29 Comments

I neglected to factor in the time difference and missed the second session of Freeing Jesus. Is there anyway I can watch after the fact?

Jane

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Thank you so much. It has taken me decades and an M.Div. and Ph..D. to get where I can appreciate your truth. Damn, evangelicalism is hard to overcome.

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Love your work and grateful to my teacher Rabbi Larry Hoffman for elevating it to me in school. As a Jewish person growing up in Indiana, I was always struck by how intimately people spoke of Jesus, as if he was sitting next to me in class. As an outsider, I found it incredibly alienating - I was so jealous of the intimacy, but also freaked out by it. This Jesus-as-friend theology ultimately impacted my own. For a while (and this had precedence because some origins of Reform Judaism were similar) I sought out a transcendent God, who parted seas - but didn't play a role in daily life, or at least wasn't sitting next to me in French class. It wasn't until rabbinical school after reading tons of Christian sermons and lots of philosophy classes that I could see how the intimacy could exist in Jewish tradition, too. Now I'm drawn to all the ways people access relationship with the Divine. THank you!

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Did you sing tbe hymn, "What a friend we have in Jesus"?

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I am fortunate Jesus has been my friend, loving me all my life. While at least one Sunday School teacher has long ago been forgiven for what she taught about the Bible I was fortunate to learn from the best Faithful & Bible Teacher in the world--my mother. It has only been as an adult that I have come in contact with life long "Christians" who story is so different than mine. I ordered the book on the day it was released from your website. In this world my corner of it anyway I want to show /"teach" , a loving, brave Jesus off the cross. At t he same time in no way do I want to negate that part of the story when people are ready for it. Another look at Jesus is extremely and we are blessed to have it from your clear writing style. I am still on the first part. So glad to be a part of t his community so when I have a question I come to The Cottage.

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Perhaps the Society of Friends got its name from that Bible verse. I grew up in a Quaker church.

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Fascinating. The Jesus of my liberal Protestant Sunday school seemed to me a sap -- a cover for the cruelty of the class stratification which my church existed to ratify. Good WASPs showed themselves in church. And that seemed all there was. Fortunately, God gets around our best efforts to obscure Her.

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Diana, you write so authentically about freeing Jesus from where he is found in some churches. I believe there is also a need to free Jesus from the Bible. When I say to some of my "religious friends" that Jesus is more important than the Bible, they just shake their heads and say "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. Jesus is IN the bible." And I hear Jesus, as you did, "Get me out of here." - Doug Carpenter

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Thanks, Diana, for the gentle reminder of the blessings of a liberal Sunday School, and the challenges so many others face in deconstructing the 'judging Jesus' -- and for the reminder to those of us who preach how critical our messages are for the "little ones" in our midst -- messages of acceptance and joy instead of fear and judgment.

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This really resonates with me. I grew up in a fundamentalist evangelical denomination. By my mid-twenties, I was firmly convinced that Satan was correct, that God was indeed the most horrifying individual in the universe. It has taken 40 years to make my way back from that place to a place where I can envision God as kind.

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My sweet Jesus...

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Please, focus on Jesus, not your book!

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This week Richard Rohr has been writing his daily meditations on Friendship. The ultimate in relationship. It is the basis of the trinity as he describes it. Love and Friendship.

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I didn't realize Fr Richard was doing this!

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Weekly Summary from Father Rohr. Center for Action and Contemplation New Mexico

Friendship and Grace

April 11 - April 16, 2021

Sunday

What I let God see and accept in me also becomes what I can then see and accept in myself, in my friends, and in everything else! This is “radical grace.”

Monday

How joyful you are if you have a friend with whom you may talk as freely as with yourself, to whom you neither fear to confess any fault nor blush at revealing any spiritual progress, to whom you may entrust all the secrets of your heart and confide all your plans. —Aelred of Rievaulx

Tuesday

When Francis felt most alone in the world, most persecuted and misunderstood, it was Clare he would turn to for clarity, wisdom, and a love stripped of sentimentality. —Mirabai Starr

Wednesday

When followers of Jesus walk beside him, he leads them in directions they would rather not go, into neighborhoods they would rather avoid, and to meet other friends of his they might not normally know. —Dana L. Robert.

Thursday

Christian mission begins with friendship—not utilitarian friendship, the religious version of network marketing—but genuine friendship, friendship that translates love for neighbors in general into knowing, appreciating, liking, and enjoying this or that neighbor in particular. —Brian McLaren

Friday

I realized that the people I really loved with great abandon and freedom were not just people who loved me, but people who also loved what I loved.

Friendship as Blessing

At its best, human love and friendship are an extension of the divine love and friendship that exist at the heart of the Trinity. It is an overflowing fullness of love and blessing. Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue (1956–2008) is a modern teacher on the sacred nature of friendship who explains how this blessing can be shared.

A person should always offer a prayer of graciousness for the love that has awakened in them. When you feel love for your beloved and the beloved’s love for you, now and again you should offer the warmth of your love as a blessing for those who are damaged and unloved. Send that love out into the world to people who are desperate, to those who are starving, to those who are trapped in prison, in hospitals, and into all the brutal terrains of bleak and tormented lives. When you send that love out from the bountifulness of your own love, it reaches other people. This love is the deepest power of prayer.

Prayer is the act and presence of sending this light from the bountifulness of your love to other people to heal, free, and bless them. When there is love in your life, you should share it spiritually with those who are pushed to the very edge of life. . .

. In the kingdom of love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have. . . . Love is the source, center, and destiny of experience.

A Friendship Blessing

May you be blessed with good friends.

May you learn to be a good friend to yourself.

May you be able to journey to that place in your soul where

there is great love, warmth, feeling, and forgiveness.

May this change you.

May it transfigure that which is negative, distant, or cold

in you.

May you be brought in to the real passion, kinship, and

affinity of belonging.

May you treasure your friends.

May you be good to them and may you be there for them;

may they bring you all the blessings, challenges, truth,

and light that you need for your journey.

May you never be isolated.

May you always be in the

gentle nest of belonging with your

anam ċara.

John O’Donohue, Anam Ċara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom (Cliff Street Books: 1997), 35–36

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So nicely put. Thank you, Diana, for helping us all on this journey.

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I owe you an email!

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Thank you for this. John 15.15 has been my nucleus verse for the past decade. Jesus is my friend! Yes. Looking forward to reading your new book.

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A question: As the nation becomes increasingly un-churched, megachurched, end-times fixated, (i.e. evangelized) and politically polarized is there even the will necessary to work to create a common-ground, 21st-century-and-beyond version of the better Jesus we all need?

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