Gathering 8.19: Memories

Decided to lead a discussion on Memories today, considering this will be my last day with this cafe and my last week in Chicago, and memories are becoming important to me. I posted up on the wall the sheets from previous weeks....
Interconnectedness:
Miracles:
Incarnational:
Stewardship:

and then a new sheet with:
Memories
Remember that....
(with some blank post-its).

This is the plan for the discussion:
Hand out sheets and two candles each.

Icebreaker: What is your very first memory?

Review all previous lessons… what we have learned, what we remember

1. What is it we should remember
2. How we can use memories for our world and for us to better our lives
3. How best to remember them

Death of loved one…memories help keep them alive

Loss of friend, move away, ….memories keep their actions active, love present

In a rough time, memories of better times can help get you through. Also memory of a bible verse or mantra or uplifting story can help. Remembering what God has done (ps 77)

(using memories in a positive way is different from being paralyzed by painful memories –the death, the loss, the regret. How can we change our perspective into seeing painful memories in a positive light to improve our being?)

After an awful event, remembering what happened can help that to never happen again.
(Always remember, never forget). Prevent history from repeating itself.
-Slaves in Egypt. Eat unleavened bread (Deut 16:3)

Have a symbol, a celebration to remember. Something tangible to hang on to that memory.

More memory we have, more thankful, more blessed, more meaningful.
Remember that we were in poverty, that we were sad, that we were lonely, that we suffered, but no longer… take actions towards helping those that still are. (Hebrews 13)

But so easily people forget (collective amnesia). This is why we have the commands to remember the Sabbath, to remember the exodus, to remember that God is our creator, that God is our redeemer. To remember.

Repetition helps us remember…. Celebrations, holidays…
Remember what God has done for you

List on post its : What do we want to remember today? ….About ourselves, About God, About the world, About life, About our calling, About our promises/actions

How can be best remember? Use a ritual, a symbol.
Then take a post it for the thing you want to remember. Light a candle. Keep a candle/

Take a candle in remembrance of this. Every time you see this candle and light this candle, remember this thing that you do not want to forget. // play video: Remember your chains






and quoted scriptures:
Psalm 77
In Times of Trouble God Is with His People
I cry aloud to God,
aloud to God, that he may hear me.
In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;
…
I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord;
I will remember your wonders of old.
I will meditate on all your work,
and muse on your mighty deeds.
Your way, O God, is holy.
What god is so great as our God?
You are the God who works wonders;
you have displayed your might among the peoples.



Deuteronomy 16:3 Do not eat it with bread made with yeast, but for seven days eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, because you left Egypt in haste—so that all the days of your life you may remember the time of your departure from Egypt.



Hebrews 13:1-3 Keep on loving each other as brothers. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.


Colossians 4:18: Remember my chains. Grace be with you.

Notes from Notebook

In lieu of saving all my crazy notebooks that I never re-read, I am going to type up stuff from this summer's notebook:

GROW:
Goal
Reality
Options
What's next, what's the game plan?

I'm leaving....
I'm taking...


Aha moments
Oh no moments

Live your faith whenever you're breathing.

Read:
Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby

Framework for Understanding Poverty

Questions:
Who is the God that you believe in?
How has God worked in your life?
What is your calling?
What do you want people to know about God?
How can I be who God wants me to be?
What ways I could be used to touch someone's life?

Reasons:
Make disciples in this life now, here, to follow Jesus
mature to be a follower of christ, follow teachings, study bible

Build a community of faith
not judge, get to know them, let them know we are a community, share the love of God through humanity, how God can strengthen their lives, develop relationship with God, spiritual aspects of life

Following the teachings of Jesus:
can transform life:
hope, love, happiness, meaningful, interconnected, community, togetherness, helping each other, family without borders, see the good, god in all
versus:
greed, suicide, depression, loneliness, hate, poverty, confusion, anxiety, stress


Missional: go and leave
Incarnational: go and stay, go and go back, help them experience life transformation, build relationships, experiential teaching, experience life together

Being the church, going out into the community, the real deal, going back, not just a one time thing

lost - without hope
found- promises of God

science takes faith to believe in?

if a friend/family member completely monopolizes your time, you cannot be incarnational
we cannot be in a holy huddle

family and church should not keep you from being in the world
be involved in community- volunteer at playground, schools, neighborhoods

how to transition to spiritual matters:

1-listen to their story (tell me about yourself/your life/why do you do what you do?)
2- tell my story (how God has work in my life)
3- tell God's story

plans for YCC:
outdoor activities, get them outdoors, sports, etc
assess needs of community, of youth, leaders, parents
what's missing?
Counseling? homework help? tutoring? college help? hotline? arts/drama? computers? place to relax? to hang out?


4 weeks plan for small groups:
1- event
2- service project
3- off site bible study, in public place
4- home bible study

sermonspice.com


what to give up to follow God? What do you get for following God?

Kingdom of the world vs kingdom of God

offer to God our plans in exchange for God's plans

embodying christ is every situation and cultural context

Hebrews 13, Acts 2,



mission:
openness, inclusive, acceptance,
wrestle honestly with questions of faith and life
real with each other, real with the world, real with God

all in this together
what i means to be a follower of Jesus
seeking wisdom and understanding
a safe place to explore and express God's love

free thinking, serice, love, compassion, church, celebration, community, togetherness, relationship, comfortable
reach people in our community, freedom of spiriti, celebrate journey, living out our faith by loving, praying, serving and worshipping together as Christians

thoughts from Octavian Nothing

The world is indeed the house of the strong; and we are indeed a terrible animal. We are granted gifts of intellect almost god-like, to raise ourselves out of the burrow and ditch; and yet cannot enjoy these excellences, for no sooner does one establish the work of his hands and plow the field, than some other, deranged with greed, sweeps in to plunder or to expand their own holdings through act of law or canny dealing.
We are a foul animal poisoned in all its springs and motivations, a beast of snarling ferity that parades itself in silks and calleth itself an angel, while gnawing upon cattle, seizing upon fowls, ransacking the earth and the seas, clawing our neighbor to provide for ourselves small trinkets to lay in our nests where we curl in bloated slumber.
Do posess hope for the future? I may reply, I do have hope, in that I do not believe our race shall perish. We shall, in two hundred years, in two thousand, yet be flourishing, the strong oppressing the weak, telling tales of why they must; we shall yet be starving each other, maiming, whipping, killing, raping, sacking, burning, scorning, despoiling, savaging, and congratulating ourselves on our superior nature.
Do not speak glibly of virtue. Nothing shall change- nothing- so long as each individual awaits preferment rather than embodying beneficience in himself; so long as we wait upon the edicts of a government ruled by invested and interested men looking to their private purses; so long as we idle in expectation that all shall be healed, and that we shall somehow be stopped in our career of plunder by an eighteen-hundred-year-old mummy, scarred with the wounds of torture, falling out of the sky or stumbling out of the desert, eyes filled with the tears that we should weep ourselves. I(451)

The form (limbs, markings, fur) of Deus omnipotens is as yet unclear to me. Aristotle maintaineth that God hath no shape, being but the limit of heaven; Epicurus claimeth that it appeareth to be a man in shape, though one of such great blessedness and incorruption that it is incomprehending and indifferent to the plight of mortals. Pythagorus taught that God is a number; Xenophanes that is it a sphere, passionless and consubstantial with all things; Parmenides that it is but the confluence of earth and fire. (452)


The term libery proliferated so many meanings that, in the end, it had none. It meant at once the right to declare independence from the Crown and the right to adhere to the Crown; to some freedom to own slaves, and to others, freedom from slavery. Cast back and forth in relentless cannonades, it became evacuate of meaning.
And thus, one of the great paradoxes...Liberty was at once a quality so abstract as to be insubstantial- and yet so real in its manifestations that it was worth dying for.


History is not a pageant arrayed for our delectation.
We are all always gathered there. We have come to the riverside to fight or to flee. We are gathered at the river, upon those shores, and the water is always moving, and the president of the United States always gesticulates silently above us, his image on the water. Nothing will cease. Nothing will stop. We ourselves are history.
The moment is always now. (