In the awakening of the mind of Christ, we see all the men and women of the world are in our situation. They are ineffably loved by God.
What can we reduce the Christian life to?
What is the essence?
Love God
Live present with God, every moment, one day at a time.
Love others
Serve others, one by one, with what is in my hand today, now.


Reflections from the Cloud of unknowing. chap. 38
Prayer made simple. We might be just uttering a word, a phrase. However, when we pray se manifest
the full hieght of our spirit. We pray with depth of our spirit. The depth of our spirit opens into the depth of God. We pray with the length of our spirit. We pray into the length of God. We pray long, we could pray forever. If we could, this cry for God would go on forever. It opens into God's eternal longing for us. It is wide,
reaching with a single word or phrase
Prayer is high
deep - wisdom
long - eternity
wide

Self authenticating moments. there is no doubt.
It is self revelatory. It reveals to me what I really am.


The capacity of the human heart to not see what is being manifested everyday.
If only we could learn to live in the abiding awareness of the moment.

The mysterious grace of this longing.
What is this experience. The horizon.

Horizon can be understood can be the point at which the manifested manifestes itself.
Everything around us is the horizon.
Rapsodic.
Augustin -
The laughter of a child. the unmanifested is manifesting itself as this....
Generosity -
Meister Echart - God is infinitely giving herself away.

We cannot will that for which our soul so desperately needs.

Moments beyond the will. We cannot will these moments. Our will is impotent to actualize that alone whuch fufills our heart.
We can will that which is beyond the will to realize.
contemplative experience libertes us from living out of our thought. We try to figure it out.
Just as we can think thought tht invite the awareness.
We can will that which is beyond the will to achieve.
That is the longing.

I cannot will the moment. the transcendent moment. It happens. Addiction is trying to grasp that moment and contain it.
I can will to put myself in the place where it can happen. that is silence.
We try to figure God out. We define attributes, names, trinity, but really those are the borders of the river. the river is where we enjoy God. This reality is the horizon of what God is manifesting today of himself. Today God is revealing, manifesting himself.

Bishop to be ordained in Tenancingo this Sunday

A Bishop is being ordained this Sunday for the Tenancingo region of the Roman Catholic Church. Historically, Tenancingo has been under Toluca, a city of about 1.5 million inhabitants, located an hour's drive west of us. El Calvario, an important Catholic church in Tenaicngo will become a "Catedral" (Cathedral). Tenancingo will have a prominent religious position in the region, and will become a center of religous authority. The new bishop is brought from "San Juan del Rio" in Jalisco, close to Guadalajara. Jalisco and her neighbor Michoacan are the most conservative Roman Catholic states of all Mexico. Their conservative renoune is the historical inheritance of the Cristero rebelion. This rebelion of the Catholic church against the Mexican Federal govermant came during as a reaction to the secularing of the Mexican democracy.
The Cristero War (also known as the Cristiada) of 1926 to 1929 was an uprising and counter-revolution against the Mexican government of the time, set off by religious persecution of Catholics, specifially the strict enforcement of the anti-clerical provisions of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 and the expansion of further anti-clerical laws.
In Guadalajara, Jalisco, on August 3, 1926, some 400 armed Catholics shut themselves up in the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe. They were involved in a shootout with federal troops and surrendered only when they ran out of ammunition. According to U.S. consular sources, this battle resulted in 18 dead and 40 injured.
The following day, August 4, in Sahuayo, Michoacán, 240 government soldiers stormed the parish church. The parish priest and his vicar were killed in the ensuing violence. On August 14, government agents staged a purge of the Chalchihuites, Zacatecas, chapter of the Association of Catholic Youth and executed their spiritual adviser Father Luis Bátiz Sainz. This execution caused a band of ranchers, led by Pedro Quintanar, to seize the local treasury and declare themselves in rebellion. At the height of their rebellion, they held a region including the entire northern part of Jalisco.
The formal rebellion began on January 1, 1927 with a manifesto sent by Garza on New Year's Day, titled A la Nación (To the Nation). This declared that "the hour of battle has sounded" and "the hour of victory belongs to God". With the declaration, the state of Jalisco, which had seemed to be quiet since the Guadalajara church uprising, exploded. Bands of rebels moving in the "Los Altos" region northeast of Guadalajara began seizing villages, often armed with only ancient muskets and clubs. The Cristeros' battle cry was ¡Viva Cristo Rey! ¡Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe! ("Long live Christ the King! Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe!"). The rebels were an unusual army in that they had no logistical supplies, and relied heavily on raids to towns, trains and ranches in order to supply themselves with money, horses, ammunition and food.
to be continued

"you will be saved bearing children" Timothy
What does that mean?
Is that a macho statement from God.
Is God saying, "woman, you need to be in the house, where you should be." Commentary: Men get to heaven by faith, but women work for it.
No. We all know, that would never be God's word to a the glory of his creation.
Then what does this passage mean? I have studied the various views and have often wondered. The more I myself see how God is "saving" me, the more insight I think I have to this passage. I whole heartely believe that I am "justified" only by fatih, that it is a gift, and I rejoice in justification as the jewel in the crown of salvation theology. However, I know that my present salvation is being freed from me. Jesus is freeing me from my ego, my flesh, my narcisim. This is a slow, painful, process. Much of my "salvation" has come being in Mexico, in Tenancingo, planting a church in rock hard ground. A great portion of my becoming more like Christ has been in the patience process of developing leaders from kids to youth, then from youth to potential pastors and church planters. Being surrounded the last 13 years by farms and green houses, I have watched farmers and agricultural engineers through the pregnancy of another crop of corn or roses. Being somewaht distanced from the technological, market driven pace of manufacturing growth that I was brought up in, I have been able to see many of Jesus's teachings in the light of surroundings similar to his. My salvation - santification - growth in Christ - feel more like the germinating of a tomatoe.
But, there is more. Kathy and the kids have been powerful instruments in the witteling away my ego and selfishness - of my salvation. The daily rutine of getting ready for school (which I am not even that involved in), homework, debriefing school, meals together as a family, talking about life, playing, has all been a mold to cook more of Christ into me. I don't think I have gotten very far, but I do see sutil inner changes that have only come through this rutine and other intentional spiritual disciplines.
However, I see much more growth in my beautiful wife kathy. I also see that she is in the Monastary of Joyfully Raising Children or "childbearing" as Paul says in Timothy.
The gift of giving as the rutine of life will bring out the unconditional love which is God's is liberty and happiness.
Your life will be centered around giving, and nurturing. You will ghave the gift of beholding daily the wonderful creation of God, the image of another human. You will naturally love that human so much that you have so continue the task. That loving rutine will bring kill your ego and its plethora of desires to escape from giving and loving. You have been given a gift of salvation from yourself, your flesh, your ego. You will be saved from the tyranny of the ego in childbearing and be free to love God and others as you were created to.

Visit from pastores

We had a visit from a pastor friend of ours and two of his friends, also pastors.
Ricardo, my friend pastoring close to Mexico City, had wanted to visit ever since I told him of my possibly having Multiple Schlerosis. Alberto, one of Ricardo's pastor friends, had a word for me. He sensed that I had a curse put on my from someone in Malinalco. When I thought back on my visits to Malinalco, I remembered when this could have happened. A few years ago we went to show a group an ancient Aztec site. Jose, the "tour guide' who lives at the site was in the midst of a ceremony with a group of people. We were invited to observe. Jose then showed us more of the area. We went up into a cave above where the ceremony was taking place. Sensing the spritual oppression of the pagan ceremony we just witnessed, we prayed and exalted Jesus in that cave. Jose, meanwhile had gotten into an argument with one of our church members. When we were leaving, I noticed a serious, angry look on his face. One of the men from the church talked to him and he seemed to calm down. As we learned more of Jose and the site, it was evident that Jose was more than than a "tour guide" and his home was more than a tourist stop. Jose was a witch leading spriitual rituals.
Jose's city Malinalco, is where the Aztecs, 400 years earlier, trained their warriors. History tells us that Aztec warrior bootcamp was a 40 day fast in the Pyramid of Malinalco. During these 40 days, if the warrior was victorious over the evil spirits that attacked him in the cold nights on the pyramid, he graduated from bootcamp.
We eventurally learned that Jose's family is heir of that famous Pyramid - the Aztec warrior training grounds. His great, great, great grandparents were spiritual leaders with the aztecs. His family later donated the site to the government for public viewing. Jose is a witch with a long inheritance of pagan witchcraft. But, we come from a longer line of spiritual power. We are heirs of Abraham - we are children of the almighty God. When, Pastor Albert prayed over me yesterday...he broke a curse with the power of the blood of Jesus, who bought my soul 30 years ago when I was 19 years old.

A child's perception of injustice

A child's perception of injustice.
"It was unfair and cruel because the doctor had told him not to read without glasses and he had written home to his father that morning to send him a new pair. And Father Arnall had said that he need not study till the new glasses came. Then to be called a schemer before the class and to be pandied when he always got the card for first or second and was the leader of the Yorkists! How could the prefect of studies know that it was a trick? He felt the touch of the prefect’s fingers as they had steadied his hand and at first he had thought he was going to shake hands with him because the fingers were soft and firm: but then in an instant he had heard the swish of the soutane sleeve and the crash. It was cruel and unfair to make him kneel in the middle of the class then: and Father Arnall had told them both that they might return to their places without making any difference between them. He listened to Father Arnall’s low and gentle voice as he corrected the themes. Perhaps he was sorry now", [James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist...]
This happened in Ireland. What would a child in Mexico sound like? What does the girl who was raped by her step-dad, here in Tenancingo a couple of months ago, say to herself about what happened? Her mother called into the school denied it.

The dark Night of the soul

The "Dark Night of the Soul" by John de la Cruz. The steps up the latter to communin with God culminate in
Faith (White), Hope (Green) and Love (Purple). Our soul longs in the dark night, when the senses are not as active to love Him.
This longing begins with faith. Faith that looks into the dark, that gazes past Satan's traps.

Who would of thought?

The author of the "The World Is Curved," David Smick says in an interview,

Japan is the perfect object lesson for how not to run things in the new global economy. A highly successful economy requires a continual process of entrepreneurial reinvention, which is not occurring in Japan. Moreover, Japan is what the United States could become if American policymakers are not careful—so overloaded with debt that monetary policy becomes largely ineffective at stimulating the economy. Today, the Japanese financial system has become far more decentralized. Who now controls the bulk of the country’s savings? Housewives, who increasingly bypass low-yielding Japanese investments and purchase foreign bonds over the Internet. The housewives control the largest pool of money in the world. They have become a major force in foreign exchange markets, and a significant wild card.

Housewives a major force in foreign exchange markets. The power in knowledge. As we consider how to see our region transformed, we must see that all resources, including financial are spiritual. We can empower women, abused for centuries, to have resources for their children's health, education, and more Kingdom uses. It might be a mircro-finance loan in Mexico and not foreign investment, but it produces resources which would be used in the Kingdom to transform this region.