In a world of terrorism, fraud, violence, betrayal, greed dishonesty, and distrust, to unconditionally accept others is not a goal many strive toward. This book is witness to the struggle to be a person offering unconditional acceptance in a conditional world. It is not a book that offers solutions as much as it highlights the struggle.
Since its beginning, Christian tradition has taught that the nature of human beings is to be sinful. Because of this sinful nature, human beings become separated from God. In practice we are separated from God and become unacceptable to God because of our nature. It is through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that the unacceptable becomes acceptable. The belief is that there is nothing we can do as human beings to make ourselves acceptable to God, but our acceptance by God is a gift given through the intervention of Jesus on our behalf. The belief is that we do not have to "change" for God to offer the gift of acceptance, but in accepting the gift we can be changed. In this way, the gift that is offered by God is acceptance that is unconditional. In recent years many in the Christian community have become uncomfortable with this concept. Uncomfortable because modern thought believes more in self determination and self reliance than relationships based on an unconditional gift from God. We like to believe that we are ultimately in control of our lives and our living. We may believe in God, but we have the responsibility to "row away from the rocks." Many struggle with the concept that human beings are sinful by nature. Through The Window begins with the realization that the author, even while seen as successful and competent, ultimately experiences himself in the very traditional sense of being unacceptable. The book begins with a chronological telling of all the experiences that would seem to make the author "acceptable," but hide the reality that beneath that success is a sense of being unacceptable. The author believes many people share this experience. It is the reality that a person usually sees him or herself differently from how most other people see that person. The precipitant for the book is a work camp where the author is teamed with five other people to complete a "simple" project. In the next week the author experiences a level of acceptance that is unconditional that has a profound impact on him. His belief is that acceptance that is unconditional must be understood as a gift from God meant to be shared with others. The main part of the book is a reflection on the reality and struggle in both life and faith of living in such a way that unconditional acceptance is passed on as a gift to others. The reflection is realistically divided into three parts. The first part is chapters two through four. This section can be understood as a statement of the problem. The second part is chapters five through eight. The affirmation of these chapters is that if unconditional acceptance is possible it will be experienced through relationships. Chapters nine and ten focus on changes the author hopes to experience as the result of his experiences. The author is a retired clergy person and chapter eleven reflects on a personal struggle he has had with the institutional church and new thoughts on that struggle as the result of his experience of "unconditional acceptance." A short chapter 12 takes you back to the work camp and some dreams for days to come. After a brief chapter to define "unconditional acceptance," chapter three is an affirmation that we live in a society where the expectation is that acceptance will be conditional. The structure of our culture is that conditional acceptance both protects and supports us. The claim is that acceptance that is conditional is literally the cornerstone of society. It is also claimed that acceptance that has conditions is the opposite of the example of Jesus. Chapter four moves in a different direction. Without trying to offer "proof," the author uses four popular stories from the Gospels as examples of unconditional acceptance. In each story he focuses on responses to the unconditional acceptance in the stories as potential responses we might have t
Capturing the extraordinary within the ordinary moment, seventy-five black-and-white photographs, many never before published, span the artist's career and are accompanied by his own account of his life and artistic development in Beaumont, Texas. UP.
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