A Quote by Timothy Radcliffe
At the centre of Christianity is community; we are gathered by the Lord around the altar.
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There is one God and one Christ, and one Church, and one chair founded on Peter by the word of the Lord. It is not possible to set up another altar or for there to be another priesthood besides that one altar and that one priesthood. Whoever has gathered elsewhere is scattering.
Christianity can be built around isolating ourselves from evildoers and sinners, creating a community of religious piety and moral purity. That’s the Christianity I grew up with. Christianity can also be built around joining with the broken sinners and evildoers of our world crying out to God, groaning for grace. That’s the Christianity I have fallen in love with.
I come from a culture where the pub is the centre of the community. The pub is the Internet. It's where information is gathered, collated and addressed.
...centre of the centre, the real heart of Christianity as it has been until now.
Since once again, O Lord, in the steppes of Asia, I have no bread, no wine, no altar, I will raise myself above those symbols to the pure majesty of reality, and I will offer to you, I, your priest, upon the altar of the entire earth, the labor and the suffering of the world.
I have asked the village blacksmith to forge golden chains to tie our ankles together. I have gathered all the gay ribbons in the world to wind around and around and around and around and around and around again around our two waists.
It was a real surprise to me to come across the evidence that Christianity might once have been a danced religion. Certainly, some of the early church leaders thought this was great and spoke of what seems to have been circle dancing, perhaps around an altar.
Easy believeism dishonors the blood and prostitutes the altar. We must alter the altar, for the altar is a place to die on. Let those who will not pay this price leave it alone!
I am not saying people should not be free to join whichever reason they choose but should we be forced to live our lives around a belief system that originated somewhere around the fourth or fifth century BC. I cannot see any more reason to base a belief system around Christianity, Judaism or Islam than I can around Lord of the Rings.
So herein lies the choice for those of us who are Christians. We can either stay within the Christianity we have mastered with the Jesus we have domesticated, or we can leave Christianity as a destination, embrace Christianity as a way of life, and then journey to reality, where God is present and living in every person, every human community, and all creation.
I can tell you there will be a performance centre in India. There will be a performance centre in the Middle East. There will, more than likely, be a performance centre in Latin America. We will be replicating this process around the globe, all over.
When I was switching around in my early stages, people underestimated how difficult it was just to go from playing centre midfield to right-back to centre-back to right-back to centre midfield.
What we want is men with a little courage to stand up for Christ. When Christianity wakes up, and every child that belongs to the Lord is willing to speak for Him, is willing to work for Him, and, if need be, willing to die for Him, then Christianity will advance, and we shall see the work of the Lord prosper.
On the country has gathered the idea of a natural way of life: of peace, innocence, and simple virtue. On the city has gathered the idea of an achieved centre of learning, communication, light. Powerful hostile associations have also developed: on the city as a place of noise, worldliness and ambition; on the country as a place of backwardness, ignorance, limitation. A contrast between country and city, as fundamental ways of life, reaches back into classical times.
For thousands of years we have gathered in circle--around fires, around bodies, around altars--because we can't do this alone.
In the contemporary world where things fall apart, and the centre cannot hold, you have to imagine a community where there is no centre. Hank, at the end of this year I started thinking that a lot of life is about doing things that don’t suck with people who don’t suck.
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