Occupy Louisville

Still here, still fighting, Still occupying

The principalities and powers are legion.

According to the Bible, the principalities are legion in species, number, variety and name. They are designated by such multifarious titles as powers, virtues, thrones, authorities, dominions, demons, princes, strongholds, lords, angels, gods, elements, spirits…

And if some of these seem quaint, transposed into contemporary language they lose quaintness and the principalities become recognizable and all too familiar: they include all institutions, all ideologies, all images, all movements, all causes, all corporations, all bureaucracies, all traditions, all methods and routines, all conglomerates, all races, all nations, all idols. Thus, the Pentagon or the Ford Motor Company or Harvard University or the Hudson Institute or Consolidated Edison or the Diners Club or the Olympics or the Methodist Church or the Teamsters Union are principalities. So are capitalism, Maoism, humanism, Mormonism, astrology, the Puritan work ethic, science and scientism, white supremacy, patriotism, plus many, many more—sports, sex, any profession or discipline, technology, money, the family—beyond any prospect of full enumeration. The principalities and powers are legion.
-William Stringfellow

Gehenna

In the New Testament, every reference to “hell” in the English is a reference either to Hades, Tartarus, or Gehenna. Gehenna is used 12 times.

It’s well known that Gehenna was the dump outside Jerusalem where trash was burned. And many times, Gehenna could be well translated as “trash dump”.

Some references for later...

Anger, Raca, Moreh, and Gehenna in Mt. 5:21-22

The blogger, the tenth Leper is doing a review of Rob Bells forthcoming book, 'Love Wins'. Yes, he has an advance copy. Surely Gehenna will be addressed.

The book promo.


What the Hell? A site about hell with many resources. What the Hell is Hell? Clearly against the modern notion of hell.

And Jason Goroncy's older post, Hell, the nemesis of Hope?

Slacking

The slacktivist and the vindication of Democracy

Stringfellow on prayer

The event of prayer, certain acts called prayer, the very word ‘prayer’ have gathered such ridiculous associations. That is not only the case with the obscene performances, which pass as public prayer, at inaugurations, in locker rooms, before Rotary luncheons, and in many churchly sanctuaries, but also the practice of private prayer is attended by gross profanity, the most primitive superstitions, and sentimentality which is truly asinine….

When I write that my own situation [during my illness] in those months of pain and decision can be described as prayer, I do not only recall that during that time I sometimes read the Psalms and they became my psalms, or that, as I have also mentioned, I occasionally cried ‘Jesus’ and that name was my prayer, but I mean that I also at times would shout ‘Fuck!’ and that was no obscenity, but a most earnest prayerful utterance.

(A Second Birthday, pp. 99, 108-9).

My career path

“I believed then, as I do now, that I am called in the Word of God … to the vocation of being human, nothing more and nothing less…. Within the scope of the calling to be merely but truly human, any work, including that of any profession, can be rendered a sacrament of that vocation. On the other hand, no profession, discipline or employment, as such, is a vocation.”

—William Stringfellow, A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow (Eerdmans, 1994), pp. 30-31.

I amuse myself...

Give away your love and then remove another tomb
Painted words adorn the walls, echoing untrue
I feel cold...

Promises abound, you rarely find it to begin
Maybe I'm afraid to let you all the way in
I guess so...

I excuse myself
I'm used to my little cell
I amuse myself
In my very own private hell

I excuse myself
I'm used to my little cell
I amuse myself
In my very own private hell

Lately I'm beside myself, pretending unconcerned
Standing at a corner where I threw you on a turn
I'll move on...

Flowers on a cross remain, marking an ending scene
Damn it all if blood you spill, turn the grass more green
Life is short...

I excuse myself
I'm used to my little cell
I amuse myself
In my very own private hell

I amuse myself
In my very own private hell