Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Does Love “Die” in a Marriage…?

Dr Brian T. Trainor (Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Social Theory and Co-ordinator of Postgraduate Studies in Humanities, Tabor Adelaide) wrote, in 2010, an interesting thought-piece on “Love & Marriage” for Ridley Theological College’s BriefCASE series. I was doing some “spring cleaning” and came across it again recently. It was helpful to re-read it, and while I could imagine some won’t agree with his line of thinking, it is interesting, and it is a thought-piece, albeit it quite densely written. Indeed, one would want to say a lot more about the importance of marriage as a means, par excellence, of growing and deepening the profoundly healing and transformative realities of love. One could also reflect on the basis of marriage not being a contract, but rather, as I believe a Christian marriage is, a covenant (cf. the essay, Conscious Marriage as Covenant by Helen LaKelly Hunt in which she draws on the wonderful story of the Prophet Hosea, and his unfaithful wife Gomer, against the backdrop of God’s loving relationship with unfaithful Israel). Interestingly too, today's local paper featured the story of a local couple who've been married 65-years. The affirm the importance of commitment, the kind of shared commitment that makes space for love to grow and deepen over time.  

Anyway, back to Trainor's essay. He introduces his central interest in writing the paper with this statement:     

“…there is a private ethical issue that I would like to discuss in this paper which is seldom discussed or analysed but which is of enormous importance (public as well as private), namely: What happens, or what should and shouldn’t happen, when love dies in a marriage? 

Certainly, marriage establishes a system of moral responsibilities between two spouses (to care for each other in sickness and in health, to be faithful, etc.,) but when a marriage ‘dies’ [or when it allegedly dies for one partner, but not the other], in the sense that love drains out of it for whatever reason, the moral obligations surely dissolve as well. Are things really so simple?...” 

He concludes: 

“…I conclude, then, that a spouse is not ethically justified in quitting a marriage on the grounds that ‘my/our love has died’, that such a spouse is in reality not ‘for’ love but ‘against’ it (mistaking its true nature and setting up a false dichotomy between love and law/morality) and that to undermine or disregard the necessary forms which love must assume in order to be embodied or expressed at all in this world as we know it, is surely to attack love itself.” 

You can read the full piece here (PDF). 

In a very real sense, concluding that love ‘dies’, is to make clear that “love” is not really understood at all. It’s meaning, preciousness, and depth is disassociated from all but “feelings”. And, if the feelings disappear then those who don’t understand the riches and depths of love can only conclude that love itself has ‘died’. Supposed lack of ‘feelings’ then leads, for these people, to the conclusion that a marriage has therefore ‘died’ and thus one becomes ‘free’ to “end it” and promiscuously pursue other relationships, looking all the while for love, but remaining deeply mistaken in how they understand “love” and thus what they’re actually looking for. It’s a sad and tragic reality, something people like, for example, Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt (and Imago Relationship Therapy more generally) conclude never need happen.  

For more around this subject, some of you might be interested in an interview Dave Tomlinson conducted with Rowan Pelling back in 2004. You’ll find it here.

How would your define love? 

Art Museums are Pointless…?

An interesting opinion piece by Alain de Botton on why Art Museums have become Pointless and what they should learn from Christianity. Here’s how it opens: 

“You often hear it said that "museums of art are our new churches." In other words, in a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.

It's an intriguing idea - part of the broader ambition that culture should replace scripture - but in practice art museums often abdicate much of their potential to function as new churches (places of consolation, meaning, sanctuary, redemption) through the way they handle the collections entrusted to them. While exposing us to objects of genuine importance, they nevertheless seem unable to frame them in a way that links them powerfully to our inner needs.

The problem is that modern museums of art fail to tell people directly why art matters, because Modernist aesthetics (in which curators are trained) is so deeply suspicious of any hint of an instrumental approach to culture. To have an answer anyone could grasp as to the question of why art matters is too quickly viewed as "reductive"…” 

Read the rest of his reflection here, plus questions and answers provoked by his book Religion for Atheists, and posed by an imaginary interlocutor: 

Here’s a couple of the questions excerpted: 

“You have argued that living without God is dangerous, can you explain why? What are the dangers?

In my book I argue that believing in God is, for me as for many others, simply not possible. At the same time, I want to suggest that if you remove this belief, there are particular dangers that open up - we don't need to fall into these dangers, but they are there and we should be aware of them. For a start, there is the danger of individualism: of placing the human being at the centre stage of everything. Secondly, there is the danger of technological perfectionism; of believing that science and technology can overcome all human problems, that it is just a matter of time before scientists have cured us of the human condition. Thirdly, without God, it is easier to lose perspective: to see our own times as everything, to forget the brevity of the present moment and to cease to appreciate (in a good way) the miniscule nature of our own achievements. And lastly, without God, there can be a danger that the need for empathy and ethical behaviour can be overlooked.

Now, it is important to stress that it is quite possible to believe in nothing and remember all these vital lessons (just as one can be a deep believer and a monster). I am simply wanting to draw attention to some of the gaps, some of what is missing, when we dismiss God too brusquely. By all means, we can dismiss him, but with great sympathy, nostalgia, care and thought ...

Is it possible to be a good person without religion?

The problem of the man without religion is that he forgets. We all know in theory what we should do to be good. The problem is that, in practice, we forget. And we forget because the modern secular world always thinks that it is enough to tell someone something once (be good, remember the poor, and so on). But all religions know better: they insist that if anyone is to stand a chance of remembering anything, they need reminders on a daily, perhaps even hourly basis…”

The Storms of Life: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Via Len. Timely! And appreciated. 

 

Consequences, Judgement, and Thinking About God & Self in Meaningful Ways

Barry Taylor offers a few thoughts on what he terms “magical thinking”. I always find it interesting reflecting on god in times of crisis; who is god? Where is god? Does god give a shit? And what kinds of people do we become in times of crisis? What drives us? What animates us? What feelings? And where are the invitations to transfiguration – too engaging with the deep places in our lives – where is the “more”? Why do some people find it so difficult to face self-critically into their own inner realities, preferring instead to blame God, to blame others? God’s invitations to become more than we currently are. Invitations to grow up. There are invitations too, to grow our conceptions and experiences of God. 

Anyway, Taylor’s reflection took me to some useful places, some places free from magical thinking (not one of my natural inclinations) including my reflecting again on Bruggemann’s conceiving of God’s judgment: “… God will not intervene to protect us from the inherent consequences of our pervasive sin…[from our choices]. When we so blatantly violate God's intention[s] … the expected consequences will follow.  

Here are some excerpts from Taylor: 

“…I know that life is understood by more than rational thinking but every once in a while I want to shake a few people and demand that for once they take off their religiosity-smeared glasses and look at life with a different lens--the devil is not out to get them, they are not in a spiritual warfare battle because the doctor looked pensive while he was doing the biopsy, they haven't upset god, and if by some mad chance they had pissed off god enough to bring them to this place in their life, surely their own belief in grace and Jesus would be enough to let them know that their sins are not accounted to them--Jesus!! I just want to scream right now. I completely get why all the detractors of religion are so militant--some of it is completely bloody nuts, and worse, it leads people into terrible places in their life… 

…Tomorrows lectionary gospel is Mark's account of the Transfiguration of Jesus--a strange tale for Mark to tell smack dab in the middle of his somewhat dark account of the life of Jesus-a resurrection story written back into the account to perhaps offer those early follower some comfort or guidance in the midst of the shitstorm of their existence. What struck me most about the story was the response of Peter, one of the disciples. It's his misplaced piety that sticks out--he is enthusiastic, ecstatic even, and wants to make shrines for Jesus and Moses and Elijah (if you don't know the story--it's in the Bible--Mark 9)--but he is completely off-base, that is the last thing that needs to happen. We are told by the writer that his response is simply fear-driven and that fear cuts him off from experiencing the very thing that might perhaps sustain in his moment of fear. We tend to locate our ideas of the sacred in a particular way, or in a specific location (my church/synagogue/mosque/temple etc) - but it is often fear that drives that choice and the transfiguration story is an invitation to experience something else, something more--in fact a 'sense of the more' is what permeates the story for me.

I realize that my views about sacredness, about religion, about god, are different than others, and I have no desire or need to convert anyone to my way of looking at it all, but I do strongly resist the way people speak and act for god when it is ultimately fear that is driving things. Perhaps we need to deal with ourselves, our desires, our drives and our fears before we can start to think about god in meaningful ways…”

Read the whole reflection here.  

Befriending Our Inner Enemies

“…How do we befriend our inner enemies lust and anger? By listening to what they are saying. They say, "I have some unfulfilled needs" and "Who really loves me?" Instead of pushing our lust and anger away as unwelcome guests, we can recognize that our anxious, driven hearts need some healing. Our restlessness calls us to look for the true inner rest where lust and anger can be converted into a deeper way of loving. There is a lot of unruly energy in lust and anger! When that energy can be directed toward loving well, we can transform not only ourselves but even those who might otherwise become the victims of our anger and lust. This takes patience, but it is possible…”

Henri Nouwen

God's Unconditional Love

“What can we say about God's love? We can say that God's love is unconditional. God does not say, "I love you, if..." There are no ifs in God's heart. God's love for us does not depend on what we do or say, on our looks or intelligence, on our success or popularity. God's love for us existed before we were born and will exist after we have died. God's love is from eternity to eternity and is not bound to any time-related events or circumstances. Does that mean that God does not care what we do or say? No, because God's love wouldn't be real if God didn't care. To love without condition does not mean to love without concern. God desires to enter into relationship with us and wants us to love God in return. Let's dare to enter into an intimate relationship with God without fear, trusting that we will receive love and always more love.”

Henri Nouwen

 

Richard Rohr: Going Toward the Pain

More quotes from Richard Rohr’s Breathing Under Water: 

Wherever there was human suffering, Jesus was concerned about now, and about its healing now.  It is rather amazing and very sad that we pushed it all off into a future reward system for those who were 'worthy.'  As if any of us are. 

It is this human pain that we are afraid of?  Powerlessness, the state of the shipwrecked, is an experience we all share anyway, if we are sincere, but Bill Wilson (author of the 12 Step Programme) found we are not very good at that either.  He called it 'denial.'  It seems we are not that free to be honest, or even aware, because most of our garbage is buried in the unconscious. So it is absolutely essential that we find a spirituality that reaches to that hidden level.  If not, nothing really changes. 

It is not necessarily bad will or even conscious denial on our part.  We just can't see what we are not forced to see.  As Jesus put it, we 'see the splinter in our brother's or sister's eye and miss the log in our own' (Matthew 7: 4- 5).  The whole deceptive game is revealed in that one brilliant line from Jesus.  But we seem to need something to force us to deal with that log.  For many, if not most people, the only thing strong enough to force them is some experience of addiction, some moral failure, or some falling, over which they are powerless. 

We are all spiritually powerless, however, and not just those physically addicted to a substance, which is why I address this book to everyone.  Alcoholics just have their powerlessness visible for all to see. The rest of us disguise it in different ways, and overcompensate for our more hidden and subtle addictions and attachments, especially our addiction to our way of thinking… 

… It seems humans would sooner die than change or admit that they are mistaken… 

… Some form of alternative consciousness is the only freedom from this self and from cultural lies.  If the universal addiction is to our own pattern of thinking, which is invariably dualistic, the primary spiritual path must be some form of contemplative practice, once just called 'prayer,' to break down this unhelpful binary system of either-or-thinking and superiority thinking.  'Praying' is changing your operating system! 

When religion does not move people to the mystical or non-dual level of consciousness it is more a part of the problem than any solution whatsoever.  It solidifies angers, creates enemies, and is almost always exclusionary of the most recent definition of 'sinner.'  At this level, it is largely incapable of its supreme task of healing, reconciling, forgiving, and peace making.  When religion does not give people an inner life or a real prayer life, it is missing its primary vocation…”

Michael Gorman’s “Pauline Missional Musings”

In the Feb 2011 issue of Catalyst Michael Gorman reflected on Pauline Studies and Missional Hermeneutics. It provides a useful overview of some of the key strands running through both disciplines. Here’s an excerpt: 

“…In his very readable published dissertation, Mission and Moral Reflection in Paul (Peter Lang, 2006), [Michael] Barram argues that “mission” is not a discrete aspect of Paul’s work, such as evangelism and initial community formation, but a principal rubric for understanding the apostle’s entire vocation, including moral reflection and ongoing community nurturing. Paul’s letters are therefore “mission documents.” If Barram is right, as I think he is, then we need to read Paul’s letters in two ways: first, as witnesses to Paul’s understanding of God’s mission, his role in it, and the place of his congregations in it; and, second, as scriptural texts for our own missional identity, our contemporary vocational and ecclesial self-understanding and practices. Thus is born a Pauline missional hermeneutic. 

In a Pauline missional hermeneutic, the guiding question is: How do we read Paul for what he says about the missio Dei and about our participation in it? In other words, the issue before us is not primarily exegetical or historical, but hermeneutical. What is a Pauline letter? (A mission document). How are we to read it appropriately? (Missionally). Older historical and exegetical questions—e.g., about how and whom Paul evangelized, and whether he expected his communities to do the same—are still relevant, but they will not be our primary concerns, and they are not ends in themselves. Rather, they are part of a larger discussion about Paul and mission. Together with all kinds of new questions that emerge from this enlarged understanding, they serve as a means to our own theological and missiological reflection… 

… More importantly, this way of considering the question of the church and mission in Paul immediately raises a whole network of additional questions that are in some sense historical and exegetical, but also, and more importantly, hermeneutical. The following examples come to mind: 

1. What was and is the relationship between the church’s deepest convictions and the shape of individual and corporate Christian existence? 
2. What kind of existence in the world is faithful to the gospel, and specifically to the story of Jesus?
3. Why and how does such an existence both attract some and repel others? 
4. How does Christian speech and behaviour, seen as an integrated whole, relate to and reflect what God is doing in the world (the missio Dei) as manifested in the story of Jesus, which is itself grounded in the story of Israel?

Moreover, we are now obliged to reformulate the basic question. Did Paul expect his congregations to evangelize others? In one sense, this is the wrong question. The better question is, how did Paul expect his communities to participate in the missio Dei? Then there is the corollary fundamental hermeneutical question, how does God expect us who read Paul’s letters to participate in the missio Dei?...” 

You can read his musings in full here. 

Shadow work…

One of my characteristics is being open to finding, discovering, or locating interesting things in interesting places. So, for example, in the January 2012 issue of the US-publication Yoga Journal – I discovered a fascinating, albeit introductory article on “shadow work” (a particularly Jungian term): Me and My Shadow by Sally Kempton. I don’t do yoga, subscribe to the magazine, or typically see it.  In fact I’d never seen it before. But “shadow work” interests me. 

Why a yoga journal? I’m just curious and interested in nourishing my own journey or in bringing useful and oftentimes different perspectives to reflections around how we’re able to practically cooperate with grace and with the transformative work of the Spirit in becoming more fully and authentically human, freer (liberated), more alive, and aligned to my deepest or truest self. 

Here are some excerpts: 

Carl Jung describes a person’s shadow as “‘the person you’d rather not be’ – the opposite of your conscious personality” (which isn’t to say that your “conscious” personality is your “true self”!) 

“…The shadow is all the selfish, primitive, egoic, violent, lazy, entitled aspects of yourself. The shadow includes all the aspects of your psyche that you prefer not to look at, the traits that… you’ve been ashamed of all your life, and the things about yourself that you [hide away from the sight of others, including yourself, i.e. your discarded self]… 

… [These] negative tendencies remain hidden from our conscious awareness [and as a consequence] they … tend to drive our emotions and behaviours in unpredictable ways… 

…Your unconscious shadow attitudes [and beliefs] become the lenses through which you look at life. Refusing to “own” a shadow tendency just makes you less conscious that it is distorting your perspective, [and thus your behaviour and choices]. When you can’t see something in yourself, you inevitably project the [characteristic] onto someone else, either judging them or admiring that quality in them… 

… [The invitation] is to bring [our] shadow into awareness and take responsibility for it… Once you’ve “owned” your shadow, you can begin to modulate and integrate it… You’ll [also] find that shadow work can dissolve many of your negative feelings about yourself… It also becomes easier to notice and let go of unconscious behaviour patterns… 

…it’s often painful to become aware of a deep-seated shadow trait, and the pain often goes back to early childhood… 

…The problem is that as you repress … unacceptable behaviours [behaviours that meet with disapproval, or are rejected], you lose the opportunity to work with them and find the positive [dimension of those] traits. For example, the intensity that expresses itself in childhood anger – assuming that you’re a mentally healthy person – could grow into a mature quality that allows you to stand up to a bully or assert yourself in a challenging situation. Your sadness could develop into a capacity for deep empathy. Your fearfulness has the potential to blossom into a healthy vulnerability; your impulsiveness, into genuine spontaneity. This is why it doesn’t work to repress your shadow. Yes, it’s primitive, selfish, and sometimes volatile, but it’s also the source of the energy you need for creative and spiritual growth… You begin to recognize that it is possible to liberate the energy tied up in shadow energy and turn it towards a positive goal…” 

Richard Rohr reflects that “…The more you are attached to any persona [i.e. “stage mask” or adopted ‘identity’, out of which you act], bad or good, any chosen or preferred self-image, the more shadow self you will have. So we need conflicts, relationship difficulties, moral failures, defeats to our grandiosity, even seeming enemies, or we will have no way to ever spot or track our shadow self. They are our necessary mirrors…” (Rohr, Breathing Under Water, pp. 33-34). However, what more often than not happens is that we run from relationship difficulties etc, making every excuse under the sun, blaming everyone else, while all the while failing to see the critical invitations to healing, wholeness, growth, and maturity. We’ll do and say anything to avoid self-confrontation; anything that brings us into a confrontation with our persona, our preferred, projected, and illusory self-image. 

Bringing Your Shadow into the Light 

Kempton suggests the following: 

• “… A good place to start is by considering the traits for which people generally criticise you…” 

“…It’s also important to notice when an encounter leaves you feeling emotionally charged. Why do you get so upset when the line at the ticket counter moves slowly? Could your fury come from a feeling of thwarted entitlement, a belief that life should arrange itself to fit your convenience [and needs]…

• … Another way to bring your shadow to light is to look at the people you feel vehemently negative about… The vehemence alone [indicates] that [there is likely] projection going on. The “dark” qualities [a person sees in others are often the] unacknowledged [same] aspects of themselves… 
• [Positively], the people you idealize for their courage, creativity, wisdom, or charm mirror your own hidden potentials… 

“Finding Freedom” 

Kempton notes that it important we recognise and accept that like everyone else, we each contain both light and darkness, i.e. we have a “true or deepest self” and we have a “shadow” (or “false”, “hidden” and “disowned” selves cf. Hendrix, Rohr, Merton, Pennington, and Keats). If we can bring both our ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ characteristics into consciousness (i.e. we recognise, are aware of, and accept them) we can begin to intentionally work to integrate them, and to release the energy (and turn it towards a positive goal) that “has been tied up in privileging one side of the other.” “Change”, she says, “doesn’t come from blindly trying to suppress or get rid of the negative tendency or by refusing to acknowledge a positive one. It comes through the power we gain by becoming aware of the actual tendency.” 

It is only when we come to know our own depths – our unique wisdom and our unique blindness, the way we are at our most loving and the way we are when we’re in the thralls of our “shadow” (our hidden and unconscious tendencies) – that we “become truly trustworthy to ourselves and others. That’s when we can authentically choose to live as our best Self” – as our truest or deepest self – that which the Spirit is nourishing, nurturing, and drawing from us.

Pete Ward and Liquid Church: A Conversation

The February 2012 Nomad podcast features Pete Ward. 

Ward is the author of the very thought provoking 2001 publication Liquid Church (This book is a vision for how the church can embrace the liquid nature of culture rather than just scrambling to keep afloat while sailing over it. Pete Ward presents his vision of a Liquid Church that addresses the needs of the isolated consumer-Christian by providing connection and community, located in common cause and similar desire for God); and more recently Participation and Mediation: A Practical Theology for the Liquid Church (“By placing culture at the heart of practical theology, Pete Ward opens up new ways of thinking about the ways in which divine presence, theology and cultural life are deeply inter-twined. This is conceptually-rich work that will be invaluable for people wanting to make meaningful connections between their understanding of God and their cultural practices in different ministerial and every-day life settings…” Gordon Lynch). 

He has a new title (he’s the editor) out in March or May 2012 (Eerdmans) Perspectives on Ecclesiology
and Ethnography. It’s the first of so-far two publications in the new Ecclesiology and Ethnography Series (Eerdmans) and collects papers from symposia on the Ecclesiology and Ethnography. 

Contents of the Ward edited book 

Contributors

Introduction – Pete Ward 

Part One: The Proposal 

1. Ecclesiology and Ethnography: two disciplines, two worlds? – Paul Fiddes
2. Attention and Conversation – Pete Ward
3. Ecclesiology ‘From the Body’: Ethnographic Notes Towards a Carnal Theology – Christian Scharen
4. “Where is your church?”: Moving towards a hospitable and sanctified ethnography – John Swinton 

Part Two: The Conversation 

1. Charting the ‘Ethnographic Turn’: Theologians and the Study of Christian Congregations – Elizabeth Phillips
2. The Cultivation of Theological Vision: Theological Attentiveness and the Practice of Ministry – Alister E. McGrath
3. Interpreting a Situation: When is ‘Empirical’ Also ‘Theological’? – Mary McClintock Fulkerson
4. Generating Christian Political Theory and The Uses of Ethnography- Luke Bretherton
5. Practical Ecclesiology: what counts as theology in studying the church?- Clare Watkins (with Deborah Bhatti, Helen Cameron, Catherine Duce & James Sweeney
6. Ecclesiology, Ethnography and God: An Interplay of Reality Descriptions- Nicholas M. Healy
7. ‘In the society of God’: some principles of ecclesiology – John Webster
8. The Church “Taking Form” in Mission: Reimagining Family Ministries within the Missio Dei – Richard R. Osmer 

The second book in the series includes an essay by James K A. Smith: 

“Understanding Religion Takes Practice:  Anti-Urban Bias, Geographical Habits, and Theological Influences: Mark T. Mulder and James K.A. Smith” 

While not a lengthy podcast (42 mins), the Nomad interview is well worth a listen. You’ll find it here. 

As the interviewer(s) said: 

“…I really liked his [Ward’s] emphasis on new more fluid forms of church and mission, while not dismissing older and more solid forms. In fact he spoke very positively about institutional church and how the resources they have are important for the bringing to birth of the new. 

Having said that, he took the idea of liquid church and mission further than I felt comfortable with…”