Lark in the Clear Air
In honor of Samhain, here’s a little bit of lovely Irish music for you, sung by the lovely Irish singer Cara Dillon…
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31
Oct
30
Saturday with St. Benedict (and me)
If you’re in Atlanta and looking for something to do tomorrow, why not come out to the Church of Our Saviour in Virginia-Highland, for the inaugural meeting of “Saturdays with Saint Benedict” — a bi-weekly group exploring Benedictine spirituality and its relevance to young adults today, co-sponsored by the Church of Our Saviour’s 20s & 30s group, and the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta’s Young Adults group. The morning kicks off at 10:00 AM with the Eucharist, followed by a gathering at which I will be speaking on Benedictine Spirituality and my experience as a Lay Cistercian in formation. Although technically this is a young adults’ group, I suspect you won’t be kicked out if you have a little bit (or a lot) of gray hair (and if anyone says anything, just say you’re with me).
The Church of Our Savior is located at 1068 North Highland Avenue in Atlanta. We’ll be meeting in the Lady Chapel (located off the lower courtyard; unfortunately not wheelchair accessible as the courtyard is below street level and accessible only by stairs).
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29
New (and not so new) books from friends
One of the sweet things about being an author and a blogger is that I’m always learning about wonderful new (and just “new to me”) books, often from friends of mine, either folks I know in person or acquaintances that I have found through Facebook. So this morning I thought I’d highlight a few of these books, books which I think readers of this blog will enjoy. Actually, I myself have not yet read any of these books (!), but I have at least looked at them all, and they all look pretty juicy.
First, here are two books from folks here in the Atlanta area. In neither case is my friend the author, but with Planet of Grace my friend James Stephen Behrens provided the photographic illustrations to accompany Bernadette McCarver Snyder’s text; and this recently issued edition of The Cloud of Unknowing with the Book of Privy Counsel was translated by local scholar Carmen Acevedo Butcher. My connection to both of these persons comes from the Monastery of the Holy Spirit: Father James is one of the monks at the monastery, and Carmen I met when she came to the Abbey Store to buy some fudge! Planet of Grace is all about the spirituality of life embedded in the earth (“biosphere one”), with lovely photographs all taken on the monastery grounds. The Cloud needs no introduction to readers of this blog, as it is one of the towering masterpieces of English mysticism (and Christian mysticism in general).
Now for a few books from my online friends, only one of whom I have met face to face, and he only briefly. Theology of Wonder is the oldest book on this list, having been published in 1999, it is by the Orthodox Bishop, Seraphim Sigrist. It consists of a series of short meditations “where Arthurian legend, Russian iconography, Jewish wisdom and Eucharistic community come together in a stirring intimation of the world seen whole,” in the words of reviewer Michael Allison. The Orthodox Heretic is by the bad boy of emergence Christianity, Peter Rollins, in which he (according to the blurb on the back of the book) “presents a vision of faith that has little regard for the institutions of Christendom. His uncompromising critique of religion, while often unsettling, is infused with a deep and abiding love for what it means to genuinely follow Christ.” Hmmm — I don’t know, but based on how wonderful his first two books were, I’m willing to bet it will be a pretty sweet read; it also consists of a series of short parables and tales. Finally, Diana Butler Bass’ A People’s History of Christianity approaches church history with the same kind of iconoclastic “tell the story from the bottom up” methodology that Howard Zinn used in his classic A People’s History of the United States. Not surprisingly, Butler Bass gives far more air time to the mystics than most conventional church historians ever bother to do. Might be because she is interested in how ordinary Christians actually struggled to live out the gospel. What a radical idea!
So there you go. Happy reading…
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28
Matthew 7:1
I had a dream last night in which I was counseling a woman, perhaps a little bit younger than me, who had struggled with addiction much of her adult life. Eventually she began to turn her life around and became involved in a small church. Unfortunately, she still would act out from time to time, and this impacted her religious life when, at a church picnic, she engaged in a sexual encounter with another member of the church — a married man.
As she told me this story, she mentioned that as a new member of the church, she had an assigned friend — sort of a sponsor or “big sister” — who reacted with anger and shaming when she learned of the indiscretion. After I heard the entire story, I said to her, “I’m not sure how useful it is to pass judgment on how immoral your actions may have been; rather we should simply discern how your choices are, or are not, the most loving for all concerned.”
I woke up and the dream has stayed with me. It has no bearing on anything that has “really” happened to me, although certainly during my Pagan years I had plenty of friends who engaged in all sorts of sexual activity that would make your average churchgoing Christian’s toes curl. I think this is more likely related to a conversation I had with a monk the other day about Catholic identity as an adult convert. He emphasized over and over again that “we are the church,” meaning that it is a mistake to think only of clergy or the hierarchy when thinking of the church: that the church consists of all the people who gather together, not just those who do it full-time.
We are the church. And we have no idea what to do when members of our ranks engage in acting-out behavior, especially such behavior as directly or indirectly hurts other people. Far be it from me to condone adultery or other forms of sexual malfeasance. But when I consider the dynamics of my dream, I am reminded of Jesus’ encounter with the woman caught in adultery. He saves her from being stoned by challenging her accusers to let only a sinless person cast the first stone, and one by one they leave. Finally he tenderly ministers to the frightened woman, reminding her that it would be a good idea not to put herself in that position again.
Absent from both my dream, and the Jesus story, is any mention of the man involved. How often are we inconsistent in handing out our judgment, zeroing in on someone who is vulnerable, or lacks social standing, and making them scapegoats for all our collective sins?
We are commanded by Christ not to judge one another. Meanwhile, if we do not maintain some sort of collective boundary-setting that distinguishes healthy/okay behavior from other actions that are not healthy and not okay, only chaos will ensue. Somewhere between judgment and chaos is the place of Christian sensibility, where we can begin to address the great sins of our time: and I’m not just talking about who’s in bed with who. I’m also talking about who’s judging who, who’s abusing who, who’s oppressing who, who is trashing the environment, who is getting wealthy at the expense of others, who is curtailing the life and freedom of others on the basis of their race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or sexual identity, who is destroying their own lives or the lives of others with drugs or other unhealthy substances. And on and on the list goes.
It’s all really quite overwhelming, which is why I suppose Jesus was far more interested in us working on the sticks in our own eyes rather than the splinters in each others’. Perhaps the best way to move out of judgment and into loving discernment is to begin doing so with our own selves.
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27
“An enlightened power of reason and a love common to all”
John Ruusbroec (1293-1381) is one of the greatest of the Christian mystics. His masterpiece, The Spiritual Espousals (sometimes translated as The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage) in my opinion belongs on the short list of “must read” classics of western mysticism.
Here is just a taste of the poetic breadth of his wisdom. At one point in the book he writes about the various gifts of the Holy Spirit as described in Isaiah 11. One of these gifts, Understanding, can be seen as comprising several effects, including simplicity in the spirit, enlightenment, and love in the will. To quote the mystic himself, spiritual Understanding leads to “an enlightened power of reason and a love common to all.” In other words, the Holy Spirit’s gift of Understanding transforms the intellect (leading to enlightened reasons) and also the will (leading to love for all).
How, then, does this manifest in the life of the believer? Ruusbroec provides a list of qualities that is well worth reflecting on:
- Humility, the “foundation of all virtue,” is the starting point of the life of enlightened reason and common love;
- Worship, which when offered with honor and reverence to God will “lift up in spirit” we who seek God’s love;
- Praise, Thanksgiving and Service, the elements of worship, will in Ruusbroec’s words enable us to “thus become free”;
- Confessing and lamenting the blindness and ignorance of human nature — rather than focus on our private moral failings, he calls us to confess, in solidarity with others, all the corporate failings of our human nature;
- Desiring the enlightenment of all — if we confess the sins of all, ought we not also fervently desire the healing and transformation of all?
- Beseeching God’s mercy on behalf of others, so that they might advance in virtue; this leads to greater corporate love for God;
- Giving generously to those in need, out of God’s rich goodness — Ruusbroec recognizes that this is more effective than mere evangelizing of others; supporting those in need helps to naturally create the space where we all may love God more;
- Offering to God our imitation of Christ, which, when done out of love, will deepen our sense of God’s response to our prayer;
- Offering to God our devotion to the angels, saints and all good people, which will deepen our sense of being part of the communion of saints; in Ruusbroec’s words, “we will thus be united with them all in the glory of God”;
- Offering to God the good work of the church and our participation in the Eucharist — another surprise: many might think of the Eucharist as belonging at the head of a list like this, but Ruusbroec places it at the end. The good work of the church, including the miracle of the sacraments, does not lead our response to God’s gifts in our lives, but rather functions as a summation of that response. Ruusbroec affirms that through our participation in the sacramental life of the church “through Christ we might meet God, become like him in a love common to all, transcend all likeness in simplicity, and be united with him in essential unity.”
Ruusbroec summarizes this list by flatly declaring “this is the richest kind of life I know.” It seems to me that not only does the spiritual gift of Understanding naturally lead to the cultivation of all these other blessings, but that it can work the other way around: and we who seek to live the life of joyful response to God’s grace can work on each of these ways of responding to Divine Love, and in doing so we create the space in our souls for the gift of Understanding to be poured in.
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26
Tessa Bielecki’s Recommended Reading for Growing in Intimacy with Christ
In her CD teaching series Wild at Heart: Radical Teachings of the Christian Mystics, former-Carmelite-turned-desert hermit Tessa Bielecki offers a wealth of suggestions of books one can read to deepen a sense of who Christ is. This veritable library for Christian formation includes poetry, art books, lives of saints and mystics, and children’s stories. In other words, it’s not just a dry selection of commentaries on the Gospels, thank heaven. Indeed, it is such a wonderful list that I took the time to write down all her recommendations, and so I’m archiving it here (this is somewhat of a selfish exercise, for many of these books I myself am unfamiliar with, and so this list is in large measure a wish list for yours truly). Let me begin by recommending Wild at Heart itself: it’s a six-CD set that in many ways beautifully complements my forthcoming Big Book of Christian Mysticism: it celebrates Christian mysticism not as some interesting footnote to church history, but as a living, breathing, dynamic spirituality into which each of us are being called, here and now, in our own unique way of course. If you enjoy reading my blog, I think it’s safe to say you’ll enjoy Tessa’s CDs.
Once you get your hands on Wild at Heart you’ll find disc four to be filled with all sorts of interesting recommendations for further reading. Here is that list, for your browsing pleasure. The first eight titles include poetry, not all of which is necessarily Christian or even religious, but which can initiate us into the mystery and wonder that lies at the heart of an encounter with Christ. Then comes two books that feature images of Christ from around the world, that can help to liberate us from the idolatry of only envisioning Christ in our own image. Bielecki then turns her attention to Christian mystics and to Christian saints, noting that one way to deepen our intimacy with Christ is by learning more about the greatest lovers of Christ throughout history. Finally, she caps off her list by commending C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books, noting that his image of Christ as the wild lion, Aslan, can be particularly useful for those of us who lead overly domesticated lives.
With the poets, Bielecki only mentions the author by name, and so I’ve taken the liberty of selecting a work or two for each author that seems to best represent that particular poet’s work. Of course, if you are drawn to a particular poet, you may well wish to take your exploration further.
So here’s the list:
Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems: Volume One and Volume Two- Denise Levertov, The Stream and the Sapphire
- Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Major Works
- Czesław Miłosz, Selected Poems
- Peggy Rosenthal, Divine Inspiration: The Life of Jesus in World Poetry
- Peggy Rosenthal, The Poet’s Jesus
- Peggy Rosenthal, Praying Through Poetry: Hope for Violent Times
- Peggy Rosenthal, Imagine a World: Poetry for Peacemakers
Frederick Buechner, The Faces of Jesus- Ron O’Grady, Christ for All People: Celebrating a World of Christian Art
- Harvey Egan, An Anthology of Christian Mysticism
- James Harpur, Love Burning in the Soul: The Story of Christian Mystics from Saint Paul to Thomas Merton
- Phyllis McGinley, Saint-Watching
- Robert Ellsburg, All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets and Witnesses for Our Time
C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia — incidentally, Bielecki strongly recommends that the Narnia books be read in the order in which Lewis wrote them (beginning with The Lion, the Witch, the Wardrobe) rather than in chronological order according to the story (i.e., beginning with The Magician’s Nephew). Newer versions of the Narnia box set arrange the books in story-chronological order; but older, out of print boxed sets — like the one I’ve linked to here — arrange the books in the order written.
So there you go. Happy reading, and happy deepening of your intimacy with Christ.
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25
Wise as Serpents and Innocent as Doves
Ken Wilber describes a significant malaise of our time as “boomeritis.” What he means by this is the tendency among highly educated and self-actualized persons (as typified by the baby boomer generation) to embrace values that include pluralism, egalitarianism, subjective/personal understandings of truth, and a general “live and let live” ethos, but that often appears marred by egocentrism, narcissism, and self-absorption. In other words, a laudable value system that promotes freedom of conscience can also devolve into a fragmented world where everyone does his or her own thing and, as a result, community flounders. I’m reminded of a friend of mine — a highly educated, successful businesswoman, who is devoted to her own spiritual practice — who always speaks of truth in possessive terms: she has “her truth,” I have “my truth,” and so on. In her cosmology, everyone is entitled to his or her “own” truth. What is not possible is any kind of grand narrative or truth claims that take us outside of ourselves and force us to play on a level field with everyone else.
I was reading one of Wilber’s books this morning in which he describes this problem, and thought about one of the reasons I was drawn back to Christianity from Paganism (a pluralistic, egalitarian spirituality if there ever were one). It had to do with the culture of self-sacrifice, humility, and asceticism that is at the heart of Christian spiritual practice. These values are often rejected by non-Christians as dysfunctional and/or patriarchal. But I think the Christian emphasis on self-denial can also function as a corrective to the pervasive narcissism of our time.
The danger in Christianity comes when believers settle for narrow or limited models of Christian experience. For example, one widespread model of Christianity in our culture emphasizes pre-scientific ways of understanding the cosmos or pre-modern ways of relating to authority (in other words, fundamentalism: think Jerry Falwell). Another model emphasizes scholarly approaches to the Bible and often has a strong bias toward social action — but against the culture of self-sacrifice that has historically exemplified Christian spirituality (the liberalism of Rudolf Bultmann or Bishop Spong epitomize this variety of the faith). Alas, relatively few people in the pews really seem to be engaging with a full and rich experience of Christianity: combining a deep devotion to the traditional spirituality of the religion with the challenges of bringing Christianity into dialogue with the knowledge of science or the wisdom of other faiths. Those who do embody, as far as I have seen, some of the most beautiful expressions of the faith. In other words, Christians who seek to be wise as serpents (by embracing science and multi-culturalism in addition to their own faith identity), but also innocent as doves (by taking seriously Christianity’s call to self-denial, thus dodging our cultural tendency to narcissism and individualistic self-absorption) often seem to be the most truly Christ-like in their values and relationships.
Fundamentalist Christianity is anchored in obeisance to unquestioned authority and a tribal way of thinking about the world at large. Liberal Christianity rejects the above and instead tries to “de-mythologize” scripture and express the faith in a rational, and even anti-metaphysical way, emphasizing social justice over spiritual transformation. Then there is postmodern or emergence Christianity, which acknowledges that the Christian narrative is only one among many narratives, and often celebrates Christianity as a subversive, counter-cultural project. The problem with each of these expressions of the faith is that they are often hostile to the others. Perhaps when Christ issued the call to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves (Matthew 10:16), he prophetically envisioned a time when some Christians would be authoritarian/tribal, others rationalist/materialist, and still others multi-cultural/pluralist. We are wise when we engage with all three of these expressions of the faith; and we are innocent when we refuse to allow any one of them to ignite our own narcissistic tendencies, by which we would trade devotion to the wild, untameable God for a smaller faith that is geared toward personal comfort and self-satisfaction.
What does it mean to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves? It means to pray our way into a truly Integral Christianity. I don’t think it’s been born yet. We’re still in the labor pains.
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24
Quotes for the Day
We don’t lack time, we lack focus.
— Tessa Bielecki
Leisure is not a privilege for those who have the time, it is a virtue for those who take the time.
— Brother David Steindl-Rast
Both of these quotes come from Tessa’s Wild at Heart:
Radical Teachings of the Christian Mystics
Oct
23
Recycling Trumps Richard Rohr (at least for me)
Readers of this blog know that I’ve been excited about hearing Richard Rohr speak in Atlanta this coming Saturday at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Philip. Indeed, if you are in Atlanta and are free on Saturday, I would encourage you to go — although it’s my understanding that the response has been so great that they’ve had to move the event from the fellowship hall into the Cathedral nave.
But, as it turns out, I won’t be there.
A couple of months ago my wife and I learned that the city of Decatur (just up the road from us) hosts semi-annual Electronics Recycling Days. These events provide environmentally and socially responsible recycling opportunities for families and businesses to dispose of computers, printers, televisions, stereo components, cell phones and other telephones, batteries, and various other items.
Because we hate to throw stuff out, we have literally been hoarding broken down computer and other electronics equipment for the past decade. Our garage is full of the stuff. When we learned of the Recycling Days, we resolved that we would lug all our stuff to it the next time it happened.
And, of course, it’s tomorrow, October 24 — right when Rohr is speaking.
Sure, we could wait until the next Recycling Day, probably next April, but we want to keep our promise to ourselves (and if you saw the condition of our garage, you’d understand why). I know other opportunities to hear Father Richard will present themselves (and actually, he’s speaking at a Catholic Church on Sunday evening, but he’s talking about the Emergent Church which we figure will just be a summary of the conference we attended last March).
So if you’re going to hear Richard speak, sorry we’ll miss you. I’m sure he’ll give a wonderful presentation. But since he’s a Franciscan friar, I imagine he would heartily approve of recycling as the reason why someone couldn’t make it out to hear him.
| 0 commentsOct
22
Quote for the Day
The grace of God is to God himself as sunlight is to the sun — a means and a way leading us to the latter. It therefore shines within us in a simple, one-fold way and makes us deiform, that is, like God. This likeness constantly sinks away, dying in God and becoming and remaining one with him, for charity makes us become one with God and causes us to remain living in union with him.
— Blessed John Ruusbroec, The Spiritual Espousals
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