This is why I check in on the Real Live Preacher

The Real Live Preacher has this gem today: "I want you to know that Matthius is the real deal. Passionate, caring, curious, full of endearing doubts and struggles. He's a serious bible student and a deep thinker. He loves God with all his heart and wants to find the right path in this life.

What else do you need from a minister, really?

So of course he will find it spectacularly hard to find a place in the Church. We mostly like our ministers slick and sure, not earthy and real. That's a fact. That's why Matthius will have a struggle.

I pray to God he makes it because we need him. The church needs him. The world needs him."

You may want to go on over and read the whole thing, but what a truth well spoken. I like the comment about "slick and sure" versus "earthy and real". It's another way of saying we fall too easily for flash over substance.  ⊕

Healing On The Fast Track

About.com has an interesting guest article today called Healing On The Fast Track: "Most healing modalities engage just one or two levels of consciousness to support healing: talk therapy works mostly with the mind; energy healing like Reiki works mostly with energy; and many forms of body work focus entirely on physical structures.

But the whole person includes all of these levels of consciousness and more. How can the whole person be engaged for faster and more profound healing? By using subtle movement explorations and guided awareness, you can engage all these levels of consciousness to heal quickly. There are four keys to doing this:

1. Quality of movement


2. Intention and attention


3. Exploration of barriers


4. Engaging your whole body and whole being"

The article goes on to explore this in more detail and gives a couple of examples to make things clearer. I thought the author's blend was an interesting format for thinking about healing.  ⊕

Free Will, God and a message to man

Real Live Preacher points to a blog with an ongoing cartoon strip called "Augustine Interviews God". RLP posts one cartoon as an example. The topic swings around to Free Will.   ⊕

Caught in the Free Will meme

I am back from an amazing long weekend retreat in Banff where I completed my Healing Touch Level 4 course. The course was great and packed with information, experiencing and sharing. All of us there came away with many wonderful memories and some profound realizations that will no doubt stay with us for a very long time.

Personally, I am intent on completing the certification process. That means dealing with a timeline and a myriad of practical details. As I look forward from here this morning, I find that the details of my everyday existence are intruding like they are wont to do. I am not as optimistic this morning as I was during the week.

I can feel a cold coming on so that’s probably part of the problem. Somewhat incongruous that: I go to a retreat with healers and come away sick. I suppose it only goes to show that the old saying is true: you can be healed without being cured.

I left the world to its own devices for the weekend and it managed fine without me. (Not that I expected otherwise.) Checking in with the world again this morning and being in the mood that I am, I am curious to notice that I keep stumbling over references to Free Will. It’s like a meme unfolding before my eyes. Looks like I’m getting some help from unexpected quarters. Nice. I’ll share the links in other posts today. I’ve already done one that I called “Free will or free won't?”.
  ⊕

Free will or free won't?

You should head over to the Inveterate Bystander. Check out a post from March 15 on Benjamin Libet and some fascinating fascinating studies: "With electrodes connected to their wrists and scalps, his subjects had brain waves recorded as they watched a clock with a spot revolving faster than a second hand. Like you, they were told to flex their wrists spontaneously. They were also told to note the spot's position at the time they decided to do so. They stated where they saw it, and Libet correlated their observations with data recorded by electrodes at wrist and scalp.

Libet measured three factors: the action's beginning, the moment of decision, and the Readiness Potential, which began a certain brain wave pattern. This pattern involves the brain's plans to carry out an action.

Okay, so what did he find out? This. The action was recorded as taking place before the decision to act"

I believe this phenomenon is what Deepak Chopra refers to as "non-local" events.  ⊕