Hi Mark! This topic is fruit for thought, and the quote you highlighted, has so much truth in it.
My take on this is that during an argument, we sometimes give the appearance of attentive listening, while at the same time, we are actually lost in thought while thinking of what to say next.
Sometimes its best to keep a mouth shut and listen to another, and just maybe we might learn something new.
Sorry is a word that comes too late, and by the time it comes, one learns that we both share the same point of view, just from a different angle.
Thanks for this great topic!
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Thanks Dino but I’m not sure which quote you had in mind. Maybe from the first post?
I wanted to come back to this. I hope it’s ok. I think what you described is understandable. As far as folks in (all-over-the-map) establish traditions are concerned, they are all over the map in regard to seeking anything spiritual.
Frozen Chosen (White, Protestant, Calvinistic-leaning, non-demonstrative in worship; what I’m most familiar with) to full-on Pentecostal to Spiritual-But-Not-Religious-With-Christian-Vocabulary to all variations of Catholicism explore (or don’t) a wide range of spiritual practices outside of the regular church diet.
The terms “spiritual formation” or “spiritual practices” are often indicator that people are looking for something beyond what they are used to in their tradition’s expression of spirituality. Some areas, I find normal, some are beyond my understanding or comfort level.
I’ve wondered, if much of this searching is, in part, a result of many churches (I can only speak regarding the ones I know) lacking well-formed, established doctrines – and practices that result from them – related to the means of grace and standard issue spiritual practices that are part of (all?) Christian traditions.
Standard issue items include prayer, corporate worship, preaching, singing, reading the Bible, Communion and Baptism. The independent Baptist churches I’ve always gone to have never done a great job teaching the congregation how to do or value most of these things or what to make of them. What if we really did a great job of teaching these practices and what they mean? What if people were trained (and supported each other) in simple ways throughout their lives in churches: how to pray well, participate in corporate worship, respond best to preaching, to use their singing for worship and response as well as learning, ways to fruitfully meditate on Scripture and the like, as part of the normal routines of church life, even worship service, because this is what Christians do? That kind of teaching is non-existent in my experience. Plenty of recommendations to do more of it all better, but no guidance as to how.
And then the two biggies: Communion and Baptism. For all the weight we (Baptists) put on HOW one is baptized, we do a lousy job of teaching the value of that baptism both at the point of it, as well as into the future, and once done, we move on, rather than continuing to value it. We have thrown out our understandings about what God is actually doing through the act of baptism, (taking that subject of baptism and placinging them into the Body of Christ), and we make it a human work, mostly of personal dedication. What if we focused on God’s work in this act, rather than our own? What if we focused on what it means to be parts of the Body of Christ?
And to finish with: Communion, a.k.a. The Lord’s Supper. I’ve been raised in the “Memorial View” of Communion and have rejected that quite a few years ago. [The Memorial View is that the congregation is using the act of taking Communion to remember the saving sacrifice of Jesus for us.] There is no doctrinal understanding of Jesus’ presence at the thing we call Communion. What if Christians in all churches actually invited Jesus to serve at His own table, from which he serves us his saving body and blood (take it literally or metaphorically as your church teaches) as a physical helping of the Gospel, which we all feed on together as His Body? What if we really valued this and kept in in mind until the next time we take communion?
I think there are many, many Christians who feel they are starving spiritually, largely because we make so little of (and value so little) the basic spiritual practices we have been given. A great many Christians are looking for something that makes them feel satisfied, but don’t know they already have perfectly integrated means. I think if we knew better what we already have and made better use of it, we would be a much, much healthier people, able to keep our focus on sharing the Kingdom of God with those around us, and communicating it beautifully in whatever way best suits the needs of our neighbor.
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Yes Mark. You original post. I am stil going through all 562 comments on this topic.
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Sounds like a running summary of church history
Thanks again. I hope you find more that is of value to you and feel free to bring up for discussion anything you like. We never know what among the topics on our mind at a moment will engage another’s interest - unless we ask. 
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Mark, I’ve been reading around back in earlier posts, mostly just for fun, and ran across these related to consciousness, which include some of our earliest interactions, I think. Leaving it sit and coming back to it, I think one question I hadn’t been able to clarify for myself has to do with the “circumference” of consciousness/es. Not having a better term to hand, I’ll use circumference. I’ve never been clear if you mean one consciousness that circumscribes all living things, or many individual consciousnesses (one/living thing), or if is even wider to include one consciousness that circumscribes all that is. And if there are multiple, if and how they interact.
Or if you mean different things at different times.
I think the presence of the term “pantheism” led me to assume meanings that were not yours.
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Recently, in relation to internet discussion, the image came to mind of a caveman jumping on the back of his prey and clubbing it senseless. That certainly takes your used car salesman imagery to the next level.
Back along the ‘pithy quotes’ theme again; I’m making my way through “Place for Weakness” book that I think you started me on, @Kendel. One particular quote from it that I like from p. 156 (on my Kindle edition) (it’s in chapter 8, section: “Hope of Glory”)
When asked what he would do if he knew that Jesus were to return the next day, Martin Luther is said to have replied, “I’d plant a tree.”
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Luther was such a character. He certainly wasn’t perfect, but he seems like the kind of guy you’d like to go down the pub with.
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Merv, you made me smile. I wonder if Luther would favor planting a sequoia?
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Amen, Liam. I love the quote about him and Melancthon drinking beer down at the pub, while the Holy Spirit did all the work.
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I imagine consciousness as being dispersed throughout the cosmos manifesting one way in rocks (maybe?), another in plants, bacteria and vertebrates. What that looks like from the inside is hard to know, with our own case being closest to hand but perhaps too close to bring into focus.
In our case I think there have been modifications made in order allow for our capacities for more detailed communication and for weighing hypothetical outcomes of various courses of action. For that to happen the intrinsic wisdom of our species has had to step back and take its hand off the tiller. I think we’ve been inspired to invent God in order to maintain contact with that wisdom while expanding our power as a species. So long as we recognize our insufficiency and need for that portion of consciousness which holds the ancient wisdom of our species we may survive this experiment. The trouble is we don’t all share the same conception of the God whose wisdom we rely on, and many unapologetically seek to maximize only their accumulation without any concern for the general good. Ideally we would turn our cleverness toward goals in keeping with what is really good/God. Maybe we need a flood?
Edited to say by invention I mean coming up with a concept to consciously hold something that actually has it’s own psychic energy and only gradually became less of a presence felt and more simply a marker for something barely understood.
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Mmmmm. I think I’m still stuck. I’ll try to improve my question. There is probably established language for what I’m asking, I just don’t know it.
Would you say that the experience of having consciousness is something that all humans share?
[I’m thinking of something analogous to something like the experience of having blood flow or the experience of breathing, which is common to all humans, but experienced individually.]
Or that consciousness (or maybe rather the same consciousness*) itself is something that all humans share?
Or something different?
Will try later but off for a walk before it gets hit today.
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Robert Wolff had a gem of a lecture where he looked at Kant’s allusion that consciousness of geometry would not carry over to animal minds. It’s been a while since I heard it, and I may be messing up the words.
But it raised an interesting consideration in how even intelligence types in humans may not share the same ability for abstract thought. Sort of like being able to see that an uncaused cause would be unobservable by nature.
It’s not that I’m that smart or perceptive. It only took me approx 5 years and a several 1000 comment thread to catch it.
Now I did have an odd experience as a small child where I would have strong emotional feelings when imagining a really big object up against a small object. It’s really one of my earliest memories.
He actually said “If the world were to end tomorrow, I would plant my apple tree”
Although he actually never said it that we know of, much like other “quotes”
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Aaah, well.
I was hoping to link Luther to Berry’s Mad Farmer’s sequoia tree.
[Now wouldn’t that meeting create some heat and light?!]
“Most quotes found on the internet are made up.” ~ Augustine
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“Most people on the internet are the product of an evil genius.”
Descartes