Abba by any name at all or no name is within us
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Abba by any name at all or no name is within us; at hand in all we are and do. Abba is the Word of Reality, the one who was in the beginning. One we experience as conscience and as confidence, as strength and power to change, as deep internal liberty.
The strength to be at peace. Forgiving ourselves and all others, and receiving our forgiveness in return.
Note only as we give will we receive.
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If our words reflect our obeisance to external principalities and powers of violence, they are neither whole nor holy. They are detritus we have not expelled.
If Abba goes unknown, unheard, unheeded, then Abba’s will on earth remains undone.
The failings and shortcomings of our world are the result of our individual and communal failure to seek out Abba within and to know and follow Abba’s way.
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Our task is to spread the nonviolent culture of Abba this world round and free humanity from its dead gods.
Any god who is claimed to be on anyone’s side is by definition dead.
This is not merely a homiletical task. It also a matter-of-fact profession one to another.
We profess by being the people who do not fight. Or, better said, whose fight is does not rachet up death.
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The sources of Abba’s Way include the way that Jesus taught and embodied, not merely what we call the Sermon on the Mount, but the implications of the parables and the embodiment of the Way in actions.
Most particularly the Way is parsed by seeing the particular miracles attributed to Jesus as the “blasphemy” we are called to practice in order to bring heaven and earth into conjunction.
The healings, excoriated as the very worst presumption, are the precise grace vouchsafed to all who have discovered and made available the abundance of truly healing “miracles” — the best of “medicine”.
The feedings that gave rise to disbelief are merely signs and seals of our evolving capacity to bring an end to poverty by acting responsibly rather than in the heat of Abba-less violence.
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The sources of the Way include all narratives and texts that manifest our Abba-less condition and all narratives and texts that suggest that we are never Abba-less.
We cannot kill Abba.
Abba will live in us even if we or the world around us has done the very worst to seek to extinguish that light.
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Abba’s Way optimally requires requires rights and democracy.
In other words the environment where conflict and creative resolution of differences can take place without becoming warfare.
The extension of rights is ever and always Abba’s Way.
The use of nonviolence not merely as a tactic but as a deep inner commitment has ever and always been essential to the spread of rights and representational governance.
Nonviolence is what Jesus practiced.
When he speaks of wars to come he merely reflects the prophetic understanding that we will despise and reject Abba’s way for a very simple reason. Contrary to the good news of this Way first preached by Jesus, we will not accept that the realm of Abba is at hand. We will therefore not repent. We will therefore not experience it. And we will therefore not believe.
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We blaspheme if we presume to speak for Abba or if we claim Abba to be on one side or another. Abba is on no side and on all sides.
And as for us, we must speak for ourselves. We speak the peaceful and upbuilding word.
We speak the hard repenting word.
We say we are a spectrum, not an either-or.
We express our thanks.
We say these things because we have done the simple things that Jesus says to do. Heard. Turned. Received. Believed.
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Abba is who Abba is and who Abba will be. We approach Abba within as Jesus taught. As spectrum people who know with Jesus none is good save Abba alone.
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Abba has power to heal and mend.
We receive Abba as our good friend.
Better the ill person knows this than to be the recipient of others’ prayers.
It is your Abba within who can heal you. The quiet knowledge and experience that this is so is worth 1000 prayers sent from beyond.
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Abba within us causes us to repent, turn, believe. This is because what good conscience we have is Abba prodding us.
If we feel real guilt it is Abba prompting us to see how our acts kill.
If we turn away from one thing or another, it is Abba helping us to turn.
If we believe the things that Jesus told us, Abba is the Spirit within us buttressing our minds and activating out repentance and uplifting us as we seek to travel Abba’s Way.
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Abba is no hostile outside enemy who sends harsh bolts of angry lightning down. Abba is close as breath and whispered truth.
The traditional gods of vengeance, hallowed in texts that were created by us, are sad projections of those who would invade the freedom of others and proclaim an exclusionary deity that has nothing to do with the Abba that Jesus taught, exemplified and vindicated.
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Abba was once the secret Jesus shared, though known to poet prophets from the start.
Abba bears abundance, untold power.
Abba is like the mustard seed.
Abba is like the pearl of great price.
Abba is light that seeks to be your beacon to the world.
Abba is what your eyes reveal when you look on the world with love. And Abba is the same light in another’s eyes..
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Abba leaves us no hiding place from choice: Repent, reject, recoil from this world’s show. Your choice is not to let Abba in or no. Abba is in already.
