#at-one-ment

[designscene]

DESIGN SCENE INTERVIEW: AT-ONE-MENT

WANBING HUANG the founder of AT-ONE-MENT sits down with our editor KATARINA DJORIC to discuss the meaning behind the name of her label, mix of art and fashion, and future plans.

READ OUR EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

[reclaimingatonement-blog]

Domestic Violence… Biblically Speaking

The decline of marital union touches us all. Reading Jonathan Grant’s Divine Sex, while simultaneously rereading Andrew Cornes’ Divorce and Remarriage, Paul Miller’s A Loving Life and Wesley Hill’s Spiritual Friendship has been incredibly humbling and delightfully edifying. It is forcing us to rethink what it means to be a disciple of Christ especially in regard to companionship. Lots of room for growth and tons of concrete-relational opportunities for applying what they put forward as the Christian vision for relationships. 

The church is finally waking up to the realities of shame. It is, albeit far too little and long overdue, finally engaging the issues of sexual and other forms of abuse. It is trying to defend the innocent and help its survivors. And all that we support and applaud. Good stuff, take up and read, buy multiple copies as giveaways. All of this is worthy of our support. 

Yet, and it's a big yet (font 42, bold, all caps!) the body of Christ is dropping the ball with marital unions.

It stands on the sidelines while the church passes the world in divorce statistics. It allows divorce for any number of reasons, such as irreconcilable differences (as if there could be such a thing amongst Christians who are Christians only because of Christ’s [and their] ministry of restoration and reconciliation). Every once and awhile, someone might speak up, but few actually engage in a meaningful manner. Few take risks. And risk is right. And of course, they are passive in the divorce itself. The union happens in the church, before God and witnesses but the divorce happens under Caesar’s roof, before an overworked judge. 

When was the last time you heard of an ecclesiastical divorce?!

Anyway, all this to say, while reading tonight, we stumbled across what we believe to be the best ‘simple summary’ of what divorce actually is in Chris Wright’s Old Testament Ethics for the People of God.

Divorce was tolerated, but eventually with explicit disapproval. Divorce hardly features in Old Testament law at all… unlike modern Western custom, neither marriage nor divorce was a matter for civil law in biblical Israel... Those laws that do refer to divorce are concerned with circumstances where divorce was either [explicitly] prohibited or with regulating relationships after the divorce had already happened… Divorce was tolerated… but… there is the the uncompromising attack of Malachi, culminating in the blunt denunciation, “I hate divorce,” says the LORD God of Israel. Nothing as sharply absolute as this… divorce is the severing destruction of marriage... Divorce is ‘covering oneself with violence’, as Malachi puts it. ...divorce destroys the relationship altogether. (pp. 331,332)

Not an exact quote, but the wording and verbiage is largely his, we condensed it here for brevity sake. Second set of italics not in original.

How is this not the ultimate form of domestic ‘abuse’?!

Why do we so passively aqueous to this act explicitly identified as something God hates. Christ himself says it was permitted only because of hardness of heart - i.e. man’s unwillingness to forgive and reconcile. Man’s unwillingness to see the image of God in his neighbor. Divorce is violent. It is after all, putting your spouse, with whom oneness was shared to death. Not only is it relational death, but it is also a form of suicide if the oneness, established by God mind you, is even remotely real.

So we challenge you, stand up for what is right. Engage your friends, participate in their lives, and stand steadfastly with them. Show them love without an exit strategy! Don’t take the sides of the individual, there no longer is an individual. Take the ‘side’ of the marriage, the new man, the one that they are now, not as a result of what they did, but what God did toward them in his joining them together. It’ll be messy and painful to be sure - but what do you have to lose? In short, nothing. 

[belovedgirl986]

Thoughts...

So I am sitting here in my home, at the dining room table, which looks like the Creative Faiery dumped a bucket load of goodness on, I just got done with 2nd string art project and I am in the middle, listen to the pause… And it dawns on me how full I feel. I have believed in the marrow of my bones for a very long time that being creative is the closest thing I can get the My Creator…and it is as…

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[thinktheology]

A Hole In Our Atonement: The cross DID NOT reconcile us to God.

A Hole In Our Atonement: The cross DID NOT reconcile us to God.

When we as evangelicals speak of the essence of the atonement most of us think of the cross.  J.I. Packer says regarding the essence of the atonement…

“How then did the cross actually redeem us, through Jesus’ death? By reconciling us to God, ending the alienation and estrangement that were previously there, linking God and us together in new harmony, replacing enmity between us with friendship…

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[world-united-in-faith-blog]

Oneness and God's unconditional love

Whether you come from the background of a traditional religious structure, one more of an individual spirituality or even one that lacked any spiritual or faith structure at all, there are many things we share in common. 

One thing that few can deny or will even challenge is that there is an intrinsic bond that exists between the various things that make up our universe.

For example, many faiths refer to humanity as brothers and sisters. Some forms of spirituality tell us that we are all connected by the universe and though nature. Science even provides evidence that there is a connection between such things as the moon and the ocean tides.

With such a connection, there surely must be one with humanity and the spiritual. 

God/The Source/The Creator or whatever name you may choose to use, is the ultimate force of love. And being love itself, this force is in no way opposed to love. That being the case, the love is truly unconditional.

The conditions put on it in any dogma or faith structure are simply human limitations and not reality.

So, may atonement (at-one-ment), oneness, brother and sisterhood and the like be our connection to true and unconditional love.

[deaverypriest]

MONKEY

From the quill of Sun Wukong From the ink well of his glorious past A slip of arrogance, A whit of swagger, & A bit of bombast Ev’ry inch a poet, a prophet, & a priest! W/ each swing of my cudgel Mountains fall, valleys form, & rivers once deep Run dry

[A Choir Of Monkeys En Burnt Cork & Lips Grotesquely Painted Ivory White.] Brio! Brio! Brio! Truly, the sun has embraced countless moons Since last eye fell 2 my knees B’fore the Spirits of green wood & clear stream But on this daye, en this stronghold of the dead, eye am here On my knees en petition, en prayer As the burden of my transgressions, my sins, have grown too fat 2 bear Much too much 4 even these broad, hairy shoulders [Aside.] Shoulders that scarcely find room en rarefied aire! So eye have come here 2 purge them all! En this blasted furnace En this morbid hall Ev’ry slight Ev’ry hurtful word Ev’ry ill-ententioned Blow 2 the gut Ev’ry peach pilfered & Drunken maleficence Ev’ry lengthy, lusty stare & remark & ev’ry challenger’s face pushed ento the muck {One-Beat Pause} The entirety of my Life en the clouds has led 2 this; A symphonie of realised emptiness, sacrifice, & torrential bliss & it’s plain for even the thickest of thick-headed monkeys 2 see That if eye am 2 open the way &, After 500 years buried beneath stone, Herd cows ento The Pure Land Eye’ll need 2 stop leaking rays of light Eye’ll need 2 cleanse this body, a body of cosmic flesh & cosmic bone Eye’ll need 2 stop leading w/ my left (En ev’ry . . . single . . . round) Boasting of my trickeries Boasting of theft & eye’ll need 2 do more than proudly wear these scars . . . iron remnants of a beautiful corruption clumsily put 2 rest {Fingercymbals-Twice} What eye’ll do is this - Eye’ll find the source of the Ganges & 4 a spell, put down my shoulder armor & cudgel Eye’ll fall 2 my knees Eye’ll wait 4 the moon 2 wax Eye’ll close my eyes, open my arms & wait 4 the grove 2 bloom, the egg 2 crack Waist deep, Eye’ll circumvent the old ford & not tarry Eye’ll wash behind my ears & b’tween my toes Eye’ll brush away the scars on my shoulders Eye’ll brush away the scars on my soul W/out buckling W/out being told {One-Beat Pause} Truly, ol’ Monkey does not wish 2 be forgiven Truly, ol’ Monkey does not wish 2 be free of his past [A Choir Of Monkeys En Burnt Cork & Lips Grotesquely Painted Ivory White.] Brio! Brio! Brio! Ol’ Monkey wishes merely 2 be free At last © LogosVox 2014

[seeofserendipity]

at-one-ment

You love being one. You want her above all. You worship her, you lavish her. You know of no other Woman. All others are Maids, Sisters, Mothers and Saints. Your love has no end. From the East to the West, Like lightning, it flashes, She is like it in wonder to any that see her. With her, I am new in mysterious ways. With her I am ageless and stronger with the day. I can reach to the heights and never lose heart. With her I face silence while leaving a sign. Another soul, like hers, like mine, of her and I combined; in two hands, two feet, two ears, two eyes, one voice, one face, one smile forever multiplied.