All posts tagged Creation
I'm not always wearing my full habit...
There is in many parents a striving to control their children, and to make of them, if not precisely automata, yet beings as fully subordinate to the will of their procreator as the characters of a novelist are to their creator. On the other hand, there is in the human creator [God] a parallel desire to create something that shall have as much free will as the offspring of procreation.
Dorothy Sayers, in Mind of the Maker
This comes in a chapter that contrasts free will with miracle, through the metaphor of an author or playwright. Although I did not get all of her references to literary works, it was thought-provoking and worth the time to read.
Oh my… God?
THE RUBBER DUCKY!!!
The arts are not a way of making a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country (2005)
a.k.a. MAKE. A. THING.
(via redcloud)
(Source: onlyondemairt, via redcloud)
irresistiblerevolution: laurenrowell: tkriii: bonedust: (via marijuanaisgoodforyou)
Undercover Nun loves that “eight days” imagery. For Christians, there’s an important bit of symbolism around the number 8. Bear with me a moment.
The first creation account in Genesis describes six “days” of God’s creative work, with God setting aside the seventh “day” for rest. This becomes part of the Law of God’s people, that one day of each seven be set aside for Sabbath.
The Passion story of Jesus begins and ends on Sundays. On the first day of the week, Jesus makes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. On the sixth day of the week, Jesus is crucified, and a few of his friends do a hurried burial before sundown marks the beginning of the seventh day, the Sabbath. And on Sunday morning, the eighth day, the women head to the tomb to finish the burial work, only to find the body of Jesus gone.
The Risen Jesus is known as God’s New Creation, which includes not only Jesus but the entire cosmos. On the eighth day, as on the first, all that is has been created afresh, through the death and resurrection of Jesus. So the number eight has come to symbolize rebirth, new life, resurrection.
Therefore, given that background and symbolism, imagine the resurrection our entire world could experience within eight days! What rebirth, to feed all of our hungry, not just for one day, but for all days! Truly, this would be a newly-created Easter world, one that mirrors the Kingdom of God that Jesus preached!
This is in response to me saying that men and women were both created in the image of God and so they deserve equality in all things.
At this point, my “bitch please” face is basically permanent.
Also, I really hate this sort of language. It’s very foreign to me, so it comes off as very holier-than-thou and contrived (probably my problem, not his). And I understand the concept of humanity being absolutely vile but it’s not something I hear about often.
The Christians I look up to talk a lot about grace, but they also talk about creation being good (meaning Adam and Eve are good). We just slip up frequently.
Anyway. Last time I promise.
Undercover Nun joins you in your “bitch please” face. Nuns are good at making that face, of course. :-)
Creation is not only good, but at the end of the sixth day? God looks back over everything that is, and God says it is very good. This is awesome stuff, right? And we know this already. Trees, flowers, birds? Very good! Beautiful! Rivers, brightly-colored fish, baby ducklings? Adorable! Precious! Mountains, herds of bison, tigers, wolves? Grand! Terrible and wonderful!
To set @Gods_Advocate straight, I would say that every single person that lives now, ever has lived, or ever will live has the same value in God’s eyes. Jesus gave us many parables to explain this to us. And this is the meaning of grace: every one of us gets the same wages for our life, no matter how much of it we’ve spent as committed Christians. Grace means that when God judges us all, we’re all found wanting, and God forgives each one of us as freely and extravagantly as the next.
This person is correct in that we do not deserve to receive God’s grace. The definition of grace is that it is unearned and undeserved; the corollary is that God’s grace is unearnable and undeservable! Nothing we can do will ever earn us God’s love and forgiveness; we can never do enough good deeds to deserve God’s love and forgiveness. But — and here’s the Good News! — neither can we ever un-earn or lose our deservingness. God’s grace simply is: as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
How amazing is that?!
Yes, there is sometimes value in contemplating our own unworthiness. This can help (some of) us (at some times) to understand what an amazing and extravagant gift it is that God offers to us through Christ. I mean, I know how often I slip up, and yet I get the same grace as people like Mother Theresa and Saint Paul. Of course, Mother Theresa and Saint Paul and I also get the same grace as Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden. That’s what grace means: we’re all equally deserving, because none of us can possibly deserve it.
Undercover Nun is with you in finding this kind of language generally unhelpful, especially when used in a negative sense, as this was in context. About the only time you really hear me talking about whether we deserve grace is when I hear someone who needs building up. And to receive this as a rebuke? How does that build up the kingdom of God? How does that win souls to Christ?
I’d far rather waltz with Jesus through the delirious whirl of scandalous love and extravagant grace. Because men and women, planets and stars and galaxies, plants and animals, microbes and viruses, electrons and quarks and photons — all of it is very good!
Creationism in the classroom: Students don't understand how black people "evolved from" white people because "we're different skin."
ryking: I weep for the future.
The title of the blog post here is “The Bible Belt can never improve if everyone refuses to question religion,” and the post presents a profoundly sad example.
Undercover Nun has said this before, and will probably say it again.
Doubt is not the opposite of faith. In fact, doubt and questioning are absolutely necessary to develop a mature faith.
If you are a member of a faith community that proclaims questions to be evil or doubt to be demonic, then your faith community is led by a false prophet. This person is not teaching the word of God, who blesses us all with brains for thinking, hearts for loving, and minds for making our own choices.
Undercover Nun prays for this uneducated teacher and the students she fails to educate.
The Clergy Letter Project
“We the undersigned, [12,500+] Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children.”
Undercover Nun has signed. Have you urged your clergyperson to sign?
Nature by Numbers - Cristóbal Vila
Wonderful short! Undercover Nun has long had a passion for phi and the Fibonacci Sequence. Creation is an amazing place!
In Virginia, volunteers turn out by the thousands for Clean the Bay Day
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — Thousands are pitching in to do their part to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.
The 22nd annual Clean the Bay Day was held on Saturday, and more than 7,600 volunteers had signed up to join the effort.
Organized by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, most of the work is done on land. But in Norfolk, volunteers used kayaks to clean from the water. They removed beer bottles, plastic buckets and a bicycle.
Last year, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation reported that 5,150 volunteers removed 153,650 pounds of trash from 327 miles of waterway.
Thanks be to God! I give thanks for all of these volunteers!
And I pray for the immortal soul of each person who carelessly or thoughtlessly drops trash onto this marvelous Creation we’ve been entrusted with. Did nobody ever teach you to clean up after yourownself?
