Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

David Bosch and Gradual Growth through Grace

I was struck by the following quote from the late David Bosch, a South African missiologist who died in a motor vehicle accident in 1992. Bosch has written some wonderful books but is best remembered for his Transforming Mission which has been re-issued as a 20^th anniversary edition (with a new preface by William Burrows, and a conclusion by Martin Reppenhagen & Darrell L. Guder – The Continuing Transformation of Mission: David J. Bosch’s Living Legacy: 1991 - 2011) 

In the most recent print copy of the Englewood Review of Books ‘magazine; Ryan Bell reflected briefly on the lasting legacy of Bosch’s book while highlighting the new edition. 

Bell writes: 

“…What gives Bosch’s life and work such unrivalled integrity is the way in which his thinking emerged not in the abstract setting of a university but in the context of apartheid in South Africa. He was born in 1929 into an Afrikaner home. He was a child of apartheid. It was only as Bosch began working to organize a worship service for black laborers on his parents’ farm that his mind began to change on the subject of race. It would take many years more for him to fully comprehend the evils of apartheid…” 

He continued with a quote from Bosch, and it was this that most resonated for me, but in ways other than Bosch’s gradual acceptance of black / coloured South Africans. 

In [Bosch’s] own words: 

“Looking back now to that day, thirty years ago, I guess I can say that that was the beginning of a turning point in my life. Not that, from then on, I accepted Blacks fully as human beings. Far from it. But something began to stir in me that day, and all I can say is that, by the grace of God, it has been growing ever since. Gradually, year by year, my horizons widened and I began to see people who were different from me with new eyes, always more and more clearly. I began to discover the simple, self-evident fact, that the things we have in common are more than the things which divide us…” [Highlighting in bold text – mine] 

What struck me was the gradual nature of grace – “gradually, year by year” writes Bosch. How often do we allow each other the space to change at the pace of God’s deep and transformative work in each other lives? I wonder if we’d be gentler with each other if we accepted the deep, slow, and often hidden work of transformative grace in each others lives. 

I was struck too, as I often am, that so many times what people have in common and the ways they compliment each other – at their best – is greater than what divides and pulls them apart. How can we ever bring reconciliation, restoration, transformation and healing to global and national conflicts when we can’t even do that in healthy, freeing and life-giving ways at the level of individual relationships? How many times do we take the easier, often-times more damaging options, rather than the path of grace and shalom? It’s one of the great human paradoxes., and indeed, one of the great human tragedies.  

The Death of Walter Wink

Good friend Steve Taylor, via his blog, just alerted me to the fact that theologian Walter Wink died. Like Steve, I’m grateful to Wink, not least for his “Powers” trilogy (which I’d love to see published as a single hardcover edition), but also for the other books he wrote around the subject, and on the subject of theological education. Like Steve too, my early return to Christian faith was in a Charismatic Anglican context and Wink opened my eyes to rigorous theological  / biblical reflection on themes which in typical charismatic fashion were poorly understood and thus practically embodied in ways that were decidedly Christianity-lite. 

Walter Wink died on May 10 at age 76 in his Massachusetts home after a long struggle with a form of dementia that is closely associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. 

Obituary here. Another here. 

More importantly Wink prepared me for William Stringfellow, and that, theologically speaking, was life-changing. Wink didn’t introduce me to Stringfellow, Charles Campbell did that, but as noted above, Wink provided the biblical / theological underpinning. I also discovered Wink had a significant respect for Stringfellow as well, contributing, for example, an essay Stringfellow on the Powers in the Andrew W. McThenia collection of essays Radical Christian and Exemplary Lawyer.

Carl Jung: Wounded Healer of the Soul

Australia’s Radio National programme The Spirit of Things recently featured and interview with Jung specialist Claire Dunne. The topic of discussion was Carl Jung, and in particular a conversation around some of the themes of Dunne’s re-issued (May 2012) 2000 publication Carl Jung: Wounded Healer of the Soul. 

Here’s the promo for the programme: 

“…Carl Jung's exploration of the psyche took him deep into the world of religion, myth and the occult. The founder of depth psychology, Jung said that his patients suffered from a lack of what religion used to give people, but lost, and that healing would come from a direct experience of the Divine... And the Art Gallery of NSW exhibition on Australian Symbolism delves into the art of dreams.” 

You can listen to the programme or download it here. 

Of course, as with any human being (myself included), there are rightly dimensions of Jung around which one could be very critical, we are all wounded to greater or lesser degrees, but there is also much in his work that is truly fascinating, insightful and helpful. 

Writing Essays: A Few Thoughts by Scott Russell Sanders

I hadn’t heard of US author / teacher Scott Russell Sanders until the latest issue of the Englewood Review of Books (Lent 2012) arrived in my inbox. Now I find myself wanting to engage his thinking and the wisdom that bubbles out of the little I have now read. I want to read more of his essays, in the same way I’ve long read the likes of Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, Gary Snyder etc. From what I understand, Sanders reflects on the importance of place, rootedness, environment, what it means to be fully human and alive, what it means to live in a web of relationships etc. 

Here’s an excerpt – some thoughts on writing essays - from the all too brief interview with Sanders that ERB published: 

“…ERB: There are several superb essays in Earth Works that explore the craft of writing, particularly “The Singular First Person” and “Letter to a Reader.” What one or two pieces of essential advice would you give to someone who aspired to be a writer of essays? 

SRS: First, read widely, and read the best quality work you can find – not only essay, but also poetry, fiction, history, philosophy, and kind of literature that interests you, on any subject that interests you. But, again, seek out the best, because you train your ear for language primarily through reading. Secondly, keep a journal — not a diary, but a notebook in which you record ideas, images, vivid passages from your reading, overheard bits of conversation, interesting words, dreams, anything that might later become material for your writing. The notebook is also a good place to practice framing sentences and paragraphs, articulating themes, sketching scenes. Third, treasure your questions, because in pursuing them, you are likely to do your best writing. Think of the essay not as a way of delivering knowledge you already possess, but as a way of discovering new knowledge, a way of coming to understand something for the first time, a way of revealing connections and meanings that had been hidden. If you make discoveries, the writing will be fresh, and the reader will be attracted by the resulting energy…” 

You can find a copy of his essay Breaking the Spell of Money here. 

How to be a Bad Christian: ... and a Better Human Being

Dave Tomlinson has a new book out later in the year, and as with all of his books I’m looking forward to reading it. Dave and Pat, his wife, were in Cambridge a few years ago and we had a fantastic time. There’s something special about reading an authors body of work and then actually meeting them – getting a sense of who they are and thus giving ‘flesh’ and significance to black letters on white pages. There was something wonderfully consistent about Dave. 

Here’s the promo for the new book: How to be a Bad Christian: ... and a Better Human Being 

“…In the course of his work as a vicar, Dave Tomlinson meets lots of people who describe themselves as `not good enough` to be a Christian, thinking that faith involves going to church a lot, or believing in a list of strange things, or following certain rules. But being a Christian isn’t about any of that - and actually, following Jesus is a lot easier, and more fun, than most people think...

In this handbook to Christianity for people who describe themselves as spiritual but not necessarily religious, Dave sketches out some key practices for how to be a `bad` Christian, including how to talk to God without worrying about prayer, how to read the Bible without turning off your brain, and how to think with your soul rather than trying to follow rules.

With beautiful illustrations from artist Rob Pepper, this is an accessible, light-hearted book, but one with a powerful invitation: to be the person you’ve always wanted to be, following a God you’ve always hoped is on your side.” 

And a recommendation from one of Dave’s great friends: 

“A vicar in the pub is worth two in a pulpit. Dave Tomlinson's HOW TO BE A BAD CHRISTIAN is as welcome as a glistening pint to a thirsty patron. Free from religious claptrap and moralistic badgering, here's a book that talks about God without boring your socks off. Tomlinson allows humanity and grace to escape the shackles of pious pedants, and flow into the world we all inhabit. Beautifully written, full of streetwise stories and wisdom, delightful and engaging - read it and discover how good it is to be among the bad. A rip-snorting manifesto for a way of living that makes a difference in the world.” 

- Mike Riddell

At Sea and the Growing Edge

Margaret Silf was a UK writer I was introduced to and read as part of my training to become a Spiritual Director. It was a few years back, but I’ve continued to value and appreciate both how Silf writes, and what she writes about. The first of her books I engaged with were Landmarks: An Ignatian Journey and Sacred Spaces: Stations on a Celtic Way, and she, amongst a number of others, really nurtured my real interest in Ignatian spirituality. Her At Sea with God is currently amongst my bedside reading, and will prove, I'm sure, a deeply affirming and nourishing read for the life-situation I’m in. 

Anyway, all that to introduce a talk that she gave at Greenbelt 2002. The talk was titled The Growing Edge and is a fascinating and very accessible reflection on the importance of the “edge” of church life; the importance of the “edge” to our spiritual formation and growth; and the importance of the “edge” to change. I highly recommend it, especially if, relative to church belonging, you find yourself on the edge of the center or indeed, beyond the edge.  

You’ll find the downloadable Mp3 here. 

Ben Myers on Rowan Williams and the Empty Tomb:

“Rowan Williams has long argued that the existence of the church - precisely as a new community, a new form of human life - is immediately implicated in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The church simply is humanity made new, a new world in which the age-old divisions and boundaries and bigotries constitutive of human society have been transcended, and rendered utterly obsolete. For Williams, the resurrection brings forth new social patterns: forgiveness, peacemaking, patience, truth-telling. And this new form of social life entails new ways of speaking about God:

"We learn to look at all human faces with the rather disturbing knowledge that they are faces that God has already looked at ... Any divisions in our world, class, race, church loyalty, have to be confronted with the painful truth that apparently we find it easier than God does to manage without certain bits of the human creation." 

The resurrection is thus God's unequivocal "Yes" to all the diverse bits of humanity - it is God's commitment to a reconciled world. This is why, as Williams often reminds, the first-century Christians perceived questions of social identity and social boundaries as theological questions, questions about the identity of God.

Redemption is therefore never a matter of private - much less "spiritual" - salvation, nor is it a vaguely edifying symbol of human striving for life and justice. It is, rather, an embodied occurrence within our world, something that changes what is possible for all human lives.

It is for just this reason that Williams insists, rather unfashionably, on the importance of the empty tomb, the physical embodiment of the risen Christ. If Christ is not raised in bodily form, then he would remain foreign to embodied human experience, to all those awkward joys and sorrows of social life. It is bodily resurrection that secures Christ's relevance to our lives here and now.

This Easter vision means the church is necessarily never an end in itself. It is the experimental beginning of a new creation, what Williams calls a "pilot project for the human race." The church is God's own experiment with a reconciled, catholic humanity. Catholicity - a single, universal human family - is not just one of the marks of the church's identity; it is the church's whole rationale, the essential form of its life, and the substance of its message to the world. Catholicity is the continuing reality - indeed, the very terrestrial embodiment - of Christ's resurrection.

The Christian message, Williams thinks, is just the sort of thing that ought to take root in different places, languages and cultures. If the church were but a parochial sect or some specialised sub-culture, then its own existence would disprove its message. A universal community, constantly reaching beyond itself to those from "every tribe and tongue and people and nation" (Revelation 5.9), shows that Christ is risen indeed, and that no human boundaries can contain his life.

The church's identity and its mission, therefore, are one and the same. The church has no internal identity prior to or apart from its engagement with the world. Its very existence is a demonstration that "he is not here; he is risen" (Luke 24.6). The church is Christ's own life translated into the medium of human community.

"The church is wider than the world," said John Chrysostom. Williams agrees. The message of Christ's resurrection continually draws the church beyond itself, into a world whose fundamental divisions have been abolished. The catholicity of the church is simply its capacity "to accommodate human beings in the full range of their humanity." 

You can read Myer’s fully reflection here. They’re excerpts from his wonderful book Christ the Stranger: The Theology of Rowan Williams. 

 

Against Innocence: The Gift of Peacemaking and Reconciliation

On the enneagram “nines” are often named as “peacemakers”. I’m not a “9”, but over recent times have more and more found myself in the peacemaker / reconciler role. I want to hold difference together. To encourage people to remain in conversation, to finds ways forward together, and to harness and focus the gifts of difference. I had to do it last week at work. 

In his foreword to Against Innocence: Gillian Rose’s Reception and the Gift of Faith (authored by Andrew Shanks) Giles Fraser writes:

“…The mediator pursues a theology that refuses that a disagreement can ever reach a point where there is no benefit to be gained from further conversation. Put a different way, it is a refusal to accept that two seemingly irreconcilable positions are indeed irreconcilable…” 

Quoting Rowan Williams, “…Reflection requires that the plain opposition of positive and negative be left behind. Thinking is not content with the abstraction of mutual exclusivities, but struggles to conceive of a structured wholeness nuanced enough to contain what appeared to be contradictories.” 

“…The sort of peace negotiation suggested by [Gillian] Rose and [Andrew] Shanks has a definite strategy: It attempts to dismantle our desire for innocence. For what is recognized by the true mediator is that innocence - of the ‘longing to be utterly sure of our rightness’, as [Rowan] Williams puts it – is exactly the motivation that leads people to reject compromise and continue with [conflict]…” On the contrary, Shanks writes, the aim of the mediator is to resist “the stubborn desire for the sort of moral purity that refuses negotiation” and a willingness to finds ways of compromise, ways forward together. Peace and truth do not stand in opposition to one another (cf. South Africa’s profoundly courageous commitment to the outworking of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission)

But, as you will have noticed, the first step is to dismantle any sense that we are entirely innocent. None of us are! We’re all compromised. We all have egos. We all have a deeply entrenched commitment to living out of our false selves. We all only ever see in part, and often on see what we want or need to see. The work of mediation and reconciliation requires great courage. Firstly, the courage to face into ones own interior realities (motives, false desires, sin, woundedness and brokenness, our shadows etc). Secondly, to have the courage to remain open, open to deep listening, seeing from the perspective of the other, being fully present, vulnerable and humble, and feeling with the ‘other’ (i.e. being genuinely empathetic). And, finally, it is to have the courage to trust, to be willing to enter uncharted territory, and to see in the other the presence of gift and invitation, the invitation to me to become more than I am, i.e. the courage to accept the invitation to continuing change and growth. 

I am not a “9” but I am deeply committed to the work of mediation and reconciliation; to finding healthy and hopeful ways forward, even though those things mean I often have to place myself in very vulnerable places, aware that I am not ever wholly innocent, or without shared responsibility for what is broken, for particular outcomes etc. 

Work for peace and reconciliation requires ceaseless effort, a profound willingness to sit with ones own pain, great moral courage, humility, and a vision of what might be possible. In this sense it is deeply eschatological work. It is the work of the gospel. It is the Jesus-following way. 

Giles Fraser writes, “Rose’s work is an encouragement to pay attention to the philosophical condition of human fallenness. Human beings are haunted by complexity, compromised by mixed motives, and debased by threads of complicity and cruelty and untruthfulness. We continually seek to represent ourselves with various fictions of our own innocence… This isn’t so much a counsel of despair; rather, it’s a fearlessly honest description of what it takes to love our neighbor…”          

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.