Disciple Bible Study Week 31, Revelation Part VI

Well, sorry about that.

It sounded like a really interesting recipe.

Probably wish we'd just kept that going.

We got to do some recap reading, and and I'd like to see, first off, as we recap the reading, if anything stood out to you or sort of hit you anew, or you were able to make some connections like they were hoping you might make in the video or the other.

I want to look at the questions they asked us second, but because we did the reading first, I wanted to see if there were particular readings that were helpful for you to review again or did something new for you as you resurveyed sort of the class.

That was, I thought that was powerful.

Yeah, it was really it wasn't academic, but but strong.

Strong connection.

Yeah.

My husband's uncle has a single home in Texas City.

When he was a teenager, he wrote on his end the last year.

So I don't know if he got the same thing from that because we saw a lot.

For me, because of my background in regards to the fact that I've not done a lot of biblical study, this was a lot of learning for me.

And a lot of revisiting revisiting what I just knew superficially and could get into it with a great deal more depth.

And I've thought I I'm gonna go back and I don't know if I'll do it, but I go back and reread stuff and revisit.

And Tim helped me a lot because he's had a lot more background and a lot of so we've done we've done a lot of it together, even read it out loud to each other.

And the only thing that that there's a lot of other stuff, life gets in the way, and then you know, if you something happens and you go, then then for two or three days you don't even think about it.

And yeah, and that and so it was a it was a it was a special experience for me.

And one that has made me really curious in a way, in ways that I never really visited, or if I had, I hadn't paid attention to, you know.

Because, you know, as a as a Christian person, as a Catholic, I I feel like I'd laid you know a fairly good, decent life, you know, and I do my funding duty and I do all that and I do Lent and But this gave me a whole different perspective.

It was very nice, like for me it was for me it was very special.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I guess we have to I don't think I share that concern.

I'm trying to figure out how not to do that because I met God in fear.

It's interesting to think about how you meet God.

Yeah.

There's a really weird story, we didn't read Genesis together, but you you think about um Abraham gave us to sacrifice Isaac, and in Jewish tradition, he's 37.

And that's Isaac's experience of God, his dad holding a knife over him.

Um and that was what we learned in Sunday school, to be honest, about why it was really now of course we learned God loved us, but then you know, then there's hell, and that's scary.

You know, that's really scary.

And um, so God in some ways is is to be feared, and how do you when that's how you met God, how do you meet each other again for the first time?

And how do you love somebody you fear?

Well, you can't.

Right?

Not holy, can the scriptures we read tell us that true love drives out all fear?

Yeah.

Um paradigm shift you said, it's really interesting to think about when scripture describes us and when it prescribes how we ought to be and the difference between the two.

I would tell you without time about any of the specific readings for me, what's really helpful about um scripture study in a group, if I read it by myself, I didn't know that I'd have to engage it.

But because we're going to talk about it, I feel like I'd better think about it a little more deeply, about what it could mean and hearing what it means for you, this is always beneficial for me.

I've never had to sit down and think about revelation rather than a broad brush, but to think about it bit by bit.

So I have a totally new perspective on the book that actually goes backward to everything else we've read, even as much as the first things went forward.

You know, if that makes sense.

It's always to me helpful to do this concentrated in a group with a purpose.

I don't always like the book, but this one I really did like, um, because it makes me reweave everything.

Well, and it provides structure.

And that's I think that's when you read a Bible, you need some type of structure.

Because otherwise you're gonna be all over the place.

Because sometimes the Bible contradicts itself.

And you and and you and you and you're reading it and you say, What the heck is that all about?

Well then the language is more difficult to mean the Bible.

Yeah, and it's it's so complicated.

And and he and this this is just sort of not that I don't mean that it dumb it, dumb it, dumb it or made it dumb.

I don't mean that.

Um but it was it was more meaningful to me.

It was easier to understand.

I was wondering, um, by John really, because it it it encompasses such a wide um swath that it's hard to uh understand that he could have you really grew in between Jesus' death and then a problem when he died.

No, no one thinks the Gospel of John, that writer, wrote Revelation.

No one thinks so.

Couldn't understand how he could.

Yeah, right.

Right.

So when was it written?

Well, oddly enough, around the same time as the Gospel of John, probably.

But syntax, totally different, you know, diction, totally different, themes, very different, and also complementary.

So when?

Um probably around 100 to 110.

Some people would date them real early at 90.

I mean, I haven't read earlier than 90 on either one.

And and and and we don't really since the since the earliest copies we have are a little bit older than that, we don't know how often it's been re-transmitted or redacted.

Someone didn't like it that way, and then that's right.

Did anybody else have a as we reread, did something stand out for you in the readings?

I think the reason they go slowly is to try to get it into your bones.

If if that makes sense.

Alright, something that stood out to me is in the New Jerusalem, there won't be a temple.

And that sounds silly, but I'm pretty sure this was written after the temple got destroyed.

So it's nice to hear that actually that's not a catastrophe, that God doesn't live in temples made by human hands, and in God's vision, there won't be a place because God will fill all the places.

To to make temples in slums, if that makes sense, and on street corners.

There won't be a a St.

John, the Divine Sanctuary that's just inside.

It'll be in memorial in the fourth war.

That will be the temple.

How about these questions that we got to answer?

I didn't know if any of you were willing to share your thoughts on these.

I I actually didn't write my answers to them because I'm still thinking about them.

Um but from the beginning, you know, the Esther, they they they asked us to think about caring and what act you might perform to strengthen your family.

I'll share one for you from me that that I've thought about.

Um it has nothing to do with Naomi, but um has a lot to do with what I'm doing on Sunday mornings with thinking about how to strengthen my own marriage.

Not because it's in dire straits, but because um that kind of work will strengthen my family.

And so some of those works have to do with really being attentive to daily practices that include appreciation, offering appreciation, not just that I like that you did this, but why and how it touches my heart and what it really represents for me.

Uh listening to my spouse and my daughter in such a way that I mirror back, so they know that I've listened and validate what they've said, even if I disagree with it, saying something like, it makes sense that you would want that because of blank and empathizing and saying, I imagine you might be feeling blank before I just go to a decision.

I love to go right to the decision.

Um those practices, and I didn't always get them right, but those are some of the things I feel like I've been inspired to do to strengthen my family.

I was I paid attention anyway, I thought I'd love looking back on the issue of the community of faith.

Yeah.

Um and for me, I think um that it's it's kind of well, it's personal in that um yeah, I've been born and raised Catholic.

I've never, this is the first time in my life that I've spent time in any place other than a Catholic church coming here to St.

Thomas.

And um so that's been a big um, why am I doing this?

What is it, what is it that I'm I'm not, and I know I'm not questioning my faith, it's not that.

It's Tim said it's an issue of community.

What's the difference between this community and a community that's hate bernadays and it just happens because it's St.

Bernadette?

Yeah.

Um why why is it that this calls you more or this feels more comfortable, or more what what are the specific things?

So so reading this has and so it's been like and I'm still sorting through it.

I mean it's like a big muddle in my head still.

Um it's it's just muddling.

Um that's probably gonna take until I'm gonna go back if I'm gonna find a counselor who can give me some advice on sorting through all of this out.

I don't know.

So there this did bring a lot of a lot of kind of turmoil about that for me.

It's not necessarily even because I was born and raised Catholic.

Yeah.

But I don't know that it's a it's a denominational thing, but for this community at St.

Thomas is really the strongest, most supportive community I've ever experienced.

And and yes, and that's the way it feels to me also.

And and um and it was just quite by accident, you know.

Samuel Gladden said something about something to come to see here, and the next thing I knew I was coming more often than I expected.

Um anyway, um, yeah, and then then that just grew.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Kudos to you, dude.

Yes.

Yeah, I don't know how long you've been here or anything like that, but we've developed a very strong, friendly, open, welcoming community.

I think kudos to the community.

Kudos to the community, because it's people within here.

This guy.

And uh and that's that.

That's that.

And that's why that's probably his truth.

Anyway, but this reading all of this, the word community is in here all the time.

I'm sick of it.

I was really sure.

It's really right.

I don't think I don't think I'm saying this.

I didn't have some kind of thing.

John's one of the guys you can thank or blame for our present condition.

Because it isn't new.

That's the thing, it isn't new.

It's who these people have been and want to be.

My faith is not as strong as anywhere.

It's not as strong as I involve myself in this church.

So that I involve absolute strength in the faith.

That's about the strongest faces you can have.

Don't you think?

I think so.

That's one of the paradigmships of the reading, isn't it?

Well for me it is.

It isn't about feeling, it's about practice.

I'm more of a works-oriented person.

That's commitment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That is commitment.

Do what I can.

But I you know, the book asks us what act of courage could you have, and this is one of those paradigm shifts is that courage is not something that comes natural to you.

What would be courageous about that?

Courage is when we put ourselves out there.

Especially when it's not natural.

And this is one of those relationship things, this is one of those sort of um like marital traps I realized as I've tried to be practicing uh these things I mentioned is we can say something like, um, you did that thing for me, but it felt a little bit rote.

Like I know that you were just doing it because I wanted it, not because it was natural.

And sometimes, like, we degrade something because of that when really it should be more meaningful.

Somebody does something that is not natural for them because they want to do the right thing.

That's courage.

That's what I think.

Yeah, that absolutely is.

Caring about that other person.

It's interesting that if you listen to comments by Metal of Honor winners, more often than not with basics.

I don't know why they're giving me this metal.

I'm just doing my job.

Yeah.

How about the guidance bit?

There's a lot of guidance questions here.

Like what insights into life have you gained, or how are you incorporating these?

How's the light guiding you?

Has your prayer life changed?

Anybody will need to share guidance bits?

I'm I'm an older person.

And I I'm the age where I am now in my late 70s, Tim doesn't experience this as much, but aging, and I don't know if it's a woman's age, I mean I don't know, but aging has been I I I'm not sure even how to explain it.

It's not so much difficult.

Well it is, there's a difficulty about it because you because partly because I was very athletic and having to hold back and pull back.

But it's more than just that.

It's more and and the readings and being here at St.

Thomas.

It's just deepened and I can't really put it into words, but it has to be but it has to do with aging, I think.

She is also it has to do with aging and aging.

And and then there's beginnings.

Also, I you know we don't know what what kind of beginnings, but but they're they you know, you I've become just really aware how throughout life you've constantly going through that.

Um and so you re to me I've been reflecting on those endings and beginnings way back going back to my twenties.

And it's not a bad thing, but it's it's um

I think back to years ago I wrote a book.

I don't think I wrote the whole book because it was like that.

But I read bits and pieces of it.

But it was by a guy named Baba Ram Das.

He was an American who went to India.

You familiar with it?

He went to India and he he took in the whole life of meditation, okay.

But but in the book, I'm not sure if this is the title of the book or I read it was it was in the book, but it was a big part of the book.

And basically it was be here now.

I mean there's the past which was a second ago, and there's a future which is a second from now.

But it's always now.

Always now.

And um so when you're talking about you know ends or beginnings, in my mind in some ways, it's it's just always in the now.

I think that's something you have to kind of learn and practice.

Because I think it's natural to go back and rehash and see what you've done wrong or see where you could do better.

So that's a that's a practice that you know to live for the now.

But if we just remember there's no past and there's no future, because it is just now.

Yeah.

I've often I've had I have crazy thoughts all the time, and here's one of them, and that's that you live exactly this life over again after you've passed away, but you make one positive change.

Just one.

Because I mean it's life is in if you think about it, think if you know we live in an infinite place, an infinite space.

And I my thought was maybe you go back and it's just that one little thing, one thing, because you're gonna live infinitely, so you're and and and maybe you grow towards um uh a true cosmic consciousness.

I don't know.

I I mean I don't think about this very often or for very long, but I just throw these thoughts out.

I think I've read about that where you you um you're in this position here because of your past lives, and every time you come back, you you're you're a little you're a little ahead of yourself.

Just a little bit.

Positive.

I'm not sure I believe it, but you know, you you are you are who you are because of all the now's.

I I've done a lot of studying in yoga and I've and I've practiced that now as practiced as seriously as I used to.

And um yeah, there is always a now, but all of those now's are who you are now.

You know?

Um so um that's um they kind of set you on the course of the future as well.

Yes, yes.

Oh yes, yes.

Because you bring all that with you.

Well, I think you're talking about salvation right now in the course of the study anyway, which is about now, and about being saved from anxiety about the future, and being saved from being defined by what happened to us or what we chose in the past, right?

And there's an interesting thing, I have a friend here who lost a child, and actually the child um took his own life, and a person told me that quantum physics was really helpful for him because there's like parallel universes.

And he said, you know, it's comforting to know that in a parallel universe my son is still alive.

It's sort of interesting to think about possibility.

Um, and the thing like you said that we make one positive change, uh, it's interesting to imagine that parallel universe and then live into it.

And that just might be salvation, right?

Is when we are able to imagine and live into just one change.

Just one positive change.

Just one positive change.

You know, I just don't totally agree with something that she said in the video.

Because the impression I got I don't know if you guys got the same impression, but the impression I got was what she said was she said that we're living for the next, almost the next life.

And I mean, and in some ways you you mentioned many times from the pulpit that you were brought up in a world where where you were supposed to survive this world so that you went on to a greater thing, but you come back many times and have said, no, no, no, no, no.

Joy and and and and and and living up a joyful life is now.

It's not something we're waiting for in the future.

I may have not said that well, but I mean I in my own journey that seems like it has to be the case because if we don't appreciate what we have before us, how could we appreciate anything else?

And so in that sense, I think I've not raised correctly.

The other thing is called escapism, and I think we've talked about that in the study, right?

Is we have these strategies for escaping reality instead of being present in it.

Yeah.

And I came in and sat down and said again, I'm gonna take my camera and walk in front of it because I have and that's total escapism.

But but in a good way.

Well, that's probably something that makes you present though.

I mean, I think that's actually different.

And and and when you have the photographs, it brings back stuff you can lay them out and it's like you're there again.

Um in some ways it makes me more present spiritually.

The interesting thing about all of that, a couple of things, is there's major psychological studies that say every time you look at a photograph, you see something different because of where you are.

So you rem you remember, but you remember differently.

Um The other thing is that those moments of inspiration, instead of being, you know, separate from everyday living, are meant to inform it.

It's not just like taking a nap.

It's meant to this is what mystical people say.

Real mystics don't just get caught up in going to the seventh in heaven and staying there.

They take that experience back and it reinforms the way that they're oriented in this space, right?

That's what retreats, I think, are meant to do, or be a sort of a workshop to remake our vision or our practice, and if we do them right.

Hopefully they're not escapes from this way, they're invitations to live into a bigger way here, if that sort of makes sense.

Well, that that does make total sense.

And I think I may have mentioned this already here, but I was the long-distance cyclist and when gone through some difficult stuff and went cross-country on my bike over two and a half months, and there was a group with me, but I was really by myself.

Um and uh I took the Holy Eucharist with me, which one of the priests, when he found out I did that, he was like the priest who gave it to me.

He said, How many Sundays would be gone?

Because I didn't know whether that'd be a masked.

And so I had I had the pixel with eight posts in it.

And um I I never had a flat tire.

I I had an accident, but but it wasn't bad.

I mean, they picked me up and cleaned me up a little bit.

My bike was fine.

I got back on my bike two miles later.

But um I I really I didn't know anybody.

I I just I can't, I just know, I say, and I and there was a lot of cleaning I had to do in my head and just go go and get rid of junk that that was and all that happened, and I think it was because I had the I had the host with me, and and I just know God was with me the entire, entire way.

And Tim would send every Wednesday we'd that we'd get mail on Wednesday, and he'd send me the comics from Sunday because I'm a big comic strip reader.

So he didn't even give me the headlines of what's happening in Houston, but I got the comics and I got some other things.

But anyway, um God never I you know he just never abandons us.

I I don't I don't I just I mean he's always uh I I I'm not sure I'm making any sense, but yeah.

Oh you know, I read a line this week, and it's had this is from my premarital or my marital thing, you know, and I just was reminded of and to me it's like the essence of the study, which is um looking for love distracts you from the fact that you already have it.

Yes.

It's a little more eloquent than that, but that's the basis of it.

Oh, that but and you said it put though what what it was, you know, what has been and how you know you call everybody goes through phases of life where you but that is it.

You guys remember Urban Cowboy?

Yeah.

Remember looking for love in all the wrong places.

Well, I think that's right.

I mean I think that's I think that's part of the study, and that's part of John's gospel and revelation is don't is to be able to find it now, and essentially when you find it you are a uh a signpost to other people to also find it now.

I think there's glass.

I I was I have a friend that I've been through a whole lot of and I was studies and retro directory.

That uh EFM version we just went through a lot of studies together and uh we moved in my car, so we uh talked a lot.

And uh this week with um my husband, um on the verge of a stroke uh when I had to go to the hospital the second time uh that gave nitrogen and stuff you know to keep them going and uh and then I went until I have to curtail my driving because I get too tired.

And so I wrote this brand and said, you know, it's just sort of a new life and then have I'll make it a good one.

With all the moves, we started over a bunch of times, so I am used to starting over, you know, and uh but it's uh it'll be interesting.

In the years, this is during shortly after Ike.

One of the things that we did in this church is we went down to Galvison to help muck out houses.

And there were probably about 10 of us or so who went down, and we went to this one house.

He was a he was a well at the time um I was a good bit, I was a bit younger, and so when he said his age, I thought, gosh, he's kind of old.

But now I'm pretty close to that age.

So anyway, we were cleaning out this, he was a he was a black fella.

He'd worked um on railroad uh and um he had a garage full of tools, filled with tools.

Uh and it wasn't a big house, it was like a two-bedroom, small two-bedroom house in Galvasson.

But I'll remember forget.

We were taking stuff out of his house and he just said, throw it on the pile, throw it on the pile.

And I said, Are you sure you want those?

I said, Yeah, I'll throw it on the pile.

Okay.

And we sat down, we're all hot and sweaty, and he sat down and he said, you know, he said, I never thought at 70 years old that'd be starting over.

But you do.

You move on.

Yeah.

And and the yeah, and then almost every decade, almost every year, every five years.

You we I can trace that starting over, and and we we we all do it.

And it's it's just part of part of living.

Because something changes it whether it's in your body or in your life, or you, you know, you lose a parent, or you, oh, you know, and I lost my dad, oh I mean, this was just been seven years ago, so he was in his 90s, so it's bad a long time.

But um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a good life.

Well, I appreciate you going through this for 32 weeks, small but mighty.

And um well, I it it's it's great for me, and I hope I've shown that.

I just really enjoyed, even though I tend to overfunction.

Um, but I but I appreciate you putting up with it and um and sharing yourselves and your thoughts.

And um, you know what's next is probably we'll do another one in the fall.

That'll probably be book three.

It'll probably be prophets and uh letters of Paul.

Okay.

Okay, good.

What is the I came in later?

What is the phrase of radical disciple mean?

Because John Chittester has a book on whether it's it depends who you talk to.

Yeah.

So I don't I don't want to define it for you, but I think the goal, I mean, really, I think it just disciple means one who follows.

So I think it means following closely and carefully.

I didn't think it means being so I and I maybe last thought is I grew up in a in a youth group where we talked about having extreme faith.

Extreme faith meant smuggling Bibles into communist Russia, even though you could get the death penalty, because that was extreme.

You're being bold to the Lord.

And um that's what got people to fly planes in the buildings.

Extreme faith.

And I sort of think there's something really nice about just being extremely faithful, and I think maybe that's radical is doing the daily grind.

I I think some people are called to that.

Later in my life I might be, but right now that would be the worst form of discipleship for me because it would neglect my family and it would drive me crazy.

So when I slow down, I could be a Benedictine.

I may never, in my faith, might be better live down being in constant motion and mindful while I do it, instead of making myself sit still and being miserable in body and mind.

And I think that's one of those helpful things is that, you know, Jesus has a different relationship with each one of the twelve men and the however many women that follow him.

Isn't that nice?

Four people who wrote about him wrote different things.

Isn't that nice?

I got different things to say than they do.

Some of the things they like, they drive me nuts.

Why would you include that story?

I hate that story.

And um that's medical discipleship, I think, is being authentic.

As we follow something greater than ourselves.

And I just think that that that is the greatest gift from God that each one of us, each one of us is created by God and all of us, and we're all just there's things that body that are the same, but each one of us are really unique and special and different, and and and we can all still accept each other.

That's that's really wonderful how boring it would be otherwise.

Yeah.

Just very boring.

Anyway, I didn't expect to come in here and have such deep discussions, but what it has been like the blessing of God.

Welcome to the Episcopal Church.

And I hope we all stay here in that wide way of thinking, whether it's here or somewhere else.

And I think that's the church at its best, is to gather together.

That's what church means, gathering, so that we can hear something bigger than ourselves and be part of it.

For me personally, it was just the Carmelites at St.

Bernard that's when they were there, were the ones that first kind of opened my head like that.

But from then, it's it's just grown.

But that was the Carmelites that did that.

Specific priests, it was Father JJ and Father Tom, right?

Tim converted, but doesn't mean anyway, so everywhere you find, you know, but now I'm here, and I find another growing, expanding uh community.

Or it it it in the end, Christ is about community.

He is not about an individual.

And that's what this whole what this whole series is about, is being brave and being in community and helping that community to move forward.

Even though there were mistakes that people make, things happen, get to lose them, we get to burn, you know.

We carry on, you know, we carry on as a community.

And each one of the readings we have seems to emphasize community.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I I'll just and I'll stop talking because we travel a lot, and people have said to us, we're afraid.

We've never carried a gun, we've never carried a knife, we've never carried a can of mace, nothing.

And we've been in third world countries and we've been in Africa, and we and never ever has anyone tried to hurt us or that I feel threatened, and we stayed in people's houses, we stayed in little dumpy places, little dumpy dumpy, but you know, so we've taken some risks, and it's usually just the two of us.

Um and sometimes we've walked and sometimes we've rented cars and just kind of you know, but people generally you know we've been in India.

India, India is amazing.

India's amazing, but um generally God created all of us, and and there's uniqueness and wonderful wonder about each each one of us is nice.

And I like that you allow you you encourage and allow that kind of discussion and that kind of hopes.

Allow is so crazy.

That's such a crazy word.

Yeah, it just tells us we really need to grow up.

The priest allows us to tell the truth, really.

Well I don't I don't mean it like that.

In an insulting way.

No, no, no, no, no.

It's not insulting.

What it means is we've got a there's a lot of room for the church to grow.

Yeah.

Or that's a novel concept.

Oh yeah.

You know?

Because it is, it's a novel con I wasn't allowed to be honest as a kid.

I wasn't allowed to say, hey, there's days I think this is all made up.

Yeah.

What kind of weak faith.

I know again, I think that's a stronger faith that you're able to admit that and you keep coming back.

Yes.

Yeah.

Thanks for coming back.

Thank you.

Thank you.