by Doug Hammack | Jul 25, 2017 | Message Audio, Transcending a Religion of Fear
It is nearly impossible for us to go directly from hated to love. The usual path is to go from hatred to resentment while telling ourselves that we should be loving. A healthier path is from hatred to non-hatred, from non-hatred to understanding, from understanding...
by Doug Hammack | Jul 19, 2017 | Message Audio, Transcending a Religion of Fear
Following on the idea last week, that the very notion of an enemy may be an illusion, we try to define clearly what makes an enemy. https://media.blubrry.com/north_raleigh_community_church/s3.amazonaws.com/nrccaudio/2017/07-16-17_Sermon.mp3Podcast: Play in new...
by Doug Hammack | Jul 11, 2017 | Message Audio, Transcending a Religion of Fear
Loving our enemy. Was Jesus serious? We Christians generally ignore this verse because we simply cannot see our way there. We are encouraged to begin this 1000-mile journey with a single step. We enable ourselves through a process of working our circle of spiritual...
by Doug Hammack | Jun 25, 2017 | Guest Speaker, Message Audio
By Scott Bass We have a saying in our community that “It is our way to lose our way…” Losing our way is sometimes a good thing. The mystical experience is not part of most Christian’s journeys these days. We don’t see “the...
by Doug Hammack | Jun 18, 2017 | Guest Speaker, Message Audio
by Chris Thomson Fatherhood changes men as people and changes our spiritual walks. https://media.blubrry.com/north_raleigh_community_church/s3.amazonaws.com/nrccaudio/2017/06-18-17_Sermon.mp3Podcast: Play in new window |...
by Doug Hammack | Jun 11, 2017 | Guest Speaker, Message Audio
by Chris Graebe Everyone has their own story about how they got to NRCC. Everyone’s wilderness journey is also a bit different, and many of us are still on that journey. Here is a bit of my own journey and what NRCC means to me. ...
by Doug Hammack | Jun 6, 2017 | Individual Lesson, Message Audio
Today we honor our young adults who have completed their high school educations and listen in as they get some advice that we can all do better by heeding it. ...
by Doug Hammack | May 30, 2017 | Individual Lesson, Message Audio
A commitment to service is one essential part of a healthy spiritual ecosystem. But service absent discernment can, at best, waste resources, at worst, cause harm. For many years the discernment was that NRCC was to focus upon building the other parts of the...
by Doug Hammack | May 23, 2017 | Individual Lesson, Message Audio
The ancient myth of Sophia and her daughters illuminates a deep truth. The Way of Wisdom (Sophia) gives birth to the daughters, Faith (Fides), Hope (Spes), and Charity (Caritas). When we apply ourselves to the Way of Wisdom — when we take up the spiritual...
by Doug Hammack | May 9, 2017 | Individual Lesson, Message Audio
When we tend to the inner life, the fruit we bear is Love. Modern standards might think love a fool because it bears all things kindly. It does not boast or envy or keep score. But when we know the Divine within, we become capacitated to love fully, not because others...
by Doug Hammack | May 2, 2017 | Individual Lesson, Message Audio
This week we discuss the Jewish heroine Esther who despite her youth, sweetness, lack of wisdom and traditional power, leveraged what she knew about the spiritual journey. She helps us see how counter-cultural spiritual power really is. Esther calls her people to to...
by Doug Hammack | Apr 25, 2017 | Individual Lesson, Message Audio
See what we did there!? “counter” and “counter.” Same word, two meanings. Now that’s big-time pun fun, people! In today’s lesson, we imagine the conversation Jesus had with his disciples as he sent them to do their part healing the...
by Doug Hammack | Apr 11, 2017 | Message Audio, Transcending a Religion of Fear
Folks who grew up in church have probably heard the term “the mind of Christ.” (It’s in the Bible.) Today’s lesson suggest the term has the potential to help us out of the partisan pickle we find ourselves in as a nation. So far in this lesson,...
by Doug Hammack | Apr 4, 2017 | Message Audio, Transcending a Religion of Fear
We’ve all got “sameness is safeness” instincts. They make it really hard to answer the question, “who is our neighbor?” But as we’ve been saying, everything is connected. A good way to imagine our connectedness is the metaphor of an ecosystem...
by Doug Hammack | Mar 28, 2017 | Message Audio, Transcending a Religion of Fear
Our brains are evolutionarily hardwired to detect difference and to fear it. This survival strategy makes it harder to see the deeper truth of our connectedness. Given that our hardwired instincts work against relating in oneness, the spiritual journey helps us. It...
by Doug Hammack | Mar 21, 2017 | Message Audio, Transcending a Religion of Fear
Five hundred years ago, Enlightenment scientists told us all things exist independently. All the social and cultural institutions we now live in, were built on instincts drawn from that basic understanding. Consequently, Western society — and especially the US...
by Doug Hammack | Mar 14, 2017 | Message Audio, Transcending a Religion of Fear
Science and spirituality have converged to affirm that we are all connected. Our separateness is an illusion that keeps us from living our lives in spiritual harmony with our interconnected reality. We all suffer the afflictions of living our two-ness illusion – chief...
by Doug Hammack | Mar 7, 2017 | Message Audio, Transcending a Religion of Fear
Since each personality has a bent, each tends toward specific fear-avoiding strategies. As we’re learning to push back against our strategies, this lesson considers a whole menu of ancient spiritual practices, to help us counter a whole spectrum of...
by Doug Hammack | Feb 28, 2017 | Message Audio, Transcending a Religion of Fear
A healthy dose of righteous indignation can be a powerful catalyst for action toward repairing the earth. …key words being – healthy dose. But, sometimes, our indignation is yet another strategy for avoiding fear. When it is, our effectiveness at being agents of...
by Doug Hammack | Feb 21, 2017 | Message Audio, Transcending a Religion of Fear
The regular occurrence of laments in our Christian lectionary cycle testifies to the fact that acknowledging affliction and fear is a healthy and a necessary part of the spiritual journey. When we distract ourselves with comforts and pleasures to avoid feeling our...
