I like to set up obstacles and defeat them.
I had to face the possibility that the art of living in the way of Jesus was no longer carried on in a holistic way by any single tradition.
The Bible is not considered an accurate, absolute, authoritative, or authoritarian source but a book to be experienced and one experience can be as valid as any other can. Experience, dialogue, feelings, and conversations are equated with Scripture while certitude, authority, and doctrine are to be eschewed! No doctrines are to be absolute and truth or doctrine must be considered only with personal experiences, traditions, historical leaders, etc. The Bible is not an answer book.
We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry. A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, narrow, or controlling orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn't take itself too seriously. It is humble. It doesn't claim too much. It admits it walks with a limp.
If Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed were to bump into each other along the road and go have a cup of tea or whatever, I think we all know they would treat one another far different and far better than a lot of their followers would.
Jesus doesn’t dominate the other, avoid the other, colonize the other, intimidate the other, demonize the other, or marginalize the other. He incarnates into the other, joins the other in solidarity, protects the other, listens to the other, serves the other, even lays down his life for the other.
Jesus was short on sermons, long on conversations; short on answers, long on questions; short on abstraction and propositions, long on stories and parables; short on telling you what to think, long on challenging you to think for yourself.
The nature of athletic celebrity is increasingly moving away from the actual field of play.
President Obama, don't you think you should follow in the footsteps of your predecessor? Remember, President George W. Bush? He stayed out of the political arena, and he let you, his successor, do your job.
At 35 years of age, I realized that my ballet career wasn't going to last for ever. As a parent of three young children, I had to start to plan my future after dance even though I dreaded about.
And when I say it, they get alarmed. . . 'Cause I'm louder than a bomb.