Reconciliation

Robban

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Don't miss the bus.

I did, so I took a different route, which was fun,

a mouthorgan playing driver, (though not while he was driving) as well was.

He had his own musik with him, short bursts of blues, jazz he seemed to have difficulty sitting still, nevertheless pretty amusing.
 
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Fizzywig

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I did, so I took a different route, which was fun,

a mouthorgan playing driver, (though not while he was driving) as well was.

He had his own musik with him, short bursts of blues, jazz he seemed to have difficulty sitting still, nevertheless pretty amusing.

Sometimes its good to miss the bus.
 
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Gregory Thompson

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@Fizzywig - I was drawing contrast between like ideas. In a similar way, having hope in someone (like a president) to do what you won't do yourself for your surroundings or job or country .. can kind of poison the future. If the hope is the reason for "not doing anything" then this kind of hope is a poison.

This is different than working together with the person to make a future. In the same way, those who partner with God to make the world a better place today, are not doing a bad thing ... however, those who hope in the pastor for ministry programs, and hope in the ministry team for an emotional breakthrough, are discounting the opportunities God has given them in life.

It has been quite a while since some sort of crazy event has happened, I guess that would be a blessing? unless you like interesting times ;)

I guess these times have an interest in themselves ... but are rather boring in the sense that the events seems to be a mimickry of the previous set of decades.
 
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Fizzywig

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@Fizzywig - I was drawing contrast between like ideas. In a similar way, having hope in someone (like a president) to do what you won't do yourself for your surroundings or job or country .. can kind of poison the future. If the hope is the reason for "not doing anything" then this kind of hope is a poison.

This is different than working together with the person to make a future. In the same way, those who partner with God to make the world a better place today, are not doing a bad thing ... however, those who hope in the pastor for ministry programs, and hope in the ministry team for an emotional breakthrough, are discounting the opportunities God has given them in life.

It has been quite a while since some sort of crazy event has happened, I guess that would be a blessing? unless you like interesting times ;)

I guess these times have an interest in themselves ... but are rather boring in the sense that the events seems to be a mimickry of the previous set of decades.

hi Michael, the "times" in part are of the "death of God" and people running around trying to put something else in place. Now that the "world to come" is not on the agenda, we seem to have the attempts to build secular utopias, so we have had Soviet Russia, the Third Reich, the Cultural Revolution and Pol Pot et al. Of course, those who remain faithful to God frown upon these, while often remaining happy to contemplate the eternal torture of Billions in God's very own death camp (ooops, oh yes, they all had a decent helping of free will so thats ok) Oh yes, and now many more sensitive souls are beginning to believe in mercy killings, the annihilation of the "lost", adding yet another epicycle to the "clear word" of the Bible.

Anyway, reconciliation. Keep things simple. I actually believe nothing (not nihilism, which is belief in nothing) and can hardly understand exactly how "belief" works. Does the belief sit in your head to be consulted on occasion? If we believe God walked the earth 2000 years ago, how does that work? It seems very often it "works" as a truncheon to clout others with who don't believe it. So we have the various believers of the various faiths. And the conflict and the arguments, while each waits for the "world to come" where THEY will be "justified" and proved "right". And of course, we have those who seek to build a slightly better world in the here and now while not losing hope for the World to Come. It all seems disjointed to me, who believes nothing.

So how do we act towards reconciliation?

Must go.
 
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Gregory Thompson

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@Fizzywig - The world to come is pretty hopeless right now, so giving up hardly helps anyone. In believing nothing, the word reconciliation is a curious word, as it implies a relationship. What reconciliation are you seeking?
 
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Fizzywig

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@Fizzywig - The world to come is pretty hopeless right now, so giving up hardly helps anyone. In believing nothing, the word reconciliation is a curious word, as it implies a relationship. What reconciliation are you seeking?

Just a quick word. I was interrupted before.

In Christian terms, all is the work of God. Reconciliation looks after itself if we get out of the way. Belief does not come into it. Trust/faith does, and surrender.

I really do find Pure Land Buddhist thought simpler. Just say "thank you" and get on with it, whatever "it" happens to be at the time.

The future does not have to be planned or "believed in", it will come of its own. Full of surprises no doubt. Plan if you want, but surely your experience tells you how silly your plans were in the past? Perhaps not. Just pleased that Robban missed the bus.

"The road to joy, which is mysteriously revealed to us without our exactly realising it" (Merton, in a letter to a child)
 
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Fizzywig

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@Fizzywig - The world to come is pretty hopeless right now, so giving up hardly helps anyone. In believing nothing, the word reconciliation is a curious word, as it implies a relationship. What reconciliation are you seeking?

And I do not believe in giving up.
 
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Fizzywig

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Our Leaders in the UK have planned what is called the Big Society, aka Care in the Community. It appears to involve closing down Nursing Homes and Care Centers.

Yet, hey presto! We have the London Marathon each year, now almost 40,000 people running across Tower Bridge, many in silly hats and outrageous costumes. At the last count the money raised in sponsorship was over a Billion. The stories of the runners are what is known as "heartwarming"......running for dad who died of bowel cancer, running for mum who died of breast cancer. Maybe such people do not have a "godly type love" yet I am sure God does not mind.

So there we have it. Who could possibly have imagined or planned for someone slowly staggering across Tower Bridge in a Donald Duck outfit to be be part of the "world to come"?
 
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Fizzywig

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Anyway, speaking of reconciliation (even of "ALL THINGS"), Freud came to this conclusion about human beings, that.......it is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestation of their aggressiveness. ( "Civilization and Its Discontents" )

I once read a book on Franz Stangl, who was the camp Commandant at Treblinka; basically the guy in charge of a camp responsible for the killing of upto a million Jewish people. The book consisted of 60 hours of interviews with Stangl conducted by the authoress, Gitta Sereny. Sereny also had brief dialogue with Stangl's children, and they said, without a trace of irony - nor as any attempt to exonerate their father as far as I could tell - that he had been a loving parent to them. Which seems astonishing in many ways.

Was/is Freud right? And if not, what is the way forward for any human being not seeking to demonise the "wicked"?

Often the answer of many Christians is simply that the "wicked", those who "reject Christ", will be despatched to another place apart from the "redeemed", or annihilated. Well, so much for the "reconciliation of all things".

The word Apokatastasis represents the idea of the eventual reconciliation of all things in Christ. ("Christ" obviously understood in a wider sense apparently far beyond the present day comprehension of some) Again, obviously, it is in direct opposition to the teaching of an eternal hell. Apokatastasis was the teaching of many of the early Church Fathers, also of four of the six main theological colleges of the early Church (this as per Thomas Talbot in his book "The Inescapable Love of God") A Biblical defence of the doctrine can be found in "Patristic Universalism" by David Burnfield, Apokatastasis was eventually declared a heresy in the sixth century by the Emperor Justinian, for reasons not entirely theological.......(maybe "crowd control" came into his thinking?)

A reasonably modern exponent of the teaching was Nicolas Berdyaev, who was himself influenced to a great degree by the Eastern Orthodox Church. I found this in his writings.....

The greater part of Eastern teachers of the Church, from Clement of Alexandria to Maximus the Confessor, were supporters of Apokatastasis, of universal salvation and resurrection. ... Orthodox thought has never been suppressed by the idea of Divine justice and it never forgot the idea of Divine love. Chiefly it did not define man from the point of view of Divine justice but from the idea of transfiguration and Deification of man and cosmos.

Well, so much for Christianity. Well, that is until the modernism of sola scriptura came along and the newly literate got hold of the Bible and began to interpret it for themselves, chucking in a decent helping of "free will" to justify the unjustifiable.

Anyway, back to the simple life of the Pure Land. Namu Amida Butsu!
 
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dlamberth

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Given your own Faith, what does the "reconciliation of all things" mean? What would be your hope?

Reconciliation of all things, from my perspective, has more to do with the perspective, or lens if you will, through which we experience life and reality. We tend to see life through the eyes of duality. Reconciliation of all things, still from my perspective, is seeing through the eyes of Wholeness, Unity or Oneness. I look to the movie Avatar as an example. I also look towards the Shamans and Mystics from their vantage point as an example of people who see all things reconciled.
 
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juvenissun

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As I see it one component of reconciliation is to recognise that the "wrath" of God (or gods) is a product of the infant mind of the human race, as is the thought of Gods who need to incarnate and sacrifice themselves for the "sins" of the world.

Mythology is worth study and has much to teach regarding the human situation, but to see such things as historical fact within time/space history is to my own mind misguided and in fact invites the very things it is claimed to heal.

This reconciliation idea is deep. But you are only pondering on a very basic question found in every religion.
How do you understand, answer or solve the big big problem of humanity: The evil nature of human?

Christianity calls it sin, and answers it in a very complicated way. Because it is the very core problem to solve. Christianity solves the problem in a perfect way.

Humanism, hmmm... has no answer at all. We recognize that human has evil nature. However, we do not know why. We can only live with it. There is no solution.
 
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