Today's Fresh Blogs...

• Signs of a Call

  Published: July 23, 2007, 8:05 am

  Tags: Spiritual Formation, Quotes

  One sign that God may be calling is a certain restlessness, a certain dissatisfaction with things as they are. Other signs of God's call may be a sense of longing, yearning, or wondering; a feeling of being at a crossroads; a sense that something is happening in one's life, that one is wrestling with an issue or decision; a sense of being in a

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• Self-Love

  Published: July 20, 2007, 11:47 pm

  Tags: Theology, Spiritual Formation

  Miroslav Volf writes in Free of Charge that when the Spirit of Christ indwells us, God occupies the space, of "I," so that Christ lives in and through us; the cooperation and intimacy between our spirit and God's spirit becomes so intimate that there is in some ways no distinction.When we love, it is truly God loving through us. When we will God's

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• Eat Pray Love By Elizabeth Gilbert

  Published: July 14, 2007, 11:45 pm

  Tags: Spiritual Formation, Interfaith, International Experiences, Gender Issues, Book Discussions

  How do you feel about spiritual experiences that take place outside of a Christian context? How do you respond emotionally and intellectual to non-Christians who share their spiritual experiences with you?2. Gender roles come up repeatedly in Eat, Pray, Love, be it macho Italian men eating cream puffs after a home team's soccer loss, or a

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• Knocking from the Inside: A Theology of Redemption in light of God's Omnipresence

  Published: August 2, 2007, 10:10 pm

  Tags: Theology, Spiritual Formation

  If God is everywhere, then s/he must be Everywhere, including within the vibrating cells unbelievers, nonbelievers, partial believers and even gay haters, gluttons and grass. Even me. Even before I was becoming a Christian, opening to an increasing awareness of God's truth, grace -- really just God's love in all its many faces, like justice and

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• Finding Peace and Joy

  Published: August 17, 2007, 11:35 pm

  Tags: Spiritual Formation

  I just got accepted into grad school and am so excited, but there is so much termoil going on in my heart and in my life that it is hard not to be angry with God. I know he can handle my anger, my fears and my worries, but somehow I just want him to tell me why things have to be so hard. So hard for my family, so hard for our finances, so hard

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• Defending the Faith

  Published: August 24, 2007, 10:27 pm

  Tags: Spiritual Formation, Culture, Church

  (and our emotional/mental/spiritual heath) along. But where are those safe places? It seems to me that the church should in a sense serve that function, but most people view the church as unsafe and unhealthy. How can this change or where else can we go?Tags: Mother Teresa, Doubt, Faith, Safe

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• Prayer synchroblog posts

  Published: August 27, 2007, 12:21 pm

  Tags: Spiritual Formation

  We are really amazed by how many people have taken part in the synchroblog today. As promised here are the links for those of you who want to read some of what has been written. I'll update the list if and when more entries are posted. There are some really excellent posts out there. Thank you to everyone here who has taken part. One thing

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• Tuesday Book Discussion: The Faith Club

  Published: September 11, 2007, 10:12 am

  Tags: Theology, Spiritual Formation, The Faith Club, Book Discussions, Culture, Community

  stereotypes and sense of spiritual superiority.Together, three women come to recognize how sacred scriptures of all faith traditions are used at times in ways that engender intimacy with God and mutual appreciation of neighbor, and at other times in ways the foster a sense of one "people" being superior, endowed with the right to even commit

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• Forgiveness

  Published: September 30, 2007, 8:42 am

  Tags: Theology, Spiritual Formation

  I was listening to a lecture for a class I'm taking in seminary this week, and the teaching professor said something that totally threw me for a loop. He was talking about the difference between true peacemaking and appeasement, and he said that we have cheapened the concept of forgiveness. Referencing Luke 17:3-4, he said that we should listen

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• Creed

  Published: October 7, 2007, 10:19 pm

  Tags: Theology, Spiritual Formation, Emerging Church

  The Gospel According to Mark(A creed created from a reading of Mark's gospel)By Jemila KwonWe are the family of Jesus, God's beloved, God's anointed one.Woven together in doing God's will, we enact God's kingdom here and now, serving and loving God and neighbor,Spreading the good newsIncluding the outcasts,Lifting up the least,Healing the

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• The Abortionist's Wife

  Published: October 15, 2007, 11:10 pm

  Tags: Spiritual Formation, Sexuality, Politics

  I wrote a piece called The Abortionist's Wife which can be viewed at the theoozeThe article was on quirkygrace for a little while, but I accidentally deleted it and then Lydia asked if she could post the piece on the ooze, so that's where it ended up :) I wrote the piece following a pizza party at the home of one of David's med school professors,

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• Dragons and Princesses

  Published: October 17, 2007, 12:23 pm

  Tags: Spiritual Formation

  Here is a quote to live and breathe:"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses waiting for us to act, just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." - Rainer Maria RilkeIsn't that what God does in the incarnation? In the stripping away of

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• Book Discussion: The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly In a Violent World

  Published: November 6, 2007, 1:15 am

  Tags: Spiritual Formation, Book Discussions, Social Justice

  This month we are looking at memory and how the ways we recall painful things can lead to grace or its opposite. Miroslav Volf's book, Remembring Rightly looks at how memory of sin can serve good or evil, and whether it is an ultimate and eternal part of responding to experience or part of a process of healing that will, at least in eternity lead

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• Book Discussion week 2: The End of Memory by Miroslav Volf

  Published: November 14, 2007, 4:29 pm

  Tags: Spiritual Formation, Book Discussions, Social Justice

  forgiveness, and transformation of wrongdoers, and reconciliation between wrongdoers and their victims. When these goals are achieved, memory can let go of offenses without ceasing to be truthful. For then remembering truthfully will have reached its ultimate goal in the unhindered love of neighbor."I think this is a beautiful exposition

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• Tuesday Book DIscussion: The End of Memory week 4

  Published: November 26, 2007, 8:34 pm

  Tags: Theology, Spiritual Formation, Book Discussions

  On page 110, Volf states based the human tendency to commit injustice, we have two unacceptable options: "We can simpy disregard justice (as Nietzche did) and abandon the world to the interplay of forces, thus plunging the unprotected weak into suffering; or we can insist on the relentless pursuit of justice and end up with a "rectified"

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