CREATIVITY SUPRISE

One:                      God!  Bang? Or Bang! God?  Being Itself.  Heat, expansion, and the arrow of time starts to fly, forward it flies.  God before time, after time, God has time. God in time and more than time.

Two:                      God.  In the falling apart and the pulling together,

is there no big crunch?  God, the structure.  God in and God is and God of non-uniform density hangs the stars, the galaxies, and all the great forms of the universe.  Mystery pervades.

A grounding of all.

Hydrogen, helium, neutrinos, and photons swirl.

Protostars, black-body radiation, fusion begins, matter emerges, creativity stirs, stars are born.  Supergiants. Giants.  Dwarfs. Sub-dwarfs.  Yellow, red, hot white, black.

Elements, discrete associations, chemistry appears.  God’s cauldronic brew of quantum mechanics, electricity, and magnetism.  Everything is changing in ancient, deep time.  Do not lose patience, billions of years to go, God has time

A principle of exclusion, serendipitously, new things emerge. Great complexity. Infomatic matter, emergent of an immanent God.

Three:                   Planetismals circle the protostars, wanderers formed from disks of stardust, waiting to stagger across a great cathedral vault. Solar systems. Suns. A sun.  Emergent suprises.

Earth, our world, it melts.  Uranium and thorium and potassium are captured, boiling the core, heat flows, plates shift, continents drift.  Frozen accidents or frozen minds?

The geosphere, rocks…water….air….life.  Rocks harden, move, explode

Rocks, water, air, life!  Changing, moving complexity.  Small, hot planets with no air….escaped.  Large, cold planets with no air…compressed to liquid or solid.  Amazing earth with ice, liquid, and vapor all held in a narrow range.  Life, a reality of earth itself.

Four:                     Metabolism with unity and diversity.  Among all the chemical possibilities, why life?  Cells, multicellularity, animals, neurons and neural nets.  Noetic features deep in matter.  Behavior with purpose.  More mystery:  knowing, vocation, God.  Symmetry, cephalization.  Fish, bugs, reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, mammals, hominids.  A long evolutionary process.  All with a place, a purposeful niche in which to compete.

Five:                      Primates, Apes.  Genes proceed but now learning and information and community emerge.  Biological fitness moves toward social fitness.  The bodies slow down and the mind speeds up.  Consciousness warms, grows hot, the bright flame of thought appears.

Homo sapiens survive.  Humankind.

Six:                         Transcendence’s appearance.  God spoke, but no one heard.  God speaks, humans hear.   Beginnings struggle to be understood by those who came from the beginnings.  Many knows the details, no one knows the mind of God.   Creativity races forward on a wave of words.  Good and evil, past and present, shall and shall not.  A place to choose, to fall back or to step forward, to not quite reach our humanity or to reach beyond all that we have been.

Seven:                  God rests in the temple universe.  We stand in awe of the starry vault of the heavens as we fall on our knees on the lands of our earthly home.

Spirituality and Religion

·         Spirituality without words is silent. Spirituality without acts is impotent. Religion without spirituality is false. The entire, complete experience of what is considered to be the most important in all of life is a spiritual experience that energizes the words of those that dare to speak and motivates the actions of those who act for the common good of all. Both the inner experience and the words and actions of the prophet are needed for a vibrant religious faith.

Creativity and Hope

·         49 years ago our family moved to a little town in Florida, Jupiter. We lved in a house on Pinetree Circle. In front of the house was a small hedge of Ixora under the front picture window. As I grew and the Ixora grew, I learned how to care for that little hedge. Making sure it had the right nutrients to have wonderful blooms and trimming it so it looked neat and tidy.

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·         Occassionally, I have the privilege of trimming the small Xiora hedge that grows in front of my house in Miami,FL. That simple act reminds me of the past and gives me hope for the future, ever grateful to be able to cooperate with all of the creativity that surrounds us. Join with me in celebrating the guidance of creativity that draws near to each of us and finds us in these kinds of miraculous moments of remembering andpri privilege of trimming the small Ixora hedge that grows in front of my house in Miami, FL.  That simple act reminds me of the past and gives me hope for the future, ever grateful to be able to cooperate with the creativity that surrounds us.  Join with me in celebrating the guidance of creativity that draws near to each of us and finds us in these kinds of miraculous moments of remembering and hope.

• Many different views related to sex can be found in the group of writings that we call the Bible. From a Christian standpoint, many of them would be judged to be wrong. Examples:


1. Executing those who engage in sexual intercourse during the seven days of the menstrual period.

2. Stoning for both the man and woman for adultery.

3. Toleration of polygamy.

4. Levirate marriage.

5. Endogamy.

6. Cutting off a woman's hand for touching a man's private parts.

7. Social regulations surrounding adultery, incest, rape, and prostitution considered mainly from the perspective of male property rights over women.

8. A bride found not to be a virgin should be stoned to death.

Some Christians, exercising their religious liberty and the right of personal conscience along with a Christocentric interpretation of their Christian faith, now assert that passages in the Bible related to homosexuality have either been misinterpreted or are simply wrong. These Christian may be wrong, but those that follow a more traditional view may also be wrong just as some Christians in the past were wrong about their interpretation of the Bible regarding slavery.

An Ecumenical Christian Theology?

In 1988, Hans Kung's book "Theology for the Third Millennium" was published in English by Doubleday.  He argued for a theology that served the entirety of Christianity while remaining  intent on the Scripture and the Gospel.  He called for a theology the respected tradition, theologians should be responsible in the face of history without ignoring contemporary issues.  He wanted a theology that was Christocentric, distinctively Christian while addressing the whole globe.  Finally, he wanted a theology that was occupied with teaching and truth while remaining practical, that did not ignore life, renewal and reform.

He contends that we are in a shift of paradigms from the most current modern enlightenment paradigm to what he calls an ecumenical paradigm.  Such a shift takes quite a while.  Many of us were born during the shift and the shift will continue well after we are dead.  Will Christianity survive?  What do you think?