the game or you end up hopelessly behind and don't finish until Advent. If you lurk quietly or are the active discussion-initiator. Any way it goes for you . . . It's All Good.

More Info on Minerva Carcano

In August 2004 Minerva Carcano was elected bishop of the Southwest Desert Conference of the United Methodist Church. The main website for that Conference is www.desertsw.org.

Carcano's email address is bishopmc@desertsw.org.

You can find numerous letters from the bishop at www.desertsw.org/bishop.

My Spiritual Biography (early years)

I wrote this a while back and decided to go ahead and post it before the class is over.
-- Rick

My Spiritual Autobiography (early years), by Rick Mitchell

My earliest spiritual recollection is that of marveling at the infinite span of time and space -- as I looked up into the night sky and wondered how it could be that anything could have no beginning or end. And even today, I marvel at how the sky is filled with the stars whose light began to travel toward us so many millions of years ago. How can people try to encapsulate the Reality of such a vast universe within the limited grasp of our small, human minds?

Another equally important remembrance is that of knowing the feel and reality of love in my life from a very early age. Whether from the expressive love of my mother, the steady, if sometimes tumultuous, love of my father, the fondness I felt from my favorite aunt and many friends, or the reticent, almost noncommittal, love of my paternal grandparents, I knew -- amid it all -- that I was loved and wanted.

After all, I was the result of a very difficult birth, where a doctor had given up on saving either me or my mother. But, mercifully, our lives were saved due to the intervention of a dear friend’s mother. I was an only child.

My mother was a very important influence on my spiritual life. We spent a lot of time together after my dad took a job out of town and was home only on weekends. We shared many evenings in which she would read books to me, and occasionally a woman in town whose husband was in the service would come over and play the piano and sing with us. It was a stimulating period intellectually and spiritually for me.

My mother dug a pool, single-handedly, in our back yard and lined it with concrete. It was a somewhat rough and crude job, but it held water long enough to be able to take a dip on summer nights, and she worked at teaching me to float -- in preparation for learning to swim.

A few years later, she would tell me that accepting God’s grace was like floating -- just “let go” and let God support the weight of all my cares and worries. I tried to follow her instructions, but I think my motivation was too focused on the need I felt to “be saved” -- and too little on recognizing and accepting that I was loved by God. It was not until my childhood years had passed that I found that key and made peace with the “issue” of salvation. I was in high school at the time and had gone through a series of responding to “altar calls” through the years -- emotional times of feeling that I wanted to somehow be closer to God. I “gave my heart to the Lord” and was baptized (twice) but continued to feel conflicted and anxious. I know now that it was partly due to the emotional manipulation and at time outright exploitation of youthful naiveté. Instead of getting an onjective instruction on God’s love and care for all people, I was getting a steady dose of emotional revivalist preaching on the “plan of salvation,” and I was constantly told that the only alternative to following the plan successfully was to burn in hell for all eternity.

Although the human interactions around me were (thankfully) very loving and supporting, the understanding of God I was taught was quite limited and narrow. When it finally broke through to my teen-aged consciousness that God was benevolent and truly loved me, I found it extremely liberating and joyful. It was, indeed, the sought-after experience of reassurance and acceptance by God, and while I told no one at the time, I knew the question of my own personal salvation had been answered for me for life. I could begin to focus on aspects of God’s love for me and for all creation -- and on doing something about building my own life.

It was not apparent to me then, but I believe that experience came about as part of (and maybe was even one of the causes of) a social maturing and realization that matters of the heart, spirit, conscience or other important life questions could not be answered and solved by formulas or “plans,” and that the necessary key would always be love and openness to others and to the “other” in our lives -- which we often see and identify as that mysterious entity called “God.” In my experience that force or entity is the love we know and share in our everyday life experiences. And, in my experience, I have found it to have a personal face and so I have come to refer to it as “Love.”

Resurrection as a Spiritual Practice

Many thanks to Brent and Lesa who sent a copy of this article "Resurrection as a Spiritual Practice." The writers suggest that the word resurrection should not be thought of as a noun, but as a verb. Resurrection is a way of living in the world. You can find the article on the website for Spirituality & Health by clicking on the article's title in the sentence above. Enjoy!

Meal/Observer/Prayer Schedule

I should have done this a while back, but better late than never! Here is the list of helpers for the remainder of our time . . .

March 19
Observer: Lura
Closing Prayer: Lura
Meal: Rick and Trader Joe

March 26
Observer:
Closing Prayer: Greg
Meal: Lenita and Dick

April 2
Observer:
Closing Prayer: Micky
Meal: Eliza

April 9
Observer: Micky
Closing Prayer: Doug
Meal: Jan & Greg

Comparing Prayer Lives

I just read this entry on prayer--and how unhelpful it is to compare our prayer practices with others' prayer practices. Check it out if you're interested: lower the drawbridge.

I Believe; Help my Unbelief

I really appreciate Dana's questions in her post. And they're making me turn a couple things around in my head/heart as well.

Yesterday afternoon I led my Liturgical Writing workshop for some of the Intro to Christian Worship students. The model I teach is simply based on my own approach to writing for worship, which is a contemplative one.

One of the steps that I discuss with the students is "Locating yourself before God." This is what I do after I've written one or more pieces for worship. I settle into prayer and ask myself: "Can I say this with integrity to God on behalf of the congregation, with all of the world's concerns and realities in our midst?" Usually, if the answer is no, it is because I have been too surface in the prayers I wrote. To speak with integrity before God in worship for me means being willing to say what's most difficult to say. Walter Brueggemann in his book Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation says:

Believers whose faith is greatly diminished may utter a truth greatly reduced: 'Smile, God loves you.' Does God love because God is engaged in some cover-up with us and does not know about the alienation? Because if God knew, God would not meet me with a smile, but with a deep, deep cry for life run amiss. The alienation is heavy, serious, and burdensome for us, because it is heavy, serious, and burdensome for the alienated father God, for the mother God who grieves for us while we are too numb to grieve.

When I look over the prayers I've prepared for worship, I ask myself, "Am I engaging in some kind of cover-up here?" And if the answer is yes, then I go back to the drawing board.

All of this to say that, after I shared this yesterday, a student asked me, "What about when I don't feel like I believe it, but as the pastor, I need to pray it anyway? What about the times when I can't say it with integrity before God because I'm in a place where I just don't feel it?"

Those of us in the room merely nodded our assent to her question. I think because we'd all been there. And none of us had an easy solution to it. It was the kind of question that seemed best responded to by a "yes," even though it was far from being a yes-or-no question.

Shortly after she asked this question, I had the group break up for a session of writing. We took about an hour to work, then came back together. I spent some time praying for the participants of the group, while they were writing. At the end of the hour, then, as I sat there watching the rain come down in sheets, I remembered the prayer that has been my saving grace so many times: "Lord, I believe; Help my unbelief."

This came to me again after I read Dana's entry: 'I believe; and yet. . .' This experience is similar to my own. I experience it as the steps in my dance with God: I believe. And yet. It is a step in, close. It is a step away. It is a surrender into. It is a pulling back. It is a sweeping off my feet. It is a soaring away. It is a kiss. It is a back turned. All of it, though, is the dance. All of it taking place in relationship. The step away, the pulling back, the soaring away, the back turned--none of those steps is the ending of the relationship but a part of it. They are all, in the end, relational terms. This is my experience.

For me, I think, intercessory prayer seems to come down to this: I have no idea where I end and someone else begins. I don't know where someone else ends and God begins. I don't know where those boundaries are, if there are any. Now, I'm fully aware that a psychotherapist would have a big problem with this kind of worldview. (We hear nothing in pastoral care if not--know your boundaries!) But I think the question is real: where do I end and you begin and where do you end and God begins?

Because I can't answer these questions with any sense of certainty, then I recline into trusting intercessory prayer "works."