What’s the good stuff?
Welcome to a growing collection of the good stuff we’ve been chatting about as a community over the past few years. We’ll regularly be releasing videos and content here on this page that relate to different topics we’ve explored together as a community. These short videos and guided reflective practices are an invitation to pause, open ourselves up with curiosity, and then to reflect and respond.
Peace: Part 4 - Peace and Forgiveness
Forgiveness is instrumental in a life of peace, and yet it is often difficult to talk about, hard to define, and can even be weaponised against suffering people. In this brief reflection we examine 4 themes of forgiveness that emerge from the story of Jesus. Firstly, forgiveness is about letting go of a desire for retaliation, revenge and harm. Second, forgiveness may require an acknowledgement of wrong and a commitment to change. Third, forgiveness can lead toward reconciliation (but that this is not always possible or healthy), and lastly, that power dynamics must be considered when we think about forgiveness. Ultimately, perhaps forgiveness is about how we grapple with the question: what do I want my life to circle around?
Peace: Part 3 - Peace and justice
As we talk about peace, one of the core themes in the biblical tradition is that of justice. We see this constantly in the cries of the prophets, who insist that peace for some at the expense of others is not real peace. We also see that for Jesus, peace is not some kind of naive niceness - Jesus calls out injustice and highlights the suffering and marginalisation of the vulnerable. In many respects, the injustices that threatened real peace in his time are similar to that of today. He wrestled with religious of power - the setting up of religious authority in a way that elevated some at the expense of others. He lived in the context of colonisation and a powerful Roman empire. And he grappled with a society that struggled with racial division and exclusion. We still have so much to learn from Jesus' vision for peace in the times we now live.
peace: part 2 - Peace with the Divine
Humans have long wrestled with the question: am I at peace with God (or the gods)? Ancient Israel certainly struggled with this existential wondering, and there are several ways of making sense of relatedness to God in the scriptural story. Jesus himself continues the tradition of navigating this question - and in his story, rather than revealing a God who is disappointed or angry with everyone, a story that makes us anxious when things go badly because we wonder what we've done to upset the divine, Jesus reveals a God whose stance toward us is one of belovedness. A God of whom we do not have to be anxious or afraid. Jesus does not come to bring peace with God, as much he comes to reveal it.
peace: Part 1 - Peace and the way of jesus
The early creation mythologies of ancient Israel spoke of a world shaped, not by conflict, hostility and violence, but by shalom - an intention for peace with God, with each other, with the self, and with all of creation. In the story of Jesus this takes shape in his view of the presence of the kingdom of God.
Peace, for Jesus, is not just about an interior kind of calm (although this may well be included), but it is about a wider posture of openness to one another... even going as far as to say we must love our enemies. He also challenges unjust and exclusionary systems because sees peace as something we need to experience together. This is an idea that comes to shape many of the early Christian writings and the nature of communities that form around the way of Jesus. They are not just about some kind of "vertical" relationship with God being put right... they are about how our relatedness to each other in community might be transformed.
