felix hominum

halfSpeed - creative worship retreat

halfSpeed creative worship retreat, June 13 – 18 2010

Take a look - the event & the format seem interesting.

Time: June 13, 2010 at 6pm to June 18, 2010 at 2pm
Location: King's Fold Retreat & Renewal Centre, Alberta

Organized By: Jim Robertson

Event Description:
1/2 Speed is a five day spiritual retreat where we will dwell in community at the juncture of corporate worship, meditation, devotional exercises, theology and philosophy. This will occur through a carefully crafted blend of daily rhythm, stimulating teaching and time. Time for conversations, rest, renewal, spiritual exercises, conversation and personal creativity.

The goal is to create a space where worship artisans, curators and leaders; teachers, pastors and theologians can facilitate one another's deep spiritual encounters, and so be renewed and inspired in their worship ministries.

Our numbers will be small (twenty to thirty); lines between faculty and attendee's blurred; and the programming will be relaxed, participatory and interactive. We will worship, eat, pray and learn together through a pilgrimage-themed narrative week as we seek encounter with the Living God.

The faculty is a blend of contemporary worship curators, worship leaders, spiritual directors, theologians and philosophers, including: Mark Pierson (a twenty year + pioneer/veteran of alt. worship, guerrilla worship, worship curation), Richard Webb (worship leadership, post-modern ministry, liturgy, music), Chad Sundin (music); Jim Robertson (alt. worship, new liturgies, rituals, devotional exercises & contemplation), Jodi Penner (music), Dr. David Williams (philosophy & theology), Dr. Myron Penner (philosophy & theology) and Dr. Oz Lorentzen (philosophy, theology & spiritual direction).

1/2 Speed will be hosted by King's Fold Retreat and Renewal Centre, located an hour from Calgary, Alberta on the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies. In addition to the mountain views and river valley, the 160 acre facility has two outdoor prayer walks, a labyrinth, two chapels, and a staff dedicated to hospitality and facilitating one's retreat experience. Additional devotional exercises will be added to King's Fold for the retreat.

Cost is $875 Canadian, and includes all meals (superb!) and accommodations. Rides from Calgary International airport can be arranged.

For further information: www.halfspeed.org,

Neighourhoods, God, & stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YaXbkD1sgs

Event Focus: "The Word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood." (John 1:14 - The Message) As followers of Jesus, we are called into neighbourhoods. Forge Canada is seeking to inspire and to equip a movement of God's people to participate in neighbourhood transformation. Come and be a part of this day with folks from across the city who are seeking to be obedient to God and participate with God in kingdom activities in their neighbourhoods. Michael Frost, author, speaker, teacher from Australia, will lead a team of people who will inspire us to a new vision of the people of God living out their faith in the context of their neighbourhood.

Register/ more info here from Forge.

Dante's Purgatory, Canto XVI: free will, & the confusion of church & state

As Dante and Virgil enter the cornice of the Wrathful, they are enveloped in a dark cloud of smoke, a "foul and acrid air" which chokes the senses.  It might be worth comparing the images used in Purgatory with those used in the Inferno for similar sins.  Dante had gone into more detail and description of the nature of sin in Hell;  here in Purgatory he will give us simpler images.  These are, after all, the souls of the Penitent, and so the effects of sin have not fully consumed them.  Instead, what we have seen so far is a pattern of contrast:  examples of vice and virtue placed before the readers' eyes.  We see the contrast not only in the historical examples which are given on each cornice, but also in the particular prayers which are chanted or sung by the Penitents.  On this cornice Dante hears the souls singing the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God).  Our attention therefore is not to be fixed on the negative (the vice or sin being purged) but on the opposite virtue which is being held forth as an example to imitate.  The Agnus Dei is an apt choice for this part of Purgatory, since it brings forth the image of Jesus who returns the wrath of his accusers and executioners with a plea for forgiveness and the meekness of the "lamb who is still before his shearers".  And in comparison to the discord he encountered among the inhabitants of the Inferno, in this place Dante hears the souls singing in perfect harmony (XVI.21).

In the midst of one of Dante's conversations we have what might be a beautiful summary image of the work of purgation.  Dante is beginning to answer Marco the Lombard's question, and he addresses Marco:

O you, creature, who purge your soul
in order to give it back to God...
XVI 30-31

This is the goal of the whole process:  being cleansed in order to give one's soul back to God, from Whom the soul had its origin in the first place.  This idea then allows Dante to introduce the topic of free will and destiny.  If indeed "grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it", then part of that perfection involves the human faculty of choice.  The relationship between grace and free will is either more simple (not more simplistic) or more complex than what Dante presents in this isolated canto.  Yet it is a question which is with us perpetually.  First, his new conversation partner is quick to dismiss some popular (then and now) "causes" of human action.  Dante asks Marco about this, commenting that some people see cause, destiny, "in the stars" and others see it "on the earth" (63).  Marco tells Dante that the "spheres" do not control destiny, for if this were so, then free will would be destroyed (68-71).  No, he says, if the world has gone downhill, then the "cause is in yourself and only there".  This, too, is then tied to the notion of justice:  unless we are free agents in doing good or evil, then there is no justice in reward or restraint.

Dante gives us a brief overview of the development of human free will agency in the individual and in society.  Since we are born with the capacity for free will, but not with the wisdom to make the right choices, we need to be guided by the restraint of law.  And if the world has gone to hell in a handbasket, (as every generation believes it has) then the fault is in the evil will of the leaders who are organizing either the religious or secular society, it is "not Nature that has grown corrupt in you" (Musa's trans, XVI.105).

This then leads to Dante's last point in the canto.  The confused and inappropriate blending of secular and sacred powers by the church of Rome has put Pope Boniface VIII into the Inferno. 

Dante's Purgatorio Canto XV

At the beginning of Canto XV there Dante encounters a “light far brighter” than any he has encountered so far.  He tells us that his “mind was stunned by what it did not know” (XV.12).  To explain the intensity of the light, Dante uses the image of a ray of light reflecting from a surface.

 

A ray leaps from water or from glass,
Reflecting back the other other way as it
Ascends in the same way it first came down,

Forming an angle with the plummet line
Exactly equal to the incidence –
As theory and experiment both show (16-21)

 Dante’s physics are correct, though Mark Musa comments (p 167) that how this description serves to explain Dante’s experience “is none too clear”.  The description does however remind me of a similar description in Virgil’s Aeneid.  In comparing Aeneas with Turnus, Virgil also uses an image of reflecting light.  Unfortunately I have misplaced my Aeneid in the mounds of books which create a second wall of insulation in my basement.  I’ll find it and update the post later.  The gist of the comparison is this:  it is about the source of power and motivation for the two men.  The light which guides Aeneas is reflected from above – it is a divine thing.  Here perhaps Dante is alluding to that passage in (book 8, if I recall) the Aeneid where Virgil introduces this idea.  The image used of Turnus is that of a boiling cauldron – which fits one for the next cornice:  the wrathful.  Be all that as it may, and we’ll patch it up as needed.  The question is this:  does one’s direction come from above (reflecting the Divine), or from below?