Open Hand - April Calendar of Events

WORSHIP: Sunday April 11, 6:30pm 3174 N. Delaware Street

GATHERING: Sunday April 25, 6:30pm Reynolds Home 3173 N. Delaware Street

CRASH CHAPEL PRAYER: Each Friday morning, 6:45 - 8:45am 3174 N. Delaware Street

CONVERSATION with Bob Hunter: Friday April 30th, 4:30 - 7:00pm Reynolds Home

MONDAY DINNER at Carley's place: Monday April 12 & April 26, 7:00pm 3174 N. Delaware Street

Passover Seder celebration - Monday 7:00pm

Please join our Open Hand community for a Passover Seder celebration, Monday the 29th, 7:00pm - at Carley's home - 3174 N. Delaware Street. Pitch-in meal included. Shalom.

Money..money..money..money.........MONEY !

MONEY - exploring the relationship between money and anxiety.

Join us Friday afternoon, March 26th from 4:30 - 7:00pm, for the beginning of an ongoing conversation with Bob Hunter. Curb your anxiety at the door of the Reynolds home - 3173 N. Delaware Street. Refreshments included of course!

• Money as a generator of anxiety
• Money as an attempt to bind anxiety
• Money as an expression of anxious reactivity
• Money and anxious families

Find Money..money..money..money..........MONEY! on YouTube the next day.

Saint Patrick's Breastplate

St. Patrick helped the Irish transmute their pagan virtues of loyalty, courage, and generosity into the Christian equivalents of faith, hope and charity.

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through belief in the threeness,

Through confession of the oneness

Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today

Through the strength of Christ's birth with his baptism,

Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,

Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,

Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.

I arise today

Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,

In obedience of angels,

In the service of archangels,

In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,

In prayers of patriarchs,

In predictions of prophets,

In preaching of apostles,

In faith of confessors,

In innocence of holy virgins,

In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today

Through the strength of heaven:

Light of sun,

Radiance of moon,

Splendor of fire,

Speed of lightning,

Swiftness of wind,

Depth of sea,

Stability of earth,

Firmness of rock.

I arise today

Through God's strength to pilot me:

God's might to uphold me,

God's wisdom to guide me,

God's eye to look before me,

God's ear to hear me,

God's word to speak for me,

God's hand to guard me,

God's way to lie before me,

God's shield to protect me,

God's host to save me

From snares of devils,

From temptations of vices,

From everyone who shall wish me ill,

Afar and anear,

Alone and in multitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,

Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul

Against incantations of false prophets,

Against black laws of pagandom,

Against false laws of heretics,

Against craft of idolatry,

Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,

Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.

Christ to shield me today

Against poison, against burning,

Against drowning, against wounding,

So that there may come to me abundance of reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,

Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through belief in the threeness,

Through confession of the oneness,

Of the Creator of Creation.

T.G.I.Spring - Open Hand Schedule of Events

Please join us for our OPEN HAND Spring events:

1. Monday the 15th - 'African Feast' Pitch-in dinner at Carley and Eric's house - 3174 N. Delaware Street 7:00pm

2. Wednesday the 17th - St. Patrick's Day beer and bonfire in the Reynolds side yard - 3173 N. Delaware Street 6:30pm into the night

3. Friday the 19th - Crash Chapel Prayers - 7:00am - 3174 N. Delaware Street

4. Sunday the 21st - Open Hand pitch-in gathering and Equinox Celebration at the Reynolds home - 3173 N. Delaware Street 6:00pm

5. Friday the 26th - Open Hand - conversation with Bob Hunter - time and place to be announced.

Everyone Welcome !

The Black Hole - Hell is a tourniquet

"THEN THERE IS, after all, " said John, "a black hole such as my old Steward described to me." "I do not know what your Steward described. But there is a black hole." And still the Landlord is "so kind and good?" "I see that you have been among the Enemy's people. In these latter days there is no charge against the Landlord which the Enemy brings so often as cruelty. That is just like the Enemy, for he is, at bottom, very dull. He has never hit on the one slander against the Landlord which would be really plausible. Anyone can refute the charge of cruelty. If he really wants to damage the Landlord's character, he has a much stronger line than that to take. He ought to say that the Landlord is an inveterate gambler. That would not be true, but it would be plausible, for there is no denying that the Landlord does take risks."

"But what about the charge of cruelty?" "I was just coming to that. The Landlord has taken the risk of working the country with free tenants instead of slaves in chain gangs; and as they are free there is no way of making it impossible for them to go into forbidden places and eat forbidden fruits. Up to a certain point he can doctor them even when they have done so, and break them of the habit. But beyond that point - you can see for yourself. A man can go on eating mountain-apple so long that nothing will cure his craving for it; and the very worm it breeds inside him will make him more certain to eat more. You must not try to fix the point somewhere."

"But surely the Landlord can do anything?" "He cannot do what is contradictory; or in other words, a meaningless sentence will not gain meaning simply because someone chooses to prefix to it the words, "the Landlord can." And it is meaningless to talk of forcing a man to do freely what a man has freely made impossible for himself.

"I see. But at least these poor creatures are unhappy enough; there is no need to add a black hole." "The Landlord does not make the blackness. The blackness is there already wherever the taste of mountain-apple has created the vermiculate will. What do you mean by a hole? Something that ends. A black hole is blackness enclosed, limited. And in that sense the Landlord has made the black hole. He has put into the world a WORST THING. But evil of itself would never reach a worst; for evil is fissiparous and could never in a thousand eternities find any way to arrest its own reproduction. If it could, it would be no longer evil; for Form and Limit belong to the good. The walls of the black hole are the tourniquet on the wound through which the lost soul else would bleed to a death she never reached. It is the Landlord's last service to those who will let him do nothing better for them."

HUMAN CHOICE - then the Guide sang:

Nearly they stood who fall;

Themselves as they look back

See always in the track

The one false step, where all

Even yet, by lightest swerve

Of foot not yet enslaved,

By smallest tremor of the smallest nerve,

Might have been saved.

Nearly they fell who stand,

And with cold after fear

Look back to mark how near

They grazed the Siren's land,

Wondering that subtle fate,

By threads so spidery fine,

The choice of ways so small, the event so great,

Should thus entwine.

Therefore oh, man, have fear

Lest oldest fears be true,

Lest thou too far pursue

The road that seems so clear,

And step, secure, a hair's

Breadth past the hair-breadth bourne,

Which being once corssed forever unawares,

Denies return.

THE PILGRIMS REGRESS By C.S. Lewis

St. Patrick's Day - Search for God & Guinness !

Join us Wednesday the 17th, for our Open Hand St. Patrick's Day celebration - bonfire and beer in the side yard of the Reynolds home - 6:30pm - midnight.....cheers, O'

I lost my wife again !

Ann is in Hawaii this week with Janet and YWAM Kona......Peter is in NYC this weekend visiting John, Nick is headed to New Orleans and Annie ships out to Mexico with 12 ZTA's . That leaves me home alone in Indy - dog sitting for spring break.......!

UNDERSKIN - Naked Body Transport

Why I Am Not a Socialist

If I were a poet writing an Utopia, if I were a magician waving a wand, if I were a God making a Planet, I would deliberately make it a world of give and take, rather than a world of sharing. I do not wish Jones and Brown to share the same cigar box; I do not want it as an ideal; I do not what it as a very remote ideal. I do not want it at all. I want Jones by one mystical and godlike act to give a cigar to Brown, and Brown by another mystical and godlike act to give a cigar to Jones. Thus it seems to me instead of one act of fellowship (of which the memory would slowly fade), we should have a continual play and energy of new acts of fellowship keeping up the circulation of society. Now I have read some tons of Socialist eloquence in my time, but it is literally true that I have never seen any serious allusion to or clear consciousness of this creative altruism of personal giving.

G.K. Chesterton 1908

Open Hand Lent Liturgy - The Courage to Say No

St. Patrick casting out Satan........by Derek Powell

"When Satan speaks in angel tones and sanctifies the road to ruin; if on that path we're asked to go, Oh Jesus, give us then the courage to say No. No" John L. Bell The IONA Community

Please join us this Sunday evening at 5:45pm for our Open Hand Lent liturgy at 3174 N. Delaware Street. (Baby-sitting provided)

Berserk Viking & Celtic Warriors

Berserk - the Viking and Celtic warriors who went "berserk" - (bear-shirted) - made a journey to the transcendent world, from which they eventually returned after warfare...and then men and women of the tribe cooled them down and reintroduced them with great care back to the human community again. Today we encourage our soldiers to go berserk and then simply discharge them out into the streets.

Robert Bly IRON JOHN

For Christ's Sake - Abraham Kuyper

"....the nature of my task bars me from the quiet retreat of scholarly research and drives me onto the treacherous terrain of public life where nettles and thorns wound at every step. We neither can nor would disguise it: we have not been driven to this work like Maecenases out of love for detached learning. Rather, the urge to this risky, not to say presumptuous, endeavor comes from the deep sense of duty that what we are doing must be done - for Christ's sake, for the name of the Lord.

Would we have undertaken this task if a higher standard could have induced us to acquiesce in the status quo? To put it mildly, our undertaking bears a protest against the present environment and suggests that something better is possible. Yet the appearance of presumption follows it like a shadow and causes some embarrassment, some diffidence. This might cause offense, this might hurt. Therefore I hasten to assure you that - given the scholarly power, the influence, and the money that oppose us - the assuredness of our words reflects no lofty imagination but a quiet humility. We would have preferred to stay in the rear; it would have been much more comfortable to see others take the lead. But since this was not to be, since we had to act, we came to the fore, hardly indifferent to human favor or aversion but drawing our line of conduct exclusively from what is demanded by the honor of our God."

Abraham Kuyper - Amsterdam 1880