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“The interconnectedness of all things…”

“The interconnectedness of all things…”

Simon Cross speaks to Annette Kaye from Psychedelic Christian charity Ligare.

Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I’m Annette Kaye, a southern hemisphere girl who finds herself in the far north-east of the UK, mother to two adult daughters, and tow teenage step daughters, all of whom, along with my partner, keep me challenged, and happy to be alive! In addition, I am a ceramic and mixed media artist, an Ignatian-trained spiritual director, supervisor, and trainer, a transpersonal psychotherapist, and a facilitator of eco-spirituality, as well as psychedelic, retreats. Faith-wise, I have travelled through many rooms of Christianity - conservative Evangelical, charismatic, liturgical, contemplative, and would now, with my interest in, and concern for, the natural world, call myself something of a Christian Animist.

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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #45

Progressive reflections on the lectionary #45

Luke 21:25-36 Beginning with the end of the world

It’s the first Sunday of the church calendar, for anyone who cares about such things, so we enter ‘Year C’ in the revised common lectionary, the third of three years worth of set readings with this reading from Luke’s gospel. This time next year we’ll be back at the start of ‘Year A’ again - if, that is, the world doesn’t end first.

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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #44

Progressive reflections on the lectionary #44

John 18:33-37 'Jesus as the ideal Caesar'

I’m drawing, somewhat, on a book by Laura Hunt for this week’s reflection. Hunt has written perhaps the only book which explains in detail how one can read John’s portrayal of Jesus as a picture of an ‘ideal type’ Roman emperor. She uses sophisticated methodologies to develop this idea and her book is worth a read if you have a taste for academic work and a library copy available to you (it’s somewhat expensive to purchase).

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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #40

Progressive reflections on the lectionary #40

Mark 10: 46-52 Ways of 'seeing' Blind Bartimaeus

There are tonnes of interesting things in this passage, the story of ‘blind’ Bartimaeus, and several mysteries to ponder. It begins with a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ visit to Jericho, the world’s oldest city, followed by a remarkable encounter between Mark’s Jesus and a blind beggar with a strange name. The story is revisited by the other synoptic evangelists - but without the repetition of that strange name which I think is important for Mark.

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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #38

Progressive reflections on the lectionary #38

Mark 10:17-31: Never mind the camels, here's the household revolution

There are some wonderful, eye-opening, mind-expanding curiosities to get your teeth into in this week’s passage which is all about Jesus’ encounter with a rich young man. Trouble is, most people seem to get caught up in the eye-catching ‘easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle’ phrase, trying to decode it for hidden meaning. Could there have been a gate known as the ‘eye of the needle’?

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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #37

Progressive reflections on the lectionary #37

Mark 10: 2-16 Jesus was creating a new system in the shell of the old

There are key moments in the gospel according to ‘Mark’ where Jesus’ “mission” becomes quite clear. He was creating a new system in the shell of the old one, a network of ‘households’ where a different way of living was put into place. Many of us rail against the injustices and evils of exploitation, prejudice and hierarchy, part of the genius of Jesus as a man was that he demonstrated a genuine alternative.

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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #36

Progressive reflections on the lectionary #36

Mark 9:38-50: "If your eye offends you..." Marginalisation and the 'trap' of social status

In the reading this week John asks Jesus about someone who is ‘casting out demons’ - but isn’t ‘following us’. Someone, in other words, who isn’t part of the in-crowd. The reading follows on from the previous week’s discourse about ‘greatness’ and the link shouldn’t be lost.

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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #35

Progressive reflections on the lectionary #35

Mark 9:30-37: Where Jesus flips the gender script on leadership and greatness

The lectionary is spooling through the greatest hits of the Gospel of Mark at the moment, and this week’s passage is another stone cold classic - Jesus notes his disciples arguing, asks what they were fighting about and finds them strangely silent on the matter. “For on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.”

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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #34

Progressive reflections on the lectionary #34

Mark 8:27-38: The turning point of the whole gospel

There’s a huge amount we could say about the gospel passage set for this week by the common lectionary. Not only does it contain one of the most famous phrases in the Bible - certainly a ‘top forty’ entrant, if perhaps not quite a ‘top ten’ - but it functions as the key pivot point for the Gospel, packed full of symbolism.

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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #30

Progressive reflections on the lectionary #30

John 6:51-58 - eating and drinking

The gospel reading this week is part of the ‘bread of life discourse’ which is a continuation of the last couple of weeks readings from the gospel of John. The discourse follows directly after the ‘sign’ of the feeding of the 5000, and this part of the passage has at its heart one of the famous 'misunderstandings’ that are so characteristic of the writing found in ‘John.’

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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #29

Progressive reflections on the lectionary #29

John 6:35, 41-51: The bread of life - theme and variations

“Who are the Christians that really like the gospel of John?” My youngest asked me one day, after coming home from a trip away during which there had been an encounter with some street evangelists. “They kept saying, ‘the gospel of John, the gospel of John…’” I was told, as the whole conversation was played back in detail.

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Diana Butler Bass writes about the importance of politics in church

Diana Butler Bass writes about the importance of politics in church

I always liked religion and politics. Religion and politics made my childhood Methodist church interesting. The grown-ups got mad when young preachers from places like Yale came in and told them that Dr. King was right and that we were killing people in a jungle in a place called Vietnam. Mostly, adults seemed polite and restrained in that old world. But you could count on a passionate preacher in a formal robe creating a family argument over Sunday lunch.

Even in my working-class, non-college educated neighborhood, we heard sermons quoting writers whose work I’d later read for myself — Martin Luther King, Jr., Daniel Berrigan, Dorothy Day, the Niebuhr brothers, William Sloan Coffin, Thomas Merton, and Harvey Cox. Indeed, people talked about the Niebuhrs so much that I thought they lived in our neighborhood. Theologians were among the first intellectuals I knew (novelists would also be on this list).

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