Emergent Church of Christ

Check out the new Facebook Group - Emergent Church of Christ. This could prove to be interesting for the Church of Christ and for the Restoration Movement in general.

Musings on Stories, Truth, and Belief

Besides fleeting moments of experience, do we have anything but stories? Hopes, perhaps. But aren't hopes just stories about the future? Anticipated stories? Stories under construction?

More and more I am coming to understand life as a story. We anticipate (rarely accurately) the story to come, we live the story, and then we have it to tell forever - if we desire to. Our collection of stories are ripe with meaning and serve to construct our identites. We collaborte with our social and ecological environment in order to highlight or obscure certain stories or stories with certain themes. Repeated highlighting or obscuring over time tends to form belief - perceived truth.

Without some kind of agency or effort, we may become slaves to our stories or the stories our surroundings keep highlighting. In order to be healthy we must not only retain authorship of our stories, we must highlight and obscure our stories with honesty and authenticity. We must not lie.

So much of what we call truth is belief. So much of life is about belief. There is TRUTH, but it is reserved for the Divine, or perhaps is the Divine.

Celebrating anniversary #12 - grateful

Gail and I celebrated our 12th anniversary this weekend. It was so good. I have had the privilege to be with an incredible woman for a dozen years.

Were life fair and just, I would have traveled a different path - probably alone. But Life for me has not been fair. Rather, life seems to have tipped in my favor in so many ways. I am a man who reaps harvests from fields I have not planted. I get to view the world by standing on other's shoulders - people who have generously given me their shoulders. And I get to be with a woman who makes me a better man.

I am grateful.