New Logo

Grant has spent several weeks working on a new logo for Urban Mystic and now we have one. Though I like the USB logo I’ve played around with on my personal blog and the design I did when we started Urban Mystic it never felt like it was ‘quite there.’ I finally braved up to the idea of having a real designer sink their teeth into the idea and am really glad I did so. Grant has done a superb job.

Here’s the logo with the yellow background:

Grant has also given an alternative, which I also really like.

I’ll now put some work into redoing the header image for the current blog and will spend some time investigating what a custom CSS package with WordPress involves.

The Discipline of Simplicity

I looked on SXC for a stock image of simplicity, one of their suggestions was the picture above. I like it and as the topic is the Spiritual Discipline of Simplicity I figured a continued picture search would be self-defeating when commenting on Simplicity.

This Discipline is defined on Renovare as “an inward reality that results in a changed lifestyle” and was one of the most challenging sessions to facilitate. The first reason was a mixture of flu and drugs. What an awesome combo. The second was this Discipline is the most open to abstraction, if you don’t use examples, and the most prone toward legalism, if you try to establish concrete examples as normative or perhaps even exemplary. This was combined with a clear understanding that simplicity is like balance – something that you don’t think about whether your desperately trying to regain your footing, safely and securely sitting comfortably, climbing a rock face or riding a wave.

I guess in short, the Discipline of Simplicity may be summarised with the following diagram:

Simplicity affects our ego, finances and lifestyle. In order to realise it in our inner lives we need a centre or focus and we’re called to prioritise the kingdom of God as present-continuous reality. Hence we place the kingdom, God’s presence and will before all things. We won’t always know if we have simplicity, but we can certainly know when we don’t. In our outward life we face the danger of legalism when trying to quantify Simplicity. In our outward life we’re offbalance if we fall into materialism on one hand or asceticism on the other. A materialistic person is just as trapped as the ascetic – both have an unhealthy relationship to things.

Spiritual Disciplines – Season One

We finished our first series on the Spiritual Disciplines just over two weeks ago. In this series we briefly explored and then practised the Inward Disciplines – meditation, prayer, fasting and study – as a small group.

Here I briefly comment on my own experiences of them. I return to them as someone with a relationship with God and as having done them before. Overall its been hard reintroducing them into my life.

her*me*neu*tics

Last night we did session 1 of 3 on hermeneutics, on interpreting spiritual texts. We explored what we bring to the reading of an ancient and premodern text. To what degree does the way we live and see the world shape and precast the meaning of what others have said, even though the way they say, lived, understood the world and used language to express it actually differs? Our biases, expectations, pre-determined conclusions, etc. all play a role in our reading.

We had an interesting and dynamic conversation going between us, so this summary doesn’t quite do justice to the session justice. To summarise though:

Reflecting on SEVEN

We’ve completed SEVEN, our series on experiencing God in our key relationships – nature, work, friends, family, romantic other, self and God. So this is a good time to reflect on the series.

Looking to the future

We’ve got two sessions left of our current series on the Seven Key Relationships. The inner relationships are the most exciting stories. Last week we shared around our relationships with Significant Others. How we give and receive love, and the degrees and barriers related to it, affect not only our romantic relationships but also our relationship with ourselves and with Godde. The role we play in romsntic relationships parrallels the role we play in our relationship with Godde.

We’ve also started preparing for our Contemplative Spirituality group along with the next short series for small group work.

time flies too fast

I’ve really been busy wrapping up a project and setting up the next one. Unfortunately work that makes money gets in the way of work that doesn’t but is still important. One day I’ll master Covey’s four quadrants and be able to do “important and urgent” along with tasks that are “important but not urgent”. Coaching may be the way to go…

We finished the series on “Our Relationship with Godde: Father, Son and Spirit”. I found it so inpsiring that I’ll be doing my Masters on this very series! I’ve still got a post on the session with the Spirit pending but figured the time has dragged on too much for it to be of interest to anyone else. I’ll definately be running this series again!

We’re half way through a series on Our Seven Key Relationships. Next week we’ll be doing the transitional relationship from our Outer Relationships to our Inner Relationships. This series has been great so far, though admitting this time I’ve kept it ‘open’, allowing new people to come into the group part way through. Usually I’ve kept it ‘closed’.

This past Saturday we did a “light” verson of the Passover meal. We totalled 9 people and between us consumed 4kg of lamb! Needless to say it was awesome. Both the company and the food was fantastic.

I’ve finally blocked out some time to blog and will post updates every two weeks related to Urban Mystic.

Our Road to Emmaus and Back

So often Jesus, who is the one who makes Godde known to us, is the very one whom we know via hearsay rather than through personal experiences. When we hear motivational morality it is often in reference to Jesus, “He was so much better than us whynot try and be more like Him?” But who is this Jesus? Can we distinguish between what we’ve heard about Him from what we actually experience? Can we move past hearsay toward a developed relationship? What does this man, this Risen LORD, actually mean to us?

The Lord’s Prayer

Last week our home group session focused on The Lord’s Prayer. We printed out a few different translations of the Matthew 6:9-13. Then we chopped them up and made sure that each verse was together in all the different versions. We shared out the verses among us, with each person or couple reading the verse they held in the different translations. Then we each had to personalise that particular verse, i.e. we had to use our own words and not quote a translation.