Dear Readers,
I am on vacation this week cycling, reading, seeing great Oregon sites and visiting family. I definitely did not have the energy to write a whole blog ahead of my vacation. Who has that kind of energy these days! Self care has become a number one priority.
However, I did think an easy way to provide something would be by listing the Top Ten blog posts over the past 30 months that I have been writing. You can click on each one to see the actual blog. It might be interesting to see what people are reading and what is says about what’s important to us.
NUMBER 10 (306 views), Oh my, oh my, oh my…
NUMBER 9 (345 views), The Ministry Gig Economy
NUMBER 8 (433 views), What if…?
NUMBER 7 (558 views), When it is Friggin’ HARD
NUMBER 6 (786 views), A Letter Reflecting on the Methodist Decision
NUMBER 5 (965 views), The Prophetic Fork in the Road
NUMBER 4 (1227 views), Signing Off…
NUMBER 3 (1117 views), The Parable of Yachats
NUMBER 2 (1364 views), Putting the Protest Back in Protestant
NUMBER 1 (14,318 views), Dear Mr. President
You will hear from me when I get back–hopefully rested, refreshed and relaxed.
I hope this list provides a way to reflect on who we are and what is important to us as we negotiate our way into a vibrant and faithful future.
By Rev. Brian Heron, Presbyter for Vision and Mission, Presbytery of the Cascades
Something I read from Caitlin Matthews today that I thought might warrant some reflection “from within” organized religious perspectives; seeing as how several of your top hits reminded me of the edge of our faith’s perspectrives …
“Many people seek validation for their spiritual pathway. Because we may have garnered the components of our spiritual search from many different places and traditions, we often have a feeling of fraudulence or lack of authenticity. Our efforts to make sense of these components, to make a living habitation or pathway from them, are haunted by fear of authority. We feel that if we change the received pattern, if we deviate from the spiritual tradition into which we were born, we will be punished or shunned. This has certainly been the message given by organized religion to those on a spiritual search: authority is withheld from those who heretically deviate in our society; authenticity can derive only from the centrally authorized mandate.
No human being shares the exact same spiritual path as another. Each person constellates various elements of spirituality that speak to him [/her], borrowing from old traditions and new perspectives. Finding authority for what we do, who we are, cannot come solely from the human world: authenticity arrives when we behave begun to move from the known into the unknown through the unique thresholds that life opens to us. Perseverance is the key” (Caitlin Matthews, The Celtic Spirit (New York, NY: Harper One, 1999) 370).
What do you think?