SUNDAY LECTURE | The Joy, Freedom, and Terror of Unknowing

ORDINARY LIFE - Thoughts and Ideas to Help You Live a Happier Life

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Summary of Ordinary Life for August 13, 2023

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Dear Ones -

Registration for the event with Suzanne Stabile should be open within a few days. I’ll let you know or you can check for yourself on the Ordinary Life Website. To do so, click here.

The title of her time with us explains it all:

The Path Between Us
The Enneagram and Relationships

She will be with us from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Saturday, September 30. She will also return for the Ordinary Life hour that Sunday.

If you are unfamiliar with the Enneagram, it is a personality typing system that is used by most spiritual directors to aid in spiritual growth and understanding of one’s Self.

I have asked Brooke Summers-Perry to come and use the Ordinary Life hour on Sunday, September 10 to do a good introduction to the Enneagram. You will want to be sure to attend this time.

I called the time in Ordinary Life this week -

The Joy, Freedom, and Terror of Unknowing

Though we value advancing in knowledge and technique in almost every other area of life, there is a resistance to new insight, information, and knowledge when it comes to the religion we embrace as well and to new understandings of how and why we have become the persons we are. There are, however, new insights and information in both arenas. In this talk I mostly spend time talking about the reactive ways we have adapted to our experiences of growing in the face of feeling either overwhelmed or abandoned - to both.

That’s a brief summary of this week’s time in Ordinary Life.

The audio version of the talk has some significant differences from the text I spoke from. You can find the text of the talk, the presentation slides and the audio version of the talk using the links below.

Our podcast, “In Between,” can be accessed through the Ordinary Life web site.

If you would like to know how to make a contribution to Ordinary Life, click here for video instructions.

Be well and much love,

Bill Kerley

In order to read or download the text version of the talk, click here.

In order to view or download the presentation slides, click here.

In order to view or download the announcement slides, click here.

To listen to or download today’s talk, use the audio player below.

To watch the video of today’s talk, use the YouTube link below.

WEEKLY PODCAST | In Between.137

We return to some of the pieces we did not get to in the last two Sundays, namely our cataphatic and apophatic list about God. We, too, are in the process of unknowing what we know and wanting to be transparent and open about that. The two lines seem to repeat themselves, audibly and inaudibly:

“There is nothing to hang on to. We are held by everything.”

What does it look like to let go and allow ourselves to be held at the same time? And how, as you will hear us talk about, do we put it into relatable language? Two things we learned in this podcast:

1) James Hollis is a prolific writer. His most recent book is A Life of Meaning: Relocating Your Center of Spiritual Gravity (2023).

2) The parable of the boat and the stormy sea is paired with the story of Jacob wrestling the angel in the liturgical calendar. They have similar meanings. When we wrestle — with the dark night, with the angel, with the stormy sea — and then let go, we discover peace. We are transformed.

SUNDAY LECTURE | Faith As Fiction

ORDINARY LIFE - Thoughts and Ideas to Help You Live a Happier Life

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Summary of Ordinary Life for August 6, 2023

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Dear Ones -

The title I gave to the dialogue Dr. Holly Hudley and I had in Ordinary Life this week was -

Faith as Fiction

To say that something is “fiction” doesn’t mean it isn’t “true.” The word “fiction” comes from the same root word that we get the word “fabric” and “factory” from.

This class was a continued reflection on our response to “The Sea of Faith” by Don Cupitt. (Again, you can watch the documentary made from the book by clicking here.)

The first thing we have to do in spiritual work is “empty the cup.” We are so full of our own notions and ideas that it can be difficult for new teachings to find a home in us. Holly quoted from Tao this verse:

We join spokes together in a wheel,
But it is the center hole
That makes the wagon move.

We shape the clay into a pot,
But it is the emptiness inside
That holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
But it is the inner space
That makes it livable.

We each reflected on the recent article in The Atlantic that has gotten so much attention on why the American Church is in Decline.

I spoke of the difficulty of “having faith” because there is a reluctance to relinquish long-held beliefs and because it is just hard work to construct a “reasonable faith.”

Holly talked about the faith of “knowing and being able to speak” and of the faith of “not-knowing and being unable to speak.”

The closest synonym to faith is not “belief” but trust. The opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty.

Those are a few of the “highlights” of our time in Ordinary Life this week. There is no text but the audio and video is available on and through the Ordinary Life website.

Our podcast, “In Between,” can be accessed through the Ordinary Life web site.

If you would like to know how to make a contribution to Ordinary Life, click here for video instructions.

Be well and much love,

Bill Kerley

In order to view or download the presentation slides, click here.

In order to view or download the announcement slides, click here.

To listen to or download the audio recording of today’s talk, use the audio player below.

To watch the video of today’s talk, use the YouTube link below.

WEEKLY PODCAST | In Between.136

A concise video ignited this conversation given by a Shaolin Monk. You can see it HERE if you have Instagram. He says that in order for something to change, something old must go. He uses the analogy of emptying the tea cup and starting again from the beginning. Emptying the cup is the only way that something blocked can be removed. Our seeking here is to empty the cup, to evaluate and remake the beliefs that do not serve human becoming. There is room for tradition, but there is also an openness to softening the edges to our traditions so that we don’t cling too tightly to at the expense of growth.

We are both interested in evolution, which is to say, change. We are both interested in truth without being hamstrung by doctrinal, literal demands handed to us. We are also both interested in community, in doing this together so that wholeness is more genuinely experienced. We will talk further about how to have reasonable faith on Sunday with some ideas that we need to empty, as well as those that can begin to fill the cup back up. It is an apophatic and cataphatic inquiry. Thanks for joining!