Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Fragments of the Spirit. Walking on the Edge of the Inside

Paul writes – A warm welcome if you’re visiting (maybe for the first time) from Waikato Anglican Diocese group that I had a great time with on Saturday. It was a fascinating journey – a lot of it (as it turned out) uncharted and therefore hopefully a reflection of the diverse perspectives and experiences that each of you brought to the conversation as we ‘walked’ together. Thanks for all that you did share, some great stories, for a lot of honesty, for some great questions, and for a willingness to have someone on “the outside of the inside” spend time with you. 

Feel free to wander around the blog and help yourself to anything that you might find useful or interesting – there’s lot of words, some Mp3’s, interviews, video etc. Follow some of the links and listen into to some of the Global and Kiwi “voices” that have been journeying with me for a good many years now.

As promised, here’s some of the material we took along with us, and some links that you might find helpful if you want to continue exploring. The handout is at the bottom of this post (a PDF), as are a couple of articles by good friend Alan Jamieson (we only got a chance to touch on Alan’s “churchless faith” research – and for some of you this research might be very useful and eye-opening. You’ll find (purchase) links to all of Alan’s books in the left hand column.

Click on the following hyperlinks for the document being linked to.

Fr. Neil Darragh’s very useful September 2009 CIT Pompallier Lecture – Where to from Here? A Present and Future Church. While written from within the Roman Catholic tradition, it has lots of relevance for Anglican’s and the future health and vitality of the Anglican tradition.

Something Old, Something New: Combining Traditional Liturgies and Current Culture Leads to Worship that’s Fresh but Rooted by Jonny Baker. I also talked a little about Grace, the church community that Jonny is a part of. Also worth a read is this paper by Jonny in which he reflects on his time with CMS and his involvement with mission, gospel and culture engagement and new ways of being church that are both deeply rooted, but relevant and authentic. 

My interview with Graeme Greene can be found online here or here  (1MB) as a PDF. In the photograph attached to the PDF Colin Greene is standing immediately beside me, and Martin Robinson is beside him. I highly recommend Colin and Martin’s book Metavista – though it can be a technical read in places.

Marginalising Artists? And, Prioriterising and Resourcing Local Mission

Paul writes – Mark Pierson reflects the importance of artists in our congregations, and why more often than not they’re unable to utilise their giftedness in any meaningful or life-giving way. Instead, many congregations either marginalise these people or reduce their contribution to something safe and unlikely to provoke, evoke, or raise questions.

Here’s an excerpt from Mark’s post.

“...This is exactly why we need artists contributing to the life of our churches. In worship and other ways. They bring insights and challenges that unsettle and question in ways that nothing else can. It’s in this opening up that God can speak to us. Particularly to those of us who are less through spoken words and more through visual media...”

You can read his full reflection here.

Also worth reflecting on is this recent statement by Al. Roxburgh. Read it in conjunction with the Jon Birch cartoon below it. The cartoon wasn’t part of Al’s reflection; instead I saw it on Jonny Baker’s blog. Al writes:

“...Simon [Holt] was looking at a massively secular and suburban society where Christian life is hardly on people’s radar, yet Christian leaders seem caught in an endless reactive conversation about style, ethos, and who has the right approach to doctrine.  This is where the energy is being spent. 

What would happen if the debates over style and who has the right approach to the truth of the Gospel were given a far lower priority and local churches focused on how they could enter their neighborhood?  It seems to me that this preoccupation with inside fights is more evidence of the inside/outside default shaping Christian life in the modern world...”

Indeed! What might happen in a small provincial town like Cambridge if energy, creativity, activity and time were invested in imaginative responses to questions of mission and church in its suburbs?

You can read Al’s full reflection and watch videos here.

Good News: “The well being, harmony and flourishing of the whole human race…”?

Paul writes – Metavista Associates is a new vehicle for friend Colin Greene and his wife Karen to engage conversationally with questions of gospel and culture. What was formerly a website for the 2008 publication Metavista (my theological book of 2008!) is now a platform (still under construction) for encouraging:

 “...new ways of taking responsibility for what is happening to our world, our society, our cultures and becom[ing] active culture makers [an echo for me of Steve Taylor’s interaction (and here) with Andy Crouch’s book], movers and shakers…”

Colin continues,

“…To do that we have to operate out of a particular tradition of belief and discourse. And that is where the role of religion and the Judaeo-Christian faith in particular has a crucial function to perform. All the great faith traditions are not first and foremost private, personal and pious convictions about what we hope happens after this life is over, although many believers behave as if this were the case.  They are first and foremost public declarations and convictions about a living, creator God, how the world came into being and how we can live together to promote the well being, harmony and flourishing of the whole human race…” (Bold text, mine – Paul / doesn’t that sound like “good news”? God’s longing for and working for shalom in us and through us).

You can read Colin’s full post here. I wish him and Karen well and hope their proposal will do just what they hope it will.

For a 2008 written interview I did with Colin, go here.

Three for Reflection from Margaret Silf

“The Good News is that our journey with God is a journey into freedom. He invites us, over and over, to cut free from our inordinate attachments and he does it, not with sticks, but with carrots…He attracts us through our deepest desires, and not through threats of eternal punishment. He calls us to the joy of his presence by inviting us to discover, in our own deepest desires, his own overwhelming and passionate desire for us.”

 

“In his First Principle and Foundation, Ignatius [of Loyola] talks about ‘making use of those things that help to bring us closer to God and leaving aside those things that don’t’…”

 

“The journey with God does not deny our natural needs and desires, but it rearranges our priorities and nudges us constantly with the suggestion that he is calling us on, as surely as the ocean draws the rivers. Our attachments begin to look like riverbank constructions that tempt us to get out onto dry land and stay there, where it seems so comfortable, desirable and safe. But if we do, there will be no on-flowing for us, no on-growing, no progress towards the full freedom of the children of God…”

 

Margret Silf is one of my favourite writers on Christian Spirituality. Click on her name to the left and you can read some of her columns from America Magazine. And, if you don’t have any of her books, you should add a couple to your reading schedule – you won’t regret it. I’d start with:

 

Landmarks: Exploration of Ignatian Spirituality.

 

Taste and See: Adventuring into Prayer.

An Insatiable Moon Set to Rise in Ponsonby – 15-days to Go!

Paul notes that:

 

“…The streets of Ponsonby will be filled with famous faces when a month-long film shoot begins next month.

 

Novelist and producer Mike Riddell is bringing to the big screen the adaptation of his book, The Insatiable Moon, which will be shot at locations throughout Ponsonby.

 

Whale Rider star Rawiri Paratene plays lead character Arthur, a psychiatric patient who lives in a Ponsonby boarding house and thinks he’s the second son of God.

 

When the house is faced with closure, Arthur and a bunch of friends set out on a mission to save their home, before his own world starts to fall apart…”

 

Read the full story here courtesy of the Harbour News. Follow the back-story here. Double-click on the picture to enlarge.

 

Fifteen days to go. Can't wait.  

Intersections and Innovation

Paul writes – The space in-between, the edges (of chaos) as distinct from the so-called “centre”, the intersections between, and other descriptors are often used to reflect on and engage with notion that these contexts are significant and important for creativity, innovation and new thinking. Here’s a statement by Werner Heisenberg that illustrates just that scenario:

“…It is probably true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet. These lines may have their roots in quite different parts of human culture, in different times or cultural environments or different religious traditions: hence if they actually meet, that is, if they are at least so much related to each other that a real interaction can take place, then one may hope that new and interesting developments may follow.” 

Taken from the opening pages of the 25^th Anniversary edition of Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism.

Cyberspirituality - Heidi Campbell Interviewed

Paul writes – Worth a listen to is an interview with Heidi Campbell who is an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University and one of the world's leading scholars in religion and online media. Her research has taken her from inner urban life in Glasgow through mainstream churches in Auckland to where religion, history and politics collide in Israel. Heidi's teaching and research centres on the social shaping of technology, rhetoric of new media, and themes related to the intersection of media, religion and culture, with a special interest in the internet and mobil ephones. She has written a book Exploring Religious Community Online. Her current research is an investigation of Jewish, Muslim & Christian communities 'historic perceptions and contemporary use of media technologies, the basis of her book due in 2010, When Religion Meets New Media.

Here’s the promo for the radio interview

“...Spiritual surfing on the internet is bigger than Ben Hur and it's changing the way religion is created, delivered and experienced. Heidi Campbell of Texas A & M University is an expert on web religion and her new book and blog share the title, When Religion Meets New Media. Julie Hamilton is the founder and editor-in-chief of Omigoddess!, the newest spiritual website in Australia designed specifically for women...”

You can listen to it or download it, for a limited time, here.

The emptiness and the senseless of lives: the general neurosis of the times...?

Paul writes – I found the following quotes fascinating and thought-provoking. It’s taken from the opening section of a 1989 paper sent to me by a friend, and written by Mary Jo Meadow. It is titled Four Stages of Spiritual Experience: A Comparison of the Ignatian Exercises and Jungian Psychology.

Meadow writes:

“Many psychotherapists have described two very different approaches to psychotherapy. In Psychoanalysis and Religion, Erich Fromm called these “adjustment therapy” and “cure of soul.” The goal of adjustment therapy is simply to help one adapt to the conditions in which he or she lives, without evaluating the appropriateness for the individual of these conditions. In cure of soul, a more radical approach is attempted. Here one seeks to discern, listening to the depths of the individual psyche, helping one come to that direction to which his or her life seems called, to realise that person’s unique vocation...”

“...In Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Carl Jung indicated in many places that he takes a more spiritual approach to the healing of the psyche (psychotherapy) than do most contemporary psychologists. His understanding of neurosis is informative:

A psychoneurosis must be understood as the suffering of a human being who has not discovered what life means for [one] self ... It arises from ... having no love, but only sexuality; no faith, because [one] is afraid to grope in the dark; no hope, because [one] is disillusioned by the world and by life; and no understanding because one has failed to read the meaning of [one’s] own existence.

Jung said elsewhere in the same book that about one-third of his patients do not have a clinically definable problem, but are simply suffering from the emptiness and the senseless of their own lives. This he considered to be the general neurosis of the times...”

While he doesn’t mean membership of a church, Jung observes that,

“...Many neuroses are caused by the fact that people blind themselves to their own religious promptings...”

“Formation and transformation require substance and depth”

Paul writes – Mark Pierson reflects on a recent church visit and offers some useful critique and cautions. Here’s an excerpt:

“...I’m not quite sure what I want to say. I think it’s something around wanting to remind myself, and anyone who’s reading, that it’s too easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to re-designing church life, particularly worship.

That there are some basic values and practices around hospitality that need to be maintained by any community of faith.

That we come together in order to engage with God at least as much as we do with each other.

That formation and transformation require substance and depth, not just feel-good froth and bubble.

That while the inherited church may suck in many ways, there are some things it knows about – like hospitality, communion, reflection, space and flow - and we should be careful before we toss them aside...”

Mark ends with a comment that interests me too - “I need to think again about how best to "sustain people in their following of Christ in the world" (hopefully Mark will post some thoughts on this theme). Couple that with this recent post from Steve Taylor (which includes some evocative thoughts on “monastic formation”) and some important questions around formation and transformation begin to bubble to the surface

You can read Mark's full post here. It’s worth reading the comments on Mark’s post as well.

Michael Casey on Enlightenment

“… In an era of hyperstimulation it can be difficult for people to realise that enlightenment comes not by increasing the level of excitement, but by moving more deeply into calm. There is a kind of monotony that is not boredom that paves the way for a more profound experience…”

The Art of Sacred Reading (1995) by Michael Casey OCSO, p. 7

 

More on Michael Casey - an older post - here.

We Get to Carry Each Other: The Gospel according to U2

Paul writes – Available from 22^nd October 2009 was a new book focused on U2 – We get to Carry Each Other: The Gospel According to U2 written by Greg Garrett who is Professor of English at Baylor University and Writer-in-Residence at Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas.

Description

“Who among us has not experienced hearing a song that moved us deeply, that spoke to us in a truly spiritual way? Millions of fans around the world have found that inspiration in the music of U2, arguably the biggest band in the world today. Now, on the heels of their latest studio album No Line on the Horizon, comes this engaging and informative examination of the spirituality that drives the band and its music. 

The author, who interviewed the fledgling band on their second U.S. tour, takes us from their upbringing in Ireland, to their dominance over the music scene in the early 1990s, and then to their role as spiritual ambassadors to post-9/11 America. Throughout we get a picture of the spirituality that flows out of U2's music and how their influence has spread beyond music into issues such as AIDS activism, debt relief for developing nations, and the crisis in Darfur.”

"U2's private practice and public presentation of Jesus' good news are often discussed, but almost never are they subject to sound critical and theological analysis. In this book, Greg Garrett has corrected that situation handsomely. Bringing to his task the tools of both musical and ecclesiological scholarship, Garrett also writes with the humility of genuine affection and gratitude. If you care at all about the role of music in western Christianity today, you'll want to read this book." - Phyllis Tickle, author of the Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why...”

(From the publishers Website)

Baptism and (Trans)Formation

Paul writes – I commented, in passing (in this post) that an interesting question about Baptism had been asked of Dave Tomlinson at Finlay Park – the question was in the context of Dave talking about “borderless churches” and went something like this: ““if we’re talking about “(church) communities without borders” and “churches without ‘border control’” where then do practices such as baptism and confirmation fit?” 

Anyway, here are some thoughts on Baptism via Jason Goroncy that I’d like to add to any conversation that might arise in response to the above question. 

“…Baptism is both God’s sign to humanity that we have been redeemed by Christ, and humanity’s sign to God that we are willing partners in God’s work of reconciliation. Baptism, in other words, finds its basis in the hypostatic union through which God draws near to humanity and humanity draws near to God. Jesus Christ is the one mediator between God and humanity. It is the prius of the divine ecomony in the incarnation that baptism testifies chiefly to, and not to any subjective attainment of our confession, which might change. To put it another way, baptism is nothing less than our participation in the full and vicarious humanity of the Son of God.” 

Jason then quotes Bonhoeffer: 

“Formation comes only by being drawn into the life of Jesus Christ. It comes only as formation in His likeness, as conformation with the unique form of Him who was made man, was crucified and rose again…” You can read all of Jason's post here. 

This in turn got me thinking about a statement author Marilynne Robinson made when asked, in effect, whether religion was needful in living the moral life, particularly as there are a good many very moral people for whom religious commitment is not a part of their life. I wove some of her response into my own statement of what I heard as she responded:

“…Religion is not [ultimately, as many suppose, about morality]… It is about what the nature of  being is… [It opens us] to the mystery of experience for which religion supplies wonderful images and vocabularly and in doing so opens us to a much larger  [horizon and] understanding than one would have without it…”

“…Often when people ‘change’ they really do become themselves [i.e. they change toward themselves]; it’s not like a difference enters into them. It’s like, for some reason or other, they’ve been distracted away from their own human centre] – who they most deeply are…”

Other sculpturers saw a big block of stone, Michelangelo saw David and set out to reveal him.  Every bit of stone that was chipped away was a change toward revealing David.

Missional Catalysts

Paul writes – Alan Roxburgh, in an issue of the Roxburgh Missional Network newsletter offers some thoughts on missional catalysts:

“…Catalyzing missional innovation is about training leaders and assisting judicatories [dioceses] to become effective agents of transformation among their own churches. The job of a catalyst is to bring diverse elements together in ways that speed up transformation... They don’t demand you change everything or become something so different from your past that people can’t recognize you anymore. Catalysts work with who you are to create real transformation.

The best catalysts of missional innovation create spaces for conversations.  In an unthinkable world it’s about the conversations…”

Paulo Coelho on Freedom

“…Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose--and commit myself to – what is best for me…” Paulo Coelho

 

This of course presupposes that you know what is best, and indeed needful and life-giving for you. Clearly, freedom too has a dimension of being and choosing to be available and present to the other, and to considering what is best and life-giving for them also. Oftentimes, what’s best and life-giving for them becomes, paradoxically, life-giving and transformational for you.

The Priest, the Monk and the Yogi

Paul writes – I listened to this interesting mealtime conversation last week. Rachael Kohn from The Spirit of Things, ABC Radio visited a very interesting household.

 

“On one church property in Melbourne, a Catholic priest, Dr John Dupuche, a Tibetan monk, Venerable Lobsang Tendar, and a Yoga Teacher and sleep research scientist, Swami Samnyasanand (Philip Stevens), live together, following their own traditions, teaching in their expertise, and promoting the possibility of interfaith community. Why they have decided to live together while keeping their traditions and practices distinct is discussed over a meal of Tibetan Momas, salad and cheesecake.”

 

You can find it here.