Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Endings or It May Not Always Be So.

A poem I’ve been pondering is it may not always be so; and i say by E.E. Cummings. It’s a hard poem. A love poem. I see too that Roger Housden picks up on it in his forthcoming book Ten Poems to Say Goodbye. 

Here’s an excerpt from Housden’s reflection on this poem: 

“…What struck me on reading it was the tenderness and selflessness of the poet’s love for his beloved. Cummings gives us a heartfelt example of how to love even as love is leaving.

He is aware that he may be losing her; that someone else may now be enjoying the intimacy he himself once knew in time not far away. Yet his response is extraordinary:

if this should be, i say if this should be-

you of my heart, send me a little word;

that I may go unto him, and take his hands,

saying, Accept all happiness from me.

I wonder how many of us have been able to bow so gracefully to the very person our beloved is turning toward, even as our beloved turns away from us. Cummings shines a light on the human capacity to truly love. He accepts the way life moves and has its own intelligence. He accepts the reality that we are never entirely in control of the way things go.

In loving what is mortal, we know that sooner or later, the object of our love will pass away, as everything does. Even so, Cummings loves utterly, without reserve. And to let go when it is time to let go – which is often not the time we would have chosen – is perhaps the final, most absolute mark of that love.

And yes, there is a cost. The poem ends with these lines:

Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird

sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

A heartrending cry of loss such as this would be moving in any context…” 

You can read the full thing here. It’s interesting to read this poem through the lenses of the 9-types of the Enneagram and the way each type holds onto something, i.e. find it hard to “let go”. For example, “...Nines tend to hold onto a belief and felt sense that they are unimportant, insignificant and undeserving of attention, while at the same time clinging to the ego-ideal of being loving and benevolent…” (Sandra Maitri). Another interesting way to sit with the poem is in conversation with chapter 9 (“Endings”) of Thomas Moore’s Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship.

 

Enough Light for the Next Step

“Often we want to be able to see into the future. We say, "How will next year be for me? Where will I be five or ten years from now?" There are no answers to these questions. Mostly we have just enough light to see the next step: what we have to do in the coming hour or the following day. The art of living is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark. When we are able to take the next step with the trust that we will have enough light for the step that follows, we can walk through life with joy and be surprised at how far we go. Let's rejoice in the little light we carry and not ask for the great beam that would take all shadows away.” 

Henri Nouwen

 

Solitude, Shallows and Education

I came across an interesting little article on the importance of “solitude” within the education sector. For me, to a point, it parallels some thinking and reflection that Nicholas Carr has developed around what he calls “the shallows” (see his The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains). Are there parallels with our experiences of church-belonging…? Are churches / discipleship education dealing with different issues, for example, rather than “activity” the challenge is more around passivity…? 

Here’s an excerpt from the article which is an interview with Diana Senechal, a New York Public school educator and author of the very recently published Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture 

“…Solitude is not about being in a hut out in the woods or being out in the desert or living without other people around. I define solitude as a certain apartness that we always have, whether we’re among others or not. It is something that can be practiced — maybe to think just on one’s own, even when in a meeting or in a group and so forth — but that also has been nurtured by time alone. So there’s an ongoing solitude that’s always there, and there’s also a shaped or practiced solitude, which requires both time alone with things, to be thinking about things and working on things, and time among others when you nonetheless think independently…

… I’m not a psychologist, but in the classroom and in many discussions on education, what I see is an emphasis on keeping the students busy from start to finish. Not letting a moment creep in where they don’t have something specific to do, something concrete where they are actually producing something. So if you keep them busy, busy, busy, and doing something at every moment, then supposedly they’re engaged. And when supervisors walk into classrooms and look and see the students writing and turning and talking, their conclusion is “Oh! What an engaged class!” The problem with that is then students don’t learn how to handle moments of doubt, or moments of silence, or moments where they have to struggle with a problem and they can’t produce something right on the spot. So, the students themselves come to expect to be put to work at every moment. If you want to give them something more difficult, you have to expect a little uncertainty. You have to expect a little bit of silence, a little bit of an awkward pause where they don’t know exactly what to do right away. What happens in this focus on visible engagement, we lose something that may go deeper, where students may have a chance to wrestle with something that’s a little bit above his or her head and where the answer is not immediately apparent…”

Intimacy

Intimacy is allowing oneself to love and be loved, to know and be known fully. Its about not hiding from ones significant 'other(s)', nor from oneself. 

Life is a profound movement from self-indulgence and self-absorption into the rich and deeply humanizing adventure of love: learning to love and receive love. There is no end to this learning and receiving.  

 

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well…” – Vaclav Havel

I was struck by the following as I read a reflection on Vaclav Havel (1936-2011) written by Paul Wilson and published in the New York Review of Books, 9^th February 2012. Here it is. Highlights are mine. 

“…a week in which the Czech newsstands were flooded with special commemorative editions of magazines and newspapers devoted to Havel’s passing, there was scarcely an aspect of his life and ideas that was not mulled over and parsed for deeper meaning, or recalled in pictures. The most iconic of those pictures—a shot of Havel with his back to the camera, walking toward the ocean—was turned into a poster and widely displayed around Prague, along with a quotation expressing one of Havel’s most deeply held beliefs: “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” 

A ringing statement, but it was not quite in focus. What Havel meant by “something”—as his other formulations of the same belief make clear—was action. All his life, Havel lived by the belief that if you wanted something to happen, you had to do something to make it happen, and damn the consequences, including arrest and prison, and possibly even death. Speaking about the early days of the post-Stalin thaw, he once said: “The more we did, the more we were able to do, and the more we were able to do, the more we did.” It is a fine summary of his attitude, and, in a sense, his legacy. Havel was continually pushing the boundaries of the possible, and in doing so, he was able to create space for others to follow…” 

… What put him in a league of his own is the corollary: you act not to achieve a certain outcome; you act because it is the right thing to do. That is what he meant by “living in truth,” a notion he explores in some depth in his most radical and enduring work: The Power of the Powerless. 

Like many great Czechs before him, Havel insisted on the importance of truth, but with a difference. “Truth and love,” he was fond of saying, “must prevail over lies and hatred.” He was often ridiculed for what seemed like a Hallmark sentiment (“Why love?” people asked), but he defended the slogan by referring to one of his greatest insights: truth, by itself, is a malleable concept that depends for its truthfulness on who utters it, to whom it is said, and under what circumstances. As a playwright, Havel turned this insight into a dramatic device: in most of his plays, the main characters constantly lie to one another and to themselves, using words that, in other circumstances, would be perfectly truthful. Truth by itself is not enough: it needs a guarantor, someone to stand behind it. It must be uttered with no thought for gain, that is, in Havel’s words, with a love that seeks nothing for itself and everything for others… 

…Havel was a deeply spiritual man who expressed his spirituality, if that is the right word, almost entirely through his actions in the world… 

… Havel’s generosity toward Sudeten Germans points to one of his finest, and most radical, qualities: his capacity for forgiveness…“and Havel knew that the only way to break out of [the] …cycle of hatred and vengeance was to forgive those who have wronged us. If,” he added, “they ask to be forgiven”…” 

You can read the full New York Review of Books piece, here. 

Thanks for Jason Goroncy for bringing it to my attention. 

Incarnation.

“…Most of us need a good infusion of understanding of the rich significance of Jesus’ humanness. He did not become flesh and blood simply so that he could die. He became a man so that he could show us what it means to be fully and truly human…” 

J. R. Daniel Kirk, from here. Referencing an article by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen on Jesus in the Jan. 2012 issue of Christianity Today. 

 

Andrew Perriman: “The curse of patriarchy and the hope of new creation”: and a Corollary on Marriage

Another thoughtful and thought-provoking post from Andrew Perriman – further reflection emerging out of his reflection on the themes of chapter 6 (“Women in the Story of God”) of JR. Daniel Kirk’s book Jesus Have I Loved, But Paul? A Narrative [Storied] Approach to the Problem of Pauline Christianity. I posted on his initial review here. 

Here’s an excerpt from his latest reflection: 

Referencing Genesis 3, he writes: 

“…The words for “desire” and “rule over” are the same in both texts. The parallelism strongly suggests, on the one hand, that the “desire” of the woman for the man is not to be understood positively—in the postlapsarian world the woman and man are at odds with each other in much the same way that sin and Cain are at odds with each other…” 

Which, I guess makes life-giving, genuine, deepening, and life-long marriages all the more special; and all the more the result of a life-time of grace-full acts of love, care, affirmation, valuing, encouragement etc which counter and subvert the power of sin and death; the inherent brokenness and conflict that lies within the hearts of each one of us and at the heart of each relationship, not least marriage. Surely then, these marriages are reflections and signs of “New Creation”, so St. Paul can liken the marriage relationship to the relationship between Christ and the Church. Signs are for seeing, but the sad reality is that so few of us see that our marriages are the signs they are, we don’t frame or understand them theologically and so we give up and the ‘sign’ is defaced and New Creation is rolled back. Far from being condemnatory, relationally naive, or from casting stones I feel deeply saddened by and grieve for the increasing loss of this hope-full sign.   

The Church is surely write to encourage prayer for couples and for those marriages it blesses in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I’m again grateful for the work of Harville Hendrix (on this blog here, here. Plus here for why marriage is a poor choice in a narcissistic consumer culture) and his deep commitment to healing, saving, and re-enlivening marriages. 

And, reflecting on “Signs of New Creation”, Andrew writes: 

“…The church is a sign in the present of the future renewal of creation, and it will be a much more effective sign of a coming world in which it is no longer necessary for the man to rule over the woman if it acts that reality out and does not merely pay lip service to it. Jesus did not only proclaim the coming restoration of the people of God, he enacted it concretely through exorcisms, healings, the rehabilitation of sinners, and carefully staged prophetic performances such as the entry into Jerusalem and the action in the temple. 

There are, naturally, limits. The extent to which new creation may be anticipated in the life of the church is necessarily circumscribed because sin still crouches at the door, creation still waits to be “set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). But what I like about the eschatological argument is that it allows us both to acknowledge the social problematic and to give a compelling theological reason to bring a new egalitarian reality into existence…” 

For Andrew’s complete post, go here. 

Evangelical Catholicism…?

Today an excerpt from a piece written by George Weigel in which he reflects on the state of the Catholic Church, and does that in the light of the John-Paul II – Pope Benedict XVI influence. He talks of a new “Evangelical Catholicism”. 

Here’s an excerpt: 

“…Evangelical Catholicism takes its ecclesiology, its idea of the Church, from Lumen Gentium, Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, as interpreted by John Paul II's 1991 encyclical Redemptoris Missio.

In this ecclesiology, the Church does not so much have a mission (as if "mission" were one among a dozen other things the Church does); the Church is a mission. Everything the Church does, the Church does to propose Jesus Christ as the answer to the question that is every human life. Everything the Church does, the Church does in order to offer friendship with Jesus Christ as the true means of satisfying the deepest longings of the human heart.

Evangelical Catholicism takes John Paul II's injunction in the 2001 apostolic letter Novo Millennio
Ineunte to heart: it sets sail from the stagnant shallows of institutional maintenance into the deep waters of post-modernity, preaching the Paschal Mystery as the central truth of the human condition, while building communities of integrity, decency, solidarity and compassion - Eucharistic communities of supernatural charity capable of nurturing genuine human flourishing.

Evangelical Catholicism is thus both culture-forming and counter-cultural. It is culture-forming, in that it takes the formation, nurturance, and maturation of a distinctive culture - the Church - with utmost seriousness. And it does not look to the ambient public culture for suggestions as to how this distinctive ecclesial culture, this distinctive mode of life called "Christian," is to be structured and lived…”

You can read his full article here.

The Beauty of Aging

I came across the following statement earlier in the week: 

“Some people no matter how old they get never lose their beauty – they merely move it from their faces to their hearts…”

Martin Buxbaum

 

J.R. Daniel Kirk, Andrew Perriman, and the “backward-moving force of the future”

And so, as the Blog Tour for J.R. Daniel Kirk’s new book Jesus I Have Loved, But Paul? A Narrative Approach to the Problem of Pauline Christianity pulls into the Andrew Perriman way-station, before continuing its journey. Andrew reflects on Chapter Six “Women in the Story of God”. 

Andrew opens with some comment around a theme, which he has championed, not least in his wonderful book The Future of the People of God: Reading Romans Before and After Western Christendom. He subtitles this section, and I had to laugh: “Freshly Squeezed Narrative without the Apocalyptic Bits”. His brief reflection lightly circles around a question he puts to Kirk: “why in a book that makes so much of the narrative structure of our belief system is there no reference to the apocalyptic extension of the story into the future of the people of God?” He continues, “…what about Jesus’ future—[his] “coming” to deliver his persecuted followers from their enemies, to judge Israel and the nations (Jim West observes that Kirk plays down the judgment theme in the Gospels [I think we all (mistakenly) do for a whole range of 21-century and socio-cultural reasons – Paul], and to be confessed as Lord by the nations? It seems to me that a narrative that jumps from Easter to the final renewal of creation is not much of a narrative any more…” In a sense this is an aside to the task of reviewing chapter six, but I think Andrew is correct to raise it as often as he does. One answer, by the way, to the question he puts to Kirk above, is that Andrew has already written the book, demonstrating how in St. Paul’s letter to the church(s) in Rome, the apocalyptic extends into the future of the people of God! 

“I think”, Andrew writes “that it raises an important question about the adequacy of the model as it is being developed here. Are there not risks involved in constructing a narrative ethic based on only half the story? Can we in principle assume that an apocalyptic ethic will look the same as a post-apocalyptic ethic?” He continues: “…Kirk makes much of the fact that the future impinges on the present—he speaks aptly of the “backward-moving force of the future”… But this argument is put forward at the expense of the political story…” 

Here are some excerpts from his reflection that address chapter six. You will find his full here. 

“…The “equality” of male and female is grounded in Christ… 

… The purpose of the church is actively to realize its future “new creation” identity in the here and now. Kirk writes: “I believe that the calling before us is to prayerfully discern what it might mean to grasp the future that God has in store for creation and draw it into the present”… 

… I [Andrew] found myself wondering, as I read this chapter, whether we should not simply call Christian patriarchy—the prolongation of the rule of the man over the woman—a sin, a dark shadow cast on the bright image of humanity made new… 

… Kirk nicely suggests that the anonymity and modesty of the “commendable women” in the Gospels in many ways illustrate more effectively than the obtuseness and self-importance of the male disciples the extraordinary inversion of the leadership paradigm that we find in Jesus’ practice and teaching. It is part of the ambiguity of the matter in scripture that the “full potential latent in these early inclusions of women in the Jesus story is not fully realized in the ministry of Jesus”, but they function “as cracks in the glass ceiling” of the social hierarchies that make women subordinate to and dependent upon men… 

… In the last section of the chapter Kirk sets out to explore “what it might mean to integrate women into the cruciform narrative of our Christian communities”. The big picture of the Christian story—it doesn’t hurt to keep restating this—is that “God has bound himself to humanity, through the nation of Israel, for the purpose of bringing the world from the failure of old creation into the glory of new creation”. Where this narrative diverges from Judaism is in the fact that “the means God chooses is a crucified Messiah whose kingdom-inaugurating activity was one of upending the economy of the world”. A.K.M. Adam has noted a certain tension between the emphasis on the cruciform shape of the kingdom story and the “imperishable vindication” of resurrection and new creation. There is something to this, but I think Kirk would respond that the way of renewal always takes us through the cross and the radical overturning of all that is worldly—including hierarchy…” 

Read Andrew’s full ‘review’ / reflection here. You might also find this post and this one, both written by Andrew, of value.