Heart transplant

Post from Steve, January 20:

We are into the first full day of the conference. Unfortunately, Christine’s flight from Lima was cancelled and she still had not arrived at the time of writing this.

There are over 300 people here from all around the world. Spanish is the primary language, but all plenary worship and business sessions have translation between Spanish, English and French. I am meeting many people I met at the World Plenary in Kenya and in other FWCC gatherings. In my small home group we have Friends from South Africa, England, Ireland, Peru, United States, Canada, Georgia (the country), and Russia.

view-from-my-window

We were given a very warm welcome by the conference organizers and Friends from the local Quaker communities—Peru and Bolivia. We were reminded that we might be challenged by the diversity we encounter here—linguistic, cultural, culinary, and theological. An organizer of the conference from Britain told us that some of us experience God through a very dynamic relationship with Jesus, whereas others experience the Divine as a gentle rain falling on us through our lives.

mayor-loresThis morning, the plenary worship was sponsored by Latin American Friends, who are mostly of the Evangelical tradition. There was singing, praying, a fairly long sermon, and a period of silence that was filled with ministry from the floor from a couple of Spanish pastors. North American Friends sponsor the plenary worship tomorrow, and I am on that organizing team.

The main theme of the conference is transformation. The pastor who gave the sermon tpdau spoke at length of the multiple crises we are facing—a lust for power, political violence, family breakdown—and how the core crisis is that people have lost their connection to the Divine, which can be regained through giving our lives over to Jesus to be transformed.

Sacred-HeartCoincidental to my previous post, the main place where the transformation takes place, he said, is in our hearts. He used the image of a heart transplant in which Jesus removes our dysfunctional heart and replaces it with his heart. He said that the heart has a cellular memory, and that there are many cases in which people who have had surgical heart transplants report having interests and inclinations they never had before, only to then discover that these interests and inclination mirror those of the previous owner of the heart. Likewise, he said, when we receive the heart of Jesus, we receive things related to his heart–a desire to pray, a desire to read the Bible every day, and a desire to be different from most people.

So what personal query do I take away from this morning? Have I surrendered my life in trust and gratitude to the Great Mystery?

 

Dharma Pentecost

Post from Steve–January 18, 2016 :
As I prepare for the upcoming conference, I reflect back to the World Conference in Kenya in 2012. What bound us all together there—we who had come from such different cultures, languages, traditions and theologies?

Certainly there was our common Quaker heritage. Looking back to the time of George Fox and the early Quakers, one sees the roots of our common Quaker testimonies of simplicity, peace, integrity, and community. There we can also find the roots of the various Quaker traditions—for example, the Christ-centred and Bible-centred approach of Evangelical Quakers, and the Universalist strain with its focus on ongoing revelation and an openness to learn from the Light in the many forms it comes to us.

However, on a deeper level still, the essential bond that held us to together was Divine love, and a commitment to express this in our lives. Above all else, this was the fire that fuelled everything good that came out of the conference in Kenya and helped us to transcend our differences and celebrate our diversity.

In our own ways, we all strive to comprehend the mystery of our lives here on Earth. And the product of our collective striving is a spectrum of beliefs about our relationships with the Divine, our fellow human beings, and the rest of creation. As important as these beliefs are in helping us negotiate our way, our beliefs can easily become barriers that separate us from each other.

How did Jesus summarize all the sacred teachings? “Love God with everything you have. And love your neighbour as yourself.” So one of the core teachings of Jesus is that it is not primarily through our minds that we will find salvation, but through our hearts. This is not referring to the heart in the popular meaning of the heart as the seat of sentimental feelings, but rather the heart as the window that the soul uses to see and be with what really is, not what we would like it to be.

And how did Jesus describe this God he entreated us to love? The best image he could think of to describe his experience of the Divine was as a Father who welcomes his wayward child home no matter how often or how badly he has failed. In other words, at the heart of creation lies a well of goodness. We are not adrift in a capricious, dangerous universe. The ocean of light covers the ocean of darkness.

And how did Jesus explain who our neighbour is? He used the story of the Good Samaritan, a member of a cultural group mistrusted and hated by the Jews, who helped the Jewish man who lay beside the road beaten by robbers and ignored by his fellow Jews. In other words, he spoke of a love that transcended all barriers.

Sacred-HeartAs long as we can keep our hearts open to the Divine and to each other, there is some possibility that we can heal the separations that are the source of hatred and violence. When our hearts close down in the face of fear, anger or pain, so does the possibility of reconciliation and redemption. Maybe that is the message of the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which one sees so often here in Latin America, with Jesus revealing a heart burning with both love and pain.

So as we approach the World Plenary here in Pisac, I pray that all of us attending can maintain open hearts, for sometimes the most confusing and annoying differences are those we feel among the members of our own family.

I have tried to express this image of opened hearts in the attached painting. It’s called “Dharma Pentecost.” In the New Testament Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended from above to rest in the form of flames above the heads of the disciples. This painting is a visual prayer for an ongoing Second Coming, with the Holy Spirit breaking through not from above, but from within each heart as it opens out towards reconciliation with the Other.

You can see the painting in more detail at this link. Dharma Pentecost  (Click on the image, once it appears on the new page, to enlarge it.)

pentecost-lores

 

Join Christina Tellez and Steve Fick at the FWCC World Plenary in Pisac, Peru.

Pisac-from-highway-downOn behalf of Christina Tellez and myself, Steve Fick, I would like to invite Canadian Friends to join us at the FWCC World Plenary in Pisac, Peru, by way of our blog on the CYM website, which can be found here FWCC World Plenary.

The conference runs from January 19 to 27 and will take place in the beautiful Sacred Valley, running from Pisac toward Machu Picchu.

This gathering is similar to the World Conference that happened in Kenya in 2012, except that it is smaller and most of the participants are representatives of their respective home bodies, with fewer open spaces. Friends Peru and Bolivia are hosting Quakers from around the world, from all the various Quaker traditions, who have again come together to build connections of love and understanding, and celebrate our diversity.

sacred-valley-from-cusco-highwayThe first image below is a view of Pisac from the road that winds down into the valley from Cusco, the ancient Inca capital and the connecting point for most visitors to the area. The second image is looking north through the Sacred Valley.

Please hold Christine and me in the Light as we prepare ourselves for the conference. And visit our blog here on the CYM website at FWCC World Plenary.