Sunday, May 28, 2006

Love, Forgiveness and Sleeping in Church

My favorite ancient wise man is Abba Poemen; why? The stories about him are almost always about grace lived out in our day-to-day contact with other people. Religious leaders are generally too happy to persecute and not nearly happy enough to practice grace; Poemen is consistent in resisting judgementalism and embrace acts of grace, but he never takes such grace as freedom do mistreat others.

An Ancient Story:

Some old men went to Abba Poemen and asked, "If we see brothers sleeping during the common prayer, should we wake them?"

Abba Poemen answered, "If I see my brother sleeping, I put his head on my knees and let him rest."

Then one old man spoke up, "And how do you explain yourself before God?"

Abba Poemen replied, "I say to God: You have said, 'First take the beam out of your own eye and then you will be able to remove the splinter from the eye of your brother.' "

Comments:
you totally just stole The Airplane Theory from me... jerk.
 
The Airplane Theory where the Egyptians had working aircraft?
 
BTW - I steal a lot of ideas from you.
 
I steal a lot of ideas from you too, sunshine.
 
ยก

I just have to try this sarcasm mark thing out...
 
Raj, I hope you aren't calling me sunshine.

Em, I expect you to use it properly and often ;)
 
You better believe it! Oh, and Emily, you're wrong!
 
sweet story man, is there a book of them it comes from?
 
apparently raj steals ideas from lots of people.

ps raj, just as a pre-emptive strike. you're wrong.
 
Jared, the best collection that I have found is The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Cistercian studies 59) (also in ACU's library. You can, however, find many of the sayings of the Desert Fathers (and repottedly Mothers, though I have yet to find these) online. I think that there is also a dissertation, available for free through ACU's library webpage, in the Digital Dissertations full- text resources (the translation seemed rather archaic to me).
 
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