[amc] Re: a note from the pastor
- From: "Nevitt D. Reesor" <reesor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Austin Mennonite Church <amc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 14:29:03 -0600
… a shamelessly provocative response from Nietzsche to one of the
schools of thought you mention below:
I want to speak to the despisers of the body. I would not have them
learn and teach differently, but merely say farewell to their own
bodies—and thus become silent.
"Body am I, and soul"—thus speaks the child. And why should one not
speak like children?
But the awakened and knowing say: body am I entirely, and nothing
else; and soul is only a word for something about the body.
The body is a great reason, a plurality with one sense, a war and a
peace, a herd and a shepherd. An instrument of your body is also your
little reason, My brother, which you call "spirit”—a little
instrument and toy of your great reason.
from Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Nevitt
On Feb 10, 2006, at 2:12 PM, garland robertson wrote:
Members and Friends of Austin Mennonite Church
I trust you are renewed in your spirit as you continue your journey
of faith.
The quest to determine how our physical reality relates to the
spiritual dimension reaches far back into antiquity. Extreme
variations in attitudes about how spirit and matter impact each other
has produced an astonishing display of behaviors. In religious
contexts, the subject primarily is discussed as a consequence of the
association of ‘spirit’ and ‘flesh’ which defines the human
creature. Ancient explanations regard the human as a combination of
these two distinct elements. In the Genesis account, spirit and
flesh unite to compose the ‘soul’ of the human which God created in
the divine image. Many persons have sensed that this composition
establishes an unresolved duality of good and evil. The primordial
incompatibility of spirit and flesh requires the faithful to war
against the evil flesh in order to live in union with God. Others
maintain that the spirit and the flesh coexist in harmony. Any
disruption that arises for the human originates from sources removed
from the spirit-flesh dynamic How have religious teachings
influenced your attitude about God’s intention for uniting spirit and
flesh? What is the perspective which seems to be the understanding
of Jesus as he preached the good news and ministered to distressed
persons ? These thoughts will compose the sermon for this next
Sunday, “The prose of spirit and flesh.”
May it go well with you. Sincerely,
Garland Robertson
...always hold firmly to the thought that each one of us can do
something to bring some portion of misery to an end
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