Good Friday: DART Stations Of The Cross

DART Stations of the Cross is a community art project which links an ancient spiritual practice with mass transit. It is presented on Good Friday by two emergent churches in the Dallas area, Church in the Cliff and Journey. Participants are encouraged to arrive at the Mockingbird DART station between 6 and 7 pm this Friday, April 2nd and to look for volunteers with black armbands.

Volunteers will provide a set of fourteen devotional cards comprised of original paintings and poetry reflecting on the traditional themes of the Stations of the Cross. Riding from Mockingbird to the end of the line in South Dallas participants are encouraged to flip cards as they pass through the stations and to consider the ways they encounter God’s presence, or absence, in the urban landscape. You will be asked to get off the train three times -- at Pearl, Union, and Ceders-- as a movement of solidarity with Jesus each time he falls. (At all of these stations volunteers will greet you, and at the first one you will have the opportunity to donate to the Stewpot’s Open Studio which supports homeless artists). Once you reach Westmoreland, the last stop on the red line, you will receive final instructions before riding the train in silence back to Mockingbird station.

All are invited to participate! Ride alone or gather with a group of friends. For more information contact Courtney Pinkerton via email at churchinthecliff [at] gmail dot com.

Quick Links:

www.churchinthecliff.org
www.journeydallas.com
www.thestewpot.org/art.asp

Technology & how it affects us: this week at Journey

This Sunday at Journey (March 21st) I'll be leading our discussion on Technology in light of our current Lent Journey. I ran across this funny video that illustrates well a point I'd like to make. The point is that technology does affect us. It affects how our brain processes information. I want to look at the difference between different time frames in history such as; before the printing press society was primarily an Oral one. They told stories. Then with the printing press we had a more left brain linear way of learning by words on pages instead of spoken. Now with technology of images we have a whole new way of processing what we see and hear. I like this video because it shows how our brain works differently when different forms of "technology" (or lack thereof) tells us something. Enjoy...



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Also something we will talk about is a recent trend of "unplugging" from all the technology we are constantly around. I like the take on it from this group:



Hopefully watching these will give you a good little start to spark your thinking as we talk about this subject! See you at journey on Sunday at 5:00pm!

Lent Reflection

Lent reflection by John Loving:

The season of Lent is the on-going and never ceasing practice of Christian reflection of the final weeks of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a season during which those who follow the way of the Lord contemplate the meaning of not only his actions, but of our own. We ruminate over the sayings of Jesus, and ultimately of our own. This is the season of Christian thinking, true Christian thinking, to which all theology must ultimately bow the knee and acknowledge its weakness, its incomplete nature. Christian theology, no matter its content, must recognize that it is hollow until it is informed by this season, in the shadow of both the life of Christ in these weeks, and in the practice of the Church.

But it must also be recognized that the season of Lent is not one only of contemplation. Contemplation is limited in its efficacious results, and the wisest of women and men may be far from being what, according to Christian faith and quite in opposition to ancient Greek (and even current) philosophy, is the perfect and highest life. The season of Lent is not restricted to contemplation, but is also a season of action. This is the season in which the Church, as a whole and in its individual members, either give something up or take something else in practice as a means of remembering the sacrifice of Jesus for the world. But this cannot be the end of our practice. Our practice is ultimately empty, as “filthy rags,” unless it is coupled with acts of graciousness and self-abnegation for the sake and well-being of our neighbors.

Hence the practice of Lent is to practice not only a constant state of remembrance of the grace of our God, but it is also to emulate that grace upon the world. It is to wage war against the selfishness of our being, it is to be willing to save others who need saving, even if they do not realize that they are in need. This is not a call for a militaristic form of evangelization, but it is a call to be always in realization of our shortcomings in the light of the actions of our God, who was crucified not only for our sins, but also the sake of the poor, the captive, oppressed, for whom he became bound in order that they may be free. It is for us, in order to realize the severity of our hubris and to be freed from it, and thus free to be a force that will raise our voices for the freedom of those who are oppressed by the powers of the world.

Lent, then, is not simply the season of remembrance. Lent is not only a time of the year when we give up something for a period of a few weeks. No, Lent is more, much more than that. Lent is the heartbeat of the Christian life, because Lent is the act of repentance and transformation. The death of Jesus of Nazareth is the only way to life, to resurrection, to the world transformed. The season of Lent cannot end on Easter Sunday. Lent continues through the year, and if we do not recognize this fact of the Christian life then we are guilty of the same sort of hard-headedness of those who, in the Jewish Scriptures, did not recognize that the Sabbath was a time to do good. We are commissioned to be transformed in the image of Jesus. This is the purpose of Lent.
Vicit agnus noster, eum sequamur. Our Lamb has conquered; him let us follow.