Lessons for TSA from a Spider Crab...!

I can't imagine there are many that don't enjoy sitting and marveling at what the BBC serve up on a Sunday evening with the amazing Sir David Attenborough! Octopus is definitely my new favourite cephalopod!

But the spider crabs on this week were equally as stunning. Their gathering in extreme numbers to molt their shells struck me as being a rather pertinent lesson. Thousands merging together to support and protect one another as they lost their shell and the soft shell beneath hardened. Support for one another at a time of extreme vulnerability.

I didn't think too much more about this until my daily dose of Rohr popped into my inbox today. I read how Episcopal Bishop Mark Dyer referred to 'recurring periods of upheaval in the church as giant “rummage sales” in which the church rids itself of what is no longer needed and rediscovers treasures it had forgotten'. Rohr continues by quoting Phyllis Tickle who suggested in the process of building necessary structure in institutions, we eventually “elaborate, encrust, and finally embalm them with the accretion of both our fervor and our silliness. At that point there is no hope for either religion or society, save only to knock the whole carapace off ourselves and start over again.” 

 I wonder what those spiders feel like once they shed their shells - I bet they feel brilliant!

Comments

Eric walker said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
5:44 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit of sally bashing....

Came across a good bit of Sally bashing over at salvationsoldiers I have to say we try and make sure that everything we raise goes into projects that build local community in Poplar but hopefully if you read this blog you get that sense anyway.
Read more

Lost Voices of Mission...Fred Brown

Image
Along the world famous Oxford street in London's Westend; nestled in among the classy frontage of designer shops there is almost an unnoticeable, unimpressive wooden door. It is more or less alongside The Regent Hall's main entrance onto the busyness of Oxford Street. People pass the wooden door oblivious to the equally unimpressive wooden steps that go up three storey's to what was Regent Hall's youth club. When I was 10 I played on these bare wooden steps totally unaware of the significance behind and upon which I played. Many years later I discovered a university youth work course - as an induction to Youth Work - stopped outside this insignificant wooden door to point out that Youth Work as we know it in the UK started behind this door. ...whether that be the surbanite flower people that flooded the Westend to express their free love; or the hard core drug community this unimpressive wooden door became the 'portal' that blurred encounter between church an...
Read more

Types of Christian Spirituality...

Image
It is easy to think and to limit ourselves to a single approach to Christian spirituality. A 'if it works for me it should work for you approach' tends to narrow our appreciation of other ways which actually impoverishes our experience of spirituality. Urban T. Holmes has developed a means of exploring spirituality and helps develop an appreciation through discovering links between spirituality, temperament and predisposition. The diagram illustrates his ideas together with potential inherent dangers. The vertical continuum speaks and helps us understand our relational orientation to God. This ranges from engaging with God through understanding and theological process to a more emotive response. Horizontally speaks of a persons preferred means of pursuing the spiritual life. Kataphtic speaks of affirmation and the need of something tangible in an individuals spirituality- this may take the form of worship, art, even imagination with the use of metaphors, symbols and images play...
Read more