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Exploration -a field manual for a faithful renewing community -Book Review

 Blurb that drew me in:  Exploration highlights specific episodes and characters of the Biblical narrative from Moses to Herod. These details are later used as examples, specific instances, pictures in the mind, as the study group uses the re-picturing tool to explore selected expressions from theology — Messiah, demon, Immanuel, sin, grace, the divine experienced as father, the divine experienced as Christ, the divine experienced as Holy Spirit. These pages text look at various aspects of mission, drawing on both scriptural and secular sources and examples. Finally, Exploration: A Field Manual uses re-picturing to explore the idea of “church” and how it might be re-imagined — faithful to historic roots, and yet new for the new data we have. The book is quirky. To me that's a term of endearment and praise: I like quirky. In particular quirks which are related to purposes of helping the reader to engage better with the material and thoughts. The laudable purpose of the quirks of pre
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Futuring formation in a climate of turbulence

Intro This is a paper I wrote for a recent gathering of people involved in thinking about spiritual accompaniment in our region. Reading Jane Shaw's volume , I was struck what a different world it addresses. Not only is my class background not really represented (it's all seems quite middle/upper class). I was largely left feeling that this is spiritual practice that seems quite detached from much of the lived reality of the nation that I read recently about in The People [The Rise and Fall ofthe Working Class 1910-2010] . The exception is to some extent is Percy Dearmer. These are people also who lived and worked in a world also where CO2 was below 350ppm (it’s now 420+) and the climate was still the relatively stable holocene we came to know and mostly love (yes, even in Britain!) My fear is that to continue to think along the same trajectory as these mid-20th century pioneers would be to isolate Christian spirituality from the most important and momentous features of wha

Heiress embraces limits to wealth

 A very interesting development was reported from Austria . An heiress is giving away a big chunk of an inheritence. Her basis for doing so is that she has not earned it. I have inherited a fortune, and therefore power, without having done anything for it. And the state doesn't even want taxes on it. I think that the points are well made.  She's (a) not done anything to earn it, (b) she's actually inherited power as a necessary correlate of the money. And (c) the state is content to let that situation stand. I think that by implication of what she's gone on to do, she is also affirming that some kind of democratic control over such money (and power) is important.  Too often the philanthropic model distributes at the whim of the owner. She's actually proposing to give up all title and claim to the money in favour of a more democratic decision-making structure. The former is patriarchal, hierarchical, 'daddy knows best' -and when you look at many of the actual

Questions for billionaires, musings for limitarians

 Some contributions to a Mastodon thread on wealth and the wealthy seemed to me to be worth further reflection. I really would like media interviewers to ask questions like this. The thread has a few other suggestions too. One of the replies was helpful, I thought. billionaires don't 'hoard money' they will 'never use'. the notional billion dollars isn't the amount of cash they have in the bank, it's an estimate of the amount of capital — ownership of stock, real estate, and so forth — they control and extract interest from. the idea of capitalists as 'money hoarders' is a child's understanding of what wealth inequality is & hampers any attempt to address its structural cause, which is social mechanisms of power placing a small group in a position to exploit the labour of the majority, not that small group somehow by their own efforts bringing in more money than they spend  -https://octodon.social/@esvrld/111806450875791439 This chimes with