small group - CrazyLovebook.com weeks 2 - 8

WEEK TWO [chapter 2 upshot: ‘you are going to die’]

WEEK THREE [chapter 3 upshot: ‘God wants to speak through you and to you... God your father/creator’]

1. Your experience of your relationship to your family dad bears on your expectation of God... there are so many family experiences, many of which are conflicted or hold ambivalence. And there is the quote, “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom.”
2. What about mother-parent relationship as a template for one’s God: nuturing, guiding, judge or source of discernment (or not)?
3. What about grandparent’s parenting of your parents, and that tone/style or relationship then carried from yourself to your own children?
4. Coming to the point where it is ‘normal’ or ordinary (unremarkable, unmarked) to pray in small and great moments during a day or a life course; in places of natural awe or squalor. Coming to the point where one’s relationship with God-Jesus-Holy Spirit is easy and natural to discuss with peers and with strangers; not preaching at them, but entering into a place of conversation.

WEEK FOUR

WEEK FIVE

WEEK SIX ‘love’

1. Motivated by love/hunger (something you crave and look forward toward) versus guilt (something you ‘should have done’ better; a nagging feeling of debt or duty). A middle ground between discipline (external structures & responses; responsibilities) and freedom (acting out of desire and making meaning of things).
2. Opening epigraph ...I thirst to have more thirst... Human, earthly experience is a string of appetites, some bigger than others. We hunger and then are (partially) satisfied for the moment (until next time). This is like the weekly sermon, a weekly time and place to expect and to prepare your heart to engage God, express praise, and allow oneself to be examined by God’s all seeing eye and heart.
3. Conundrum: our earthly relationships and appetites wax and wane, but to BE in love with God and to love one’s neighbor as oneself is not something that waxes and wanes. It is a satisfaction of being present and sharing a time and place. So would one’s relationship or appetite develop best by having times of fullness and times of desolation? Or is the lifetime goal to achieve a presence (of mind and heart) with God and then strive to remain together and avoid separation? Is the ideal a static state of being in peace and joy, or something dynamic and a distant, future goal to strive for and delay today’s gratification for that future, imagined place of being. Are you already arrived or should you defer those things around you and be blind to today’s conditions so as to struggle and strive to keep one’s eyes on that golden future?
4. Analogy of growing one’s heart in the trials of one’s life experiences. Muscles have to be exercised (pulled or pushed and then rested) or they atrophy. Some exercise routines are for stamina: high frequency of repretitions of light weights. Some exercise routines are for strength: heavy load but few repetitions.
5. Just like the detective programs say about (dastardly) deeds: it takes motive and opportunity to commit something.  
6. Comparing love in human relationships to love of God (and God’s love of us), it would appear that the essential quality is of being together. When apart you hunger to be together again. When you are being together, then you are comforted and at rest; at home; at the destination.

WEEK SEVEN ‘with God on purpose’

1. Paddling on the river vs. drifting along: How to actively seek out God’s will but not direct oneself; how to discern God’s direction.
2. Life-stage: start of life is forward looking (endless time available; macro lens), middle life is a mix of looking forward and back (wideangle; able also to perceive some fluidity in time: being able to imagine forward and back in time when seeing the person before you --how the present moment connects to the youngster that came before and the oldster that has yet to come), and old age (perhaps?) is filled with memory and possibly curious about extinction and what may follow. If living to a ripe old age there is the growing awareness: one’s place in a longer chain of being, that one cannot take the accumulated stuff of one’s estate along to what follows (‘you can’t take it with you’), that you are “just passing through... just looking.” Woe to those who die before the fullness of age matures.
3. Practically speaking how does a mainline church body differ to a community service club such as Kiwanis: both have a prayer and meet weekly to get to know one another and serve the wider, outside community. Perhaps the praise and glorifying and gratitude is God directed in the one, but the other is focused more on “love your neighbor as yourself.” And an organized church tries to create opportunities for other seekers to come in a pick up an oar and join in the project to help others (poverty, ignorance, illness --with or without spoken connection to God’s hand and feet) AND to help people who are seekers like oneself.
4. There is an important distinction when motivated to contribute self, abilities, resources by what others expect or require (obligation; guilt; contract) rather than to be motivated by a calling or internal urge or will to do so, whether invisible to others, with tacit agreement or with spoken criticism. When one proceeds to do the right thing, regardless of external conditions then the reward is bigger than yourself and eternal. Called: some degree of inevitability whether desired or not (bigger than one’s own will), something extends from the engagement (not just starts and ends with oneself), some filling up rather than emptiness at the end, some self-propelling (movement under its own power; sweeping oneself up).

WEEK EIGHT Profile of the obsessed (single-minded; “crazy” in secular world)

Natural wish for self-preservation and avoidance of risk or harm. Natural urge to mirror other’s emotional state: joy for joy, sorrow for sorrow. But how to go beyond forgiveness and actively reach out to love an enemy, since we all are children of God, thus we are brothers and sisters to one another. Is this a balance of self and other (loving others as loving oneself), or no holds barred surrender to God; not to steward one’s gifts and resources for wise or discerning spending.

“If you don’t have something nice to say, then keep quiet” helps to prevent conflict, but relationships can advance in strife and struggle as well as joy and harmony. “Be wise as a serpent” teaches that you can engage and love even one’s enemy; maybe not as unguarded and straight-forward as a relationship mutually respectful and holy, but still possible by choosing the time and manner of loving. And when one has been harmed, then trust may have been broken, but forgiveness is still advisable and indeed commanded. Then to go beyond forgiveness and actively reach out in love (wisely as a serpent) takes lots of care, prayer and seeking. Speaking truth (call into account; challenge but support) but it doesn't have to be brutally honest.

Paul’s teaching about new believers not having to follow Jewish laws has a parallel to our times: people striving to achieve a certain look or lifestyle to demonstrate their clean and virtuous Christian living may truly being earnest seekers, but more likely may simply be confusing appearances with the intangible, invisible heart of relating to God. By conforming to appearances one may simply be trying to self and others “I’m as good as you; I’m better than you.” And by asserting one’s Godliness as a visible thing (clothing, postal address, car) it can consume the energy one should be using to seek God. The superficial details can distract or opt one out from growing closer to God.

There is an ongoing, emergent quality to one’s relationship to God and one’s neighbors (whether friend, enemy, or stranger). Much as Alcoholics Anonymous meetings begin with self-introductions, “I’m Joan and I am a recovering alcoholic” ( -ing, in a state of development).

As we navigate our daily and lifelong plans for ourselves things come up that were not in the plan. One part of spiritual growth is being able to seize the opportunities that present themselves rather than defend against these things that intrude into one's plans. Following the analogy that "life is a journey" it can be powerfully transformative to see the unscheduled changes, detours and bumps as equally or perhaps more valuable than the itinerary of one's own making.

WEEK NINE Gallery of real-life champions who step out in faith to take whatever comes, whether it is their expected direction of God’s.

WEEK TEN Now what to do with the foregoing reflections, admonitions and exhortations.

After reading & talking, what is different: that author so freely brings God and holiness into daily cares and decisions. After all, whatever triggers a reflection, studying or prayer and action should be all day and night; not just on Sunday. Working on one’s heart and relationship to God & one’s neighbors is an unending task. Mindfulness sharpens vision and appetite. Imagine substituting “I pray” instead of “I hope” since ‘hope’ is so casually expressed, but seldom heartfelt to its full measure.

    The experiences of fellow small group members is as memorable and instructive as the text at some points. And the more we read the book the more the significance is confirmed and appetite to know and do more grows.

    Ask not what you can do best to use your talents, but look beyond that to ask instead how can I glorify God: how can the relationship grow wider, deeper, and stronger.