April 22nd 2007 Liminality: Rites of Cultural Passage Message #2

Rites of Passage are potent experiences in pre-industrialized countries. They are things like coming-of-age moments, designed to teach people about who they really are. At Westwinds, we see Rites of Passage as rituals through which we are detached from our old lives. Once separated, we spend time being transformed. The conclusion of the “rite” is the reintroduction into our old lives as our new selves.

April 15th 2007 Liminality: Personal Transition Message #1

There are times in life when we begin to realize that we simply must do something different–we cannot continue to live this way. There are other times in life when someone else makes that decision for us – either through divorce or separation, dismissal from work, or interpersonal isolation. Today we’ll talk about what happens next.

April 8th 2007 Window in the Sky

Despite his proclamation that the temple would be destroyed and then rebuilt in three days, nobody really expected Jesus to come back from the dead. Likewise, nobody really gets what that must have meant to the faithful followers of the two-day-dead Jesus. Even George Romero would’ve been hard pressed to know in advance what Jesus would be like after death.

So what would he have been like? Did his experiences of after-death change him? Was he still the same Jesus? Or, is this the new Jesus?

For us, Easter is the proof within the pudding of Christian spirituality. It is the “so, there” of eight millennia of Judeo-Christian theology. It is the promise God has kept, and the promise God has made for tomorrow.