Anne Marie Miller

Author: Anne Marie Miller

  • jesus brand spirituality

    i recently got a copy of jesus brand spirituality, a book by ken wilson, which came out this week. anyone who knows me well knows i love reading, but i read so much, i really only skim books to find nuggets that will stick with me.

    this book, however, had me sucked in from the first couple of pages. technically, it had me sucked in from the title. last weekend, i read it in about three hours and highlighted/underlined so many things in it.

    i’m going to have to do another post just to share all the insights, but i thought i’d share the first chunk with you now.

    i should also say that nobody asked me to review this book…this is straight up out of my own felt need to share this book with you and express that i think it is one of the most important books any church leader or believer could read.

    with that said:

    • we can only hope jesus will continue to challenge every effort to hijack his brand, because he is, and always will be, the main attraction.
    • jesus invited curious onlookers to help him do what he was already doing so that his actions would have greater impact…there were no faith quizzes to pass before you could help out; all it took was the willingness to go somewhere with jesus because you liked what he was doing.
    • jesus was a mystic who prayed with his eyes open
    • the roman empire embraced christian faith as the state-sanctioned religion. this in turn gave birth to the monastic movement as devout individuals sought a more spiritually enlivened form of faith, removed from the trappings of the empire (*my thought: we are on the cusp of this again, with people getting worn out from “trappings of the empire” and are longing for a deeper, more Christ-like faith)
    • since religion can both illuminate and obscure jesus, sometimes we need to dig to find him. a good place to dig is the gospels. here, we find jesus on a mission from god to repair the world. in his glance, we catch an invitation for us to join him.
    • caring for the most vulnerable isn’t a matter of compassion alone; it’s a demand of justice and the true sign of religion.
    • as we engage with the realities that engaged jesus’ attention, we are more likely to encounter him.
    • the gospel is a message with personal, social, and global reach. if it’s not good news at all these levels, it’s not good enough.
    • have we front-loaded people with so many matters of belief that we are, in effect, asking them to swallow the whole package as a pre-requisite for a meaningful engagement with jesus?
    • as a result of our long and productive love affair with rationalism, we tend to suffer from an anemic view of what we call “spiritual experience.”

    anything resonate with you?

    if you’d like to get your own copy…you can get it right here! i seriously can’t tell you how much this book rocks.

  • two sites you should check out

    CompassionBloggers.com – WOW. from the first time brian mentioned the trip to me, to now, three months after returning from uganda, i don’t think anybody really knew the impact blogging could make in releasing children from poverty. well, needless to say, it has blown everybody’s stinkin’ minds.

    shaun (in between wearing a dress and a cute little girly hat, and hanging out with cuban assassins) has been working really hard on this site which connects bloggers and children to the world. the next blogging trip is in november, and he is looking for people to go that want to passionately explore this new road of getting children sponsored and having their own lives changed forever. oh, and you can also post about 2873 cool widgets and stuff on your blog.

    VISIT COMPASSIONBLOGGERS.COM NOW! :)

    WeTheChurch.org – i love prayer. i love praying for others, and hearing how god is working in their lives probably more than anything in the world. it is powerful and transforming.

    my friends chad and scott launched an amazing site called WeTheChurch.org. people submit either prayer or praises — keeping their thoughts within 140 characters like twitter — and from all over the world, people can pray and celebrate with them.

    my favorite part of this site is that i can get new prayers/praises in my twitter feed. let me tell you there is nothing like reading,

    “A friend’s father had a massive stroke today, in ICU, doctors said he has 50/50 chance of surviving, if he does, he’ll have permanent damage”

    in between the daily tweets of “at starbucks” and “my cat barfed up a hairball.” it’s divine. truly.

    CHECK OUT WETHECHURCH.ORG and FOLLOW THEM ON TWITTER.

    =====

    in all the craziness, i have had some great posts brewing in my head this week that i haven’t fleshed out. thanks for hanging in there with me.

    what site or blog have you been digging lately?

  • because it is quiet here

    crystal asked me to guest blog on her blog this week. it has been one of those weeks where i have not been taking very good care of myself…not sleeping great, not eating great, not drinking enough water, and running like a chicken with my head cut off. and it has caught up with me as i am working from home this morning, eating zicam tablets to ward off whatever little bug seems to have latched on to my throat, and taking it a little easier.

    so, instead of coming up with something original, she was gracious enough to let me post something i wrote a while ago.

    you can read it here. it’s about sorrow without despair.

  • quick question!

    how many emails to you send/receive a day (include all – work & personal).

  • The Week of Hot Sex

    what the?

    yep.

    as some of you know, i am buddies with the guys over at deadly viper, and they let me do some cool stuff over there…(like blog…) because as we know, the seven deadly assassins don’t just target guys.

    so next week, we are having a very frank discussion about sex on the deadly viper blog.

    and we want your questions.

    nothing is off limits. at all. don’t believe me? read the post mike has up today.

    feel free to post your questions here or if you’d rather keep it private, feel free to email me at anne {at} flowerdust {dot} net.

    NOW…

    i realize some people think we talk about stuff like this to the extreme level we do for sensationalism or to create a buzz or just to get comments.

    please hear my heart when i say

    THAT IS NOT IT AT ALL.

    we realize that just because we are christians…it doesn’t mean we don’t struggle with things, or wonder things, and wonder what the bible says (or doesn’t say) about sex.

    this will be uncomfortable. even when mike, jud and i were emailing today about next week, i was literally squirming in my seat too. i was uncomfortable. and chances are, if you were to ask me these questions face to face, i’d blush and stutter and sweat.

    but hey, blogging just might allow us to be a little more vulnerable. to have time to process things and respond. and to ask and answer questions appropriately…just a little bit more easily, perhaps.

    (also, feel free to comment anonymously).

    i look forward to the conversation.

  • CAPTION PLEASE!

  • what kind of people are you, anyway?

    occasionally i post the random searches that land people here at flowerdust. without further ado, the searches…and responses.

    pantyhose blog
    you will find none of that here. i haven’t worn pantyhose in…10 years?

    girl dies from spider laying eggs in throat
    that sucks.

    doggie day care hot springs arkansas
    i prefer cats, actually. and really? day care for dogs? i thought that would be called, “a yard and a rabbit?”

    purring cat paws at my face
    that means he loves you.

    why does my cat put his butt up and in my face?
    that means he doesn’t.

    what to do when you live in the middle of nowhere and stay at home with your child
    open a doggie daycare.

    my husband of 38 years ran into his old girlfriend what should i do?
    did she fall down? well, make sure she’s okay! chances are she’s pretty old.

    chicka chicka boom tree shaped cake
    uhhhhhhhhhh………

    sister teaching brother to put on pantyhose first time
    and let’s hope it’s the last time, too.

    evil leprechaun drawing
    like this?

    sister farting on a airplane bathroom
    and how, exactly, would you know?

    any surprises in your stats lately?

  • how can i pray for you?

    this weekend, i am sharing my thoughts on blogging community at the lifechurch.tv internet campus. something i am talking about is how this community here on flowerdust.net has formed over the last few years and how we truly do cover each other in prayer, support, advice, and even discuss the questions of life. we even fight a little bit. all signs of healthy relationships!

    so, with that…i think it’s time to have another post dedicated to how we can pray for each other. i will be checking in over the weekend and praying for you, and encourage you to come back and do the same for others.

    i’ll start.

    chris & i could really use your prayers about our finances. we have cut back so much, but like some of you shared, similarly, we have made poor decisions in our past that we are paying for now. there is also quite a bit of medical debt that we were able to defer but it is now staring at us in the face and is making a tight situation tighter. i could identify with much of what anonymous had to say earlier this week.

    please pray that we are sensitive to areas we are able to cut back on so we can build more margin into that area of our life. and for god’s protection. we don’t have any room for emergencies!

    wow, that was hard to share!!!

    your turn…

  • the decline of christianity??

    it started last week when i was watching the today show. matt lauer was quietly peering through the door of a buddhist temple. the monks, quietly chanting. matt left his shoes at the door to respect the sacred space, and took a step or two in.

    “it’s nothing like anything you’ll ever see,” he said.

    a friend sent me some stats. it confirmed what i was questioning.

    the mainline protestant church is NOT REALLY growing.

    from the report:

    Mainline Protestant denominations continued to decline, according to the 2006 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. The United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the United Church of Christ, all reported slight decreases in membership in 2005. For the first time in many years, the Southern Baptist Convention, a conservative evangelical denomination, also showed a decrease of 1 percent.

    i am by NO MEANS a historian, or a theologian. but from what i’ve read, other, non-protestant religious sects are growing much faster than protestants.

    so then i wonder…what are we doing differently?

    my gut reaction came kind of easy…too easy…so that is why i wanted to run it by you.

    none of these other faiths are really “modernizing church” the way the west is doing it. (and please humor me; this is just me wondering out loud rather than any stance i am taking).

    when we (the modern, western church) are blending into our culture by appearances, other religions still keep to many of their sacred traditions, even to the point where it does not make sense at all.

    but the christian church is barely scrapping by statistically…the growth has come to a near-screeching halt, and less people are hearing about their one true love.

    your thoughts??

    [PS – this is simply going off statistics. this is not a reflection on spiritual growth. we’ll save that topic for a rainy day!]