Colourful Dreamer

This is our last week listening to Jesus’ “Sermon on the Plain” – Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount. Here Jesus is in a broken place among broken people teaching what the year of the Lord’s favour looks like. This is what God at work in the world looks like. This is Luke 4 in action. As we approach Lent we are invited to consider how much this shapes our hopes and dreams for ourselves and for our communities. What would our society look like if we prioritized the poor, the hungry, the homeless, those who mourn. What are the powers and structures that need to be non-violently resisted? What are the logs in our own eyes that we need to, in all humility, acknowledge and deal with? The Diocese of Waikato & Taranaki offer these thoughts as we come to Ash Wednesday and Lent   “You probably know a few people who 'wear their heart on their sleeve' - people who make their feelings about someone or something pretty obvious. However, you may not know that this phrase orig...

F or the last four weeks we have been celebrating the Season of Creation using the title of “Oikos- a home for all”. With Christians from around the world we have proclaimed that ALL life belongs to God, and acknowledged our need to work with God and all God works through to protect and heal God’s gift of our common home. Using the central image of Sarah and Abraham’s tent, we have contemplated this world as God’s tent, where ALL life belongs to is equally precious to God and is offered welcome, shelter, refuge, and safety. It is God's deep desire for all life and all creation to thrive.  This desire is behind Day 8 of the Principles of the Franciscan Third Order which says, “(We) fight against all injustice in the name of Christ, in whom there can be neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female; for in him all are one. Our chief object is to reflect that openness to all which was characteristic of Jesus. This can only be achieved in a spirit of chastity, which sees ot...

Thoughts by John Hebenton tssf   based on a homily given at the final Eucharist of the TSSF Asia Pacific Conference 2018 In New Zealand we currently have a programme called “Dancing with the Stars.” I have tried very hard not to see it, unless I have been tricked into watching it by the women in my life. It is not my favourite programme. In part I think because of the dancing. I don’t really get it. I don’t see the differences. The sambas and cha-chas and waltzes all look the same to me, which I think says something about the quality of dancing. Now if it was contemporary dance or hip hop I might be a bit more excited. During this conference we have been invited into the Divine Dance that is Trinity, the eternal dance that is at the heart of God. We have been reminded that in Andrei Rublev’s icon Trinity , also called The Hospitality of Abraham, we are invited to see ourselves and those around us within this eternal dance. And like dancing with the stars, there is more th...