Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Monica Furlong on the Role of the Priest

Paul writes – I came across this very thoughtful reflection by Monica Furlong (1930-2003). Speaking in 1960 to a group of Ordinands in Durham, she responds to the statement “I want priests who dare to be…” 

Here’s what she said (and I’ve updated the language in a couple of places to reflect the reality that in NZ women are able to be ordained and to serve as priests and Bishops within the Anglican tradition): 

“[Priest’s, ministers, pastors] are in for a growing loneliness, of being misunderstood. I suggest that this will only be endurable if they expect this, understand the reasons for it, and do not cast too many envious glances over their shoulders at the circumstances of their predecessors.   

I am clear about what I want from the clergy.  I want them to be people who can, by their own happiness and contentment challenge my ideas about status, success and money and so teach me how to live more independently of such drugs. 

I want them to be people who can dare, as I do not dare, and as few of my contemporaries dare to refuse to work flat out and to refuse to work more strenuously than me. 

I want them to be people who dare because they are secure enough in the value of what they are doing to have time to read, to sit and think, and who face the emptiness and possible depression which often attacks people when they do not keep the surface of their mind occupied.  

I want them to be people who have faced this kind of loneliness and discovered how fruitful it is, and I want them to be people who have faced the problem of prayer. 

I want them to be people who can sit still without feeling guilty and from who I can learn some kind of tranquility in a society, which has almost lost the art. 

It may be true that it is only in so far as the clergy start by exploring their inner loneliness and its relation to Christian belief that all their hard work is going to reach others who, for one reason or another, are alone, and so begin to heal our society. 

If they do not begin from a vast clearing of quietness around the offering of worship, a quietness which they can discover who they are and so enter into genuine relationships with others, then they are indeed second-rate social workers, and it were better that they were swept away. 

But I have a great hope that the clergy will rise to this challenge as historically they have risen so admirably to others. 

From here I want to suggest that the [Priest, Minister, Pastor’s] great strength will be the fact that s/he has no strength except the strength of love. S/he is closer to Christ… because like Christ, S/he has so few defences against the world.

Without any certainty that it is going to be appreciated or understood s/he goes out to other people, able only to offer his/her relationship with God, his/her longing to help, to love  and to heal. S/he is prepared to be vulnerable, to make [themselves’ a fool in a way which only… Christians still attempt.”   

Monica Furlong. I’m pretty sure it’s from her 1965 book With Love to the Church.

Also of interest to those of you who got this points might be this paper: Binding and Loosing for Theologians: A short paper for the colloquium: Theology for Church and World: The Priestly Vocation of the Theologian (PDF). UPDATED. The author/speaker was James Walters (Westcott 2003-07). It was delivered on the  2nd February 2008. The paper was given by the Revd Dr James Walters (now curate of Hampstead Parish Church) at a Colloquium entitled 'Theology for Church and World: The Priestly Vocation of the Theologian' in honour of the Revd Professor Dan Hardy who died on 15 November 2007.

 

Begbie, Viola, and Batchelor – Three Great Conversations plus Just War and Eastern Philosophy and Western Indulgence.

Paul writes – ABC Radio in Australia has had some fascinating interviews over the last little while. Here’s three I’ve enjoyed:

Jeremy Begbie

Can music convey beliefs even when it is purely instrumental? Jeremy Begbie thinks it can, and as a musician and a theologian he teaches students at Wolfson College, Cambridge and Duke University in the US how to understand the parallels between complex musical harmonies and equally complex theological ideas such as the Trinity. Professor Begbie speaks to Rachael Kohn on the occasion of a series of lectures, Music, Modernity and God, for New College at the University of New South Wales.

Podcast and transcript here.

(One of my favourite artists) Bill Viola and his spiritual art

Few video artists can boast a hallowed placed in the world's churches and cathedrals, but Bill Viola's spiritual vision has been widely recognised by both the artistic as well as the religious establishment. In a rare and profoundly spiritual conversation, Bill Viola talks to Rachael Kohn at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image for the Melbourne Festival of the Arts.

Podcast and transcript here.

Stephen Batchelor - The Secular Dharma

Buddhist practitioners in the West will often say that Buddhism is not a religion as such. But author and Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor believes that even the "-ism" of Buddhism represents a departure from the teachings of the Buddha himself. So what role do philosophy, belief and the Big Questions have in the practices of compassion, meditation and awareness?

Podcast here.

Also, two great articles from the ABC Religion and Ethics Website

Just how realistic is just war? By Stanley Hauerwas.

Eastern philosophy and Western indulgence By Justine Toh. 

 

Films: The Best and Worst of 2010

Paul writes – The local university magazine (Oct. 10) featured a piece on the best and worst movies of 2010 – a New Zealand perspective. In terms of the “best” of 2010, I agree with all the choices except Broken Embraces. While I’m a big Pedro Almodovar fan, this particular film failed to draw me in on any level. I experienced myself as a detached observer rather than a ‘participant’ in the story. I have yet to see the very popular kiwi film Boy, and have The Secret in their Eyes to watch.  

And I’m pleased to say I’ve seen none of the 10 “worst” films – which is clearly a good thing. Good that I haven’t and good that my sense of what is likely to be a poor movie has been validated. 

See what you think.

Download Best and Worst Films of 20010 - Nexus Oct. 2010  

 

In Conversation about an Insatiable Moon

Paul writes – I’ve been getting some encouraging feedback from friends who’ve been to see The Insatiable Moon. It’s touching people, moving them in a whole lot of ways, reconnecting them with their own stories and experiences; opening their eyes to contexts and realities unfamiliar to them.

Recently while in England, star Rawiri Paratene (Arthur), Director Rosemary Riddell, and Screenwriter/NZ Producer Mike Riddell were interviewed by Joseph Hoye from NZnewsUK, a UK-based news service for ex-pat Kiwi’s domiciled in the UK (and no doubt elsewhere, given the reach of the web). 

You can read the full interview here.

Below are a few extracts, including some highlighted comments encouraging New Zealanders to spread the word and to get out and see the film. Unlike other recent “big” kiwi releases, this film doesn’t have a big marketing budget – you won’t see big full page ads, pictures on bus stops and the back of buses, big TV advertisements etc. This is a film relying on and trusting its audience.

Reminds me of the feature story in Friday’s Business Herald: fragile startup businesses with great products, services etc… not succeeding because of a lack of capital and willingness of investors to get in behind and support great NZ businesses with heaps of potential, but limited capital for marketing etc.   

Anyway, I'm getting off the subject at hand, here’s the excerpts

Joseph Hoye: Pretty Woman and Sleepless in Seattle come to mind when discussing love stories. This is a film about love but it’s nothing like that style of film. Was there the intention to make this a film about love?

Mike Riddell: It’s more about the nature of communal love rather than romantic love. The boarding house is a place of belonging for the men who live there. Bob, the boarding house manager has a rough as guts love for his charges.

And on the other side, it’s an exploration on the lack of communal love. I lived in Ponsonby when it went through the policy of so-called community care but it was releasing people into a society where there was no natural community. A lot of people got left to their own devices, except a few who headed to these houses and established their own kind of community.

Rawiri Paratene: In order for there to be community care there has to be a community.

Mike: Right. The language was there but in reality it was a cost-saving exercise to get people out of the institutions. There were some good motives as well and I wouldn’t want to go back to the old total institutionalization.

And the romance between Arthur and Margaret is part of Arthur’s journey and I guess it’s an exploration into what is madness. Margaret is going through her own period of fragility where normal choices are being transgressed. The romance fits in with Arthur and Margaret’s journey.

Rawiri: It’s certainly not a romance in terms of Sleepless in Seattle and Pretty Woman.

Rose Riddell: I think it’s certainly a difficult film to pigeon-hole and I like that, but I think some reviewers have struggled with which category they can put this into. It was never intended to be fit into any particular genre other than be a lovely, feel-good story. There’s the love story, the mental health aspect, there’s redemption, and all of those stories can touch people on different levels… 

…So what do you want from this movie? What are you hoping for? Mike: We all have aspirations for this story. The reason you make it is because you want people to see it. We want the story to travel. Our experience has been that if audiences come, they love the film. The problem is getting audiences to the film because we don’t have a big budget to spend. We rely on word of mouth. I’d just like a lot of people to experience it. One of the by-lines that the New Zealand distributors have used is ‘a small film that might just change the world’ That would be great to aspire to that. 

… Rawiri: I want the word of mouth to get going. It deserves bigger audiences than it’s getting back home at the moment. I want all of the things that Mike and Rose mentioned. I think it deserves to get into an A-list festival, which will help its life along. It’s a nice festival movie… 

…With a round of laughter in response to Mike’s answer, the interview was over. The coffee wasn’t the best but the company made up for it. Mike, Rose and Rawiri moved on to their next engagement, leaving me to muse on how such a great little film as The Insatiable Moon could have been overlooked in the funding stakes and hoping that audience reaction will soon make up for it. So, whether you’re in the UK or New Zealand, make sure you get to a screening as soon as you can to repay a little bit of the faith that these gutsy film makers placed in their story…” 

Spread the word. Go and see the movie! Its “a small film that might just change the world”; change the world one person at a time!

For reviews and more on the film, visit its website or these posts – this one and this one – on this site. 

 

The Divine Spirit Praying in Us

Paul writes – I came across the following quote via a friend the other day. It makes some needful and important points.

“The practice of contemplative prayer is the discipline by which we begin to see God in our heart. It is a careful attentiveness to the One who dwells in the centre of our being such that through the recognition of God's presence we allow God to take possession of all our senses. Through the discipline of prayer we awaken ourselves to the God in us and let God enter into our heartbeat and our breathing, into our thoughts and emotions, our hearing, seeing, touching, and tasting. It is by being awake to this God in us that we can see God in the world around us. The great mystery of the contemplative life is not that we see God in the world, but that God within us recognises God in the world. God speaks to God, Spirit speaks to Spirit, heart speaks to heart. Contemplation, therefore, is a participation in this divine self-recognition. It is the divine Spirit praying in us who makes our world transparent and opens our eyes to the presence of the divine Spirit in all that surrounds us. It is with our heart of hearts that we see the heart of the world. This explains the intimate relationship between contemplation and ministry.”

Henri Nouwen. The Only Necessary Thing.

 

Alan Roxburgh on How Cultures Change

Paul writes – I was struck by a really important statement by Al Roxburgh. Important at the level of organisation i.e. a business, church etc. At the same time it’s a statement that can also be engaged at the level of the individual and/or relationship.  

“...Information and knowledge [and planning] does not and will not change a culture, because a culture is shaped not primarily by information and knowledge but by habits, practices, values, and attitudes and so until you begin to engage people at the level of habits, practices, values, and attitudes nothing changes...”

Alan Roxburgh, Montreal – Sept 2010

For more from Alan, see yesterday's post.

Alan Roxburgh in Conversation - Church When The Maps Have Changed / New Book out 2011

Paul writes – for those of you who haven’t already discovered them I want to highlight a series of talks/conversations by Alan Roxburgh at a recent gathering of Anglican clergy in Montreal, Canada. They gathered at the Montreal Diocesan Theological College over the period 26-28 September 2010.

Al’s distinctive voice has accompanied me in the car for the last week. Lots of deeply encouraging content, lots that should be both profoundly exciting and profoundly challenging for the church. I found myself greatly engaged, but also greatly troubled as I reflected on my own journey and experiences, and as disappointment, frustrations, fear, and sadness also bubbled up as I listened.

Al is one of the Western churches foremost missiologist/theologians. He brings real intellectual grunt, breadth, experience, a network of diverse conversations, and great communication skills to the table. All are in evidence in the audio recordings of the talks.

It’s been a privilege to have gotten to know him quite well in recent years. I appreciate him as a person, albeit our personalities are quite different, and without always agreeing with him (though I mostly do) I usually defer to his experience by sitting with an idea /description or terminology and thinking it through over time, noticing how initial resistance changes with the benefit of new perspective and learning. I always appreciate his framing and naming of the challenges and opportunities we face.

Needless I highly recommend the talks (of varying length) and their conversational nature. Technology again makes it possible to listen in on from within our own local and socio-cultural contexts; in my case from the bottom (or is it the “top”?) of the world. Thanks to those in Montreal and to Alan for making the recordings available.

You can find them here. Can be heard online or downloaded as Mp3’s (a good idea as further benefit will be gained from repeated listening).  You can also pre-order his latest book (which he mentions in passing in his first lecture) – Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood to be published next year (March 2011). It is described in the following way:

“...The burgeoning missional church movement is a sign that believers are increasingly feeling the call to impact their communities, which is a good thing. But, says Alan J. Roxburgh, these conversations still prioritize church success over mission--how can being missional grow my church? But to focus on such questions misses the point.

In Missional, Roxburgh calls Christians to reenter their neighborhoods and communities to discover what the Spirit is doing there--to start with God's mission. He then encourages readers to shape their local churches around that mission. With inspiring true stories and a solid biblical base, Missional is a book that will change lives and communities as its message is lived out...”

Al’s books should also be required reading in congregational contexts across this land. As NZ Baptist church leader Murray Robertson said many years ago, “New Zealand is a mission field!” 

 

The Five Most Important Theological Books Written Over the Last 25-Years...?

Paul writes – The magazine Christian Century posed this question to eight theologians: “Suppose someone who hasn't been keeping up with theology for the past 25 years now wants to read the most important books written during that time. What five titles would you suggest?”

Stanley Hauerwas responds with the following:

George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. Lindbeck not only maps the alternative in contemporary theology but also offers a constructive way forward that has been taken up by many theologians. He does this by drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein and Clifford Geertz to provide an account of doctrine that might help us see ecumenical possibilities that would otherwise be unavailable.

John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel. In this collection of essays Yoder develops a constructive alternative to Reinhold Niebuhr. Yoder's case for Christian nonviolence draws on christological and eschatological connections that reveal that any attempt to separate theology and ethics is erroneous. Yoder may provide the kind of ecclesiology that Lindbeck suggests we need.

Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology. Jenson's work not only is the kind of theology that Barth made possible, but it represents the recovery of the work of the church fathers as crucial for understanding contemporary theological struggles. Jenson's ability to use scripture as constitutive of theological arguments is exemplary. These volumes should become the training manual for future theologians.

James Wm. McClendon Jr., Systematic Theology. In the three volumes of his systematic theology, McClendon develops a Baptist theology that is in conversation with the great Catholic tradition. Like Jenson's, McClendon's theology has ecumenical implications that are extremely promising. His suggestions regarding how classical christological issues can be understood more fruitfully as narrative have yet to be considered in the way they deserve.

John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. Milbank's tour de force offers a theological engagement with modern intellectual formation that we desperately need. He argues that modern theology has legitimized social theories that make theology unintelligible to itself. Though Milbank is critical of Lindbeck, his is the kind of work that Lindbeck hopes will be done.

Other theologians include a number of my favourites: Amos Yong, Lawrence S. Cunningham, Sarah Coakley, and Kevin Vanhoozer. You can read their responses/selections here.

Feel free to leave a comment – if you wish - with the five books you would recommend if you’d been asked.

 

James Alison: Sexuality, Certainty, Salvation, and Missional Opportunities

“Priest and theologian James Alison believes that there are bright glimmers of hope to be found in the Catholic Church's wrestling with issues around homosexuality. He reflects on his own experience as a gay Catholic, on the givenness of sexual orientation, and on what he calls "the shape of God's affection".

It’s a good programme – a mixture of lecture (excerpt) and interview. On balance, I always think Alison comes across more energetically and evocatively in writing and in interview, so for me it’s the interview component of this recording that really gets at Alison’s ability and insight as a theologian, not least as a theologian who happens to be gay. That said the closing section of lecture is very good. Clearly too the issues that Alison explores are bigger than simply the homosexual debate. Alison's theological methodology and his approach to theological reflection are fascinating and as someone on the inside of the outside in relation to church, I find it tremendously helpful and encouraging. For me, a lot of the issues Alison addresses, and the sexuality debate, more generally, actually circle around missional questions in the spirit of, for example: Luke 10: 1-11 and the Emmaus Road story.  

I understand why Rowan Williams has written (in his foreword to Alison's most brilliant book (in my view) Knowing Jesus): "...James Alison's work is a model of clarity in exposition - relaxed, concersational, but holding us firmly to the demands of its subject matter. It is a model of how to deploy some very traditional Christian resources with a thoroughly contemporary intellectual toughness, so as to liberate us from the cliches of so much modern theological squabbling..." 

This Australian radio programme first aired on the 10^th October 2010 and you can find the audio here (downloadable as an Mp3 if you wish) If you missed it, I also drew attention, here, to an earlier interview with Alison while he was in Australia.  

 

“…This delightful romp through a character-filled world is well worth a look…”

Paul writes - Another good newspaper review of The Insatiable Moon (4 out of 5) 

“…This delightful romp through a character-filled world is well worth a look…” Sam Edwards, Waikato Times review.

You can read it in full here.

Again, go and see it and if you haven’t seen it don’t take my word for it; there are now a good number of very positive media reviews of the movie. More can be found on the movie’s website, or via its facebook page. On this blog, you’ll find more about the movie here.