SUNDAY LECTURE | Intense Commitment and A Relaxed Faith

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

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Summary of Ordinary Life for November 19, 2023

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Dear Ones -

The religious/spiritual journey I am attempting to teach about requires an intense commitment and a relaxed faith - both at the same time. This reflection on the phrase in the Lord’s prayer - “give us this day our daily bread” - offers an excellent opportunity to reflect on this way.

Both existing Hebrew Scripture and Jewish liturgy shaped the telling of the Jesus story. No aspect of the Lord’s Prayer was more so significantly shaped than this phrase. What is required to hear it is an intense commitment and a relaxed faith. The phrase is: a prayer for food, a request for help in living one day at a time, a prayer for justice, and a prayer for help in trusting. It is a difficult teaching for us to hear because we are not Jewish, we love to be in control, and we are dissatisfied with “what is.” However, the things that matter are not all sparkly, new, and novel. They are ancient and ordinary - like bread. The Exodus story is a myth about freedom from bondage, death, and darkness.

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

To read or download the text 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.

If you would like to listen to or download today’s talk, use the audio player below.

If you would prefer to watch the video recording, click on the YouTube player link below.

SUNDAY LECTURE | The Future of Faith

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

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Summary of Ordinary Life for November 12, 2023

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Dear Ones -

This week’s talk in Ordinary Life was titled -

The Future of Faith

I began with my version of an old Zen teaching story about the guru’s cat that was tied during evening meditation time to keep it from disturbing those gathered to meditate. The point of the story is that many people adopt, embrace, and practice all kinds of religious rituals and beliefs without having any understanding where these things come from. We must move from mindless practices to mindful mysticism. Mystics see, experience, and express that they are a part of the world and not apart from it. What blocks our spiritual growth and happiness is the belief that we are separate from the Sacred and from each other. God is not so much an architect but the Architecture that we are merely part of. We must move to embrace communal responsibility and communal salvation. Viktor Frankl in “Man’s Search for Meaning” gives a hopeful way forward.

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 of the talk, click here.

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

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

If you would like to listen to or download the audio recording of today’s talk, you can click on the audio player below.

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

WEEKLY PODCAST | In Between.144

How many of you are familiar with Anthony De Mello? He’s written a boatload of books, and turns out the only one I have is The Way to Love. He was an Indian Psychotherapist who was also a Hindu-Catholic and wrote many books on spirituality. He was a masterful storyteller, and today, Bill retells the story about the Guru’s cat.

Listen and see what you get from it - there are many layers here, but ultimately, one of the points is not to hold our doctrine so rigidly that we lose sight of people and presence. When we are busy arguing about doctrine, we are no longer in the experience. We lose sight of the sacred and of each other.

In deconstructing our faith, it can feel necessary to take something from the old into the new so we can learn how to hold it loosely and allow it (and ourselves) to change. The Guru’s cat was initially just a cat, but it eventually became the central meaning of the meditative community, and the whole thing fell apart.

Next week, we’ll talk about reconstructing. But in the meantime, don’t tie up your Guru’s cat.

SUNDAY LECTURE | How To Live and Love in This World

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

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Summary of Ordinary Life for November 5, 2023

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Dear Ones -

One of my spiritual practices is what in Buddhism is called Tonglen. In the Christian tradition a similar practice would be called “petitionary prayer.” The practice is one where we consciously take the suffering of the world into ourselves and, then, send forth in its place loving-kindness and compassion, peacefulness, and ease. At the moment there is a lot of suffering going on in this world. Some of it the result of natural disasters. Much of it the product of human evil. What, in this kind of world, does it mean to pray “thy kingdom come.”

I called the talk I offered in Ordinary Life this week -

How to Live and Love in this World

and spoke to this complex issue.

As part of this time I gave out a handout summarizing the significant talks since beginning the theme of “walking the way” last Spring. A copy of that handout is on the Ordinary Life website.

This talk also includes an invitation for those of you for whom Ordinary Life matters to do the work that will be required to make this gathering your class so that it can continue into the future as a guide and resource for people who are seeking to conform their theology and belief system to “what is.”

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 the audio from today’s talk, use the audio player below.

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