Sometimes I wonder if people can see that I’m basically a fraud. And I wonder why I haven’t been called out for it yet.

Every now and then I am confronted with my own inconsistencies. I guess there’s various shades to that: there’s hypocrisy (when I say I espouse a particular moral high-ground when I know I frequently violate same said high-ground), and then there’s inconsistency (when I try to live a particular way but exhibit character traits that are inconsistent with that life), and then there’s just plain blindness (when others see my weaknesses before I am aware of them).
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Now Moses would take the Tent and pitch it outside the camp, at some distance from the camp. It was called the Tent of Meeting, and whoever sought the Lord would go out to the Tent of Meeting that was outside the camp. Whenever Moses went out to the Tent, all the people would rise and stand, each at the entrance of his tent, and gaze after Moses until he had entered the Tent. And when Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the Tent, while He spoke with Moses. When all the people saw the pillar of cloud poised at the entrance of the Tent, all the people would rise and bow low, each at the entrance of his tent. The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one man speaks to another.

So we start! We had our first reckless prayer gathering today at our home church, the Belchertown UCC. About a dozen of us gathered in the parish house, in a wonderful little chapel room with stained-glass windows.

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This year I’m going to explore a few major themes, and one of them is the idea of having “big faith” in a “big God”.

So, to kick things off, what I mean by “big faith” is, concisely, the kind of faith that surprised Jesus. I mean, the dude was secure and comfortable around religious scholars and rich folks and beautiful women and handicapped people and all that, but every now and then he would run into someone who had faith that simply stunned him.
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Alright, looks like we’re leaning toward Saturday mornings, starting Saturday, January 20th. Another option is Sundays right after church.

Update: We’ve decided! We’re meeting on Sundays, right after church (well, about a half-hour after second service to give people time to converse and connect with others). We’ll start meeting on Sunday, January 21st!

We’ll go for about eight weeks, meeting in the chapel room at the Belchertown UCC parish house on the common, with light refreshments and pastries and juices and such. It promises to be a boatload of fun!

[Okay, I'm not sure if you've ever had anyone describe a prayer group as "a boatload of fun"...]

While we wait, here’s something to get you started:
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some random notes to begin 2007 with … to be fleshed out in more detail later this year …

… I think the “gospel” is bigger and more mysterious and more surprising than people commonly understand it. I think phrases like the “kingdom of God/heaven”, and “giving your life”, and “life eternal”, all have contemporary meanings that people assume so much (”heaven”, “dying”, and “life after death”) that they take them for truth, but those meanings are completely different from what those phrases REALLY mean. I think such interpretations actually work AGAINST the real “gospel”, the real good news, which has multiple dimensions only one of which is the availability to humans, here and now, of the God-given power to live life to the fullest in community and in radical revolution against oppressive/paralyzing systems of thinking. As Jesus said 2000 years ago, the “kingdom is at hand”, it is here.
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