My public ministry was today finding every "NAR" figure and institution on Twitter I could and posting this brief Biblical critique:

"Are you on the 7 Mountains path of goats or the Matthew 7 sheep situated by Jesus' sermon?"

https://douglasolds.blogspot.com/2023/09/you-on-7m-path-of-goats-or-sheep.html

from Kafka's Blue Octavo, 4th Notebook.

On February 10, 1918, he writes (in Max Brod's translation)

"Peace Ukraine."

The following day, "Peace Russia."

Right makes write.

Later: "Religions get lost as people do."

Like when they choose and arm "lesser evils" to keep their own deadening boundaries. Romans 12:17-21

Last Monday

I wake with your hip docked to mine.

I push on it, my oar a palm at its gunwale, my ear its oak,

aware of the ripples of your breathing

I push on it more, outward like a canoe toward deeper waves

To flow into your body, tenting your knees, your ankles lathed staves

Singing you into a sunflower turn to mix with warmth, to partner to it and guide me by its coursings.

Your eyelids are gluey, but your smile dreams at me, into me

Finding its haven my hands
still pushing you into the deeper

The delicacy of morning’s understories

And the claim they make on tapping, kneading, urgent

Genius of waters’ summoning g(r)asp

I posted a negative book review on Amazon of a book that proposed a theology of the temple and its priesthood under the guise of a "tabernacle narrative."

I have expanded that review greatly (30 pages), documenting the significant errors of its exegesis, methodology, and hermeneutics.
"My money quote" at the end of the introduction reads:

"While I am hardpressed to find any positive contributions to Christian theology in this work, it did lead me to a deeper exploration of Anderson's cited Biblical sources and to reveal how a history of religion hermeneutic underlying their consideration leads to the institutionalization of boundary making."

If this is your kind of theological read, I link it here: https://douglasolds.blogspot.com/2024/02/review-anderson-gary-a.html

For a book I felt called to review for its noteworthiness (in a negative sense), it posted today on Amazon.

https://amazon.com/.../ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv...

Part of my Lenten Discipline will be to continue adding to that review on my blog with more detail as Holy Week approaches.

“Why Not Joseph and David?”
A Sermon for
Transfiguration Sunday February 11, 2024 https://douglasolds.blogspot.com/2024/02/why-not-joseph-and-david-sermon-by-rev.html

"The Gospel Sung In Christmas Carols"

A Seasonal Service for December 24, 2023

https://douglasolds.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-gospel-sung-in-christmas-carols.html

"Thursday before Christmas, 2023" (Poem)
https://douglasolds.blogspot.com/2023/12/before-christmas-2023-rev.html

Woke up this morning with a paragraph I wish I had put in the introduction to my book:

"A definition for the existential idea of chivalry in this book intended to assuage resistance to anachronistic readings--to frame it in contemporary crisis from our feeling dumped into a world without meaning:

"Modern Chivalry is the chaplain's Dasein--her awareness of the ontic shroud of death and her attendance to that of her charges. Necessary for her re-robing work (see chap. 6) is her understanding and habituation by virtue of the Christian gospel. And when appropriate, its gentling articulations."

sermon: "Trustees of Attendant Grace: Stewards No Longer!"

https://douglasolds.blogspot.com/2023/10/trustees-of-attendant-grace-stewards-no.html

The call to lay down lines of impermissibility inside violent hegemony’s crimes to then justify another round of escalation. As a Christian, I am not allowed to weigh the scales of evil, certainly not to justify greater evils. I may only call for peace, lament and pray for grace.

I read an article like this and as a Pastoral Theologian I recognize the Teleology of Repair (and the provisionality of phenomena) and I shudder with awe.
https://shorturl.at/ansNV

"Are you on the 7 Mountains path of goats or 7 Matthew sheep situated by Jesus' sermon?"

https://douglasolds.blogspot.com/2023/09/you-on-7m-path-of-goats-or-sheep.html…

#Dominionism #7MountainMandate #7MountainsMandate #ChristianNationalism

Who for Plato’s sacked harbor intend
cicada-sanded and vinegar air expect,
Against grace’s headwinds vainly beat
Who by red morning vapors from a box to box, note:
The lily dances with eagles while dandelions denude golden borders
like choral blizzards
Relentless, embracing the voided sediment
with nonpareils, the sap sparking new ages
That melt into eternity bearing nuggeted angelic settlement,
Shoveling away from the paths of children drifts of slave-fueled sentiment

when you abandon Christological orthopraxy (virtue, SoM, and Golden Rule) in life to replace it with a doctrinal ideology and ideology of doctrine, you have lost both transcendence and immanence; you have totally lost [adapting Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Francis of Rome, August 2023]

I was told yesterday by a visiting congregant that PSA "IS the gospel." I disagreed, and she retorted, "you're wrong!" and stormed off not willing to engage. The only threat I posed was to her certainty. In reality, her understanding was of the gospel of Caiaphas: John 11:49-50

My audio sermon this morning, "The Call OF Blood Heals the Call FOR Blood."
https://douglasolds.blogspot.com/2023/08/sermon-by-rev.html

Nostalgia looking for traitors is the ash heap of propaganda.

"Two Contrasting Structures of 'The Two Meanings of Liberty:' An Essay on Political Theology”

which I wrote as a test of ChatGPT 4.0.

Perhaps needless to say, it failed to characterize my essay on its own terms, proposing red herrings along the way. As I identified them, it repeatedly offered boiler plate apologies. In the process it came up with its own invidious alternative structure, "conditional liberty" monitoring social conditions constantly adjusted to a predetermined (by elites) end and overseen by oligarchic human circuit breakers. In short: hegemony.

[DM me for the transcript]

https://douglasolds.blogspot.com/2023/08/two-contrasting-structures-of-two.html

an excerpt on the theological allegory of dance from a relatively neglected 18th C philosopher, J.G. Herder whom I am researching for a book on the Protestant Enlightenment.https://douglasolds.blogspot.com/2023/08/kinesthetics-of-dance-as-theological.html