The Levitikon: The Gospels According to the Primitive Church

Reposted from the Apostolic Johannite Church:


The Apostolic Johannite Church is proud to present to you, for the first time in english- the Levitikon: the Gospels according to the Primitive Church.

This english edition contains the Gospel of John as discovered by Dr. Bernard-Raymond Fabre-Palaprat.

At a total of 86 pages, you'll also find:

* An insightful introduction by Msgr, Jordan Stratford
* An introduction and notes from the text's translator- The Reverend Donald Donato
* A letter from the Patriarch of the Apostolic Johannite Church.

It is available via our website at http://johannite.org/levitikon.html and will be available on amazon.com shortly.

We've waited a while for this and hope you enjoy it as much as we do. Stay tuned also for more news about future book releases from the AJC,

Fraternally,
+ Shaun McCann, Ep.Gn.

Torture Awareness Month - June

from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture:

Torture Awareness Month - June

ENDING TORTURE: OUR NATION'S UNFINISHED BUSINESS

June 26th is United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. Several years ago, religious and human rights organizations in the United States declared the month of June to be Torture Awareness Month as a way to provide greater visibility to this issue and provide an opportunity for coordinated actions across the country.

This June, NRCAT encourages congregations and people of faith to focus on two primary efforts:

• Passing federal legislation granting the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to all detainees in U.S. custody.
• Securing a comprehensive investigation, a Commission of Inquiry, into the use of torture by the United States since September 11, 2001 - learning from the past is the best way to build a torture-free future.

Under the theme "Ending Torture: Our Nation's Unfinished Business" we seek to codify in law one of the key elements of President Obama’s January 2009 Executive Order – ICRC access to detainees – and we continue our call for a nonpartisan Commission of Inquiry to be appointed by the President and/or the Congress. NRCAT has also called upon the Attorney General to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate the use of torture.

Congregations and religious organizations can participate in these critical efforts through a postcard campaign, educational events, and a variety of other activities.

ACTIVITIES for CONGREGATIONS

NRCAT encourages congregations and local interfaith groups to focus on two primary activities. Get more details and download resources.

1. Have a table at each worship service in June:

• Ask people to complete postcards (or letters) calling for legislation that will assure that the International Committee of the Red Cross has access to all detainees held by the U.S. The post cards can be taken to the local offices of Members of Congress on Monday, June 28, or mailed to their offices in Washington, DC.
• Ask people to sign a petition asking for a Commission of Inquiry.
  

2. Hold an Educational Event, which could be one of the following:

• Show the 20-minute video "Ending U.S.-Sponsored Torture Forever".
• Organize a one-hour discussion, using a guide with background text and sample questions focused on why ending torture is our nation's unfinished business.
• In several cities in June, NRCAT will co-sponsor a panel discussion on the need for a Commission of Inquiry, featuring a religious leader, an attorney, a medical professional, a former interrogator or another expert.

Learn more details about these and other activities, including background resources available from NRCAT.

Giving Up

The fourth century desert Father, Abba Anthony, said, “In whatever place you find yourself, do not easily leave it.” For over 1500 years, Benedictines have made stability a vow. For a host of reasons, staying put is becoming something of a movement of its own today. This is good news for those of us who’ve dug wells three feet deep in 10 different places and become frustrated that we haven’t hit water. It’s good news for neighborhoods that have been passed over and used for their cheap labor. And if the scientists are right about historically unprecedented climate change, this is good news for the earth too. It may well be that the most important thing we can do in our time for social justice is to give up our spiritual journeys and put down some roots for life with God and other people.

from Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Giving Up Your Spiritual Journey (and Putting Down Roots)

Arizona Resiste!

You Shall be Free from Slavery (Come, Dambala)

Oh, Dambala, Serpent of Wisdom, melt down our walls and help us to see. Teach us new words to speak, and deeper ways to listen. May we be shocked out of our systems of complacency, apathy, and fear. May we find our roots and raise ourselves up. And may we help, always, to liberate each other. - from T Thorn Coyle

Sound Bite Gnosticism

From Msgr. Jordan:

If your only contact with Gnosticism is internet and primary sources, something even worse can happen than simplifying Gnostic teaching. You'll see the gap between what is repeated online and what's really there, and you'll begin to dismiss all modern Gnostics as having a superficial understanding. You'll start to marginalize your fellow travelers because they're only getting the first part and not the second, and you might get bitter enough to reject what they have to contribute, even though their reflections on the first, shorter passage may be insightful and legitimate. Those who allow this bitterness to take route are Gnosticism's biggest critics. They suffer – truly suffer – from assuming that everyone is a twinkie of some kind and their out-of-context sound bites make them less authentic, less whole. Stuck in their increasingly hateful echo chamber, the individuals from this second camp don't have the complete picture either; they just assume they do.

full post here

The Art of Personal Transformation

Excellent article on the Fourth Way:

THE ART OF PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION:
A Guide to Spiritual Awakening

by
Theodore J. Nottingham

Peace of the Action

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. ~Bishop Desmond Tutu

Deir Yassin's inextinguishable fire

So, today, I commemorate the 62nd anniversary of the Deir Yassin Massacre. Commemorating Deir Yassin is not to create a sadistic exploitation of the suffering of a people. It is a reminder to us all that injustice did take place there, and that it is our responsibility to remember that the atrocities and intolerance we see and hear about today had their inception with Deir Yassin.

full article here: http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml

Origins of a Scandal

via Tony Jones:

As a grade-school kid, the Jesus I was taught to embrace was unlike any adult I'd ever encountered. He was dirt poor, humble, and a bit shabby in appearance. He hung out with the poor, the sick, the outcasts, and pariahs, but he didn't lament their company. I didn't know a single adult like him in my parish.

The Jesus the nuns taught me to cherish did something no adult I knew could pull off with conviction: He didn't lecture the sinners or avoid them, but embraced them with breathtaking compassion. He seemed to genuinely treasure them, without judgment. As a child it was the most startling thing I'd ever encountered.

Too bad they had to temper it by shifting my attention to Rome.

To this day I remain stunned the church doesn't see what even a young boy could see the first time he was given the chance. A church that holds up a poor carpenter's kid as its ideal presents a leader who, symbolically anyway, seems to emulate the Roman emperors instead.

Doesn't the church find it incongruent that the world of the Vatican is so royal and opulent? Everything about it drips with abundance and authority. Where'd that broke Jewish guy go?

full article here

Saturday Morning Reading

(6 Reasons why I am not answering the phone this morning)

1) Msgr. Jordan Stratford's Sound Bite Gnosticism

2) Dee Rapposelli's The New Aeon, or Slouching Toward the Liberation of Consciousness

3) Dahr Jamal's Iraq War Vet: “We Were Told to Just Shoot People, and the Officers Would Take Care of Us”

3) Daniel Silliman's Faithful Apostasy

4) Timo S. Paananen on the Secret Mark Debate

5) Bishop William Behun's History and Myth, or Jesus and the Kraken

6) Dcn. Donald Donato's Fed to the Lions: Crisis in the Catholic Church

Saint Philoumenos the New Hieromartyr of Jacob's Well (+1979)

St. Philoumenos the New Hieromartyr of Jacob's Well (Feast Day - November 29)

Hieromartyr Archimandrite Philoumenos

"On November 16/29, 1979 they burst into the monastery and with a hatchet butchered Archimandrite Philoumenos in the form of a cross. With one vertical stroke they clove his face, with another horizontal stroke they cut his cheeks as far as his ears. His eyes were plucked out. The fingers of his right hand were cut into pieces and its thumb was hacked off. These were the fingers with which he made the sign of the Cross."

An open letter to conservatives

from Russ' Filtered News:

Now the advice. You’re going to have to come up with a platform that isn’t built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from yours; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more. But you have work to do even before you take on that task.

Your party — the GOP — and the conservative end of the American political spectrum has become irresponsible and irrational. Worse, it’s tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred. Let me provide some examples – by no means an exhaustive list — of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.

full article here

Who'll Feed Fido During the Final Judgment?

from Soma:

"You've committed your life to Jesus," the site announced. "You know you're saved. But when the Rapture comes, what's to become of your loving pets who are left behind? Eternal Earth-Bound Pets takes that burden off your mind."

Not knowing whether to be appalled or enthralled, I read on. "We are a group of dedicated animal lovers and atheists. Each Eternal Earth-Bound Pet representative is a confirmed atheist, and as such will still be here on Earth after you've received your reward. Our network of animal activists is committed to step in when you step up to Jesus."

Continue reading Securing Your Pet's Post-Rapture Future.

Ten Plagues Finger Puppets

from God Spam: Religion & absurdity in pop culture & the media by Gwynne Watkins. Gwynne describes herself as "a Christian, but not the kind that sucks."

Welcome to the blogroll: Geez Magazine

"Geez magazine has set up camp in the outback of the spiritual commons. A bustling spot for the over-churched, out-churched, un-churched and maybe even the un-churchable. For wannabe contemplatives, front-line world-changers and restless cranks."

The Harrowing of Hell

Beneath all the dressings, the liturgies, and the scaffolding of beliefs erected along-side, what matters is at the heart. It is the raw experience of the Presence of the Light that splits the darkness of death. It is the Light of the resurrected Christ that we await. It is the annihilation of the dual nature of thought and the redemption of the world of creaturely selfishness and the sense of being alone. It is all about remembering who we really are and from whence we really come.

An excellent post from harriedmystic : Practice # 182: The Harrowing of Hell

Wordle

From Saint Theophan the Recluse

"In general, Loquacity (rambling talk) opens the doors of the soul, and the devout warmth of the heart at once escapes. Empty talk does the same, but even more so... Empty talk is the door to criticism and slander, the spreader of false rumors and opinions, the sower of discord and strife. It stifles the taste for mental work and almost always serves as a cover for absence of sound knowledge..."


- Saint Theophan the Recluse

Hieratikon - The Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom

If anyone is devout and a lover of God, let them enjoy this beautiful and radiant festival.

If anyone is a grateful servant, let them, rejoicing, enter into the joy of his Lord.

If anyone has wearied themselves in fasting, let them now receive recompense.

If anyone has labored from the first hour, let them today receive the just reward.

If anyone has come at the third hour, with thanksgiving let them feast.

If anyone has arrived at the sixth hour, let them have no misgivings; for they shall suffer no loss.

If anyone has delayed until the ninth hour, let them draw near without hesitation.

If anyone has arrived even at the eleventh hour, let them not fear on account of tardiness.

For the Master is gracious and receives the last even as the first; he gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, just as to him who has labored from the first.

He has mercy upon the last and cares for the first; to the one he gives, and to the other he is gracious.

He both honors the work and praises the intention.

Enter all of you, therefore, into the joy of our Lord, and, whether first or last, receive your reward.

O rich and poor, one with another, dance for joy!

O you ascetics and you negligent, celebrate the day!

You that have fasted and you that have disregarded the fast, rejoice today!

The table is rich-laden; feast royally, all of you!

The calf is fatted; let no one go forth hungry!

Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness.

Let no one lament their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one mourn their transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave.

Let no one fear death, for the Saviour's death has set us free.

He that was taken by death has annihilated it!

He descended into Hades and took Hades captive!

He embittered it when it tasted his flesh! And anticipating this Isaiah exclaimed: "Hades was embittered when it encountered thee in the lower regions".

It was embittered, for it was abolished!

It was embittered, for it was mocked!

It was embittered, for it was purged!

It was embittered, for it was despoiled!

It was embittered, for it was bound in chains!

It took a body and came upon God!

It took earth and encountered heaven!

It took what it saw but crumbled before what it had not seen!

O death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!

Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!

Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!

Christ is risen, and life reigns!

Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in a tomb!

For Christ, being raised from the dead, has become the first-fruits of them that slept.

To him be glory and might unto ages of ages. Amen.