The Branches Community Fellowship
A Christian Community. The Branches Community Fellowship meets for spiritual reflection twice monthly. We begin with a meal at 6:00pm. .
We gather in the lodge of the Rebecca Creek Bed and Breakfast, located 1/2 mile east of Hwy. 281 on Rebecca Creek Rd, Spring Branch, TX. (Look for it on the left).
Paul's message in Romans 1-11.
Your are God's children!
Now act like it!
To be unknown by God altogether too much privacy.
The discovery of our deepest self and the discovery of God should be the same discovery.
The soul is always freed and formed through dying and rising. The Biblical challenge is to understand the resurrection metaphor as how new life happens.
If God and Jesus are not violent or vindictive, then our excuse for the same is forever taken away. Fr Rohr
The development of "love consciousness" is the second coming of Christ.
Fr Rohr
Salvation is finally universal connecting and universal belonging. Fr Rohr says the word for that is "heaven. "
Follow Jesus not to create a perfect social order, but rather as a guide for loving as God loves.
Did God intend no purpose for creation in the first 13.7 billion years? Did the sun, moon and galaxies have no divine purpose? The birds, the fish and animals were just waiting for humans to appear? Was there no Divine Blueprint (Logos) from the beginning? This type of thinking reflects the hubris of our thinking and our tendency to anthropormize the whole story around ourselves.
From Fr Rohr
God did not need Jesus to die on a cross to decide to love humanity. God did not need a change of heart.
The heart of the original Jesus movement was sharing an open table and offering free healing. The combination of shared material resources (eating) and shared spiritual resources (healing) is absolutely at the core of Jesus' mission. John D Crossan
20/07/2017
In today's meditation from Fr. Rohr(cac.org) he says that many translators suggest that Paul's frequent line "faith in Christ" may well be more aptly translated "faith of Christ." So our faith journey should be guided by the faith of Christ. We can discard church dogmas and belief systems for a life of imitating Christ. The bar for us Christians gets a bit higher, but the grace provided for such a journey is also an incredible get out of jail free card.
It is that to which we cling that drags us into the bottom of the abyss. There is real power in having nothing to lose.
Anxiety makes people dumber. Peter Steinke
Paradoxically, personal fulfillment means abandoning ourselves and putting others first. It means moving beyond wanting to be loved and moving into becoming lovers. Words from Richard Rohr
Fr Rohr rightly reminds the church to be about healing rather than sin management.
Christ is not Jesus' last name, but his eternal identity.
Let nothing disturb you, Let nothing frighten you, all things are passing;
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing:
God alone suffices.
St Teresa of Avila
God does not watch the world suffering, but lives it.
Jesus had a degree of empathy we can scarcely imagine.
Jesus is the emblem of what fully lived humanity looks like in this world.
The earth's dream is carried in the depths of our genetic coding. There on the earth functions at a depth beyond our capacity for rational thought. Herein lies our hope for the future of ourselves and the entire earth community. Thomas Berry
Happy 4th to our Nation Community!
The mystery of the cross teaches us how to deal with hate without becoming hateful; how to oppose evil without becoming evil ourselves. Our biggest challenge.
As long as you can deal with evil by some means other than forgiveness, you will never experience the real meaning of evil and sin.
Prayer is about changing you, not God! R Rohr
We never think ourselves into new ways of living; we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
I can't hate the person on welfare when I realize I'm on God's welfare.
If your spiritual practice does not lead you to concrete acts of caring and service, then you have every reason not to trust it. R Rohr
To the narcissist all the worlds a stage, and everyone else is either a stage hand or a supporting actor.
The only people Jesus seems to exclude, are those who exclude others.
The story of humanity does not begin with a broken relationship; it begins with "it is good!"
As you fall into the mystery of an ever loving God, you are better able to accept the mystery of yourself.
CS Lewis goes on from yesterday: "He comes down from the heights of absolute being into time and, down into humanity. ..but he goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world with him." To proclaim ourselves followers we have to question the depth of our incarnation. As the song asks: "How deep is your love?"
CS Lewis refers to the Incarnation as "the grand miracle. Believe that miracle, and everything else should come easy. "
We can only offer to others what God has done in us.