This Week

This week at praxis...Like Seams on a Baseball

What good is it, 
my brothers and sisters, 
if you say you have faith 
but do not have works? 
Can faith save you? 
If a brother or sister is 
naked and lacks daily food, 
and one of you says to them, 
"Go in peace; keep warm and 
eat your fill," and yet you 
do not supply their bodily needs, 
what is the good of that? 
So faith by itself, 
if it has no works, is dead. 
----James 2:14-17

Let every word
be the fruit
of action and reflection.
Reflection alone
without action
or tending toward it
is mere theory,
adding its weight
when we are 
overloaded
with it already.
Action alone
without reflection
is being busy
pointlessly.
Honor the Word eternal
and speak
to make
a new world possible.
----Helder Camara

The American, when you come to religion, is not a theorizer, 
an Oriental dreamer or a philosophical speculator.  He has little use 
for a religion which is sedate, or ornate, or ceremonial.  He needs
a religion that does something for him and in him, and provides 
something for him to do in the way of helping others.  And it must
 be simple ---- something that he understands and can catch on to 
as he passes by, so to speak.  Push, go, hustle is the spirit of the 
country.  As tacticians, we of The Salvation Army take note of this.  
We have something alive to offer America ----an active, energetic, 
bustling religion.	
----Evangeline Booth

An example: When I lived in New York City, 
I helped start a small homeless shelter 
at my church and spent many nights there.  
This was classic non-consumer behavior, 
robbing me of hours I might have spent in restaurants, 
bars, movie theaters, and boudoirs.  
But of course I did not do it primarily because 
I was a good Christian; I did it because 
I wanted the sense of being a slightly sainted fellow.  
Over time, however, the mere fact of being 
there began to change me in certain small ways.  
It made me feel peaceful to do the small 
daily tasks of that place ---- changing the sheets, 
cooking the soup, delousing the pillowcases.  
It was one of the paths to learning no to resent housework, 
one way to cease the innate consumer 
desire for a maid (or a mother).  
In fact, I sensed, counterintuitively, 
that this work made me happy ---- a revelation 
that would not have surprised any of the 
long chain of gurus and Christs and other 
cranks down through the ages, but that 
certainly shocked my suburban soul.  
Having been exposed to some deeper (if transient) joy, 
I was marginally less of a sucker for 
the various ersatz appeals of popular culture.
----Bill McKibben, "Consuming Nature", in The Sun July 2000
 

Human existence cannot be silent,
nor can it be nourished by false words, 
but only true words, 
with which men and women transform the world.  
To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it...
Human beings are not built in silence, 
but in word, in work, 
in action-reflection. 
----Paulo Freire





Questions:


	Do you agree with the writer of James that saying you have 
	faith without corresponding action or behavior is not enough?
	When have works led to spiritual enlightenment for you, 
	or vice versa?
	praxis means the relationship between action and reflection/faith.  
	How does worship at praxis help you with the praxis of your faith, 
	the action of it, or the relationship between them?
	A baseball's skin is held together by the tension in the seams. 
	How does the tension of faith/works work in your life?  
	How do you know when you have done enough, or believed enough?