The spiritual journey of Paris Hilton

It wa slightly sad to read today that Paris Hilton’s spiritual guru has been exposed as a fake.

Paris was photographed with a Buddhist monk in West Hollywood on Saturday night – the pair shopped for books on spiritual enlightenment before he blessed the star and encouraged her to unburden herself by offloading her $10,000 diamond necklace, which she promptly handed over to a passing stranger.TMZ is now reporting that the man who posed as Paris’ spiritual guide is actually a Hollywood actor. Maxie Santillan has had roles in TV shows CSI and My Name Is Earl, and on the big screen in Pirates of the Caribbean and the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie!

So is this just a Hollywood scam… a publicity stunt in poor taste…. or is the poor girl looking in all the wrong places?

When Jesus said “Come unto me all you who are weary and I will give you rest for your souls” he wasn’t just talking to downtrodden peasants. The real question is: can he deliver on that promise? Rest for my soul is a tall order. It means that all that weariness and confusion…. all that seeking and striving, pushing and shoving to make some sense out of life…. all that rubbish is finally thrown off.

In the end, everyone wants rest for their souls – a solid base for their lives. I just have to make sure I’m leaning on something that will not give way.

Thinking Allowed

Yes, but what do you think?

I remember meeting a colleague at one of those Vicar-conference- type things whilst some charismatic rumpus was doing the rounds (like a hawk in a dovecote), and he said to me without a trace of irony:  ”What do we believe about it?”

It’s so easy to toe party-lines… to put your brain into deep-freeze… or even simply to let your thinking follow the line of least resistance. It requires a conscious effort to “love God, with all your… mind”. But the truth is that thinking is allowed. It’s good for you.

OK. So having stated the thesis, let’s test it. Apparently, (Telegraph 16/2) senior Church of England bishops are concerned that last week’s Synod vote to allow the church rather than the Prime Minister to have the final say in choosing diocesan bishops may lead to disestablishment. Church Commissioner Peter Bruinvels said the Church was ‘weakening [its] constitutional place at the heart of decision making’, but Philip Giddings, chairman of the Church’s mission and public affairs council, claimed the Government was still ‘committed to establishment’.

In contrast, a UN report claiming that more than 60% of British people have no religious affiliation has called for the Church of England to be separated from the state as its current privileged position does not reflect ‘the religious demography of the country’.

Bit like the BBC hanging on to the privilege of licence fees?

Next week,  (according to Guardian 21/2) a delegation of Islamic academics and theologians are meeting at the Vatican to discuss the open letter A Common Word Between Us and You sent to the Pope in October 2007 which highlighted the similarities between the two faiths. That should solve everything shouldn’t it?

By contrast, it was great to hear  (Church Times 22/2) that churches in Bridgend County Borough are responding to the numbers of apparent suicides among 17- to 25-year-olds in the area. The ecumenical ‘street pastor’ initiative works in Bridgend town, where according to the Area Dean of Bridgend, Revd Michael Komor, they are ‘well placed to engage with the young people’. Churches in the deanery will open for a day in the next few weeks, offering a safe space to ‘ask the questions’ and the multi-agency suicide prevention group for the area will include a church representative. However Mr Komor questioned recent press coverage, saying it gave the impression that ‘you’d only got to live in the area’ to feel suicidal.  

So where does it start, this thinking business? Apparently, an incredible improvement in behavior and academic progress followes the introduction of a ‘Philosophy for Children’ course in 2004 (BBC Online). A Year 4 teacher from the school in Warsall, Beckton said that the course helped children in her class ‘listen and respond appropriately’, express ‘original thoughts’ and ‘demonstrate judgments based on reason’. The school has now produced a DVD Thinking Allowed to illustrate the success of the course.

If only thinking was allowed for people over the age of 9.

Yes, but what do we believe about it?

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Life, Death and the Pursuit of Oscars

Interesting to notice in a recent magazine  the recent splurge of Hollywood films with a pro-life twist. Juno, described by the CEN reviewer as a ‘beautiful, life-affirming film’, is one of several where the leading character has an unwanted pregnancy but decides to keep her baby. In the case of Juno, she considers abortion but changes her mind when she is intercepted by a classmate on a pro-life vigil. The ‘crass’ and ‘raunchy’ comedy Knocked Up, the romantic fantasy August Rush and the drama Waitress all feature women who either decide to bring their child up or have the baby adopted. Perhaps -as Hollywood observers have been quick to point out- the trend could be as much to do with good storytelling as a change of mind, but affirming the sanctity of life is always good news, isn’t it?On the other hand, Juno’s by-line (“A comedy about growing up and the bumps along the way”) is about as trivialising as you can get.But this is the territory – with Corrie, Eastenders, and the rest (Hollyoaks? Skins?) – this is where our society does its moralising, its decision-making. And if the media makes an occasional  plug for what we agree is right behaviour, why gripe?

Making sense of the senseless

My thoughts this week have also been with the victims of senseless violence at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Ill., and E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, Calif. In case you missed these stories, on Tuesday, February 12, Lawrence King, an openly gay 15-year-old, was shot in the head by a classmate in Oxnard. Because he wore “feminine accessories” and makeup. Later this past week, on Thursday (the day of St. Valentine himself), five students were gunned down while many others were wounded by a shooter who attacked a lecture hall on the NIU campus. To me, perhaps the most chilling part of the NIU tragedy is this quotation from the university’s public safety chief Donald Grady: “There were no red flags … It’s unlikely that anyone would ever have the ability to stop an incident like this from beginning.” In other words, to sum it up, “these things happen.” Complacency could not be any further removed from the route to social change.

And even whilst acknowledging the tragedy of these shootings, how can one ignore the greater tragedy of those who are dying every day in Africa and the Middle East as political unrest continues to result in violence in places such as Kenya, Sudan, Chad, Afghanistan and Palestine. In Kenya, 1000 people have died and 300,000 have lost their homes in the fallout from a disputed election this past December, with peace-making talks stagnating. In the continued Darfur genocide, experts estimate that 200,000 people have died, while 3.5 million have been displaced from their homes.

So how do you make sense of the senseless?

How do you keep on believing in the justice of and love of Father God in the midst of such atrocities…  such folly…  such wicked waste?

Well. Let me know what you think. For me it drives me deeper into understanding the death of Jesus on the cross. That too was an atrocity, a wicked waste, the foollish brutal bullying of the innocent by the guilty.

  

Everything is spiritual -in its own way?

Everything –according to Rob Bell- is spiritual. And of course he’s completely right. It’s just a question of whether its bad spiritual or good spiritual.

And the wisdom to know the difference.

So can you help me here? Let me run some things by you and you decide which part of the good/bad spectrum they belong…. Treat it like a News Quiz with a moral twist.

Last week (31/1) the Telegraph reported on a Romanian Orthodox ex-priest, Daniel Corogeanu. He was convicted last year, freed pending appeal, and now jailed for seven years for the murder by crucifixion of a young nun who had symptoms of schizophrenia. She had been bound and chained to a cross and denied water for some days in a long-drawn-out ‘exorcism’ ritual. Corogeanu said that she was beyond salvation and claimed his action was justified.

Now I’m pretty sure that that’s bad.

But –bearing in mind the importance of us all getting along, and “doing the hard work of putting up with each other” (as The Message puts it somewhere)- how do you rate this new development in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity: For the first time in its 100-year history the WPCU has concluded with a service in St Paul Outside the Walls, Rome with Pope Benedict XVI taking part with World Council of Churches general secretary Revd Dr Samuel Kobia, as well as about 30 other leaders of Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant churches. The week started in Graymoor, New York in January 1908 under the title ‘Octave of Prayer for Church Unity’. (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/6657).

Good, bad or indifferent?

Or Dr John Sentamu having a pint with the pope? (Well, not exactly). When Tony Blair had an audience with Pope Benedict XVI, he gave him a gift, as is customary, a painting of Catholic convert Cardinal Newman. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, was more down to earth. On his first trip to Rome to celebrate the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the Archbishop presented His Holiness with a special beer brewed for the occasion at Masham, North Yorks. The Pope, a Bavarian by birth, is said to prefer beer to wine and water. (The Guardian (29/1)

Or Rowan Williams expostulating on the Blasphemy laws? (I’m not even convinced that in our day and age blasphemy is an issue that can be dealt with by legislation). Delivering the James Callaghan Memorial Lecture in the House of Lords this week, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said the current blasphemy legislation was unworkable and should be repealed. Whatever replaced it should clearly signal what was acceptable, and have the effect of stigmatising and punishing the extreme behaviours, and cruel forms of speaking and acting, that silence argument. Church Times (1/2)

I guess it’s good  (but I’ll wait for your comments to be sure) to see two senior Catholic leaders, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Bishop Crispian Hollis, arriving in Zimbabwe earlier this week as guests of the Zimbabwean Catholic Bishops’ Conference following a visit to South Africa. They stressed the pastoral, rather than political, nature of their visit which nevertheless comes at a time when opposition within the country to the dictatorial regime of Robert Mugabe is mobilising.

And the Revd Charlie Cleverley, Rector of St Aldate’s, a thriving charismatic evangelical church in the heart of Oxford, is claiming  non-Muslim residents will be driven away by the thrice-daily loudspeaker calls to prayer over the eastern part of the city proposed by leaders of a new mosque there. Mr Cleverley, who previously led a church in a Muslim area of Paris, said the ‘azan’ minaret call to prayer was ‘un-English’ and risked ‘ghettoisation’ of the area in years to come.  Source: The Times (30/1) .

So how do you vote? Cleverley or uncleverly? Does this “getting along” business include people outside the Church. I suspect so.

A group of evangelical C of E bishops has urged wavering delegates to be willing to attend the 10-year Lambeth Conference, which has been threatened by divisions over appointments of practising homosexual priests and bishops. They are urging support for the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Windsor Process in working towards resolution and unity. Church of England Newspaper (31/1).

Bad spiritual or good spiritual? What does God think of the Lambeth Conference striving for unity as the expense of doctrine? Help me out here.

I was interested to read of The Black Christian Leaders Forum’s (BCLF) appeal following a meeting last week with the Department for Children, Schools and Families for more black men to come forward to train as teachers who will be effective role models and mentors. Wale Hudson-Roberts, racial justice co-ordinator for the Baptist Union of Great Britain, agreed with the call but added that the profession needed more black teachers in senior positions to effect a change, and that teachers generally required training to better understand black culture, where assertiveness was often mistaken for aggression.  Baptist Times (31/1).

I vote a tentative good.

And finally, Respondents to the British Social Attitudes Survey 2008, which questioned over 3,000 people, concluded that marriage is fairly irrelevant, although stable relationships are important. The majority considered that there was no difference between being married and cohabiting, even when raising children, and two-thirds believed that divorce could be a positive step. This flies in the face of David Cameron’s affirmation of marriage and desire to halt the disintegration of the family as the key to mending what he describes as our broken society. Sources: The Times (29/1).

Strange to find myself with David Cameron on this one.

Reflecting on Heath Ledger’s death

The Christian response to Ledger’s death has seen two extremes. There are the “He is burning in Hell” Christians vs. the “All you need is love” Christians. There has to be a middle ground. Derogatory tones do nothing to caste Christianity in a positive light while John Lennon Christianity dilutes the gospel, removing sin from the equation.I am a sinner and you are a sinner. The difference is when somone does not believe he/she is a sinner, living life while flipping God the bird. All of these young stars were wraped up in what this world has to offer and not what God has to offer. They sought pleasure and comfort in the material and lived accordingly. The Bible says quite clearly, “Friendship with the world is hatred toward God.” (James 4:4) There are consequences for our actions.I wish River Phoenix was still around making movies, he was the greatest actor of my generation aside from Johnny Depp. Ledger’s death should be a wake up call for the young and famous. No one is better than another. We are all wretched in our sin. It does not matter how much money you have or how righteous you think you are. All of us will eventually face death.Related Posts:The Warm Fuzzy Church
Have You Been Jedi Mind Tricked
Get Over Yourself

Demolishing the Obsolete?

I remember a sign in Cologne Cathedral saying: “This is not a museum.” Fair point, I guess, but when I read in the Catholic Herald of the £3m to shore up the ruins of Westminster Cathedral, I wonder if that news belongs as a piece of “Christian news” or does it belong in English Heritage Weekly etc? Westminster Cathedral, the UK’s premier Roman Catholic place of worship, could close within 10 years unless urgent structural repairs are carried out. The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, launched a £3 million restoration appeal on Wednesday. He said the Grade 1 listed building ‘is recognised as one of the finest examples of Victorian architecture and Byzantine art in the world. However, time has taken its toll and we must now take urgent action to ensure the future of this living house of prayer.’ Begun in 1895, the Cathedral draws some 4,000 worshippers each Sunday and has relied entirely on donations from parishioners.

I was interested to read  (The Times 15/1) of students of La Sapienza University (in Rome) forcing Pope Benedict to call off a lecture on the basis of his ‘obscurantist’ position on science. Some 67 academics also wrote claiming the visit was inappropriate. They felt ‘offended and humiliated’ –apparently- by a statement he made twenty years back shrugging off Galileo’s heresy trial as justified within the context of the time. ‘No voice should be silenced in our country least of all that of the Pope’ commented Prime Minister Romano Prodi. It’s a similar kind of picture isn’t it? Our buildings are museums and our leaders museum-pieces?

In Zimbabwe, truncheons were used by the state police to break up twenty Anglican congregations. Although the Province of Central Africa replaced Rt Revd Nolbert Kunonga with Dr Sebastian Bakare, the former bishop and ally of President Mugabe, he has refused to step down. On Saturday he said the country’s churches now belonged to a new ‘Church of the Province of Zimbabwe’. The police then issued circulars warning that only services conducted by priests loyal to Kunonga could be attended. The Archbishop of Canterbury condemned ‘unequivocally the use of state machinery to intimidate opponents of the deposed bishop’ and declared his support for Bishop Bakare. Dr Bakare confirmed that Anglican churches would again defy the ban this Sunday.

 The demolition story goes on: (Church of England Newspaper 18/1): The government of Orissa state has supported last week’s torching of churches and Christian homes. A wave of ‘premeditated, pre-planned’ attacks by Hindu extremists has forced over 3,000 Christians to flee their homes and the CNI General Secretary, Revd Enos Das Pradhan, said the attacks were accompanied by the ‘utter collapse of the law and order machinery.’ The All-India Christian Council reported that 95 churches were attacked and the homes of 730 Christian families destroyed. Mr Pradhan appealed for prayer for Bishop Kumar Kayak and local Christians to ‘keep witnessing through their lives at this hour of oppression and atrocities.’

Are moral reservations also something that’s obsolete and worthy of wholesale demolition? According to the CEN Newspaper (18/1). The House of Lords has voted 2 to 1 in favour of plans to create hybrid human and animal embryos, despite warnings from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Winchester. The experiments will involve injecting human DNA into empty eggs from cows in order to increase the pool of eggs available for research into diseases like Parkinson’s and spinal muscular dystrophy. Archbishop Rowan Williams told the Lords debate there were ‘major moral reservations’ concerning the plans. He was alarmed by the health minister’s use of the phrase ‘the human end of the spectrum’. Dr Williams also voiced concern at the lack of clear thinking as legislation ‘inexorably [moves] towards a more instrumental view of how we may treat human organisms’. Members of the group Christian Concern for our Nation wore animal masks as they demonstrated opposition to the Bill outside the Lords.

But take heart, there are other kinds of demolition at work, the magazine Christianity (Feb 08) carries a story about  a Christian-led education project that has won a National Youth Justice award after it slashed youth crime in a London borough by 58.5 per cent year-on-year. The Spark2Life programme received the team award for making an ‘outstanding contribution to tackling youth crime’ at this year’s Criminal Justice System (CJS) awards. Youth worker Dez Brown developed the programme in Wandsworth schools with the backing of police and the local education authority. Linked to school citizenship and PSHE courses, it combined a keynote talk with classroom sessions and a mentoring scheme in 13 schools. Following this success, Mr Brown hopes to take the programme to other boroughs and cities.

And finally, as thousands of debt-ridden families wake up to the reality of Christmas overspending, a Christian charity is offering churches the chance to come to their aid. Christians Against Poverty (CAP) has produced CAP Money, a course featuring Alpha-type filmed talks, to help people budget their way out of hardship. CAP founder John Kirkby said they were launching the course ‘in response to the overwhelming demand for a simple, easy-to-follow money management course that will make a long-term difference.’ Alan Meyer, senor minister of Elim Community Church in Carlisle, said a pilot scheme they had run ‘had a fantastic response’. ‘We are looking forward to using it as an evangelistic tool because of the huge impact it is able to make in people’s lives,’ he added. Meanwhile, the Methodist Church has produced thousands of fake credit cards bearing the inscription ‘Buy L£ss, Live More’. The cards are designed as a reminder to fit in a wallet and carry the inscription ‘MARK 10:17-27’ in place of a credit card number. 

“Demolishing strongholds” and upholding values…. and the wisdom to know the difference?

It isn’t just…

It isn’t “just” six and a half million abortions in Britain. It isn’t “just” Darfur. It isn’t “just” plundering embryos, plundering the Earth’s other resources. It isn’t “just” rising seas of

global warming, global poverty; melting human societies modern-day slavery, child-prostitution, worker abuse human rights abuse, religious and political persecution; foreign policiesdriven by arms industries.

It isn’t “just” euthanasia, state-controlled birth-control, family-control, China’s one-child policy subsidised by the West; inconvenient girl foetuses untimely

ripped in India young people in Britain state-liberated out of innocence into state-sponsored promiscuity and the morning-after pill — “We won’t tell your parents!” — and rampantsexually transmitted disease.

It isn’t “just” international aid tied to international population control, Aids tied to despair Farming tied to culture without growth; deforested land

and devastation of the natural habitats of humans and other living things seed-control: genetically modifi ed for guaranteed profi t;guaranteed sterility: barren seeds for barren land and guaranteed futureless people.

It isn’t “just” ‘human tissue’, bio-industrialised

hybrid-control, part human, part animal the unnatural selection of embryos bred mostly for death, for designer-whim or research,rarely for the womb — likewise genetically modifi ed.

Envisioning Part 2 (January 08)

Welcome to our second Vision Day. Let’s share together and find out what the Lord is saying to us!

A word from Psalm 73 on Spiritual Eyesight: