Gathering For Wholeness

Looking for a way to make the world better? Did you ever think having an evening out with dinner, music, and friends could also help those experiencing poverty?

This Open Mic Night does just that. Gather your crew for good food, burgeoning talent, and charity.

Admission is any non-perishable food item, sharing of talent at the microphone, or monetary donation.

Signups for microphone time slots opens at 5:30pm.

Gathering For Wholeness We are Making Disciples, Celebrating Diversity, and Moving for Wholeness.

This has always been an amazing evening of wonderful acts and food from Dapper Cafe.

Admission by donation. You can donate cash, non-perishable food, or your talent at the microphone.

Gathering For Wholeness We are Making Disciples, Celebrating Diversity, and Moving for Wholeness.

It’s not too late for Summer Camp registration.

Campbrain

Great opportunity to support The Awareness Project and watch it multiply

CFT is offering an opportunity for mental health-focused nonprofits to raise matching funds, thanks to support from The Ramesh and Kalpana Bhatia Family Foundation, NTX Giving Day’s Cause Sponsor for both Mental & Behavioral Health and Intellectual, Development, and Physical Differences.

In alignment with Mental Health Awareness Month in May, The Bhatia Foundation and CFT are matching donations, dollar for dollar, to local organizations supporting mental health. A total of $50,000 is available for participating organizations. 💚

Donations eligible to be matched can be made on the North Texas Giving Day website starting today through Wednesday, May 15 – you can browse mental health-focused nonprofits at: www.northtexasgivingday.org/community/Mentalhealth2024

Resource Sunday is small compared to the world’s needs, but it is certainly part of what we can do.

Open Mic Night was once again a success. We had eight different people step up to the mic and gathered many resources to restock the food pantry. Thanks to everyone who contributed to make it a great evening. See you again on the second Friday of May.

Holy Saturday, in Arabic is Sabt al-Noor, the Saturday of Light, it is a day that reflects the in between. Between the hope and the grief. Between the come and yet to comes of the faith. In someways, this day is all days. It is the liminal space between much of our living. The space where we wait and pray in hopeful expectation. We could despair, for sure, but we also have this anticipation of the potential for life to rise above the current state, for God to become alive again in our midst. That is the Holy Saturday that we often dwell in during this journey of life. It’s a faith lesson waiting to be taught by our experiences of being courageous enough to hope in the midst of despair, to keep dreaming even as nightmares shroud us in darkness. It is the trust of believing that the unseen peaceful and loving reign of God is just waiting for the break of day. So we hold on. We vigil. We wait, not in fear, in anticipation, and it is an active waiting. We are also harbingers of this hope. We move to bring the love we long to fill our days. May you be a light that guides us into the dawn of Easter morning.

The photo from the table tonight.

Gather with us, whether a beggar or one who is privileged, for a meal as we journey through the Last Supper and Crucifixion story, Friday 6pm.

Privatization of Prisons leads to monetizing justice, which is rarely about justice anymore. When you get paid by the number of inmates you hold, it breeds injustice. It criminalizes the innocent and justifies the oppressor, who can get more money by extending the stay of an inmate under false claims of bad behavior. When it’s a business, not a public service, it isn’t beholden any longer to actual justice because the bottom line becomes more important.

Tarrant County approves $200,000 settlement for jail beating victim The county has now agreed to pay at least $1.6 million in jail lawsuit settlements in recent years.

Epiphany sometimes means seeing fun instead of seriousness. Not all letting go and letting loose leads to disaster.

Parenting isn’t easy. Pressures come from the relationship with the child and from other relationships that want to tell you the proper way to parent. Shame and fear are emotions built into trying to raise your children to be healthy and well prepared for their life.

Some of us imagine God the way our parents raised us. Like this picture, God becomes the ultimate authoritarian, so either our parenting subconsciously reflects this perspective or we abandon the faith of our parents as adults because we see its abusiveness.
Faith can be a source of comfort and guidance for parents, and it can be a source of pain, as church members judge each other’s parenting styles.

In our Technological Information Age it gets even more complex. Do we let kids use tech and feel like a helicopter parent vigilantly watching their every interaction, so they don’t venture into the world of potential online harm? Do we ban our kids from using technology until a specific time, even though we worry they may become a step behind other kids in understanding how to use the technology that will influence most of their future lives?

If you are a parent, follow your own instincts. If you are a friend of a parent, keep your advice to yourself, when you haven’t been asked for it. Don’t guilt others into what you think they “should” or “shouldn’t” do. There really aren’t perfect answers to the stresses of parenting.

Proverbs states, "Train up a child in the way they should go; even when they are old they will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6).

This verse reminds us of the importance of instilling values and virtues within our children's hearts, so that they may navigate the complexities of life with discernment, but it doesn’t answer the way they “should” go.

We could pick and choose various parts of scripture that fit our ideological bends, which happens frequently across the spectrum of social and political views. We could delude ourselves into thinking that scripture has a homogeneous message about “the way we should” raise our kids. It doesn’t. We could blend faith and pediatric neuro-science into our own model of faithfulness. The point is I am not convinced or concerned about the exact model of parenting because for me the method seems more important. By method I mean whatever our direction in parenting around such matters, we need to keep the process open and inclusive to the child’s voice. That doesn’t mean they get to choose exactly what they want. It means they are heard and their voice is valued in discerning what the boundaries are and why.

In Christian history, we find examples of parents who sought to raise their children with love and inclusivity. One such example is found in the life of St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine. Her husband was reportedly abusive and adulterous. As you can imagine this impacted Augustine. Her son was described as rebellious in his youth, questioning the Christian faith and the paganism of his father, eventually becoming a Manichaean when he studied in Carthage. Manichaeanism revered Mani as the final prophet after Zoroaster, the Gautama Buddha and Jesus Christ. It sought to combine the various moral teachings of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Marcionism.

Whether we agree with St. Monica’s mode of directing Augustine away from the integral faith of Manichaeanism to Orthodox Christianity, it’s her method that I think is a worthy model. She starts with her own prayer and meditation on the schism between her and her son. In a vision she became convinced that she needed to seek reconciliation with him. Reconciling requires openness and understanding that respects the other’s voice and feelings.

St Monica persevered in her prayers and gentle guidance. Eventually, through her unwavering love, Augustine experienced a profound conversion and became one of Christianity's most well known theologians, which his thinking still had aspects of manichaean thought around light and darkness, good and evil, woven into it.

In this digital age where screens are omnipresent, it can be challenging to strike a balance between embracing its benefits while safeguarding our children's well-being. Our faith be a guide or a hindrance at times in navigating our relationships with our children. The important part is the way we engage scripture, prayer, and meditations to orient us towards love and reconciliation as our parenting model, making room for them to feel included in the process of setting healthy boundaries for their growth and wellbeing.

This can also apply to those of us in the church that too often lean on judgment of other parents without engaging them in an open conversation of understanding and support first.

At some point, it is parents that expand the boundaries of the neighborhood and allow their kid to cross the road, even though it’s dangerous. We can share our knowledge and experience of this parental journey with them, but we don’t have to pressure them into our way of doing it. It is the parents that make the decision of when to cross that road as they go with the kids at first, holding their hand. Eventually this expands to include lessons of where to look, so the kid can step out and do it by themselves. All of this requires two way communication founded on love and the child’s safely learning how to navigate their expanded boundaries.

By listening attentively without judgment or assumptions, we create a safe space in our relationships to share our thoughts and concerns, and this encourages others to respect and listen to ours in return. The same method can be true of how parents relate to the world that loves to tell us “the way we should” be parenting.

Ultimately, let us remember that the openness and inclusion of our children in the dialogue does not negate the goal of setting healthy boundaries for their development. Just as we faithfully guide our children in other areas of life, we can establish clear guidelines for technology usage trusting our own instinct and vision without becoming critical of those that choose to do it differently. By doing so, we create a framework that cultivates responsible digital citizenship while also nurturing space for inclusive, spiritual and emotional growth.

When words from a founder of the movement you journey in today still inspire you more than two centuries later: I gift you B. W. Stone's Address to the Christian Churches in Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio, 1814.

“Often it is said of us, that we are laboring to establish a party. I deny the charge with respect to myself, with abhorrence of the thing. Our very profession is leveled at the destruction of partyism, as the bane of Christianity. No wonder that those possessed of a party spirit, oppose us so warmly. We have publicly and sincerely professed the spirit of union with all Christians; we have neither made nor adopted any party creed, but have taken the Bible only as our standard; we have taken no party names by which to distinguish ourselves from others, but the general name, Christian. We have raised no bars from our communion, but what the Bible has raised before us, and yet we are accused of partyism!
If our opposing brethren think us possessed of a party spirit, let them put us to the test; let them offer us the right hand of fellowship; let them invite us to join in the work and worship of the Lord; let them break down the bars of separation around their communion tables which they have raised against us, and then if we do not unite, let us be branded with the odious name, partyism. Till this be done, I hesitate not to say, that they act an ungenerous part who thus accuse us. But if partyism be objected to as a crime, let the objector, who is clear of it, cast the first stone at us.
Partyism is a foul blot on Christianity, and among the blackest stains on the character of its professors. An apostle calls such "carnal.". Partyism is directly opposed to the plan of Heaven, which is to gather into one, or unite all, in Christ Jesus.
It is contrary to the express command of God-to the doctrine, example and prayer of Jesus, to the repeated exhortations of his inspired apostles and to the very spirit of Christ in all his
new-born children; for they are born with heavenly love and union, with the whole family of Christ. But alas! How many are corrupted from the simplicity of the Gospel! Enlisted into a party, they too, soon are taught to despise others, and to forget the good exhortation, "Let brotherly love continue.” How many happy souls, whom God had joined together, has partyism severed with an unhallowed hand?
We have taken the name Christian, not because we considered ourselves more pure than others but because we knew it was the name first given to the disciples of Jesus by divine authority. It better agreed with our spirit, which is to unite all Christians, without regard to names or distinctions. There are party names too many already in the world, without our assuming another.
…

The pious Christians of every name see, and are grieved at the evils of partyism, and acknowledge it wrong. Will they blame us then for attempting to clear ourselves of the evil?
They must acknowledge that we have taken the only solid ground to destroy the evil, and promote the contrary. If so, let them go and do likewise.
The time is not far distant, when Christians of every name shall be more solicitous for the salvation of souls, than for the promotion of a party. They will flow together, in love, to the standard of Heaven, and encourage each other in the work of the Lord. They will piously blush at those things in which they may now be boasting, and fill the world with praise for such a great deliverance.”

(From Works of Elder B. W. Stone, edited by James M. Mathes, Cincinnati, 1859, pp. 157-60.)

God, save us all from our partisanship of faith and the social and political evils they inspire, indeed. Amen

Wholeness Pondering:

We were never called to a simple faith of mere consent to an idea about who Christ was. We were called to follow Christ into the complexity of human sorrows with the simple focus of giving what was needed, not what we thought was deserved.

“Those of us who embrace (the first) kind of simple faith dislike, in fact are frightened by complexity. We hold certainty dearer than truth. We prefer obedience to discernment…(We) bear out (the) contention that ‘ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge’…Limited love is better than limited retaliation, and limited love can be very moving…,but when the neighbor to be loved has been limited to one of one’s own people, then limited love, historically, has supported White Supremacy, religious bigotry, the N**i notion of Herrenvolk, and ‘America for (only) Americans’, which never included Native Americans or (fully integrated the ancestors of the enslaved)…limited love is often more self-serving than generous.”
~William Sloan Coffin, The Heart is a Little to the Left.

The simplicity of Jesus’ love wasn’t about the simplicity of loving only those who love me and are in groups I identify with. The simplicity of Jesus’ love was to an unlimited love that engages in the complexity of human sorrow, injustice, and hate to offer a gift none can ever earn fully, but we all need, unconditional love. The call to follow Christ was a call to advocate against limited self-serving love, for the radically complex and yet simple idea of unconditional love of all, even one’s identified enemies. That is the path of genuine discipleship that is very often less traveled.
Jesus was more of a social humanist than a religious nationalist.