New Monasticism – Contemplating a way of living publicly

* Warning – Long Post

A really wonderful essay: Christian Spirituality as a Way of Living Publicly: A Dialectic of the Mystical and Prophetic (or here as a pdf), written by Philip Sheldrake (who is fast becoming a very important voice in my journey. Thanks for the introduction Steve) begins by highlighting the commonly held misconception that “spirituality” has to do with interiority and personal spiritual experience that is divorced from everyday life. This false separation between the inner and outer life was the most prevalent understanding of Christian spirituality until the “last part of the 20^th century.”

Sheldrake’s[i] revisiting of relevant sections from St. Augustine’s theological treatise City of God is fascinating, all the more so for his offering us a much needed corrective to the long held view that Augustine’s was the classic expression of what Richard Sennett refers to “as the triumph of an inner spiritual world over a human, outer, one.” Indeed, later “medieval Augustinians understood the purpose of interiority [the contemplative journey] to be external action rather than the cultivation of an inner universe of private experience.”

Today, more than ever, given current interest in reworking and drawing from sections of the Christian monastic tradition (given expression in so-called “new monasticism(s)”) the assumption that the medieval turn to interiority implied the privatisation of spirituality” is one of a number of issues that needs to be questioned and rethought.   

For me, Christian community (be it “neo monasticism” or “churches” more generally) is always one consequence of a collective participation in the missio Dei. God’s redemptive work is always prior. Therefore neo monastic “communities…exist [primarily] for the sake of witness to Jesus Christ who is the life and hope of the world.”[ii] “New monasticism exists to sustain knowledge of the gospel of the kingdom that was proclaimed, embodied, and accomplished in Jesus Christ.” [iii] New monasticism must therefore, first and foremost, be a bearer of good news, an embodying of a new way of being and becoming fully human (i.e. Christ-likeness) in relation to God, self, other human beings, and creation more generally.

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[i]      Sheldrake currently is pursuing interests in spirituality in the public life, theological hermeneutics and academic spirituality, and cathedrals as theological/spiritual texts.

[ii]     Jonathan R. Wilson in his introduction to School(s) of Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism, Cascade Books, Feb. 2005, p.2

[iii]     School(s) of Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism, Cascade Books, Feb. 2005, p.2. See also Jonathan R. Wilson, Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World: Lessons for the Church from MacIntyre’s After Virtue, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1997.

Sheldrake writes, “The missio Dei (mission of God), is the divine activity of self-disclosure in creation, salvation history and Incarnation, drawing all things into the limitless embrace of God's unifying love. The life of discipleship is to participate ever more deeply in this missio Dei through a faithful following of the way of Jesus, the bearer and expression of God's mission. For this reason, the biblical notions of mission and discipleship are at the core of the Christian life [and what it might mean to express new derivatives of monasticism]…” 

Jesuit, the late “Michel de Certeau, [i] and David Tracy write that mystics [read also, “monastics”], like the mad, represent a kind of otherness on the social and religious margins.”  In my view, so-called new monasticism needs to position itself as a very marginal enterprise, one that lives deeply and lovingly particularly for all who likewise are marginalised and excluded. It needs to be a vital and active conduit for God’s shalom.  A new monasticism that does not have at its core the partnering of God in his missio Dei, and the re-integration of the inner life and its outer dimension seems too me to take the risky path of living out of a superficial understanding of monasticism. New Monasticism, like some historical streams of Christian monasticism must be both “mystical” (i.e. contemplative) and prophetic (leading to and engaged in “transformative practice”).

De Certeau sought to speak in a world in which society and intellectual discourse were no longer dominated by the Church. After examining various approaches to “being”, de Certeau settled for the idea of lived practice, a provocative presence-in-the-world expressed in the age-old tension between discipleship (following), and conversion (the fluidity and flexibility of discontinuous change). The church in all its forms is called to bear witness, to embody belief by following Jesus faithfully and consequently to allow itself to be continuously changed. “God's transformative self-disclosure in the event of Jesus Christ is continually to be re-expressed in the life of the community of disciples in every time and place.”

Christian Spirituality embodied in churches and new monastic communities, rather than representing a retreat from the world should in fact be a way of living Christologically, a way of living publicly in the power of the Spirit so that the story of Jesus Christ, his life-death-resurrection-ascension points to and enables a way of living for the sake of the world.

There is more I want to say with regards to new monasticism, some of it critiques, some of it affirming (although with caveats attached), but that will have to wait for another day.

Meantime, I’d encourage you to print off a copy of Sheldrake’s essay, fill a nice warm bath, pour a glass of wine, and read it through the lens of new monasticism as both a way of contemplation and a way of love; contemplation and cruciform love expressed within intentional Christian community, and within the public sphere.

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[i]      See also Sheldrake’s excellent essay Unending Desire: De Certeau’s ‘Mystics,’ in The Way Supplement, Vol. 102.

Comments

[Caroline Ramsey]

I love the use that Lindisfarne influenced New Monastics make of the tidal nature of Holy Island (off the coast of Northumberland, England). With the Flow tide the island is cut off - a time for withdrawing to the cell and contemplative prayer. At the Ebb tide, you can leave the island by the causeway and it's time to work, witness and serve.

This seems to show the balance your thinking of.

My vicar made the point during a conversation today that as we see the need for an evermore fragmented, flexible approach to the church's mission, so there is a need for an ever greater attention to our core relationship with God; the prayer rhythms of the monastery come to mind. Not, as you say, about privatised spirituality, but about the balance and resourcing of a life of witness.

[Jeff]

Paul,

Great post, read it this morning and have downloaded Shaldrake's article to read. His book "Living between Worlds" was though provoking for me.

Keep it up buddy,

Catch ya latter,
Jeff