Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

I Do Not "Imitate" Christ.

I’ve reflected for few days on this statement made by a Roman Catholic seminarian here in NZ: 

“…I was invited to step back and take a look at myself. I quickly learned of my worries, my setbacks and faults, but also my strengths, my capabilities and my potential. The seminary challenged me not to be like Christ, as if… Jesus was a model I merely had to imitate, but to be in Christ, to deepen my knowledge of Him, to hold Him at the centre of my actions, so that in time, I could know myself all the better…” 

While I’d want to nuance and expand this seminarians statement, I reflected particularly on the notion of learning to “be in Christ”, in contrast to the more commonly held notion in many circles, which sees Christ as someone we “imitate”. My deepest and most authentic sense of self is not lost in Christ (cf. a co-dependent relationship). I don’t cease to exist in Christ. Rather I discover my deepest, my distinctiveness, and most authentic humanity in Christ and in my deepening relation to Christ. 

In Christ, through God’s empowering presence, I become more human, not less human. I’m humanized, not de-humanized. 

I also reflected on this quote against the backdrop (in part) of this post by James K. A. Smith.

A Religion of Your Own

I’ve been listening to a podcast interview with Thomas Moore, aired on the Voice America / 7^th Wave show Abundant Living. The episode is titled: A Religion of Your Own. 

Among a number of themes Moore discusses his new book A Religion of One's Own (Gotham Books) which will be available in January 2014, although as at today it’s not yet listed as a pre-order on Amazon.com. 

Moore discusses: 

• The distinctives in the terminology around the use of the terms religion and spirituality
• Our need for psychological and religious maturity – a religion we can own as ours.
• How the arts can help us to explore complex and subtle issues around psychology and religious health. 

Moore encourages people to actively study and deepen their understanding of their own tradition, while, from the depths of that tradition nurturing an exploratory willingness to engage with and enrich ones own religious tradition with the insights and perspective of other religious and spiritual traditions, practices etc. He encourages people to develop the spiritual practice of spending time in nature. He explores how a contemplative approach contributes to religious depth. Run time for this episode is approximately 57 minutes. 

As always with Moore, there are some really valuable insights, and I found it an encouraging and affirming conversation. 

You’ll find the conversation here. 

An Inconvenient Theology: Reading William Stringfellow, First Edition by First Edition

Richard Beck, professor and experimental psychologist at Abilene Christian University, has a high regard for Episcopalian Layman William Stringfellow – something he and I share in common. In 2012 he started a “project”, and it remains ongoing. The project was to first collect, then read all of the first editions (and/or first “printing’s”) of William Stringfellow published works, in chronological. Unlike here in NZ, first editions can be readily founding the US, and very affordably. Why “first editions”? Beck writes: 

“… [I] wanted to read Stringfellow's books as they came out of the crate when he first saw them. I can't explain this in any way other than wanting to make a connection with Stringfellow through space and time…” And, this is the envious part of me quoting, Beck “…found two copies that were autographed by Stringfellow. The prize of [which was] a first edition, first printing, autographed copy of My People is the Enemy…” 

So, after providing a really useful overview of Stringfellow’s theology, he’s been slowly making his way through the books and reflecting on each. Maybe he’ll complete his project, maybe he won’t, but to date he offers reflections on the following Stringfellow titles: 

A Private and Public Faith

Instead of Death

My People is the Enemy

Free in Obedience

Dissenter in a Great Society

Count It All Joy

Imposters of God. 

If you’re interested in this series, check back on Richard Beck’s blog site. If I notice he’s read / reviewed another Stringfellow book, I’ll add the link to this list. 

Nick Cave – Far From Me

The musician who has journeyed with me since my young adult years.

Like U2, Cave and his music / art attract academic papers, essays and engagement. The latest being The Art of Nick Cave: New Critical Essays, published in March of this year. It covers a great range of material. In February 2013, there was also the release of the latest album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the very understated and brilliant Push the Sky Away. And in March 2014 we have the release of Mark Mordue's 446-page biography of Cave, Tender Prey: A Biography of Nick Cave to look forward too, if you're a fan.

The Enneagram and Spiritual Direction

I typically read “consciousness”, “attention”, and awareness as interchangeable terms. In spiritual direction we’re learning to “pay attention”. We’re learning to see, feel, and listen. We’re learning to become aware of ones interior movements. We’re learning to discern God’s presence, (transformative) activity and invitations in our emotions, moods, feelings, relationships etc. In Ignatian terms, we’re learning to “find God in all things”. 

The enneagram is an important tool, one that can be used in spiritual direction. There are few books that focus specifically on the ways in which spiritual direction, the enneagram, and ones journey toward God can be woven together in helpful ways. 

One such book is The Enneagram and Spiritual Direction: Nine paths to spiritual guidance by James Empereur. S.J. I’ve yet to secure a copy of read it, but it’s on my list when finances allow.

Spirituality and Practice have a brief online review, here. Has any one read it? Would you recommend it? Why?

Here are a couple of excerpts that I found online: 

“…Preliminary to much spiritual growth is the ability to know how and when the attention shifts among thought, memory, and planning and among fantasy, feeling, and sensation; also necessary is the knowledge of how to visit the other spaces on the enneagram besides one's own to experience other styles of attention. (12) 

…I see healthy and holy persons as those who have integrated their own space [Enneagram Type] into their lives by moving to both stress and security spaces, by picking up there whatever is useful for their growth at any moment of their personal journey, by drawing strength from both wings, by depending on the need at hand, as well as by being able to visit all the spaces on the enneagram as required or desired at any moment of their lives. Thus, healthy persons are those who move around the enneagram at choice. They always remain firmly based in their own space [type], where their principal energy is found. But they are not limited in their journey to leaning on one or both of their wings, nor are they required to move in one or other direction such as the 1-4-2-8-5-7 internal structure. Rather they can visit all the spaces at different times depending on their changing circumstances. (20)…”

~ James Empereur. S.J. 

Characteristics of Conscious Relationships

As part of my occasional posts on marriage and committed relationships I appreciated the insights contained in a brief online article by Lizzy Ziogas. It’s titled: The 5 Ingredients to Create A Conscious Relationship. “Conscious”, contra “Unconscious” relationships are such important concepts to understand. ‘Characteristics’, as described in this article are helpful both in evaluating the heath of an existing relationship, or in reviewing ones that hadn’t worked out. 

Again, as I’ve said in relationship to pre-marriage counseling, I would use a list of characteristics such as the one I referenced in today’s post as a means of talking through what makes for a marriage that is growing, deepening and thriving – a conscious relationship. 

Other “lists” of characteristics I’ve drawn attention to in the past include this one, this one, and this one.  

Here’s an excerpt: 

“…Creating a thriving conscious relationship requires us to bring our most valuable gifts to the table. When I say “valuable gifts” I’m not talking about a fancy car or a diamond ring; I’m talking about our gifts of responsibility, vulnerability, listening, trust and commitment. These are the key ingredients that create and sustain a deeply fulfilling conscious relationship. 

Responsibility is the willingness to take ownership over any “baggage” that we bring to our relationships—most of our core wounds, fears and traumas develop as a child within our relationship to our primary care givers. 

A relationship works when each participant has the self-awareness to take a deep look within themselves and choose to be real about how their life experiences as a child shape how they respond to life as an adult…” 

Read the rest of this article here.

Emotional Intimacy – Part 2 of 2

Earlier in week I highlighted a conversation between Robert Augustus Masters and interviewer Tami Simon. 

Here’s part 2 of that interview. Simon’s and Masters speak about the importance of mutual transparency in relationships, how we can engage in “connected catharsis,” the telltale signs that reveal when we are using spiritual bypassing to avoid emotional experience, and how we can start to identify and work with our own shadow material. 

Part 1, here. Part 2, here. 

Gordon Cosby Dies

Sadly I missed this news until just recently. Gordon Cosby, the co-founder – with his wife Mary – of The Church of the Saviour in Washington D.C. died, aged 95, on March 20^th 2013. May he rest in peace. More here. 

It is from him (and the late Elizabeth O’Connor) that I got a focus that has been so important to me – a focus on the importance of the “Inward” and the “Outward” journey. The whole missional orientation of the church community was inspirational too. My introduction to The Church of the Saviour came in 2000 by way of a wonderful book written by Peter Renner. It was titled The Church of the Saviour: A Radical Experiment. 

“The one journey that ultimately matters is the journey into the place of stillness deep within one’s self. To reach that place is to be at home; to fail to reach it is to be forever restless. In contemplation we catch a vision of not only what is, but what can be. Contrary to what we have thought, contemplatives are the great doers.” 

“…Faith is trusting the flow and reveling in the view and being carried beyond all existing boundaries…” 

~ Gordon Cosby

Friends and Their Limitations

“…We need friends.  Friends guide us, care for us, confront us in love, console us in times of pain.  Although we speak of "making friends," friends cannot be made.  Friends are free gifts from God.  But God gives us the friends we need when we need them if we fully trust in God's love.  Friends cannot replace God.  They have limitations and weaknesses like we have.  Their love is never faultless, never complete.  But in their limitations they can be signposts on our journey towards the unlimited and unconditional love of God.  Let's enjoy the friends whom God has sent on our way…” 

~ Henri Nouwen

Emotional literacy, and the Development of Relational Maturity.

Robert Augustus Masters is an Integral psychotherapist, relationship expert, and spiritual teacher whose work blends the psychological and physical with the spiritual, emphasizing embodiment, emotional literacy, and the development of relational maturity. 

In Part 1 of this podcast conversation, Robert and the show’s host Tami Simon, discuss emotional literacy and how it is lacking in our culture today. They consider differences in cultural conditioning between men and women when it comes to expressing emotions and the need to develop a toolkit to identify and work skillfully with anger. (70 minutes).

You will find the podcast conversation here.

Broken Open

I always appreciate the ‘poetic’ strand, the richness of language, image and metaphor invariably woven through Rowan William’s sermons – this one from 2009. It’s a wonderful example: 

“…This is what we are here for as a Church. Our life as church declares to the world that God's longing is for a humanity like this, broken open for intimacy. Broken open: because there is a cost in the creation of the humanity God longs for. At the very beginning of all things, and at the very beginning of the story of God's people, the word of God speaks into a dark emptiness and brings life and light. By sheer divine freedom, God brings light, makes a humanity where there was no humanity, a community where there was no community. And God makes us able to receive his mercy where once we could not even understand that we needed it. In a word, we have been called from nothingness; but this means that we still stand over that abyss of emptiness -- an inner void that only the Word of God can hold and fill and make to be something that is real and living. Sin is our constant temptation to slip back into nothingness, into unreality -- the void of our own individual desires and agendas, the void of a self that deludes itself into the belief that it is really there on its own, independent of God and others…” 

~ Rowan Williams, from here. 

Pursuing No Career, and a Perspective on Ordination – William Stringfellow

“I had elected then [in my early student years] to pursue no career. To put it theologically, I died to the idea of career and to the whole typical array of mundane calculations, grandiose goals and appropriate schemes to reach them…. I do not say this haughtily; this was an aspect of my conversion to the gospel…. 

“[Later] my renunciation of ambition in favor of vocation became resolute; I suppose some would think, eccentric. When I began law studies, I consider that I had few, if any, romantic illusions about becoming a lawyer, and I most certainly did not indulge any fantasies that God had called me, by some specific instruction, to be an attorney or, for that matter, to be a member of any profession or any occupation. I had come to understand the meaning of vocation more simply and quite differently. 

“I believed then, as I do now, that I am called in the Word of God … to the vocation of being human, nothing more and nothing less…. Within the scope of the calling to be merely but truly human, any work, including that of any profession, can be rendered a sacrament of that vocation. On the other hand, no profession, discipline or employment, as such, is a vocation.”
 


—William Stringfellow, A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow (Eerdmans, 1994), pp. 30-31. 

“I would be damned if I would be a priest. That was what I decided. I would not be a priest and, moreover, I would spend my life refuting any who suppose that to be serious about the Christian faith required ordination. I would be a Christian in spite of the priesthood, in spite of all the priests” 

– William Stringfellow, A Second Birthday, p. 82).

NT Wright: Christian Origins and the Question of God – Vol # 4

         

Paul and the Faithfulness of God – 2 Vol. by N. T. Wright is due to be released on the 1^st November 2013 

•      First book comprises Parts I and II and front matter
•      Second book has Parts III and IV plus bibliography and indices 

Can be pre-ordered from Amazon, as can Paul and His Recent Interpreters and Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978-2013. The latter two are also to be published and available on the 1st November 2013.

Why are Women more Religious than Men?

A recently published study by Marta Trzebiatowska and Steve Bruce focuses on the question “Why are women more religious than men?”

Published on the 20th September 2012 it is profiled in the following way: 

“…Women are more religious than men. Despite being excluded from leadership positions, in almost every culture and religious tradition, women are more likely than men to pray, to worship, and to claim that their faith is important to them. Women also dominate the world of 'New Age' spirituality and are far more superstitious than men. 

This book reviews the now-sizeable body of social research to consider if the gender gap in religion is indeed universal. Marta Trzebiatowska and Steve Bruce extensively critique competing explanations of the differences found. They conclude that the gender gap is not the result of biology but is rather the consequence of important social differences over-lapping and reinforcing each other. Responsibility for managing birth, child-rearing and death, for example, and attitudes to the body, illness and health, each play a part. In the West, the gender gap is exaggerated because the social changes that undermined the plausibility of religion bore most heavily on men first. Where the lives of men and women become more similar, and where religious indifference grows, the gender gap gradually disappears. 

Written in an accessible style whilst drawing some robust conclusions, the book's main purpose is to serve as a state-of-the-art review for those interested in one of the largest differences between male and female behaviour. 

Contents 

1: The Great Divide
2: New Religions
3: Spirits and Bodies
4: New Age and Spirituality
5: Conservative Religion
6: Biology, Roles and Attitudes
7: Risk
8: Ways of Life
9: Secularization
10: The Sum of Small Differences…” 

You can find an excerpt (PDF) – chapter 1 – here. 

The Church of England is “in danger of becoming too clerical and congregationally-based.”

Interesting output from The UK-focused YouGov survey, which Professor Linda Woodhead commissioned to inform the 2013 series of Westminster Faith Debates. Her findings are presented in her article ‘”Nominals” are the Church’s Hidden Strength’ in the current issue (26 April 2013, p. 16) of the Church Times. Sadly, this is only available online to subscribers of the newspaper. 

British Religion in Numbers (BRIN) report: 

“…The analysis proper, which forms the first part of the article, distinguishes four types of Anglicans:

1. Godfearing Churchgoers (5% of Anglicans) – These are Anglicans who attend church, are very certain in their belief in God, and who say that God is the main source of authority in their lives. They are also likely to score highly on other indicators of religiosity (such as prayer and Bible-reading) and to hold conservative views on many issues of personal morality, particularly sexuality (setting them apart with Baptists and Muslims rather than fellow Anglicans).
2. Mainstream Churchgoers (12% of Anglicans) – These have more in common with Non-Churchgoing Believers than with the Godfearers. Apart from their churchgoing, they differ in being a little more religious than Non-Churchgoing Believers on a number of measures and a little more morally conservative.
3. Non-Churchgoing Believers (50% of Anglicans) – These share a good many of the attributes of Mainstream Churchgoers, notwithstanding that they do not attend church. They all believe in God (although some prefer the word Spirit), and significant numbers practise religious or spiritual activities regularly. ‘These “nominals” are more than Anglican in name only: they believe, practise, and identify with Anglicanism.’
4. Non-Churchgoing Doubters (33% of Anglicans) – These Anglicans are also more than merely nominal. Only 15% are outright atheists, most being agnostic or unsure about God, and more than one-fifth claim to practise some religious or spiritual activity in private. They are the most morally permissive of the four groups.

The second half of the article is an impassioned – some may say occasionally idealized – plea for the Church of England to take more seriously non-churchgoing Anglicans in general, and Non-Churchgoing Believers in particular, rather than representing Godfearing Churchgoers as the ‘most real Anglicans’. Woodhead contends that the Church is in danger of becoming too clerical and congregationally-based…” (Emphasis, mine).

Source – here. 

I wonder what data and perspective a similar study of the Anglican Church in New Zealand would produce…?