Jim Pace not only is a clone of Scott Van Pelt from ESPN but he's also a pastor and lead navigator at [nlcf] in Blacksburg, VA and author of Should We Fire God? to be released April 8, 2010
# will be Ustreamed live from Hollywood, California, starting tonight at 7 p.m. PST:
Here is today’s prayer for the season of Lent… As always, these come from Stanley Hauerwas’ .
INVISIBLE God, by the power of your love you make present the bodies of the invisible, the poor, the farm worker, the foreigner, the dead. Assault us with such presence, as through them you promise to give us your presence. Make us visible; make us real. Make us capable of feeling so we may think. Make us capable of tears so we may laugh. Make us your visible people, your light, your joy. AMEN Stanley Hauerwas
Peace, Jim
In his closing , JR answers the question, “Do you think Rob Bell is a heretic?”
What did you think of JR’s take?
Peace, Jim
Here is today’s prayer for the season of Lent… As always, these come from Stanley Hauerwas’ Prayers Plainly
Spoken.
GOD of light, shine in our darkness that we may see that this world, for all its distortion by sin, is still your world. Give us the virtue of courage to fear rightly that which we should rightly fear. Give us the virtue of live that we might rightly hate that which is hateful. Give us the virtue of prudence that we might know what to fear and hate. For this task we pray that we might learn to trust one another, as we are incapable of being faithful alone. AMEN Stanley Hauerwas
In , I go into a bit of detail about . Some people refer to them as our empathy gene.
In a nutshell, if you watch me prick my finger with a pin, you cringe along with me. Partially because it is a bit gross, 
but not just because of that. To many in the cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology fields, those neurons trigger a similar response in the viewer as in the one engaging in the action itself. Simply put, if you watch me prick my finger, your body is aware that it isn’t your finger that was pricked, but only mostly aware. Your body responds as if it were hurt as well, just to a lesser degree.
It’s fascinating.
Want to hear about another unexpected connection our body makes?
In a similar way, the emotional pain of romantic rejection, the “it’s not you it’s me” speech, seems to also trigger a surprising response. Whereas the general thinking has been that romantic rejection most directly would register in the affective centers of the brain (the emotional control centers), that would seem to not be fully the case.
In research out of the University of Michigan (go Big Blue) a team has discovered that the parts of the brain that light up when hot water was poured on a subjects arm also light up when a subject would view an image depicting their social rejection.
I haven’t seen the peer reviews of this study yet, and I know from my past research that studies like this are notoriously difficult to interpret as the human brain is incredibly complex. But what this does show is that emotional pain registers similarly to physical pain. Emotional hurt can trigger similar responses as physical pain. A fascinating demonstration of the connectedness between our emotional and physical worlds!
If only it worked the other way as well… having an orthopedic surgeon set and cast a broken leg is much more expensive than eating a tub of Rocky Road and listening to “I can’t fight this feeling anymore!”
But, broken leg or no, if you are now jonesing for some REO Speedwagon, here you go. As always, you are welcome.
Peace, Jim
In part five, JR continues the discussion of whether or not God’s love extends beyond the grave. Take a !
Peace, Jim
Here is today’s prayer for the season of Lent… As always, these come from Stanley Hauerwas’ .
SOVERIEGN of all life, we pray that you will give us the patience to stay still long enough to witness the beauty of your creation. Help us live at peace with your world, especially with our brothers and sisters in and without the church…. – Stanley Hauerwas
Peace, Jim
Ready for part ? In , Rob Bell touches on the idea that people could respond to forgiveness from Christ after death. In this post, JR discusses that issue.
So, as we start what will be the third week of Lent, twenty days down and 25 or 26 to go, it might be good to take a moment
and reflect on the purpose for the reflection. The reason we are doing all this.
My questions to myself, and you would be:
1: Have you been able to maintain your commitment to do certain things more (reflect on the scriptures, pray and act generously?) If you never started, or if you got a couple of days in and dropped the ball, this can be a great time to start or re-start!
2: Whether that answer is yes or no, what has this process shown you? Try to avoid going into a shameful stance if you have not kept those practices or into personal congratulations if you have.
3: What has God shown you as you have gone through this process?
4: How is this season preparing me to receive with fresh excitement the news that our Messiah has been resurrected?
We will likely take a couple more of these heart-check moments so that we can allow God the maximum input into our lives. Or likely, take the almost constant speaking of God and just pay much greater attention to it.
Today’s prayer:
ALMIGHTY God, whose Mary-like beauty compels our attention, give us hearts that jump within up with the good news of your salvation. We confess that amidst the tedium of the everyday our worship of you sometimes feels like a job — just “one more thing.” Thank you for the unsettling of our lives, wherein we discover the splendor of the kingdom made possible by your Son, Jesus Christ. We pray that you will ever be here, unsettling our attempts to domesticate the wildness of your Spirit. AMEN. Stanley Hauerwas
Peace, Jim
And now, installment . In this post, JR discusses his thoughts on whether Rob Bell is a universalist.
Here is second post on Rob Bell’s new book, . Take a ! In this post, JR gives a general overview of the flow of the book.
