New Years Party
Our usual party host, James Garcia, and his partner Robert, have invited everyone to his 'Maison de fête' at 4530 St Anne ( the cross street is Olympia ) starting 7.00pm on New Years Eve and going on very late... costumes encouraged and extra drinkies invited. James is perfectly positioned to view the traditional mid city bonfire on Orleans Ave so come one come all!
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Events this week
We are taking a break from bible study over the holiday period, as well as from Choir practice. The first Bible Study of the New Year will be on Wednesday 7th January, and the first Choir rehearsal will be Thursday 8th January.
We will start Choir rehearsals again in the New Year with Ken as our Music Minister (yes, not interim anymore! he has committed to us for a year as music minister) ably assisted by Russ, and requiring EVERYONE to be disciplined and committed to turn up to each rehearsal, or to telephone if unable to make it. Have a good Christmas Break! |
Prayer Requests
I am working to have a 'prayer request page' put on our website, but until then prayer requests may be emailed to the pastor at pastor@bigeasymcc.com
Please remember in your prayers Paris, Lillian, Jessie, Dale and Misty Bohon, who is struggling with illness on many fronts - and requires nothing less than God's miracle. Almighty God, do what is in our best interests - Your Will not ours, but know that we crave the health of these our beloved brothers and sisters. Amen. | |
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 Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn't it, of a long line of proven criminals?
Ogden Nash
The above sentiment is probably held by many people as we approach the start of 2009 - it has not been an entirely good year for anyone with any financial interests, or indeed anyone who bought a house at the height of the housing bubble; I however am going to revel in the fact that 2009 is a year I am looking forward to with the same joy that I look back at 2008. You see, I have no financial investments (nothing to invest!) and did not buy a house, but that is not why I am overjoyed, it is because my life has attained a greater sense of purpose since I was given the opportunity to serve here in New Orleans than I have ever known before.
I have had periods in my life when I was doing a job I enjoyed, I have worked as a garden designer, a hospice chaplain, an artist, and have studied medicine, but I have never had the same sense of spiritual fulfilment I have found here. If I felt this was a personal achievement I wouldn't be writing about it - it would be bragging, but instead I am convinced that this is something freely available to all, and it is this belief that brought me here in the first place. Now, if the mention of the word Christ brings you out in hives stop reading here!
I am unashamedly a Christian minister, and will proclaim with my last breath that Christ stood for universal love and deliverance - and that love and deliverance was proclaimed especially to those who the religious establishment of his day persecuted and ignored. I am also absolutely sure that if that phenomena, that mystery we call Jesus Christ had lived today he would be reaching out into our community as he did to the Samaritans and the eunuchs 2000 years ago.
Understanding the central person of the Christian faith is fraught with problems - we understand there is something extraordinary in the person of Jesus Christ, but because the God part of the 'Man shaped God' that is Jesus is utter mystery to us our language and our expression breaks down when faced with spiritual experience. This does not make that experience invalid; it merely places it so far outside of our usual mundane reference points that we don't know where to put it.
The Christian Gospels are something we have very little experience of today - they are not history. They are not biography, they are epiphany, they are theophany, and they are apocalypse. What all these three words mean is an 'outshining' (Greek epi - phanos) of the nature of God - a glimpse of the mind of the God that created this planet however many billions of years ago. They deal with a truth that is not dependant upon historical details or even biographical accuracy, they are true myth, something life-changing and redemptive, but something that exists within a context that is all their own. They speak to us of a truth that is not dependant upon the sort of corroborative details that a court of law demands; they speak truth in the same way that a parable speaks truth - on many many different levels, not just the surface level.
Why am I getting all preachy? Well, C.S. Lewis said, 'God cannot offer your any happiness or fulfilment apart for himself, because it does not exist'. This means that all true joy, all lasting happiness is nestled within the nature of God, and when we express something of that nature in love, in kindness, in compassion - we gain access to that true lasting happiness. If I counselled any way of life that did not point to that well spring of all joy and fulfilment I would be deceiving people and leading them astray. I must be honest - in the words of a brother MCC pastor of mine - 'You need Jesus!'
There, I have now totally divorced myself from lukewarm, wishy washyness - from the approach to Christianity that thinks that you can only accommodate the GLBT community by diluting the faith until it is thin enough to stretch where you want it to go - I actually believe that it is by strengthening the 'Christ' bit of Christianity that we find love and inclusion, and by abandoning the vast mass of extraneous doctrine and hate mongering add-ons that have formed the 'religion' that calls itself Christianity but in truth has very little to do with Christ.
I hope and pray that I can have the privilege of another year in New Orleans as pastor of this wonderful church, and that 2009 is an even better year than 2008!
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| "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Marianne Williamson. (kept for another week by request) |
Contact Info -
Rev Clinton Crawshaw - Pastor 504-214-4340
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