Stephen C. Rose

The text of Bonhoeffer’s Ghost is c Copyright 1966-2008 by Stephen C. Rose. Holt, the original publisher of The Grass Roots Church (1966), has returned complete ownership the manuscript to me and portions of it have been adapted or excerpted, along with portions of Abba’s Way (2005) and Beyond Creed (2006). In cases where the statements in The Grass Roots Church appear to be prescient, the original publication date has been included in parentheses. It is my hope to complete this manuscript in 2008 and that during that time a publisher will publish the entire text in book form. The text you find here will change over the months and grow to the full length of the intended work. Contact me at steverose(at)gmail.com

Contents

A Note on The Title
Abba
Abba’s Way
Anthropology
Denominations and Church Structure
Earth
Ending Violence
Exhortations
Governance, Planning and Polity
Idolatry
Jesus
Me
Messianism Is The Heart of The Church Problem
Music
Our Limitations, Our Potential
Revaluation of Values
Right To Life
Worship

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To all who have inflicted mortal punishment in the name of absolute truth and all who have died at their hands.

By the time of Augustine, “worship is no longer a ‘hole and corner’ affair celebrated in the upper room of a poor house on a side street. The Christian religion is now protected, even encouraged, by the Empire. The result is that Christians erect church buildings, which excel in magnificence even the pagan temples; the officials of the faith are decked in splendid vestments; and public worship reflects the fact that the despised Nazarene has conquered the imperial might of Rome. This is in fact Christianity on parade

… The theologians had now come to understand more fully the mighty acts of God in the incarnation, the cross and the resurrection of Christ. These doctrines were carefully elaborated because they had to be protected from the misunderstandings of the heretics. They were built into a creed.

– Horton Davies

After recent events — whether one gives them the name of Nietzsche, of Heidegger, of the Second World War, of the Holocaust, of the destructibility of humanity by its own technical resources — it is clear that we find ourselves in an absolutely unprecedented space.

For this space one needs equally unprecedented reflections on responsibility, on the problematics of decision and action. To say this is not a piece of speculative hubris. It simply acknowledges where we are. We need the unprecedented; otherwise there will be nothing, pure repetition.

—Jacques Derrida

A Note on The Title

Dietrich Bonhoeffer”s Ghost pursued him through time.

“Why”, asked the Ghost, “did one drawn to the Sermon on the Mount and to nonviolence, retaliate?”

We guess the answer:

The very enormity of Hitler’s evil. Even pacifists said, “We must fight!” Bonhoeffer offers an explanation, but Bonhoeffer knows the Ghost has more to say. Bonhoeffer himself knows more. Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity builds on the Sermon on the Mount. So too Bonhoeffer’s world come of age. And his famous notion of cheap grace most certainly attaches a cost to discipleship. But for doing what? There’s the rub.

Painfully, Bonhoeffer knows there is a lasting contradiction between his actions then and what he might have done if he had had the time.

So he is not surprised to hear the Ghost explain, “Evil for evil merely breeds more evil.. Jesus knows a better way; he is more canny. Negotiation is his style and parable his sword. He shakes the very props of Empire with a word. Why did he die? It was to show the power and shape of Abba’s love. To vindicate and demonstrate the truth of Abba’s Way..”

The Ghost continues. “Dietrich, it is not too late. Inspire those who come after to speak what you would have spoken. Instead of creeds, obedience. Instead of a set of beliefs, a way of life. Instead of ‘church’, a practiced faith. Instead of assent to war and its ways, a removal of the sword from Caesar and the final coming of age which is Abba’s Way.

“This way confronts but does not kill. This way puts on no airs and claims no truths. It simply acts and values Abba-like That’s all.

“You knew it then: The old way will not work. Do not allow your legacy to venerate you for the wrong thing.”

Bonhoeffer, like Hamlet, talks back. And, like the poet in Isaiah 6, says: “I am a man of unclean lips. Living in a world of unclean lips.”

The Ghost replies, “You are indeed. But Abba sets you free. Then, Dietrich, if they kill, it will be for the right. Make strait the way of Abba, Dietrich. Make it strait.”

Then on the parapet, the ghostly figure disappears. And now we hear a rising angels’ song.

Abba whose home in heaven is
Hallowed and holy is your name
Let your realm come your will be done
Till earth and heaven are the same

Give us this day our daily bread
Forgive the wrongs that we have done
As we forgive those who do wrong
Lead us not into temptation

Deliver us from evil lord
And guide us safely to your shore
Yours is the power to heal and mend
Yours is the glory ever more

Abba

Abba is the name that Jesus gave to God. It overrides those texts which portray the deity as cruel, vindictive, distant and condemning. This is the deity whose child Jesus is. Familiar, available, good, and yes, the very force within each person who will turn and see, and seeing repent, and in the resulting reunion believe, Abba is the one whose good news Jesus bore, embodied and exemplified.

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Abba is wholeness, justice, peace and love. Wholeness because attention to Abba within us enables healing, which is what Jesus meant by wholeness. Justice because justice is the product of reciprocity and forgiveness . When justice is denied, Abba spurs us to obedient confrontation and imbues the Abba-inspired the true courage, with the assumption of responsibility to achieve justice without committing more injustice. Peace because Abba wills the complete defeat of those divisions which make for warfare of any sort. And because only by achieving the possibility of acting peacefully, can one live at peace with oneself and others. Finally, love because Abba is fully for all persons regardless of their evil, their alienation, their destructive state of being. It only takes the seeking of Abba within any individual to commence the process of becoming whole.

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Abba is present within every depth, as light and life and creativity. This means that each human being contains depths more profound that they can ever realize, until they realize that the very force of wholeness in the universe is lodged like a shining light within. Abba dwells within the foundational depths of each and every person on the planet. This is not an article of faith or a creedal statement. It is a scientific truth validated by practice. To deny Abba within is the only act that Jesus deemed unforgivable.

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Jesus taught us but one single prayer. It is addressed to Abba in heaven. This can only mean that within each of us a spark of heaven exists. On Abba’s Way this prayer is a constant companion. We say and sing it aloud and silently. Alone or in community. It contains most of Abba’s Way. If there were no other text, it would suffice.

Abba whose home in heaven is
Hallowed and holy is your name
Let your realm come your will be done
Till earth and heaven are the same

Give us this day our daily bread
Forgive the wrongs that we have done
As we forgive those who do wrong
Lead us not into temptation

Deliver us from evil lord
And guide us safely to your shore
Yours is the power to heal and mend
Yours is the glory ever more

(LMD)

Please note: All hymns are set to meters in the parentheses following the texts. All lyrics are adapted or original and Copyright by Stephen C. Rose and licensed to CCLI and LicenSing.

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While Abba is named only a few times in Scripture, notably by Jesus and Paul, this familiar Aramaic word derives its power from the entire teaching of Jesus preserved in the Bible. Abba’s Way has no truck with fundamentalism. Nor does it require that one move beyond the Canon. Scriptures, like all human products, are a spectrum. Scriptures range from vindictive and vengeful to beautiful and sublime. Abba is preferable to “god” for many reasons. Many common uses of the word “god” imply nothing about the One to whom Jesus addressed his prayer. The common phrase “acts of God” imply that Abba is impersonal. Cries of frustration and anger cannot invoke Abba without in essence damning one’s innermost being.

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We perceive and discover and relate to Abba because of texts that contain Abba’s Way and persons who have followed the way. But we do not enter Abba’s Way until we have turned (repented) and accepted the presence of Abba within us and begun to live with the Abba prayer. While we accept and honor Jesus as the exemplar and bearer and vindicator of this way, we insist that this is a way beyond religion, beyond all religions. This does not mean that religions will disappear but it does mean that the fundamental nonviolent values of Abba’s Way constitute a leaven in the loaf of all religions, not another religion to which existing religionists gravitate and which they institutionalize.

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Abba is the true lord of the dance. It rises from the deepest wells of joy, To dance with Abba’s spirit, Abba’s grace, is to know beauty in the inner core. Wherever there is threat, the dance can dare.

Abba’s Way

Abba is within us; at hand in all we are and do. Abba is One Whom we experience as conscience and as confidence, as strength and power to change, as deep internal liberty. The strength to be at peace. Forgiving ourselves and all others, and receiving our forgiveness in return. Note only as we give will we receive.

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If our words reflect our obeisance to external principalities and powers of violence, they are neither whole nor holy. They are detritus we have not expelled.

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If Abba goes unknown, unheard, unheeded, then Abba’s will on earth remains undone. The failings and shortcomings of our world are the result of our individual and communal failure to seek out Abba within and to know and follow Abba’s way.

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Our task is to spread the nonviolent culture of Abba this world round and free humanity from its dead gods. Any god who is claimed to be on anyone’s side is by definition dead. This is not merely a matter for preachers. It also a matter-of-fact profession one to another. We profess nonviolence by being the people who do not fight. Or, better said, whose fight does not ratchet up death.

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The essence of courage and honor is not to fight but to find a way past fighting.

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The sources of Abba’s Way include the way that Jesus taught and embodied, not merely what we call the Sermon on the Mount, but the implications of the parables and the embodiment of the Way in actions. Most particularly the Way is parsed by seeing the particular miracles attributed to Jesus as the “blasphemy” that we are called to practice in order to bring heaven and earth into conjunction. The healings excoriated as the very worst presumption are the precise grace vouchsafed to all who have discovered and made available the abundance of truly healing “miracles” – the best of “medicine”. The feedings that gave rise to disbelief are merely signs and seals of our evolving capacity to bring an end to poverty by acting responsibly rather than in the heat of Abba-less violence. The sources of the Way include all narratives and texts that manifest our Abba-less condition and all narratives and texts that suggest that we are never Abba-less, because we cannot kill Abba. Abba will live in us even if we or the world around us has done the very worst to seek to extinguish that light.

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Abba’s Way optimally requires requires rights and democracy. In other words the environment where conflict and creative resolution of differences can take place without becoming warfare. The extension of rights is ever and always Abba’s Way. The use of nonviolence not merely as a tactic but as a deep inner commitment has ever and always been essential to the spread of rights and representational governance. Nonviolence is what Jesus practiced. When he speaks of wars to come he merely reflects the prophetic understanding that we will despise and reject Abba’s way for a very simple reason. Contrary to the good news of this Way first preached by Jesus, we will not accept that the realm of Abba is at hand. We will therefore not repent. We will therefore not experience it. And we will therefore not believe.

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We blaspheme if we presume to speak for Abba or if we claim Abba to be on one side or another. Abba is on no side and on all sides.. And as for us, we must speak for ourselves. We speak the peaceful and upbuilding word. We speak the hard repenting word. We say we are a spectrum, not an either-or. We express our thanks. We say these things because we have done the simple things that Jesus says to do. Heard. Turned. Received. Believed.

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Abba is who Abba is and who Abba will be. We approach Abba within as Jesus taught. As spectrum people who know with Jesus none is good save Abba alone.

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Abba has power to heal and mend. We receive Abba as our good friend. Better the ill person knows this than to be the recipient of others’ prayers. It is your Abba within who can heal you. The quiet knowledge and experience that this is so is worth 1000 prayers sent from beyond.

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Abba within us causes us to repent, turn, believe. This is because what good conscience we have is Abba prodding us. If we feel real guilt it is Abba prompting us to see how our acts kill. If we turn away from one thing or another, it is Abba helping us to turn. If we believe the things that Jesus told us, Abba is the Spirit within us buttressing our minds and activating out repentance and uplifting us as we seek to travel Abba’s Way.

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Abba is no hostile outside enemy who sends harsh bolts of angry lightning down. Abba is close as breath and whispered truth. The traditional gods of vengeance, hallowed in texts that were created by us, are sad projections of those who would invade the freedom of others and proclaim an exclusionary deity that has nothing to do with the Abba that Jesus taught, exemplified and vindicated.

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Abba was once the secret Jesus shared, though known to poet prophets from the start. Abba bears abundance, untold power. Abba is like the mustard seed. Abba is like the pearl of great price. Abba s light that seeks to be your beacon to the world. Abba is what your eyes reveal when you look on the world with love. And is the same light in another’s eyes..

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Abba is light within. See Abba shine. And if your longing mingles with contempt, stop in your tracks, breath in, and know this truth: To ask, to seek, to knock is Abba’s way, And none who does these things will ever fail.

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The kingdom or the realm of Abba’s here, Then Jesus adds “Repent, believe this news.”
The good news is that Abba is at-hand, available to help us at all times. Without Abba we fall, so does this world, very world that Abba would restore.

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Abba leaves us no hiding place from choice: Repent, reject, recoil from this world’s show. Your choice is not to let Abba in or no. Abba is in already. We were created, after all. Our choice is whether to recognize and hallow and affirm, or not. This choice can result in an attitude of permanent repentance, a turn away from the nasty show and the violent screen. Not to become self-righteous Grant Wood figures set apart. Just not to fight. Not to buy in. Our Yes delivers up our No.

Anthropology

When we are in our rightful minds, on Abba’s Way, we are a spectrum, primal to sublime. It’s just the way we’re made. This means we’re neither good nor bad nor any other either-or. We are both and, Thus always penitent and ever hopeful.

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A spectrum implies motion from one end to the other. It also implies that within any possible action there are positives and negatives. It humbles us into an admission of profound ignorance regarding causes and effects.

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Abba makes the spectrum infinite. Which is why our possibilities are unlimited. Every miracle counted by Jesus as blasphemy is now within our power. Every evil that has ever been conceived is also now within our power. And choice remains the most precious, potentially redemptive, potentially lethal, connection to Abba that we have. Which is why the most sure prelude to lethal violence is the evisceration of choice by our exercise of power over others.

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So the paradox is that our world is fallen and that we fall short day and night. But when we are on Abba’s Way. we are freed from the deleterious self-condemnation that is the product of our fallen state. Fallen, we rise. Impaired, we live.

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We overcome because Abba lifts us up. We know the lifting when we seek and find Abba. We know the lifting when we remember that Abba answers our asking. We know the lifting when the door we knock in Abba’s name is opened. Even if someone has no consciousness of these things, Abba is at work.

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I see the bodies decompose knee deep. I see the face of those who ravage towns. All cruelty in but one ugly face and all defeat in but a single tear. I see the past impervious to love and history become the victor’s tale. The victors change, revenge remains the same. And humankind still plays this vengeful game.

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In wilderness or city, it’s the same; alone or in a crowd, we feel the heat. The heat can lead to union and a child, a celebration of the heart of life. Abba can be the heat’s progenitor. The heat can lead to solitary play, guilt-ridden, casual, lonesome, routine; Abba does not despise the body’s play. The heat can animate resentfulness and lead to rank abuse and drunken rage. Abba then is the victim, wracked with pain within and in all pain-wracked casualties.

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Blame passion, blame somnambulance, blame lust, then blame the victim, blame yourself, blame on. Rather than blame, live with the heat within. It is life’s gift, direct it lovingly. It is the very source of life itself. Give of its warmth to others and to you. At times there will be no capacity; you get shut down by age or mourning days. Then use the heat to create in yourself. Turn heat to words, to music, or to thought.

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We feel the heat. Accept it. Give it room. The body’s you. You are the body. True.
Mould heat to good will. Give Abba his due.

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To seek your own way is to be afraid. Each moment of pure joy can yield up fear.
As you accept yourself for who you are, stark challenges may woo you from your course. The lofty heights appear but then the depths arise and you are daunted by the sheer expanse. The way of Abba frees you to move on; the way of Abba is finding your way.

Denominations and Church Structure

A penitential review of our sad common history. In the beginning, theological disputes, overshadowing attention to the way of Abba. Anti-Semitism based on imputation of responsibility for Jesus’s death. Culminating in widespread anti-Semitism in Europe and the acceptance in Germany of the Holocaust with only token church opposition. Creation by 400CE of an authoritarian, exclusive polity. Burning of offending theological works. Mariolatry. Use of physical force to sustain theological points. “Pornocracy” — acceptance of corrupt lifesyles among the leaders, most recently in instances of clergy abuse (pedophilia). Consistent condemnation and even violent suppression of those who have stood for simplicity, poverty and the way of Abba. Seven Crusades in the Middle Ages with spiritual goals of dubious value, marked by rape, pillage and other outrages committed both in Europe and on the long route to the Holy Land. Growing reliance by a powerful church on mystery, miracle and authority, Dostoevsky’s triad of ecclesiastical sins. Church-sanctioned wars on “heretics”, includng “witches”. Executions, confiscations of property and tortures of horrendous cruelty. The Spanish Inquisition including papally-sanctioned attacks with an estimated loss of 300,000. Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants with ferocity on all sides surpassing that of many other wars. Acceptance of slavery by many churches. And today, the relative silence of churches in the face of a growing tendency to chip away at human freedom in the name of an Orwellion fear of “terror”.

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The three functions of a local cooperative ministry, and of church structures at all levels should be chaplaincy (worship, preaching, “priestly” functions), teaching (all educational efforts) and abandonment (a broad effort to move away from “church programs” to the concept of lay upbuilding of secular society).

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A cooperative local structure minimizes competition and varies program and mission from place to place. There is a central house for worship events. There are facilities for ongoing education. Abandonment moves in the direction of helping empower existing voluntary programs and social and political structures.

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There is often too little lay participation in substantive decision-making. A cooperative ministry opens the way for greater participation because we move beyond the pastor-centered, Jack-of-all-trades ministerial model to a focus on professional specialization whose goal is greater lay participation in spreading Abba’s way throughout the earth.

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Existing congregations tend to become the private preserves of the membership. A cooperative ministry can more easily open buildings and programs to a broader public. Buildings can be identified by their function. It can invest more in making cooperative efforts known to the entire community.

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Existing congregational worship requires a substantial overhaul. A cooperative ministry at the local level could select the most likely building and designate it as the central meeting place. Worship could be conducted on a daily basis with les emphasis on elaborate structured services and more stress on enabling silence, meditation and reflection. The culture of Abba’s Way can begin to supplant two largely-deleterious tendencies of current worship efforts. The first is a sad adherence to language and expressions that are triumphal, presumptuous and overreaching. Much of the language in existing hymnals and prayer books was written before sexism became an obvious component of religious language, Much is creedal and messianic rather than humble before the mystery. The second is a reductionist centering on “praise” that claims too much and professes to the point of excluding those who may not wish to express faith in such elaborate and ostentatious emotional modes. Each of these areas breeds controversy and division when discussed. Centralized neighborhood worship can acknowledge the need for diversity as well as for keeping a sanctuary space open at all hours simply to enable anyone who wished to have access to it.

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A localized cooperative structure could begin to offer to the general public face to face resources that fall under such headings as lectures, films, presentations, discussions, debates and so forth. The purpose of these would be to let the world know that the Abba community (aka Church) is concerned with issues on which it does not claim any particular authority but which it wishes to acknowledge as important for life itself.

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This falls under the heading of a teaching ministry with a stress on competent resourcing and instruction and open-ended debate. Clearly the present effort to include teaching in every struggling local congregation is counterproductive when compared to what could happen in by pooling resources and creating neighborhood directors of education paid or volunteer.

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A neighborhood cooperative approach could lead to the enhancement of community in an area. A community of neighborhood as demonstrated by the willingness of local congregations to band together and cooperate. Enhancing a community of consensus around issues that are of concern to the entire area. A community of, reconciliation reaching out to bridge fissures and hostile elements in a community. A community of spontaneous association that depends on there being a public institutional presence – this means a building that is open most hours and where there is enough going in to enable people to mingle, to meet, to cross-fertilize. Finally this approach could lead to enhanced forms of living together in community. Residential communities, for example, could easily spring up around various efforts within a cooperative ministry structure.

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Denominations are generally not structured to cede their formidable powers to a cooperative local structure which minimizes denominational identity. But their staffs can participate ecumenically with other local denominational leaders and across religious lines to help enable such cooperation as they are willing to support. In addition, there is no law against local cooperation based on the bilateral interplay of existing congregations.

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An intentional emphasis on lay empowerment that involves more than one congregation can begin to create the workable change at the grass roots. This can in turn create a sea change in the wider church.

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The creation of models of community and ministry around Abba’s Way can grow out of existing congregations or even out of existing individuals and the communities they gather. The sharing and singing (silently, individually or in groups) of the Abba Prayer is the most compact and efficacious way to proceed. Using meditations found in books such as this can help to resource individuals and communities. In essence we are opting for the growth of what some would call Jesus People but what I would wish to call Abba People as I believe Jesus himself would wish us to focus on the One who sent him, the one who is at hand, to one to whom our repentance is addressed, the one in whose power we believe.

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Denominational loyalty has atrophied over the years. Most lay people would be hard-pressed to say what makes them a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian. More than likely speech related to this issue would move toward class or style differences. The change envisioned in these pages is to a largely post institutional spirituality what is informed by the thrust of Abba’s Way articulated here. Its sign and seal in the present world situation is adherence to nonviolence and the affirmation of or reverence for life – to common up the phrase Albert Schweitzer used to speak for Abba’s Way before it was named.

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We do not need more denominations.. We need, most probably, to be open to cooperation but at the same time, open to giving primacy to the individual and group practice of Abba’s Way, in which “attending church” is secondary to how one structures one’s whole life.

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Hitherto the notion of Abba’s Way might have been denoted “sectarian” in the pejorative sense that thinkers like Reinhold Niebuhr applied the term to expressions they felt were extreme or outside the mainstream. But now the notion of Abba’s Way is post-institutional. It is an understanding. It is as real and effective as breathing but at the same time as invisible as what may be going on in someone’s mind as they walk down a city block.

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Backbiting is a sadly inherent aspect of any organization as the rivalrous nature of humankind manifests itself and as differing opinions become “irreconcilable: Abba can help us transcend this but it is most difficult to achieve peaceful forward movement in an organizations without a more conscious practice associated with Abba’s Way. Abba’s way is not a wimpish sort of niceness. It is as wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove – a statement that does not acknowledge the morose and pugilistic nature of the dove! Regardless, Abba’s Way never operates with a naïve view of individual or corporate human nature. We do what we can and when we can do no more we have lives that are free enough and a world that is large enough to enable us to shake the dust from our feet and move on. This is why divorce of all sorts should be encouraged and made easier rather than more difficult. And why in making wrenching decisions involving upheaval and separation the preeminent consideration should be the wellbeing of children first and of the infirm and immobile second.

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The follower of Abba’s way is not required to be part of anything including a particular church, a political party or an organization. Put differently, virtually any association is fertile ground for the cultivation of Abba’s way. In essence it is the inner creativity of the person what is the closest thing to a purpose in life and to the overcoming that Abba makes possible. So the fulfillment of the person through the use of gifts is paramount and prior to any associations.

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I think that the upheavals that are going to take place in the next century will hardly be affected by the Church. Even the structure I propose is not likely to have a substantial effect on the outcome. I am primarily interested in discovering whether there is anything within the Bible, within the Gospel, within our hymns and prayers, that is able to address man significantly today. I think there is, but I have a hard time finding it in today’s Church. If I were interested only in social action I would forget the Church in a minute and plunge into either the peace movement or the civil rights movement exclusively. (1966)

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We are in a time of seeking and yet I feel we can begin to move beyond both liberalism and neo-orthodoxy. The direction is unclear, but it may involve a real consideration of the possibilities of realizing a transition within human nature in this world in the context of what may well be a fantastic upheaval in the next fifty or one hundred years. My vagueness at this point should be reason enough for silence until the ideas begin to form themselves more clearly.

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I believe the exciting realities of local ecumenism that already exist are the prototype of the renewed Church. I believe they will grow in number. I believe they will finally work to transform the denominational pattern.

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The worst thing would be the continued identification of the Gospel with the salvation of the Church as opposed to the world. This could lead, and is leading in some cases, to an imperialistic attempt to identify the Church with the White West in a world where the White West is a minority. The Church would then become even more parochial and closed and would ultimately provide the “spiritual” impetus for an arrogant and self-righteous stand of the White West against the rest of the world. This would be a tragedy, and at that point we would have to fight the Church in the name of the Church. (1966)

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Church renewal must grow from the grass roots and it must not get institutionalized too soon. Let any reader, minister, or layman begin his or her own organizing, because the focus of organization is where you are.

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The cooperative ministry must then come first, but hopefully this conflict can be averted.

Earth

Our spinning wheels of prideful sophistry, our glamor built on force of power and arms. These close the way to Abba deep within. What we take in can pass right through us – see it go! It’s what comes from the heart and mouth that counts. If we retain the detritus of a world that rejects the Way of Abba, then it will come out of our hearts and mouths and be reflected in our walk and permeate our manner. Seek Abba only. Make Jesus your teacher. Say the prayer. Sing it too. Make up your own melody. Practice the pledged forgiveness in exchange for the forgiveness we receive.

Abba whose home in heaven is
Hallowed and holy is your name
Let your realm come your will be done
Till earth and heaven are the same

Give us this day our daily bread
Forgive the wrongs that we have done
As we forgive those who do wrong
Lead us not into temptation

Deliver us from evil lord
And guide us safely to your shore
Yours is the power to heal and mend
Yours is the glory ever more

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This prayer is a transaction, real, alive and efficacious.

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The truth is too much to be known. There are too many truths, all theory fails.
The more we know, the less we can absorb. So masses gravitate toward easy things.
And, like a house of cards, perceptions collapse and all sense of order and unity is lost. And yet there is an order and a unity and Abba is its sign and seal and we are the recipients of the gift – the gift of freely admitting that we can only know in part,

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One sentence can change everything we hold. One verbal holograph can change it all.

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Ideas are not equal. Nor are the levels upon which we live. The truth is in the words and deeds themselves. All else is academic robes and dross.

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Finally, our face to face is us with Abba perhaps not too far away.

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Even scholars end up face to face

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Dance is the rhyme and reason we all need to move with chance and change and merriment; beyond the tangled webs our living weaves, with power to rise above the madding fray.

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Our dance requires no physical event; it is a state of mind before it moves. It is the prompt of Abba moving you. So own the grace. It’s Abba’s gift to you.

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Our “charity” will never overcome. It will make posters of its fair, good works. And document its progress with a smile.

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All is not well, save where Abba’s alive. And Abba lives in all who speak their No to everything that is not Abba’s own. The litmus test is violence and force. When violence and force hold sway we must speak out: This is not Abba’s Way.

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The state is Abba’s own when it desists from saying it is just when it is not. The state is Abba’s own when it recedes and those who serve it give Abba his due.

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“On earth there is none greater than we are. We are the very finger of the Lord.” Thus speaks religion wearing stately garb. To such a state give nothing but the least. To such religion give nothing at all.

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The state was formed from failure. It succeeds as crime recedes and hate is modified. As tortures end and prisons are less used. As living space can resist fire and flood.

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When we live as Abba would have us live the failure of the state will start to lift. The lion and the lamb will hold peace talks. And hope will rise from failure like a flower.

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Our social goals: Less “Caesar” more ourselves. Less designation of our lives as weighty work. As more responsibility holds sway, each person’s needs are honored, not betrayed. As there is more awareness of Abba, the very vision of his realm expands, and we live more and more within its sway, and Abba rules, befriends and understands.

Ending Violence

I picked up a Gideon Bible when I woke up one day. It opened to Esther so I read it. It said the King ruled. His word was law. Including getting rid of Queen One and making Esther Queen Two. The problem was not only hierarchy. It was fallen human nature. Now Purim is celebrated because, having bought into everything everyone, Jews and Persians and everyone, did the same dumb stuff. Result? Dead Bodies. So what if they did not plunder? What the text does is hallow a deity who takes sides, not he deity whom Jesus represents. I am disgusted. I will inveigh against violence and confess myself violent and original-sinned as the next person. Let’s talk direct and simple sometimes. Anything that kills or leads to same is not something to buy into. Nor to venerate. Nor to celebrate. Anything, not just some things.

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All dualism divides into two. All unity removes opposing sides. A binary approach is but a tool which never should subvert the truth it hides. Protagonists, antagonists, we know, are frequent players on life’s chancy stage; But there’s simple truth that history shows: Division’s less in a world come of age.

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The spectrum is the tool we must select. Repeat: A house divided cannot stand. All history has proved this endlessly. Idolatrous dividing in fools’ hands shatters all hope of living peacefully.

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Who arbitrarily divides most likely has the same evils within his own camp that he excoriates in the camp of his enemy.

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Do you not see the legions of the dead and know division for just what it is? If everything’s a spectrum, what is good? And what is evil? Are they not two things?
There are no absolutes. For Abba would see compromise applied to everything. How terrible this simple word appears, when we consider fanfares and alarms! Why compromise, alleviating fears, when we can have our lusty calls to arms! What would our media do with boring days, not punctuated by new body counts? What would we watch, what could our wise ones say if conflict was reduced to small amounts?

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Compromise is not meekness or loss of power. The watchword on the human stage is conflict without deathly actions, conflict within a lawful scope, conflict within a democratic matrix.

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The path to war ends up in warrior’s hell. Two sides are needed to create a war Two enmities, two arguments, two briefs. And then consent, emotions honed knife-sharp,
Then promises no one will ever keep.

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Better the courage to speak truth to power. Better a house divided will not stand;
Better no dualism, more cold showers, And maybe leaders who can understand.

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Abba’s Way harks back to Jesus’ teachings and his so-called miracles – prefiguring of human potentiality. There is now no excuse for the world not to become rational and responsible. There is no excuse to make believe there cannot be enough for all. There is no excuse for believing that one who makes little or nothing is less deserving than one who is paid millions every year for being in the right place at the right time. There is no excuse for the gaping differentials we have any more, for seven and eight figure incomes for some and three figure annual takes for others. The system can and should be changed. This is an aspect of Abba’s Way.

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The subtext of conspicuous consumption, is gang warfare and criminality. Gang warfare and crime entertains the “rest of us”. Our bloated justice system is the bread and butter of politicos of both parties.

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We all die. We all go to dust. The question is do we acknowledge the worst of this does not have to be? Or do we play out a charade which enables the conspicuously rich to make ever greater and greater fools of themselves? The current infatuation with greed for greed’s sake is a sad validation of a lot of very bad theology. How so? Anything that militates against the human capacity to know Abba and to be transformed by this knowledge is bad theology. Anything that does not press those on Abba’s Way to stand firmly against injustices, seen always in terms of gaping and ludicrous, differentials, is bad theology. Anything that can compartmentalize life to the extent that one is insulated from the truths of injustice represents a profound abdication of leadership and this too is bad theology.

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Good theology would be the global leadership at every level in every field saying something like this where it will do some good: Get smart and spread the wealth before the bill on excess comes due. Good theology would be rich corporations of all sorts investing in rational steps to create a more level playing field worldwide.

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We haven’t had to be as bad as we’ve been the last 2000 years and now it is simply ridiculous.

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We live in a world where it is no longer necessary to employ soldiers to kill one another. The job of defense departments should be to minimize death and to fight hard against the deleterious practice of making it impossible for those who rain death upon the world to even know what they are doing close up and face to face.

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We live in a world where only the habitual but outmoded energies of principalities and powers stand between partial and a total victory for something like proximate justice, tolerance and helpfulness. We live half-blind in the world Jesus redeemed.

Exortations

Come celebrate. Learn silence. Then create.

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Judge not. But be a light that can be seen. Judge not. But let the world know Abba’s way.

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Judge not. For Abba works in everything. Let Abba’s wisdom shine in all you say.

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Our calling is to preach of life not death, to preach life more abundantly, to preach economies of mustard seeds, to wear no ponderous robes but to wear light, for Abba’s light is what this poor world needs.

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Come. Come with me to where Moses once stood and heard the voice of Abba in the flame. But hearing Moses would not move along. Who shall I say sent me? was his demand. And Abba’s answer was value’s last stand. Deep anger. (Think of that! And listen well) “Say, I Am sent me. I am Who I Am. Say, I Am sent me. I’ll be Who I’ll Be.”

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Embrace the truth. Abba has but one rage. And that is giving your worship away. To Golden Calves, to hateful speech, self-righteousness. Hypocrisy, mendacity, false charity. Yes, Abba hates, despises cant and feasts that in themselves pour spite on Abba’s Way. When Jesus said what he could not forgive is was our sin against his very being, his gift of being present inside us. True suicide is not just of the flesh. It is the sinful suppression of the Abba-given spirit which is Abba deep within. The very source of dignity and power. Abba’s rage rises when you throw his gift to the dogs.

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Give Abba room to be Abba to you. Ask, seek and knock and live in confidence,
according every right to each and all. For doing less denies that Abba lives. For as he lives he lives in everyone. Extend a helping hand to each and all, for this is Abba’s will and Abba’s wish. And learn to live with what you cannot change, for Abba’s patience with us never ends. But realize that all things will be changed to create harmony betwixt heaven and earth.

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Attune your mind to Abba, not idols. That is the only value you must hold. Without this everything is flame and dross. But with it, creativity has space. And Abba’s will may yet be done on earth.

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So few submit and few believe today, The goodness Abba calls us to is weak. We need to hear again and see. For now the principalities hold sway and time that was fulfilled goes unfulfilled. We will be here till we find Abba’s way. And then we’ll see new light upon the hill.

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Our conflicts are the challenge at the core. But Abba frees us from against and for. Sad legions rise, well-trained, well-schooled to die. But we say we need fight no more. And so we push like Sisyphus of old, in hopes somehow to roll away the stone, in hopes that blinded eyes will open wide and bathe in Abba’s reconciling tide.

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Sing out the song of Abba silently and softly share the news of Abba’s care. Let Abba shine in every song we sing.

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Be not the enemies, but friends, of life. And let no depth remain a source of fear, for Abba ends every division there and salves past pains and gives grief tender care.

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Be Abba’s friends now, come, alive and close, companions on the way that Abba takes.
Forsake the frowning crowds, the milling herds, and walk the path within called Abba’s Way. For Abba turns all values upside down, exposing what is false of every stripe. No fixed laws will suffice when truth reveals a shabby justice and a care denied. The realm of Abba seeks strong, living friends, whose values are writ clear upon their hearts, companions who will laugh along the way and sing and dance. Of such are his realm made.

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Sing to outcasts, bring joy to solitude, raise songs that bend an ear to deeper truth. Let happiness in you be their welcome and Abba’s realm one day shall overcome.

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Make peace with every fragment of your being. Let all your inner wholeness become clear. Accept each part. Let every part converse. Then you will find a way beyond your fear.

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Do not delude yourself into thinking that an inclination to Jesus makes you suddenly free from the evil impulses of the heart. Derive your understanding of yourself from an honest facing of the recurrent presence of thoughts and impulses which square exactly with the words Jesus uses to describe what is internal to us. Regularly and in private, pray for that Abba within will cleanse you and make you whole.

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Attach no significance morally or spiritually to what you eat. Examine what proceeds from your heart. That is what has significance in the book of life.

Governance, Planning and Polity

The state was formed from failure, not from hope, from unsolved crimes, rampant disease and hate, from anarchies and tortures, fires and floods, to satisfy our need to have control and keep our harmful passions at safe bay. Now when we murder, there are courts and jails. When we go out, roads, schools, zoned buildings, parks. And when we drive, signs, signals, highways, tolls. Give it its due. Make it the best you can. The more we are on Abba’s Way the more the state can fade away.

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Abba’s Realm should show up in our plans. Forgiveness should inform our polities. Nonviolence should be our stated aim. The sanctity of life should be our pledge.

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Our social goals: Less “Caesar”to render our substance to. Less designation of our lives as weighty work. Far more responsibility holds sway. Each person’s needs are honored, not betrayed. As there is more awareness of Abba, as heaven’s vision flowers and expands.

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States upon states, all bounded by all law. A paper trail from birth to burial. Records on file, on disks, in storage vaults So what is Abba’s now? And what the state’s?

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Abba’s within police and presidents. Abba’s within the angered anarchist. Abba stands with the self who overcomes.

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The state may call us to annihilate. This is not Abba’s call, nor Abba’s due. The state may speak untruth and seek belief. This is not Abba’s call, nor Abba’s due.

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Do not waste energy in vain protest. Use energy to create your best work. Do not cry slavery, instead find space. A tiny space where freedom’s light can shine.

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Let states be judged by what they do not seek. Let states be judged by how they do not fight.

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Today’s urbanized, automotive urban-suburban sprawl does not present a worthy pattern for the future. It is the playing out of the self-evident assumptions of the era of Henry Ford. Recall that even such perspicacious democratic visionaries as Frank Lloyd Wright blithely drew today’s choked interchanges into their futuristic plans.

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There are many possible elements that could be integrated into a polity built around viable and identifiable communities: these would include advanced computerized work stations that would provide a walk-to workplace and at the same time reduce the need for costly central office space and hair-raising commuting.

Idolatry

What is false witness but idolatry? For idol worship bows down before lies. Ideas are idols, so are creeds and laws when they are made the litmus test of truth. Truth is between Abba and everyone, each living being on earth is Abba’s home.

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Idols are both subtle and too plain; the shrieking adulation of a star, some secret, guiding passion well-disguised, a lethal, communal hypocrisy. Worship is mostly idolatry; It is the act which gives an idol place.

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Partial truths become oppressive laws.

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An idol is a human artifact, whether a thing, a person or belief.

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The way we build suggests idolatry. What we place first becomes our golden calf.

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In opposition to idolatry.the words may differ but they coalesce. Love justice, mercy and humility.Bring lion to lie down beside the lamb. No graven images, how plain is plain?

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No murder, how obscure is that command?

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How can we stand against idolatry? Value the mind and heart of all creatures. Accept the sheer diversity of life. Judge not that you be clear of the judgment. And never see your own thought as The Truth.

Jesus

We know what Jesus valued from what he said and did. The gospel stories demonstrate his concerns and cares. They demonstrate iconoclasm toward our typical idols of state or authority or religion. His values come utter faith in Abba. For this reason worship is to be reserved to Abba alone. And worship is the ascription of value.

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Jesus’ inaugural proclamation is that Abba is at hand. The energy of the new age is present. But the primitive church, before a word was written down for posterity, tended to make Jesus a messiah and to downplay his message and the iconoclastic acts which characterized his ministry. Instead of being a leader and exemplar who would have us follow him, Jesus was turned into the iconic center of the church’s devotion.
Jesus’ purpose and mission became secondary. Abba was ignored and the deity was relegated to a distant place. The Spirit fire within Jesus, who sought to convert persons to the way of the realm of Abba, was modified and became in the church’s eyes the sign of one’s “chosenness” .

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Jesus was a speaker and doer of the right, not a supernatural being who gathers his favored ones from the morass of unbelievers and removes them to heaven above.

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Jesus said the realm of Abba – heaven – was in everyone. He commended neighbor love and, even more, love of enemies. He swiftly became subject of theological debate relating to religion. The way he embodied was subordinated and ultimately distorted to include rationales for violence and religious intolerance.

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Jesus says the kingdom or realm of God is at hand and so it is. Fully half of his Biblical references to God are to the kingdom or realm of God. He then says to repent and believe this good news. This can only mean that the good news is God’s at-hand-ness, that henceforth God is available to us and we participate with Abba in ordering a world that is in harmony with heaven.

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Jesus intends the restoration of a fallen world to full harmony with the Holy One. Such a restoration brings peace and justice to our relationships, trust and simplicity to our lives. There is less and less “Caesar” to render our substance to. Less designation of what we do as forced work. There is more responsibility, more acknowledgement of each person’s fundamental need for affirming love. And there is more awareness that, though life is precious, Abba’s love transcends life itself and integrates us into a realm where, as Revelation suggests, death’s power is no more.

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Those who know the venality of life in the competitive marketplace and the utter cruelty of life for millions who are ignored, impoverished, left on fields of battle, abused and forced into situations of indignity, will scoff at the thought that Jesus had in mind a world closer to the way he embodied. The way he embodied, cynics will say, is a recipe for anarchy, a naive exercise, and an idiotic attempt by unalloyed goodness to alter the status quo, where evil has the upper hand and people accept evil as the price of good. Our world is one of prisons, economic struggle, envy and consumerism, not to mention illness, accidents and events we call acts of god. But the gospel has remained true since Jesus proclaimed and embodied it. The consequences of ignoring it increase with time.

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Without denying evil and the need to be delivered from it, Jesus proposes a way of goodness which is free and efficacious, even when it is risky and subjects us to possible suffering and even death. We are encouraged to exist without reference to the world’s dominant understandings.

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Jesus commends an inclusive love that is far more important to him than love of family, to which he accords a secondary status. He is not as high on friendship as he is on active negotiation with adversaries and love for enemies.

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When one looks at the sum of his teachings and acts, one concludes that Jesus emphatically affirms acts of direct helpfulness, tolerance and sharing and is hypercritical of anything smacking of religious show or hypocrisy.

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On issues of property, Jesus offers little encouragement for acquisition or ownership and a stark warning to those who assume they will win ultimate ease by having an abundance of material possessions.

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When we ignore and modify Jesus’ teachings we fall into the trap of “realism” which is, in the view of Jesus, primarily a mask for hypocrisy.

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Jesus is as realistic about the world as anyone. But he ranges himself at all times against worldly realism. Instead, he celebrates life as a free manifestation of God’s goodness and encourages us to counter the humanly- created evil which sustains the system, which requires the “realism” which enables the world to continue evading responsibility.

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The good news or way of life proclaimed and embodied by Jesus is first a way of responsible living. It is not something to believe in as much as something to be manifested in human relationships and in the character of one’s dealings with God and the world. Thus its principal point of reference is not the Person of Christ as an object of veneration or worship as much as the realm where God’s will is to be done.

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The realm of heaven is to be allowed to sprout up on the earth. It is not a realm, incidentally, that is contiguous with the boundaries of religious institutions, even Christian institutions.

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Jesus is happy to see the virtues of the realm manifested wherever they are observed.

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Vastly more important than ecclesiastical and creedal matters is the quality of contact among persons, the degree to which trust in God reduces anxiety, extends sharing and enlarges the presence of peace.

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The premium is not so much on command of a tradition as on the capacity to discern within tradition those elements, which, amended by Jesus, are the building blocks of a life beyond the boundaries created by tradition.

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Jesus bears a realism that is more profound and accurate about things than the self-interested realpolitik of those whose power is won at the expense of the values that make for life, happiness and community.

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If Jesus had intended to proclaim an otherworldly, perfectionist ethic, destined to be branded unrealistic by the best minds of the church, he would not have advanced the notion of God’s will being done on earth in the only prayer he ever taught. He would not have gathered a following of men and women and spent the bulk of his brief, intense ministry providing them with myriad instructions and examples related to how to exist in the world.

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Jesus intends that life here and now be the locus of our learning what we are meant to learn. Jesus intends that we now absorb and understand which values and teachings are paramount for the ordering of our lives on earth.

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It is, sadly, a convenience, used by the world as well as churches, to emphasize the creedal, priestly side of things, “realistically” allowing religion to become a compartment, at the expense of the all-embracing way that Jesus exemplifies, embodies and commends. It has been more convenient to say that this way is a mélange of confusing and conflicting things and to forget dealing with it entirely.

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Religion is so much more easy and so infinitely more malleable — and convenient — all around. But religion of any sort, as Barth, and Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky well understood, will not accomplish what Jesus set out to do. Religion will not be an iconoclastic, critical presence, facing off before the established principalities and powers. It will gather things into barns and then battle over the contents during leaner times.

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When Jesus said the poor are blessed, he was not advocating poverty. He was telling people that their poverty would come to an end. That people who follow the way of Abba will thrive.

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Jesus introduced a new economic system, which most never noticed or understood. It was the miracle of sharing and the creation of abundance when people’s minds are oriented to Abba’s presence. When they put helping others first. When they put doing unto others into their daily agenda.

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Jesus, a scholar at the age of twelve, of simple dress and wandering ways, was valued for his healing touch, less so as knowing wisdom-bearer or iconoclast. The path he chose showed him the whole of life. He wandered with the vacant-eyed and lost. He looked for Abba’s flame in everyone. What scholar will see this as fair travail?

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Somewhat unprecedented would be Jesus stating now just what he was and what he is about. Vastly unprecedented would be our believing it was he who spoke.

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Jesus heralds hope in deepest depths transforming the effects prideful loss and anger coiled in insolent repose. He turns our howls of placelessness and pain into a song of freedom once again. He breaks the bars of prisons bearing signs named poverty and greed and driven need. He makes us whole by making Abba plain and showing us the way to life again.

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Jesus was never a wimpy visionary whose project was to make us feel good about ourselves and the world. He came with the serious task of converting us from our evil inclinations by means of proclaiming the gospel of Abba’s nearness and the way of obedience and forgiveness. Jesus is not an idealist but a realist in giving a true description of the evil inclinations of our heart — and in offering the prophetic alternative first proposed by Jeremiah — a divine heart transplant made possible by Abba’s near presence and incination to stand with the penitent.

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Jesus is engaging in an epochal battle. Not a new one because Isaiah (Chapter 6) indicates that God is always impatient with us in a prophetic sense — for we do not do the justice we should. Jesus is showing more of Abba’s realm than his predecessors — indeed it is his power and his call upon Abba that is creating such a stir. It is probable that he did need people he could trust around him to protect him from the elements growing in their opposition to him. So too today for his attack continues. It challenges privilege and worldly notions of happiness that lack the simple good-heartedness of his profound Beatitudinal understanding.

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Jesus sought Abba before he sought the crowd. He climbed the heights and waited for a word. Temptation came but soon he was set free and comfort grew as Abba grew in him.
When he came down from there, he knew the truth, the way, the light, the life, the healing mode. He knew who Abba was, where Abba lives. And with one silent blow, religion fell. And this world’s values fell as well.

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Jesus died to show that Abba lives. Jesus died to show the winning way. He died to show that Abba will prevail. He died because he followed Abba’s way.

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Now Jesus lives again and Abba is close by, at hand, beyond, above, below, inside.

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Jesus said all secrets shall be manifest, all hidden things shall be revealed. And those with eyes to see know this is so. All secrets and all hidden things unfold to the extent we walk in Abba’s Way.

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The words of Jesus are as plain now as they were back then: Rejoice. Take Abba in. Receive the love. Be lifted up.

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He comes before us in simplicity. He says Abba’s at hand, within, around. He has no rivals he must overcome. His road is lonely, sometimes even sad. Sometimes he wishes those who hated him would stop. But they do not and so he knows his fate. Simplicity is lethal, healing wrong. His blasphemy redeems as he expires.

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You might say Jesus is an underline come to confirm that Abba is I Am. Need we know more? We shall not find it. Most theology is the futile effort to pretend that supposition is truth. Most theology concentrates on the parts of Abba that we can perhaps infer but not proclaim as being our experience..

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The prophetic trumps the priestly in the Bible. Amos speaks for Abba when he writes of divine hatred for feast days and solemn assemblies. In the institutions of religion the prophetic is trumped by the priestly. In the statements and actions of Jesus, the prophetic attains its apotheosis and the priestly is forever relegated to his own control. The Sabbath is his. And by implication ours.

Me

Wandering Years: In 1968 I moved with my family from the near North Side of Chicago to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. My lungs were still choked with tear gas, courtesy of Mayor Daley’s constabulary, which marched in lockstep over a ridge in Lincoln Park to break up a worship service — one of the few times I ever got to preach. I still exercise to Hey Jude in my head, testimony to that August, 1968, when I drove around Chicago in my battered green bug contemplating mayhem.

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We moved because I was burned out and thought I could have a free-lance career. Also we needed (if we would admit it which we never did terribly openly) a decent place to educate our kids for free. So we ended up in a 16 K house that was falling apart in Stockbridge just down the hill from where Arlo used to live. It was a nice time to half drop out. Waiting for me in my mail when I arrived in the bucolic Berkshires was a note from Hugh Kerr, then editor of Theology Today. In conversation with James McCord, then President of Princeton Theological Seminary, I was offered the following package if I would move to Princeton. I would edit Theology Today and get a doctorate at the seminary. Even to my naive eyes this looked like a clear ticket at age 32 to Presbyterian Nirvana. Somebody round there liked me. I wonder who could have called me after that move and gotten me to pull up stakes. I refused politely explaining the situation.

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Eugene Carson Blake, when we were both at the WCC in Geneva in 1967, he at the helm and me strung out in the Youth Department, editing something called RISK, said if I would stay I could work for him. And that is perhaps an offer I should not have refused, because Gene Blake knew whereof he spoke and had no truck with mindless fundamentalists and that is a plus as far as I’m concerned. But I had not learned the secrets of abdominal breathing nor the balancing of parenthood with career nor the codes of the Europeans who still managed to run things in Geneva, so I slipped back to Chicago later that year with my tail between my legs.

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There was a sort of interim thing in the 1970s. For about a year I was inexplicably offered a consultant position by the Presbyterian Board of National Missions which had the idea that I was more or less expert on matters of young radicals in the church. The only reason this was so was that they were the only ones I could get to even listen to me. So onerous was doing nothing as a consultant that I hastily arranged that my salary which was a princely $1000 a month plus $300 for expenses be applied to a post at the Christian Century Magazine. I offered myself as a “free” associate editor and Alan Geyer, the then editor, accepted. The only thing I recall from that period is covering the advent in New York of a Baskin-Robbins addict 14 year old guru named Maharaj Ji. I was summarily tossed out of the ashram when I admitted to one of the young man’s acolytes that I preferred God to the guru. My introduction to creedal messianism in practice.

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Ken Neigh and his associates on the National Missions staff were about to be deep-sixed in effect and a semi-kept regime installed to placate both liberals and conservatives. I couldn’t have gotten through that door with a battering ram. In addition I got a letter from Bob Christ in Chicago telling me that there was a catch 22 as far as my ordination went. If I did not work for a church organization my ordination would have to be declared inactive. Well since I wasn’t, it was! I suppose it is still sitting on a shelf in Chicago. Call all this Exit Ad Infinitum.

Messianism Is The Heart of The Church Problem

Music

In the early 1970s I underwent what was the most painful event of my adult life. I saw it at the time as a fissure and a rejection – a “you cannot go home again” event. I saw it as the end of my career, a death. In its wake I turned to writing and performing music. I had written only a few songs by then. Since the early 1970s I have written hundreds of songs, converted many traditional hymns and advocated a new hymnody with Abba as the focal point of the lyrics. Simplicity is the watchword for both lyrics and melodies. In the section published here, I have not included my original melodies, but I have provided meters which will enable anyone to play any melody they wish, from popular to traditional, as long as it fits. As an example, in the Beatitudes song, the meter is 8787 and this is also the meter of the familiar “What A friend We Have In Jesus” as well as to at least 17 other hymn melodies including “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”. All these lyrics are licensed to CCLI and LicenSing and may be copied and used freely,

The Beatitudes Song
(8787)

Blessed are you poor in spirit
Heaven’s kingdom shall be yours
Blessed all who mourn and suffer
Know that Abba’s love endures

Blessed all you meek and humble
You will own this whole world wide
Blessed every justice seeker
Justice shall not be denied

Blessed all who practice mercy
Mercy then you shall receive
Blessed all you pure in hearted
You will have no cause to grieve

Though you may face persecution
Abba’s kingdom you shall know
All who suffer for my name’s sake
To that blessed place shall go

Jesus made these simple statements
By the Galilean lake
Only as they are remembered
Do we know which path to take

No the truth is not defeated
Though the earth see misery
Happiness and joy are treasures
For all those with eyes to see

Blessed are you poor in spirit
Heaven’s kingdom shall be yours
Blessed all who mourn and suffer
Know that Abba’s love endures

Know that Abba’s love endures

Words and music c Copyright 2006 by Stephen C. Rose

Our Limitations, Our Potential

Truth lies within us as the spark of life itself, of freedom and of Abba’s will-be-done. Do not press farther, leave the apple be. Accept the terms of life. And life itself.

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You can embrace all heights and depths at once. Let Abba’s light and peace bathe you with love. If this brings you to tears, embrace yourself and know you are embraced as you respond. For Abba ties you to the universe, to all creation, heavens and beyond.

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Some friends won’t trust you as you seek the heights. Hold to the still small voice that lives within. The knight of faith remains invisible but Abba’s eyes of love are clear as day. Trust eyes and ears, trust limbs and heart and mind. You need not play to them, play for yourself. For you are one with Abba all the time.

Revaluation of Values

The tawdry values of our blinded world can only be changed by Abba within,

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We are a calling from Abba’s great heart to be and become beacons bearing values revalued to save and not destroy the earth.

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The only ones who demand worship are Satan and some would-be stars. There is no Satan left to adulate. And would-be stars have feet of clay. Our worship is a mirror of ourselves.

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Are lesser values worthy of our Yes? They flow from Abba’s being our good friend.
They are the values that the prophets sketched. They are the values Pharisees abhorred.

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Peace, justice, trust, simplicity and love. Such values are not high in human terms but these are what is written on our hearts when we perceive that Abba lives within. Let Abba’s light within us softly burn and to the ways of happiness return.

Right To Life

The right to life is either meant for all in every situation that exists, a universal, “Do not kill whatever lives”, or it is proximate, negotiated, resolved within the terms of Abba’s Way. We have the right and obligation to speak out whenever conflict rises. And it does with endless constancy and grief. For every death diminishes, whether we feel connection or do not. We have only the calling to minimize all carnage of all sorts no matter how inflicted, no matter for what reasons, no matter how just or unjust. To kill is wrong in every circumstance. We are diminished every time. Abba’s Way believes in an eventual perfection in which even death itself is no more. Abba’s way believes in the resurrection of life.

Worship

Worship may be an inner urge to bow down to things held high.. A team, a lesser value, an idea. It is not sought by Jesus or Abba. Most often it is hated and despised.

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The very worst of worship builds on creeds. Crusades and inquisitions and small thoughts. Close down. Repent. And then wait silently.

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Does Abba seek our worship? No indeed. Does Jesus? Not in a thousand centuries.

END

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“Abba’s Way” states: Unprecedented would be Jesus stating today what he was, and is, about.
Description of “Abba’s Way” (2006) | Purchase “Abba’s Way”