liquid light

hi there.

here’s a quick update for anyone interested:

current listening: heavy rotation of Johnny Cash, Daniel Lanois & late Bob Dylan. also loving Nora Jones’ last album.

current reading: some interviews with Bono & early morning reading of the psalms etc - fresh coffee in hand - have opened things up for me in a fresh way.

current trajectory: simplification, thankfulness & an awakening to Grace.

currently: recording debut album.

love to all.

Russ…

this heresy vs orthodoxy debate can get pretty serious & heavy and it got me thinking:

if heresy comes down to what we believe - as the orthodox/mainstream church suggests - then what about someone with advanced alzheimers? i mean, when the combination of synapses that fires “heretical belief X” into neurological existence becomes corrupted & starts to break down, is that person still a heretic?

heresy looks neuron-deep to me and thus, of little import to G-d.

“you shall know them by their fruits”, and not by their doctrines.

! therefore sound a yawp! a hallelujah & a ha! ha! ha! over the rooftops of the world, for love covers heresy & orthodoxy all

until ! hear otherwise from cosmic central, !’ll call myself a “hilaretic”.

those who know, laugh.

our younger son’s middle name is Eli, in honour of a dear friend - Eli Luevano - whom i met in the magaliesburg mountains outside johannesburg in 1984.

we met in january and the last time i saw him was in april/may of that year. the impact he made on my young heart & mind far outweighed the amount of time i spent with him. an american & converted jew, he had an incredible lust for life & big bushy beard. he wrote me a letter from Albuquerque a while later but we eventually lost touch.

many years later i heard that he died on crashed flight TWA 800, while working as a steward - he was 42, the same age as me. it goes to show that we never know the impact that our lives have on another and that every connection, however brief, holds infinite possibilities within.

“My friends are my estate.” - Emily Dickinson.

Nic @ sound & silence asked me to contribute to a synchroblog on “emergent heresy”. how could i resist responding to such a request, albeit a short one.

heresy comes in many shapes & hues and no two heretics are the same. i have a shaved head, a goatee, a taste for evocative electronica & walks along wintered beaches and an affinity with those through the ages known by the orthodox as “heretics”.

the first - in fact only - time the word heresy has been used in relation to me and in my presence, was at a home group i attended for a while, a couple of years ago. i had expressed my increasing revulsion towards the teaching of hell and my increasing wonder at the doctrine of universal restoration. in response, a well meaning senior member of the group warned me that i was dabbling with heresy.

since then i have moved all my heretical & dangerous books down from my office/studio and into the lounge, in full view. for me, this was an important act of “coming out” as a spiritual being.

i don’t wear my heretical status like a t-shirt. i have too much respect for my more orthodox friends and family for such pettiness. in fact, quite the opposite. i sometimes miss the simple belief i had when i first became a christian at age 15, unfettered by the lacunae of theology. however, we cannot go backwards and have to be true to where we are and how we perceive the heart of G-d at that moment.

many a holy man or woman was killed for holding beliefs that fell outside orthodoxy. however this has everything to do with the spirit of pride & judgement and does not reflect the Divine.

every mature fellowship needs it’s resident peace loving contrarian - it’s heretic - to challenge and provoke. i don’t claim that title or role but see it’s value to the Body.

love covers all heresy.

R.

hi all.

i’m intending to have a change of direction in the blogsphere over the coming weeks & months, and will probably bring this particular blog to an end - not before saving the entire site however!

i’ve used it partly as a means to work through some of my “stuff” and have gained a lot from peoples input. however i feel that a lot of my posts were underpinned by high levels of angst, as i looked to resolve particular things, especially around certain areas of faith & theology.

my spiritual outlook has undergone significant change and while there exist many reasons to fear for the future of our planet and humanity, i believe that these are far outweighed by the many reasons for hope. i suspect that our collective short-term trajectory will bring rocky, sometimes disturbing and undoubtedly challenging times. however, i firmly believe that when we emerge on the other side, a new & exciting world will await those who dare to surrender, to shed fear & change.

i desire to make a clean break, as it were, and want to thank everyone who has contributed or visited over time. i’ll post any new URL here.

thanks and blessings!

russ, sofasufi.com

i’ve been thinking a lot about “the tribe” lately. some would say that i’m being too apocalyptic but looking around, i don’t see how our current societal model in the technologically developed world can sustain itself for much longer.

on a purely economic level, we have a skyrocketing oil price coupled with massively increasing demand from China & India, extreme levels of personal debt and a cabal of leaders who believe in perpetual & pre-emtive war, which some economists have estimated has already cost around $1 trillion.

this brings me back to the question of the tribe & how i feel we need to begin to restructure our lives at a practical & grassroots level, to become much less dependent on the status quo system for our survival.

at the moment we’re considering buying a piece of land in France. our thinking is that if things start to unravel fast, we would at least have somewhere to go that we owned outright, with no debt. we’d have enough left over to build a simple dwelling, which would still be more comfortable & secure than what the majority of people on this planet live in.

however i wonder where this leaves the “tribe”.

a key question is: do we believe that our current trajectory is sustainable and if not, what are we doing to bring our lifestyles more in line with that belief? too often as humans, we expect the worst but prepare for the best.

as an example, a few months back i was talking to a family member about the stock market & challenging them to consider selling their holdings. at the time, the UK FTSE index was sitting at 6700 and my point was, what good reason do you have in the current climate to believe that they will continue to climb? i couldn’t see any. three months later the index was at just above 5400 - a drop of 20%.

i’m no investment guru but for me, it highlighted our human tendency to see the signs and then seek - unconsciously or otherwise - to avoid making the necessary changes in order to adapt to the direction the signs seem to be pointing in.

i don’t see buying a piece of land in a rural area as the grand solution but it makes at least as much sense of continuing to live in suburbia, 100% dependent on an unsustainable system. so i ask myself and i ask you:

who/what/where is the tribe? and how should we then live?

…but

i found this out-take pretty disturbing. what do you think?

“The world has a cancer, and that cancer is man.”
Merton Lambert - former spokesman for the Rockefeller Foundation - Harpeth Journal, December 18, ‘62

“To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men, their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas.”
G. Brock Chisholm, co-founder of the World Federation for Mental Health, former director of UN World Health Organization

“One-fourth of humanity must be eliminated from the social body. We are in charge of God’s selection process for planet earth. He selects, we destroy. We are the riders of the pale horse, Death.”
Psychologist Barbara Marx Hubbard - member of Task Force Delta; a United States Army think tank

have a look at right hand column in the list of popes on wikipedia. i did and it really struck me that until Constantine decreed otherwise, the vast majority of popes were murdered. we can assume that for whatever reason, they represented a threat in the eyes of the establishment elite.

along comes Constantine and things suddenly change. the orthodox faction enjoy increasing political power and begin a programme of persecution and murder themselves, this time on their more unorthodox & gnostic brethren.

this raises a number of possibilities and questions:

why were the early church such a threat to the elites?

why isn’t the “1st world” church a threat any more? Blaire and Bush expouse a christian allegiance publically & proudly.

did the more gnostic brethren refuse to play the political game and pay the price for it?

why did the persecuted become the persecutors?

…and can we trust an orthodoxy who’s hands are stained in blood? by their fruits….

David was not allowed to build the temple due to blood on his hands so maybe the mantle of the church was taken away from the orthodox when they developed a taste for blood.

i don’t know but it’s lunch time….