Hello friends,
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood monk in dogs.
Welcome to this brand new series.
Look again,
And when I say brand new.
I mean brand new,
Not just a fresh series,
But even something different to the usual offerings that I've been bringing to Insight Timer during my time here.
And today I want to start with a question.
What if you've been looking at God wrong?
When I say wrong,
I mean just too small.
What if there's things that you believe about God that are true,
But they're not the whole truth?
Maybe you need to see things with a different angle,
Or a different lens,
Or just a new way of seeing,
And that's what this series is about.
I want to warn you right from the beginning,
This isn't going to be 12 gentle little reflections designed to make you feel more spiritual for 10 minutes.
We're going somewhere else with this series.
We're going to take some ideas that you probably already know about,
Things like God,
Prayer,
Sin,
Faith,
Heaven,
Jesus,
Calling,
Scripture,
And we're going to turn them around All right,
We're going to pick them up and we're going to look underneath them,
And we're going to look behind them,
And we're going to look at them from another direction.
Because while it's all very well and good to learn something that you've never heard before,
Sometimes it's as good and maybe even better to take the thing that you've heard a hundred times and suddenly understand it's got more depth or a slightly different meaning or another possibility.
You might have had that experience yourself.
You've read a sentence in the Bible for years,
Or there's words you've been singing,
Or you've recited a creed in church or something,
And then one day,
Something happens.
Maybe someone explains it a bit differently,
Or you.
.
.
Start to see it in a completely different context.
Or you sit with it longer,
And then suddenly,
Oh,
Wait,
Oh,
Is that what this could mean?
And just for a moment,
The whole picture moves and shifts.
And that's what I'm interested in,
Those movements,
The movements when something familiar becomes strange again for a moment,
Because I think.
We got a problem.
In spirituality generally,
And in the Christian tradition particularly,
Because we've become really good at familiarity.
We know stories,
We know vocabulary,
We know what we're supposed to say,
We know the answers,
And sometimes familiarity can become the enemy of wonder.
We hear God is love and we.
.
.
Not our heads,
Right?
Of course,
Yeah,
We knew that.
But then stop and ask.
What if God really is love?
I mean.
.
.
The action itself,
What if God is within that?
That God is love when we feel it,
That God is love when there's this movement between things.
What would that do to the way you think about God?
Or what about pray without ceasing?
We've heard it,
We've read it in the Bible,
But what if prayer.
.
.
Isn't actually something you do.
What if prayer is something that you are?
Becoming aware of the presence in which you already live.
Your kingdom come if you pray the Lord's Prayer you've prayed it a gazillion times but What if Jesus wasn't actually teaching us how to escape earth and get into heaven?
But was announcing that God's world,
His Kingdom is already breaking into this world now.
Or follow me?
What if Christianity?
Just a list of believing a whole bunch of things about Jesus.
What if it's an invitation to learn a whole new way of becoming human?
To see what we're doing.
And this is not about trying to be clever.
This is actually about looking deeply,
Looking again.
And sometimes this can be dangerous because if you really look.
.
.
Than some other things.
Might have to change.
You might discover.
That the God you've been afraid of isn't the God that Jesus reveals,
You might discover that the spiritual life isn't about a way to get to God.
You might discover that doubt isn't necessarily the enemy of faith.
You might discover that holiness has a whole lot less to do with looking religious and a whole lot more to do with our capacity to love.
You might discover that your ordinary life doesn't need escaping in order to find God.
You might discover that you've been trying to get somewhere in the spiritual sense,
Actually what's happening is God's been trying to wake you up to where you already are.
That's why I don't want you to simply listen.
Of these episodes.
I want you to argue with them.
Alright?
Push back.
Get annoyed.
Say,
I'm not sure about that.
And that's good,
That's like high.
Because I didn't create this series just to be 12 new slogans to throw out there,
You know?
I'm interested.
In helping you see.
In saying.
Different things in different ways because seeing is different from knowing.
You can know something without ever really seeing it.
You can know that.
Person.
And you can know that they love you and you can still struggle to receive that love.
You can know that beauty is everywhere and still walk past it every single day.
You can know that you're alive and forget to actually live,
Right?
And so,
Maybe.
.
.
We need to do the same thing with God and with spirituality.
All that stuff we can know about God without noticing God.
We can know the language of faith and never experience.
The depth of that faith,
We can know answers.
And not be astonished by the questions that we have.
So over these 12 episodes,
We're going to do something really,
Really simple.
We're going to take familiar ideas,
Generally related to the Christian tradition,
And we're going to turn them just a little bit,
Just enough to let the light hit them differently.
Maybe you'll hear something that makes you stop.
And maybe in that moment you disagree,
Or you'll laugh,
Or you'll get angry,
Or you'll see something you've never seen before.
And somewhere along the way,
You might discover that the Christian faith is a heck of a lot stranger,
Much more beautiful,
And much more alive than you may have imagined.
So here's the invitation.
Don't listen to this series looking for things to agree with.
Listen,
Looking for something you haven't noticed.
And when that thing catches you,
Sit with it,
Stay with it and turn it around some more and ask,
What if that's true?
Because that's when things get really interesting.
When an idea begins to change the way we see,
And that's the whole point.
Maybe I guess,
You know,
We go looking for a new world,
But we don't need a new world.
We just need to look again.
And maybe you've been looking at God and yourself and the world through a lens that's just way too small.
So let's change the lens.
Let's turn the gem.
Let's look again and see what happens.
This is Look Again,
And we begin tomorrow.
And so,
As we go,
I share this prayer in preparation and sit with this prayer today.
And really begin to ask yourself,
Am I ready?
To shake some things up and to see some things with fresh eyes.
God,
We come before you today.
Hoping to be fresh new soil.
Give us eyes to see in new ways.
Give us ears to hear things that we haven't heard before,
Even in familiar words.
Give us minds,
Open,
Ready,
Prepared to truly and honestly consider.
What we hear and what we contemplate.
And whatever comes of the things that we think through and talk about in this series,
May our hearts be open to receive the seed of your word in good soil so that as it comes forth,
That it produces a tree with abundant fruit for us and for the world that you've called us to serve.
Be with us,
We pray.
And may grace,
Peace and love go with us today and always.
Amen.
Till tomorrow,
Friends.
Bye for now.
