ABC’s Encounter program recently featured James Alison.
“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 an interesting interview, one you can hear now. My wondering as I listened to it is reflected in this quote from a Belden Lane, from a chapter in Lane’s The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality (still one of my favourite theological books!), which I’d read prior to listening to Alison.
“…I’m increasingly uncomfortable with current images of God found in books and workshops that mix popular psychology with a theology whole devoted to self-realization. They seem to reverse the first question of the [Westminster] catechism I studied as a child, declaring that the chief end of God is to glorify men and women, and to enjoy them forever.” I really don’t want a God who is solicitous of my every need, fawning for my attention, eager for nothing in the world so much as the fulfillment of my self-potential. Once of the scourges of our age is that all our deities are house-broken and eminently companionable. Far from demanding anything, they ask only how they can more meaningfully enhance the lives of those they serve…” (p.53).
This quote on Len Hjalmarson's blog also underlines for me some of what Lane is suggesting:
"...Benedictine prayer is based almost totally in the Psalms and in the Scriptures.. Benedictine prayer is not centered in the needs and wants and insights of the person who is praying. It is anchored in the needs and wants and insights of [God] ..." Joan Chittister. Len's full post, here.
You can listen to, or download, the James Alison interview here.
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