timvictor Relational Spirituality

Exciting developments for 2021

Patreon Logo

Thank you so much to those who currently support the work of the urban mystic. Without your support it would not be possible to continue this work. This year I’m looking to step out further and increase the work—to go from being a small fish in a small pond to a small fish in a bigger pond. Starting a Patreon is an important step to expanding the work of the urban mystic. I discern that the next step is not only to keep going with the Podcast and add Video via YouTube but also to facilitate groups and develop a post-church community. I feel ill-equipped for this. Nervous. Scared. Much of the time I feel that God has made a mistake calling me to this. But the urge is there and won’t leave me. So I’m going with it. Here Patreon offers an opportunity to connect with people and receive support. This will enable urban mystic to develop a team who connects one-on-one with people and produces digital content as well as hosts online and face-to-face groups.

In the next few weeks I’ll launch our Patreon page. Kindly consider supporting the work of the urban mystic. But even if not, know that the work will stay de-commercialised. All our courses, our one-on-one work, podcast, upcoming YouTube material, etc. will stay 100% free. We’re not looking to establish any kind of transactional relationship.

Continue reading “Exciting developments for 2021” →
timvictor Key Conversations

“I’ve seen him do things I can’t explain.”

The cover to The art of Mandalorian written by Phil Szostak and cover by Doug Chiang

“I’ve seen him do things I can’t explain.”

Din Jarin

These are the words spoken by Din Jarin to Ahsoka Tano about Grogu, an infant, in Season 2 Episode 5: The Jedi of The Mandalorian. Jarin is a Mandalorian and Bounty Hunter and Tano a former Jedi now renegade vigilante. Their commitment to the good that results in their landing as misfits within their socially and politically complex world. And it is this layering of themes such as fall and redemption, humanity and inhumanity, spirituality, stratification, and interaction between young and powerless and those capable that makes Star Wars* a complex and compelling universe to explore. The same can be said for Sci-Fi in general and we see similar themes in the likes of The Expanse**.

Continue reading ““I’ve seen him do things I can’t explain.”” →
timvictor Key Conversations

The mystics is a cosmologist at heart

Humans have a longstanding love of the cosmos, the environment in which we live and wherein our earth finds its home. We have progressed from our earlier cosmology toward a contemporary cosmology through adopting technology enabling observation, modelling, and representation.

Back in 1493, this was the Christian Aristotelian understanding of the universe, which I found here:

Here the geocentric thinking of Artistotle and Ptolemy won out over the heliocentric thinking of Aristarchus of Samos. This set us back 1 300 to 1 700 years! Thankfully the Copernican Revolution set the ball rolling enabling us, relatively recently, to create a new and more accurate representation of the cosmos. Fortunately the thinking of modern detractors pushing back against the Copernican Revolution and later scientific contributors serves as a voice on the fringe to the mainstream. There’s simply no chance that modern detractors can set us back in our thinking. Hence we arrive at a new modelling and representation of the cosmos.

And now we have a similar representation, which I found here:

What’s remarkably similar within each is the perspective and the work of understanding the cosmos by integrating available knowledge. We (meaning humanity and the earth) are centred, roughly, in each artwork. This really brings home that our view of the world and view of the cosmos is really our view thereof – our world(view). It is a representation in our hearts and minds that’s communicable visually. Yet tons of in-depth thinking and numerous contributors guides the artist as aggregator in producing each. There is an interplay between talents of understanding and representation brought together in order to produce the maps above.

And though, in each case, the map is not the terrain, they are the vantage point wherefrom we are driven toward the Transcendent. It is here on this earth and within each of us that we discover our centre which serves as orientation on the mystery of the Transcendent and God.

The mystic is, really, a cosmologist at heart.

timvictor Key Conversations

Living in the village

I met with one of the world’s forerunners concerning mysticism last week. Krüger is the author of Along Edges, Sounding Unsound, Metatheism, and Signposts to Silence. They’re seriously good books and I can’t recommend them highly enough. They are also incredibly challenging, so consider yourself forewarned.

While speaking to Krüger, he dropped a number of gems. One of them relates to the usual tension between (1) trying to establish something (like plant a church) and (2) withdrawing to live as a hermit (like the hermits and ascetics). Yet there is another option that isn’t often explored, which is that of (3) living in the village.

Pages: 1 2
timvictor Uncategorized

Why do I have this blog?

Having just rebooted my blog I have to pose the question, “Why do I have this blog?” Over the seasons my blogs mixed my personal and professional thinking with what’s interested and concerned me together with my hobbies and interests. In particular, this blog was reflective but created trajectories rather than went somewhere. This left the blog without coherence, which may have been ok except that it’s never sat right with me. Continue reading “Why do I have this blog?” →