The 4th Dimension

I'm going on a centering prayer retreat this week at Sacred Heart Monastery in Cullman, Alabama. It is called an 8-day intensive in centering prayer. I have practiced this ancient form of Christian prayer for the past two years and have found it to be transformative.

Here is a quote from a source book for centering prayer, Thomas Keating's book, Open Mind, Open Heart:

The union established during prayer has to be integrated with the rest of reality. The presence of God should become a kind of fourth dimension to all of life. Our threedimensional world is not the real world because the most important dimension is missing; namely, that from which everything that exists is emerging and returning in each micro-cosmic moment of time. It is like adding a sound tract to a silent movie. The picture is the same, but the sound track makes it more alive. The contemplative state is established when contemplative prayer moves from being an experience or series of experiences to an abiding state of consciousness. The contemplative state enables one to rest and act at the same time because one is rooted in the source of both rest and action.

Youth Advisory Delegates (YADs)

Meredith Carlson sent this photo of the Youth Advisory Delegates at the 2006 General Assembly. Ginny Monteith is towards the top in the center.

 

Implementation trumps Ideas

This graphic comes from Creating Passionate Users

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Technology Usage Stats

gsiemens in elearnspace wites:

Reading the most recent BusinessWeek, I encountered some intriguing statistics:

* Last year we produced more transistors than grains of rice (and surprisingly, we can produce a transistor at a lower cost than a grain of rice)

* Over 2 billion mobile phones are in use worldwide, compared with 820 million PC's

* Online activity is fairly level until the 65+ age category, where it drops from 74% to 32% (the highest is the 19-29 age group, at 88%)

* In the US, the size of the blog-reading audience is at 20% of the size of the audience of newspaper readers.

1:01 PM, Sunday Jun 18 2006 links ? BozPage River

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PC(USA) receives historic $150 million gift for church growth

A Colorado businessman and elder has contributed a historic $150 million gift to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) aimed at helping presbyteries start new churches, transform struggling congregations and develop new racial-ethic congregations. The money from Stanley W. Anderson of Denver, CO, for the new Loaves and Fishes Church Growth Fund will be distributed to presbyteries through grants ranging from $250,000 to $1 million each. Presbyteries will be required to apply for the grants and will have to match a portion of it. [Read more]

PC(USA) - 217th General Assembly (2006)

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