Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Richard Rohr – The Contemplative Tradition Grounds Emerging Christianity

 "…In fairness to the Catholic church … it was good Catholic theology that gave me the authority and self-confidence to talk the way I talk. Catholicism made me who I am. It's ironic and here I end up being very critical of much of Catholicism, and yet, Catholicism gave me the key to unlock that from inside and not outside.

"It's all there. Catholic theology, when it's good, is really good. It's incarnational. It's inclusive. It unlocks itself from inside. It's capable of self-criticism. But it is such a small percentage that ever gets to that, it seems."

So says Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr whom I met and talked with a few years ago, up the road in Hamilton. They could be my words as well, though I didn’t get the benefit of “good Catholic theology” or the rich Spirituality of the Catholic tradition until my own adult questions and the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling brought me back to my beginning.

You can read the whole Rohr thought-piece here - How you get there: The contemplative tradition grounds emerging Christianity. It’s about Richard Rohr and written by Tom Roberts, NCR editor at large, who is travelling the US reporting on Catholic Parish life.

Gorman on Missional Hermeneutics

 Paul writes – Author / Theologian Michael J. Gorman offers some useful thoughts on “missional hermeneutics”, thoughts I’d want to read I conversation with a number of other voices including Al Roxburgh, Steve Taylor, Lesslie Newbigin, Andrew Menzies, Stanley Hauerwas, Kevin Vanhoozer, Simon Carey Holt and William Cavanaugh.

Gorman writes:

“[Missional Hermeneutics] is grounded in the theological principle of the missio Dei, or mission of God. This term summarizes the conviction that the Scriptures of both Testaments bear witness to a God who, as creator and redeemer of the world, is already on a mission. Indeed, God is by nature a missional God, who is seeking not just to save “souls” to take to heaven some day, but to restore and save the created order: individuals, communities, nations, the environment, the world, the cosmos…This triune God calls the people of God assembled in the name of Christ—who was the incarnation of the divine mission—and empowered by the Spirit to participate in the missio Dei: to discern what God is up to in the world, and to join in. This means also, then, that mission is at the heart of theosis (participation in God and transformation into Godlikeness) and theosis at the heart of mission.

This way of understanding mission has many implications, only a few of which may be mentioned here briefly.

1. Mission is not a part of the church’s life (represented locally by a small line item in the budget) but the whole, the essence of the church’s existence; mission is comprehensive.
2. Mission is not the church’s initiative but its response, its participation in God’s mission; mission is derivative.
3. Mission is not an extension of Western (or any other) power, culture, and values; rather, it is specifically participation in the coming of the kingdom of God. It is therefore critical of all attempts to coerce Christian mission for implicit or explicit political purposes other than the “politics” of the reign of God—the realities of new life, peace, and justice (shalom) promised by the prophets, inaugurated by Jesus, and first spread to the world by the apostles. For Christians in the West, it is crucial that they recognize the failure of Christendom as something to be welcomed, and that they see the church appropriately and biblically as a distinctive subculture within a larger, non-Christian culture. Mission is theo and Christocentric.
4. Mission is not unidirectional (e.g., West to East) but reciprocal.
5. Mission must become the governing framework within which all biblical interpretation takes place; mission is hermeneutical.

…To read Scripture from within a missional hermeneutic is wonder how a text both manifests and mandates mission…”

 You can read his full post here.

Jason Clark on Church, Mission, new expressions of church and lots more.

 Paul writes – Blogging friend and all-round nice guy Jason Clark was recently interviewed (13/11/09) by Alex McManus. It’s a fascinating interview that covers a lot of ground – the DMin programme that Jason has developed; his understanding of church, and why Jason considers himself a “missionary” in his UK /Post-Christendom context.  He touches on lots of themes and interests we hold in common, and does a far better job of articulating them.

The interview is around 45 mins in length, and can be found here. Jason blogs here. This blogsite in a number of places links to the PhD research he is doing. Many of the themes are touched on in his interview.

Included in the interview was these great questions; questions church leadership teams (vestries, elders, parish-councils etc) could use and adapt in order to review and reflect on why they are church, what they are trying to achieve as church etc. Certainly they’d act as conversation starters and who knows what other questions and reflection they would give rise too.

Excerpt:

Jason explains that we need to “ask questions” and to “be aware of what’s taking place in the [church space]. He then gives some examples of the kinds of questions he’d ask.

·       What does it mean to be a human being and to grow as a human being? [I guess the point is to review how the experience of church and church belonging is helping in our formation and (trans)formation. Is what we’re doing humanising and enriching peoples experience and understanding of what it means to be a human being? Are they becoming more fully and richly human, free, whole, and alive? Or, are we dehumanising and diminishing them including their longs, hopes, and aspirations?].

·       What’s the cost to get into [the church space]? Who can get in? Who can’t?

·       What are the values in that space?

·       What is the trajectory of that space? Where does it lead people, and to what does it lead them?

·       How [are] people being formed in that space? Where are the limits [and barriers] to how [they] can be formed?

I highly recommend listening to the interview which is downloadable, and if you have burning software, can be easily burned onto a CD, added to your Mp3 player etc.

Being in the Church, Not of It

Paul writes – Today a great little statement by Henri Nouwen. It’s worth some reflection

 

“…Often we hear the remark that we have live in the world without being of the world. But it may be more difficult to be in the Church without being of the Church. Being of the Church means being so preoccupied by and involved in the many ecclesial affairs and clerical "ins and outs" that we are no longer focused on Jesus. The Church then blinds us from what we came to see and deafens us to what we came to hear. Still, it is in the Church that Christ dwells, invites us to his table, and speaks to us words of eternal love.

Being in the Church without being of it is a great spiritual challenge…”

Insatiable Moon – Gareth Higgins Reflects

Paul writes – Gareth Higgins, with whom I shared a couple of whiskey’s a couple of years back, is due in Auckland shortly and posts a few thoughts on The Insatiable Moon (back story here), wondering if it’ll be one of the best films of 2010. I hope he’s right. I think the script is one of the best I’ve read, blending as it does a great story, narrative, drama, humour, and mystery.

I spent my first day on set today and had a great time – they’re great people – a great cast, a great crew, and a great production team. It’s hard not to believe in this story and this group of people. I wish them every success.

Gareth writes:

“…They [Rose and Mike Riddell] are making a film whose script mingles the sensitivity of ‘Paris, Texas‘ with the humour of ‘Whale Rider‘, and hangs on the most unusual narrative hook this side of ‘Cold Souls‘: Arthur, a middle-aged homeless Maori fella with schizophrenia in Ponsonby, near Auckland, and believes that he is called to impregnate an unhappily married woman named Margaret with a view to her giving birth to the second incarnation of Jesus.  Simple enough.  He looks at the moon a lot – he made it, you see.  He thinks about life.  He gives good gifts to broken people.  Meanwhile, a cynical television reporter, doubting preacher, and friendly boarding-house owner dance their own way into a deeper appreciation of meaning…” 

You can read Gareth’s full reflection here.

David Tacey – Does Religion Have a Future

Paul writes – Those who’ve been following the posts on David Tacey may also be interested in a 2008 podcast of Tacey talking at St. David’s Uniting Church, Canterbury, Victoria, Australia about many of the themes that the last few posts have reflected on. He titles the talk Does Religion Have a Future? If you go here, and scroll down, you’ll find Tacey’s talk, and two responses to it.

 

From my perspective there is much in the talk that I think is absolutely spot-on, especially his broader engagement with culture and his critique of “church; but in places I think he pushes things too far in favour of an amorphous spirituality; one that in many places uses the language of Christianity, but hollows out any rootedness in the Christian tradition, or a specifically Christian understanding of spirituality and it’s mystical tradition. 

 

Interestingly, he does commend (as do I) the very good 2008 Australian publication, Emerging Downunder: Creating New Monastic Villages of God by Brent Lyons Lee and Ray Simpson

 

Here are a couple of quotes from it:

 

“… ‘spirituality’ is a personal and self-directed search for meaning… spirituality is a re-emergence of the religious instinct in secular conditions, [because]…for the most part [the searching and interest in spirituality], for the most part, is emerging outside of religious traditions…”

 

“…The historical church [by-and-large] has been based on belief, [yet today] people want experience… The spirit of our times is sceptical and disbelieving until such time as an experience changes its mind and convinces it otherwise… The secular world is full of disbelieving people who are nevertheless waiting for; [indeed] even hoping for conversion…”

David Tacey – Drawing Out the Sacred in Secular Times – Part 3 of 3

Paul writes – “At all times”, Tacey asserts, “and places, when religion has grown weak due to rationality or scientific enlightenment, the way to make religion strong again is to re-experience the mystical potentials of the tradition…”

“When, in the sixteenth century, religion was weakening due to the advances of the natural sciences and rational enquiry, it was thought by some religious leaders that the way ahead was to stiffen and rigidify, to threaten and induce fear [doesn’t that sound very contemporary? – Paul]. But the way to renewal was not through such defensive tactics, but rather through the revival of mystical interiority found in such figures as Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross…Strengthening takes place through… interiority, reflection, introspection and a careful consideration of the God within (“God within” - I hear Col. 1:27 and see the so-called “Virgin of the Sign – The Orans icon. “…Jesus is hidden in our lives…” Rowan Williams, Ponder These Things, p. 50).

“There are Western resources [with which to expand and nourish our interiority], but we have forgotten them and our churches no longer talk of them]. They are buried, lost, or out of sight. We have the resources”, Tacey says, “of Ignatian spirituality, Carmelite, Benedictine and Cistercian spiritualities, but these are like underground streams in society. Where can we go to be replenished by these living waters? We are sitting on enormous riches and great resources of water, but most of this passes us by, as we sit in a dry wasteland at the surface. We are suffering from a collective amnesia of some kind, and we have to remember how to live on the inside, how to draw from the mystical depths, and how to replenish our lives by turning toward the sacred echoes at the core of the human heart…”

Tacey argues that, “it is essential today that religious life originates within the self, as a personal response to an inner call [“Come, follow me…?” said Jesus to his first disciples], rather than being derived from inherited habits or from social pressure. It seems that religious faith that is not grounded on personal conviction is simply unable to deal with the conflicts of our time, and is all to easily lost or abandoned [cf. Matthew 13:3-9. I love Simon Smith’s retelling of this parable in his Bodge Plants a Seed]

David Tacey – Drawing Out the Sacred in Secular Times – Part 2 of 3

Paul writes – In his very thought-provoking essay, What is Religion For? Drawing out the Sacred in Secular Times David Tacey reflects that “the turning toward God is an act of surrender, devotion and love. Through the surrender of love we allow the greater power to make its claim on us and to reorganize our lives. The God encounter is not the last step in our history of acquisitiveness and seeking, but the renunciation of acquisition and the cessation of seeking [ in a vague and general sense]. Instead we allow ourselves to be found… and to be taken home.

On this point I suspect Tacey would agree with Henri Nouwen who has written:

“Brother [sister], You want to seek God with all your life, and love him with all your heart. But you would be wrong if you thought you could reach Him. Your arms are too short; your eyes are too dim, your heart and understanding too small. To seek God means first of all to let yourself be found by Him…” 

Tacey believes that “the task of religion in a dark time is to remind people of the love and security which is already available to us, but only if we are prepared to stop long enough to listen for it. It is to help people see through the profane answer and to discover the Augustinian answer [Men and women squander their strength on luxuries that make them weary (Confessions, 241) and “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you" Confessions, Book 1, Chpt. 1]   

It is to help them find the courage to enter the world of their feelings and to find there, at their vulnerable core, the cry for God, the cry for the fellowship of the Spirit. It is to release people from their obsessions and addictions, their tin gods and false idols, their debts and cravings, and invite them to rediscover their integrity as they return to the reality of their true [and deepest] longing” (p. 49).

“We cry”, he says, “that God has deserted us, when in fact it is we who have deserted God.”

“…To survive these [current] conditions, religion must become prophetic and use its prophetic resources and imagination. It must play down its authority, its desire to impose, preach, or import and instead it must listen to people’s stories, to their pain, their hopes and dreams, their failures and their despair… It means listening to what has not been said”, or as a dear friend regularly says, “it is to listen for the more”; for what is deeper, for what might be struggling for expression, or indeed, what might be resistant to being breathed into life.

David Tacey – Drawing Out the Sacred in Secular Times – Part 1 of 3

Paul writes – In his essay, What is Religion For? Drawing out the Sacred in Secular Times David Tacey believes that we find ourselves (as others have done in previous generations) in “a destitute time, a time devoid of spiritual meaning and direction, a time eclipsed by the darkness of the world… our present night”. Now, he doesn’t intend that to sound gloomy, rather, as he writes in this essay, and writes elsewhere, the spiritual is breaking through in lot’s of interesting ways in our contemporary Western context. Quoting Indian Poet Rabindranath Tagore he describes faith, as “the bird that feels the light and signs while the dawn is still dark.”

In this present time “religion [needs to move] from a spirituality of dwelling to a spirituality of seeking or journeying. Religion’s task is not to point to itself or to explain itself, but to reach beyond itself into the world. It does this by reaching into and drawing out the sacred depths in people’s lives” (p.47), says Tacey. 

He continues, “In a secular time the majority of people no longer come to religion and do not participate in religion’s rituals, so religion has to go out to the people.” “The locus of engagement”, he believes, “is no longer primarily the sacred building, where most people are not gathering, but the wider secular community in which a great deal of activity and human restlessness is taking place. In a sense, the whole world becomes the new temple, because anywhere in the world can be made potentially holy by the advent of homecoming, that is [by recognizing and being drawn to or by] the presence of something sacred at work in it…”

Interestingly, he says “the task of ministry is different in a destitute time, because ministry must shift from preaching the word to listening for the word. It’s general direction shifts from evangelism to prophetic listening… We need to listen, as St. Benedict proclaims in his Rule [RB Prologue 1 which Terrence Kardong O.S.B.  notes as “closely resembling the exhortations found in the wisdom literature of the Bible], with the ears of the heart to the thoughts and feelings that come from the hearts of others…”   

You will find the introduction to this series, here. 

David Tacey on What is Religion For…?

Paul writes – I read a number of essays/lectures over the course of a year, but one of the best has been an edited lecture, which I read within the last few days – What is Religion For? Drawing out the Sacred in Secular Times by Australian David Tacey, author of some extremely useful and interesting books including:

The Spirituality Revolution: The Emergence of Contemporary Spirituality. Sydney: HarperCollins, 2003; London: Brunner-Routledge, 2004; Jung and the New Age. London and New York: Routledge, 2001; ReEnchantment: The New Australian Spirituality. Sydney: HarperCollins, 2000; Remaking Men: Jung, Spirituality and Social Change. London and New York: Routledge, 1997; Melbourne: Viking Penguin Books, 1997.

Why do I regard his essay as one of the best I’ve read this year? So much of its content resonates at a deep level for me. I’ve written a little essay on “desire” to be published in REFRESH journal in December. On the downside I wish I’d seen Tacey’s essay before I wrote mine as Tacey’s inclusion would have made it a stronger essay, but on the upside (without wanting to sound big-headed), reading Tacey’s essay was very affirming of my own reading of these times.

Tacey’s essay is published in the very good collection of essays Reimagining God and Mission (in Australia) published in 2007 and edited by Ross Langmead (Back cover and contents page here [PDF]). Sadly, as is the typically the case with ATF Press publications the binding along the spine is very rigid and its difficult to open the book out without creasing or breaking the spine. Disappointing given the usually high quality of essays in their publications, and their price (NZ $40). That said, I do highly recommend this collection. As Langmead says in his preface, while originating out of an Australian context they will also “resonate  in other cultural contexts, particularly in those similar-but-different countries, the UK, USA, Canada and New Zealand” (p.vi)