I bought a book about a decade ago called Our Family Book of Days. It was when I was just beginning my own journey of wanting to strengthen my knowledge of the past, so to help me in my present living more fully alive to God's presence. I had looked at Jewish festivals and typical Christian holiday history. I thoroughly enjoyed getting into the Church Calendar with all the saint stories. It was all so new, and at the time that book was overwhelming.
I relooked at that book this morning. I journaled in the front of the book my current thoughts, and will now share my ponderings here. I will be posting more calendar stuff. Since over this past year I've covered a lot of my favorite saint stories, Jewish holy-days, and stuff - I'll do reminders with links back.
What I've wrestled with for some time is when to choose to post about other person's stories. Do I stay consistent with the Church Calendar, in choosing death dates? Their thinking, was that was those person's birthday into Heaven.
I used to have a timeline on the wall in what is now my 'office'. I miss it at times. Some figures had dates in connection to what we remember them for in history. Like when Columbus found America instead of the Indies (which was his goal - a route not having to go through the barbarous lands of the eastern hemisphere), or when did Pasteur learn about bacteria, or when was the atom split?.
In wading through the saint hagiography, the reality of daily living as human beings is hard to find. I've tried to post more of the ordinary dailiness of living with the current culture struggles in the saint's lives. I see daily life as miracle and look for God winks everywhere. God is in the ordinary making the ordinary EXTRAordinary.
I enjoy the flow of history and the big picture. From my timeline I saw the eras of the beginning of philosophy, when humanity no longer was existing from meal to meal, having time to think and ponder. I saw the progression of art, and technology; the eras of exploration, and colonization; the story of language, of math, the story of science ... The flow of Christian history is fun to learn.
Rather than drawing dividing lines, saying, "well that's just Catholic, or Orthodox, or Jewish, or Celtic, or Protestant ..." I see it as a flow, like streams forking off from Jesus and the early church. Even the story of Mohammed fits into the flow of monotheism.
The Bible itself begins in the multi-god cultures and creation mythologies - with God saying there is one god Who created the world. Then it goes into the choice of relationship with walking and talking with God or do we want to do it our own way. Then there's the story of a chosen people, still dealing with the choice of relationship with God or not, and what does that look like. And we're able to see that even with God pretty physically in their midst, with daily miracles, people still chose to do things their own way. Then God enfleshes Himself into our history, in Jesus, wanting to help draw us into the relationship with Him He so desires. We see God in the ordinary, reaching out to the ordinary ... I'm not going to go on with my simplistic overview of the Bible ...
But the flow of Christian history from the above place is humanity coming out of a One God and only one God, into now what do we do with a human Jesus who claims to be God ... If you were Jewish, Jesus' claim would truly be blasphemous! And learning about all the 'isms', who's names just keep changing. In history we see differing definitions of 'holy' - from not even saying the name of God; from avoidance of the material (but then why, if Jesus IS God, did He choose to go through a physical womb and birth experience; why be born in the filth of a barnyard; why have the first evangelists be the lowest scum of society - the shepherds, and yet have secular kings recognize this born 'king') - gnosticism; to abuse of the body (still a devaluation of the material), to avoidance of the 'secular' world - with focus on the dividing wall of secular vs spiritual - who's to judge?!
I'm rambling. I need to be planning my next landscaping project. Hmmm, where was I going? Oh ... birth into heaven ... remember?
My next pondering question was 'what's heaven'? Didn't Jesus say, "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand"? here and now? And if God is in the ordinary of daily living, and if we're all created in His image, what do we do with that image in us, what can it look like, how does it play out in people's stories? ...
I will both look at celebrating someone's birth or what they're noted for. I'm just wanting to carry on for me personally, learning more about people's stories, and how their living out the gospel message touched them and their surrounding immediate culture, and how it might touch me and my daily choices in wanting to walk with God too.
Enough. I will keep posting, though a year of the calendar is done. Calendar Girl Me will carry on ...
2 comments:
You don't have to write about it all again, but PLEASE do give the reminders with the links! Or you should maybe find an online calendar and link it to your site (or maybe there is a built in calendar feature on your site??) and you could put all the stuff on it, and you could add to it as you add stuff.
The idea of a calendar is a good one. I've posted my circular calendar in a past post.
What I might think of doing, since I do want to add pages to my website beyond just blogging, I could have one page be a calendar - and maybe a link to it.
I see the possibilities. Just haven't taken the time to do them!
Post a Comment