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Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, I hope persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. Please share this ministry with others, and please return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader, Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
Brian encourages support of the 4-Star Christian organization Compassion, which supports children worldwide; see www.compassion.com .
Note: The following will contain some matters of personal experience. In Christian goodwill, I have detained from mentioning the names of the two church sects, or denominations, and I make no claim that either sect intentionally meant harm or wrong, only a statement of my experience of what did happen, and my appeal from personal experience against it happening to anyone. Those on the other sides, so to speak, would argue their sacral right, but, as I note in the writing, they nor I will decide Truth and Right. Institutions need to be held accountable for their injustices, and the power to act and go on with the debris of persons' lives in the wake does not justify the act of doing it. Misue of power in the churches is as wrong as outside. If my honesty can help one other soul, let it be. Amen.
Scripture
6.5 Everyone liked this idea, and they chose the following: Stephen (a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit), Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas of Antioch (an earlier convert to the Jewish faith).
8 Stephen, a man full of God’s grace and power, performed amazing miracles and signs among the people. 9 But one day some men from the Synagogue of Freed Slaves, as it was called, started to debate with him. They were Jews from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and the province of Asia. 10 None of them could stand against the wisdom and the Spirit with which Stephen spoke.
11 So they persuaded some men to lie about Stephen, saying, “We heard him blaspheme Moses, and even God.” 12 This roused the people, the elders, and the teachers of religious law. So they arrested Stephen and brought him before the high council.
13 The lying witnesses said, “This man is always speaking against the holy Temple and against the law of Moses. 14 We have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy the Temple and change the customs Moses handed down to us.”
15 At this point everyone in the high council stared at Stephen, because his face became as bright as an angel’s.
7.54 The Jewish leaders were infuriated by Stephen’s accusation, and they shook their fists at him in rage. 55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily into heaven and saw the glory of God, and he saw Jesus standing in the place of honor at God’s right hand. 56 And he told them, “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing in the place of honor at God’s right hand!”
57 Then they put their hands over their ears and began shouting. They rushed at him 58 and dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. His accusers took off their coats and laid them at the feet of a young man named Saul.
59 As they stoned him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 He fell to his knees, shouting, “Lord, don’t charge them with this sin!” And with that, he died.
*Selections from Acts 6, 7 (NLT)
Spiritual Teaching
"Father, haven't you any comfort to give me? He was a bad Catholic."
"That's the silliest phrase in common use," Father Rank said.
"The Church says ..."
"I know the Church says. The Church knows all the rules. But it doesn't know what goes on in a single human heart.".
*Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter. In Jon M. Sweeney. Almost Catholic.
* * *
I spoke words in the sanctuary
yesterday, to shouts of "Amen!"
Today, they're only dust particles
blown by the Wind.
There is always room - are at least there had better be - in the Church for the rebel, the heathen, the outcast. Joan [of Arc] was was none of these, but she was what we might call a fugitive. ... Just as there are many in the Church who follow the rules and obey the commandments and listen to those in authority, there must also be room for the prophetic ones among us who appear to be wrong, misguided, headstrong, and foolish but turn out years later to have been right all along. These are the fugitives. God knows we need them!
*Jon M. Sweeney. Almost Catholic.
* * *
The church is fallible on discerning the Voice of God from the voice of orthodoxy, tradition, and rules. The Voice of God has no period, only commas or other grammatical devices that keep revelation open, radically open.
Likewise, the church tends to feel threatened by the person who carries a spiritual authority but does not fit preconceived ideas of truth and rightness. Possibly one lesson from the Life of Jesus is God has no priority on appearing right, true, or traditional to the Church, a religious sect, or anyone.
* * *
Joan of Arc was a teenage girl who heard voices, she claimed, of an angel and a "dead" saint. She said they told her to fight the British for her homeland France.
Born about 1412, this adolescent girl soldier led the French troops into Orleans. The French, under her leadership, repelled the British near the end of the Hundred Years' War.
Largely because of Joan, Charles VII, the French King, was coronated, and Joan was well pleased. Yet, only two years later, Joan, now age nineteen, was charged with heresy and burned at the stake by British priests of the Roman Catholic Church in Rouen - in modern-day France. This was 1431.
"Jesus" was the last word on Joan's lips, as the flames rose up and engulfed her body. Her ashes were scattered in the River Seine.
Still, within days talk of Joan's saintliness spread from persons who witnessed her trial and those who interrogated her unfairly. Three of her accusers, among them a bishop, Pierre Cauchon, died of varied diseases within weeks. Within twenty-four years, Joan's case was reopened by the pope. The conviction was overturned - too late for Joan. About four hundred years later, the same Church that instigated the burning of Joan of Arc, canonized her as a saint.
* * *
In the preface to George Bernard Shaw's play Saint Joan, Shaw refers to Joan as "the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages" and "one of the first Protestant martyrs." Writes Sweeney, "That last phrase has always rankled Catholics, particularly since Joan's canonization in 1920; but Shaw's point is that in her free-spirited defense of individual conscience over Church, she was indeed perhaps the first Protestant martyr."
* * *
I have left two denominations over the issue of fit. The Church, generally, does not well tolerate the mis-fit, what Sweeney refers to as a fugitive.
Before leaving the first, I was told by the dean of the college where I taught: "Brian, there's not much of a place in ... life for an open-minded person like you." Interesting, meaning: "You may be seeking truth, you may be called and gifted, you may be under the anointing of the Spirit, but, you don't fit in this sect."
Before leaving my last denomination, after ten years of service, a committee at the district level affirmed a message to me. I sat before the representatives of the committee, and heard, essentially, as I sat stunned: "We affirm your gifts and calling, but we feel you do not fit in .... We would like to think you will find a home in another denomination." I never did fit. I did not intend to fit. And what is the fit, anyway? Like, where is the box we are to think outside of? But, again, the Church: "It does not matter if you are a lover of truth, a lover of people, a lover of Christ, a called and gifted and anointed person and pastor, we send you on your way, you do not fit." I never received a word of "Thanks" in that meeting, after that day, or during my remaining three months of pastoral work, for the years of service, from the hierarchy at the district or conference level. Not one cleric called to offer any encouragement or affirmation. I was simply dropped by the wayside, a not-fit- like a leper.
Possibly, in light of the above two cases, I could rightly write something. Brian must be "one of the queerist fish among the eccentric worthies." If so, "Amen!" Spirit decides, and a committee does not, even as a bishop or a pope does not - no ecclesiastical person or group does. Either we serve the free Pursuit of Truth, are we are slaves to lies and injustice - even if we surround our hypocrisy in the gleaming gold of piety, and call it a committee decision or an edict. The word of an edict or committee in itself says nothing more of truth than the willingness to embrace the Wisdom that at first appears un-fit.
In the first case, I resigned my professorship and lost my home, and, eventually, shortly afterward, a marriage of sixteen years. In the second, I lost my pastorate and a home, and have ended up living with friends who are giving me a place to live until I get full-time work.
Thankfully, I have not endured what Stephen or Joan of Arc endured from the "Church" - death. And I do not claim any special status as a misfit. I am one among many who have struggled to find a "fit" in a Church that often appears more interested in a fit than in the heart of the person. And these misfits, these fugitives within the Church, or outside looking in, may be the only hope for the Church to survive as a vital presence in the West. Silence your prophets - even though they appear odd and recalcitrant-, and you silence your viability for the hundreds of thousands who have no interest - and need not - in a Church that repulses the un-fit.
* * *
What happens when a church sect refuses to include and, possibly at times, tolerate, the dissident? At worst, that sect is signing its own death notice. At least, it is showing that its view of things, and how God should work, is more important than allowing Wisdom to prove, as always, that in its very appearance as foolishness, Such is really Wisdom.
The person of Truth may not show up wearing the garb of orthodoxy, or the attire of the tradition. Yet, his foolishness may bring to shame, and will one day, the wisdom of the religious who once judged him or her a misfit.
Blessed are the spiritual misfits in the Church, or outside It,
They fit with God..
19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As the Scriptures say,
“He traps the wise
in the snare of their own cleverness.”
* I Corinthians 3.19 (NLT)
Responding
1) Have you ever been treated as a misfit by a religious group? Why? Share what the experience was like for you.
2) Do you know of anyone who had a heart for God and, yet, was judged unworthy for inclusion by the Church or in a capacity of lay, licensed, or ordained ministry? What qualities proved to you he or she was a truly godly person - a fit with God?
3) In what ways might divine wisdom appear as foolishness to many in the Church?
4) Was Jesus a fit or misfit religiously? Explain your response.
* * *
*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, with friends and under a vow of simplicity. Brian is an ecumenical-interspiritual leader, who chooses not to identify with any group, and renounces all titles of sacredness that some would apply to him, but seeks to be open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He affirms that all spiritual paths lead ultimately back to Jesus Christ. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*Contact the above email to book Brian for preaching, Spiritual Direction, retreats, workshops, animal blessing services, house blessings, or other spiritual requests. You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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