to struggle used to be
to grab with both hands

and shake
and twist
and turn
and push
and shove and not give in

but wrest an answer from it all
as jacob did a blessing.

but there is another way
to struggle with an issue, a question –
simply to jump

off

into the abyss
and find ourselves

floating
falling
tumbling
being led

slowly and gently
but surely
to the answers god has for us –
to watch the answers unfold
before our eyes and still
to be a part of the unfolding

but, oh! the trust
necessary for this new way!
not to be always reaching out
for the old hand-holds.

~a new way of struggling by susan w. n. ruach

A little from Catherine Keller’s On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process that I’m in the midst of for my Emotional Intelligence course…

“Those who know suffering come closer to a truth about the creation: the future is open, alarmingly or promisingly.  The way is not laid out in advance.  Creation itself is in process.  Our own way forward has not yet been charted.  There may be no trail before us at all.  Sometimes one can only move forward in faith: that is, in courage and confidence, not in a delusional certainty.

Process is ongoing.  Amidst trials and tribulations, life is going on.  Exoduses happen.  But, like Moses, you may not make it to the promised land.  That possibility didn’t paralyze him.  ‘Hope,’ says the theologian Karl Barth, laying to rest any facile faith in end-times or immortality, comes ‘ in the act of taking the next step.’” (Keller, 9)

READING: Transforming Mission by David Bosch
FOR: “Paradigms of Mission”

“We are called, therefore, to be ‘kingdom people,’ not ‘church people,’ says Snyder.  He continues… Kingdom people seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice; church people often put church work above concerns of justice, mercy and truth.

Church people think about how to get people into church; Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world.  Church people worry that the world might change the church; Kingdom people work to see the church change the world.'”  (Bosch, 378)