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Note: It is strongly suggested that you  print off  a complete section for reading through at a later date than trying to read the content of this website directly off the computer screen.

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The Sustainable Life for a Life of Wholeness

The basis of a Sustainable Life has three components with the ability to be maintained and continually renewed everyday:

Spirituality. It is the inner room of your life and answers such questions as:

• Who are we as people?

• What is the meaning of life?

• Are we significant?

• What values should we live by?

• What gives us identity and destiny?

Social Network. These are the people around us who give us a feeling of belonging. The multiplication and complementary effect of effort, family & friends, clubs and organisations, associations, churches and the general community.

Structure. This gives us order, direction, our aims and overall purpose.

Each of these components can be pictured as legs on a tripod which is perched on a large rock near the ocean. When the storms and waves of life encroach (as in a severe brain injury which the author experienced over sixteen years ago), if the legs are strong when the waves crash over you roughly, you will remain steadfast. If one of the legs is weak, the whole tripod falls over.

A Christian Spirituality perceives that there is a visible, finite physical world that you and I live in as well as an invisible spiritual world where God dwells. God is the infinite-personal God …. infinite – because God is outside the Cosmos and personal because God is a God of . relationships. God is always the One initiating and seeking a relationship with us. We do not have to take the lead. God is the God of abundant relationships and can be known intimately by His Holy Spirit.

A Christian spirituality is based on a Christian Worldview. It isn’t another Spirituality in the Postmodern culture mix of many spiritualities which are seen as equal. Christian spirituality is a unique Spirituality from Jesus Christ where there is a dependence on His internal leading and guidance, not on the external constructs of a corporate church.

The present Christian is caught between the historical legacy of two alternatives …… .that of the early Christian Church and the influence of later centuries. This tension is revealed between two different concepts of the Church:

• • • • The first one is that of Church  as a relational community. This leads to a warm, open and communal approach with an Apostolic and Spiritled leadership under the direction of the Holy Spirit underpinned by a framework of the Word of God.

      • The second  one is that of Church as a rigid, hierarchical organisation. The second alternative leads to a more corporate, formal and structural approach.

I differentiate Wholistic from the term Holistic as a holistic has a meaning of only body and soul, where soul is eternal and is far more important than the body. Wholistic has all components of life as being equal. The infinite – personal God created matter and spirit at the same time and places great value great value on both.

Also see the files:

Part 1 …. The Sustainable Life a life of wholeness January 2018
Part 2 …. The Sustainable Life May 2016

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For these last two areas of ‘Social Network’ and ‘Structure’, refer to the final page under ‘Resources’. ______________________________________________________________________________________