Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

David Stendl-Rast and Anselm Grun: Faith Beyond Belief

This would have been a rich conversation to listen in on, but thankfully we have the book, which was reviewed in Tui Motu magazine. Issue 217 July 2017: 28. See also this review.

It's a book I will savor over the coming years...particularly as it is a book you can read from cover-to-cover, or dip into contemplatively and prayerfully. Here are some excerpts from the Tui Motu published review:

"...This short book of 180 pages offers an engaging and accessible introduction to Christian spirituality for the 21st century. Two members of the Benedictine Order, David Stendl-Rast from Mount Savior Monastery, New York and Anselm Grun, from the Benedictine Abbey of Munsterschwarzach, Germany, meet in the abbey with editor, Johannes Kaup. They talk together with humour and honesty sharing spirituality as an everyday reality and addressing some of the most profound and complex issues confronting the human family...

... The book is organised into 20 chapters, averaging nine pages a chapter. Each chapter has a main title and subtitle, the latter a summary of what to expect. We have, for instance: Goodbye to Infantile Images of God; In Search of the Divine Mystery; The Incarnation; How Body, Soul and Spirit Go Together; and Roots and Growth...

This is not a systematic treatise but rather a "heart to heart" informal sharing of critical issues that face all of us, Church and non-Church people. The Benedictine men discuss gender equality (the editor has used "she" in place of the usual "he"), Christianity and other religions, conflict resolution, eco-theology, fundamentalism and crises in capitalism and democracy.

The central Christian teachings of the Incarnation, Resurrection, Atonement, Trinity, Sin and Forgiveness are considered and prayer and care for our personal and collective meditative lives occupies a central place..."

You can read the complete published review by John Thornley here. It's a 5-minute online read. You'll find a preview (downloadable PDF at the publishers site).

Mark Vernon in Conversation: The Road Less Certain

Today, a podcast was recorded live at Nomad’s recent first offline Gathering, and features psychotherapist, author and teacher Mark Vernon. Mark was an Anglican priest but developed deep doubts about the faith. His subsequent journey took him through atheism, to agnosticism, through ancient Greek philosophy, to a Christian faith that sees doubt and uncertainty as integral parts (see Mark’s post, which features a mind-map drawn by one of his listeners at the April 2017 gathering)

I’ve followed Mark’s blog over the years, and on occasion he’s very kindly sent me PDF’s of some inaccessible articles he’s written, particularly in relation to Carl Jung, whom I’ve long had an interest in. A number of Mark’s books can also be found in my library, including How to be and Agnostic; The Big Questions: God; The Meaning of Friendship (Mark’s PhD focussed on this theme); and Love: All that Matters.

As I was listening to the interview I thought of my good friend Alan Jamieson and his PhD research on Church Leavers. In my mind his research and publications around this theme still feel relevant as many people question their experiences of church, faith, doubt, and spirituality. It also underlined for me the missional questions around cultural engagement (listen particularly around the 15 min mark).

This is a thoughtful, encouraging, and considered conversation, and is well worth a listen. I also recommend Mark’s books, and in particular his books on friendship and love.

Mark Shriver: testing the Vatican's commitment to change

Sounds like an interesting book, albeit it cops some criticism from reviewers along the way, and one does wonder, why another book when similar ones exist.

“…In the end, Pilgrimage sheds sparks, rather than shards of light, over what we already know about Francis; yet it brings him into focus better than many of the weightier tomes out there. And as a readable, enjoyable, accessible portrait of an extraordinary man, it is hard to beat…” – Austen Ivereigh (full review here), author of the very good The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope, which is one of those books I’d say is similar though not identical in its focus.

“The church sex abuse crisis has rocked the faith of millions of Catholics.

A Pew study found that, in the United States alone, 40 per cent of people raised Catholic have left the church.

For one member of America’s most famous Catholic family, the crisis has been especially painful.

Mark Shriver is the nephew of JFK and the son of Sargent Shriver, a legendary humanitarian who ran the Peace Corps and the war on poverty in the 60s.

In an effort to rescue his faith, he set out to test the Vatican’s commitment to change. The result is his new book, Pilgrimage: My Search for the Real Pope Francis.” A nicely hardcover book, it was published 29^th November 2016.

You’ll find a conversation with Mark Shriver here. It aired on Australian radio on Good Friday, 14^th April 2017.

The Benedict Option?

I’m always up for an interesting conversation, and one is certainly being generated by the recent publication of The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (March 2017). I haven’t read it yet, but have noticed it appearing, over the last few months in various reviews, promotional material etc. It’s author is Rod Dreher and his is a book which James K. A. Smith notes ‘…is offered to a world that sometimes feels as fraught as the late Roman empire of Augustine's time. Indeed, invoking a new "barbarism," Dreher looks to Benedict: "Saint Benedict had taken the proper measure of Rome. He acted wisely by leaving society and starting a new community whose practices would preserve the faith through the trials ahead”…’

I haven’t yet read the book, and likely won’t, but who knows? That a title becomes as ‘popular’ as Dreher’s book seems to be at present, gets my attention, but doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to read it. Most in my life its been the lest popular and more obscure commentators etc. that have been most helpful to me.

I’ve always found Jamie Smith a thoughtful and cogent communicator. I’ve read many of his books and listened to him for years (via podcasts etc), so I incline towards his review/commentary here. I also found this Hearts and Minds review balanced and helpful. I think it’s written by Byron Borger. See also, Michael Bird.

Have a read of the reviews and see what you feel. Is it a book you’ll read, or not?

Pádraig Ó Tuama - Finding Home in the World and the Importance of Language

I first heard Pádraig Ó Tuama in 2014 (my post here; no link to the interview, but I wanted to share one of his poems). He was interviewed about poetry and movingly read a number of his poems. Next up was an interview on Australia’s The Spirit of Things (my post and link here). Finally there was the On Being conversation that I listened to today. I so value his take on the importance of language.

“Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian, and extraordinary healer in our world of fracture. He leads the Corrymeela community of Northern Ireland, a place that has offered refuge since the violent division that defined that country until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. And Pádraig and Corrymeela extend a quiet, generative, and joyful force far beyond their northern coast to people around the world. “Over cups of tea, and over the experience of bringing people together,” Pádraig says, it becomes possible “to talk with each other and be in the same room with the people we talk about.””

Ó Tuama reflects of the fact that “agreement has rarely been the mandate for people who love each other. Maybe on some things, but actually, when you look at some people who are lovers and friends, you go actually they might disagree really deeply on things, but they’re somehow — I like the phrase “the argument of being alive.” Or in Irish, when you talk about trust, there’s a beautiful phrase from West Kerry where you say, “Mo sheasamh ort lá na choise tinne,” “You are the place where I stand on the day when my feet are sore.” And that is soft and kind language, but it is so robust. That is what we can have with each other.”

I also highly recommend his book In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World (first edition published in 2015).

Our Fragility

I’ve been listening to Bangladeshi-born Australian Doctor/Psychiatrist Tanveer Ahmed quite a bit this year. He’s a young man who’s had his fair share of controversy (plagiarism), but to me he remains a fascinating and oftentimes compelling commentator (for some he will be controversial or just plain wrong in his assessment) on what is happening in Australian culture, and as a corollary, with men. I’ve never been much inclined to gather around my self people and commentators who will affirm what I already think. I like to be stretched intellectually.

So, for me, much resonates, and I’m inclined to agree with a lot of his commentary within a New Zealand context too. I have his book Fragile Nation: Vulnerability, Resilience and Victimhood (pub. Nov. 2016 / excerpt here), but have not yet been able to make the time and space to read it.

He recently featured (along with Psychotherapist and pastor, Winsome Thomas) on Australian Broadcasting’s The Spirit of Things.

“Sting reminded us of 'how fragile we are', but is the decline of religion partly to blame?

Psychiatrist and social commentator, Tanveer Ahmed, examines the mental and social cost of the decline of meaning and boundaries normally set by religion.

Psychotherapist and pastor, Winsome Thomas was raised in the Salvation Army, but soon found the boundaries too limiting and has developed a spirituality to help fragile lives.”

Have a listen, here (53 minutes).

The Politics of Capitalism and Inequality

Summer is always a time to reflect for me, and each year my focus is a little different. This year, it’s been politics that has captured my imagination: politics and the interface between justice, community-building, and human thriving. I reflected a little in late December, and have continued to read and listen. Deepening inequality and injustice profoundly concern me. I’m concerned by the rise of fascism. Thinkers like Tim Jackson have entered into the conversation. Other conversationalists have been Pope Francis, Noam Chomsky, US-born Iranian film director Ramin Bahrani and his profound 2015 film 99 Homes (spoiler alert – review here), Michael Moore, and US-historian Thomas Frank (his most recent book is a stunner and is sure to be both provocative and controversial (for some) - Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (March 2016)

Documentary filmmaker and author Michael Moore, always controversial, does a fabulous job at getting the issues out on the table in his 2009 film Capitalism: A Love Story (watch for early Bernie Sanders, who back in 2008/09 still made a lot of sense). While featuring Barack Obama in a positive light (Obama having in 2008 becoming the US President-Elect), I imagine Moore would have had a very different take of him at the close of his second term if that documentary had been released in 2017. Certainly I’ve been deeply disappointed by Obama’s two-term Presidency. So much potential for change squandered and allowed to be bought. I watched Capitalism: A Love Story for the first time earlier this week. Worth re-reading, this side of the US-elections, is Moore’s prescient“Five Reasons Why Trump Will Win” (from memory it came out around July 2016)

A more recent, but equally provocative documentary that I would highly recommend is Noam Chomsky’s Requiem for the American Dream (2015)

There have been numerous other documentaries well worth watching, e.g. 2005’s The Corporation. Or 2011’s The Inside Job. Or Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

I also highly recommend listening to Thomas Frank, here (The US Election and those who have been left Behind) and here (Thomas Frank and the New “liberal”). Neither conversation is particularly long, but both pack a punch. While his latest book focuses on the US Democratic Party, it nonetheless has real relevance in other Western countries such as my own.

William A. Barry: Past, Present, and Future: A Jubilarian’s Reflections on Jesuit Spirituality

“If we cannot love our past, we cannot accept and love ourselves and our present, because we are products of that past with all its good and bad elements.” Which, of course, is an important way of reminding us that we are the products of our past with all that was good, and all that was less than the good we had hoped for from life.”

~ William A. Barry SJ.

I’ve mentioned Jesuit priest, author, and spiritual director before. His books have been really meaningful to me at various points over the years. I most recently mentioned him in this post.

Over the first few days I’ve read his extended essay Past, Present, and Future: A Jubilarian’s Reflections on Jesuit Spirituality. It was published in September 2000 in the journal Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits.

Barry has been a Jesuit Priest for over 50-years now, and in places it’s a little dated, but nonetheless remains useful and indeed, insightful, tracking as it does the changes that have occurred in Jesuit spirituality within Western Catholicism and the USA. He starts out with a great quote from Win Blevins’ 1995 novel Stone Song: A Novel of the Life of Crazy Horse, which includes these lines:

“The old way was beautiful. We turn backward to it and in taking leave we offer it our love. Then we turn forward and walk forth blindly, offering our love. Yes, blindly.”

Barry names and expounds a little on each of what he considers the “traditional marks of Jesuit spirituality”:

1. The recovery of the meaning of the fifteenth annotation, found in the “Introductory Explanation” of the Exercises.
2. The variety of prayer forms
3. Adaptation to the Individual
4. The Role of Desires
5. The Discernment of Spirits
6. The Account of Conscience.

Reminding me, in parts, of Al Roxburgh, he makes these statements: “…What’s the problem [the Jesuits / Catholics / Christians in the West, are facing] our cultural maps no longer are accurate…What’s the solution? Our spirituality is a … means of finding the way of the risen Jesus in our time. What time is it? A time of crisis for our world…”

You’ll find the PDF (scanned copy of journal) here. Barry’s essay comes in at 39 pages plus the cover and some additional pages. Additionally he quotes a section of the Rule of Life of the Anglican Society of Saint John the Evangelist, which you will find online (PDF) here. It is also a useful read and something to think about at the beginning on a New Year.

Making Christianity Relevant Again

Today, at the start of a New Year, a reflection from Richard Rohr. Something to think about.

“What will make a difference to the future is awakening to a faith that fully communicates God’s love—a love that transforms how we believe, what we do, and who we are in the world. —Diana Butler Bass [Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (HarperOne: 2013), p.37.]

Our religion is not working well. Another year has ended—a new year begins—in which suffering, fear, violence, injustice, greed, and meaninglessness still abound. This is not even close to the reign of God that Jesus taught. And we must be frank: in their behavior and impact upon the world, Christians are not much different than other people.

The majority of Christians are not highly transformed people, but tend to reflect their own culture more than they operate as any kind of leaven within it. I speak especially of American Christians, because I am one. But if you are from another country, look at the Christians where you live and see if the same is true there.

Let’s be honest: religion has probably never had such a bad name. Christianity is now seen as “irrelevant” by many and often as part of the problem more than any kind of solution. Some of us are almost embarrassed to say we are Christian because of the negative images that word conjures in others’ minds. Young people especially are turned off by how judgmental, exclusionary, impractical, and ineffective Christian culture seems to be. The church seems hostile toward most science (the objective outer world) and thus unable to talk about its inner dimensions with any authority. As we saw in the recent U.S. election, Christians overall showed little prophetic or compassionate presence.

Most Christians have not been taught how to plug into the “mind of Christ;” thus they often reflect the common mind of power, greed, and war instead. The dualistic mind reads reality in simple binaries—good and bad, right and wrong—and thinks itself smart because it chooses one side. This is getting us nowhere.

Iain Provan: Convenient Myths and Seriously Dangerous Religion

‘Dr Iain Provan's new book Convenient Myths talks about how modern culture constructs myths to suit the temper of the time.

Iain Provan has been the Marshall Sheppard Professor of Biblical Studies at Regent College since 1997. In this interview he takes on modern tendencies to re-write history and create myths to suit current thoughts and attitudes.’

I was surprised by how much this 30 min conversation engaged me. You can find the downloadable podcast here.

I have a number of his commentaries, but haven’t read Convenient Myths: The Axial Age, Dark Green Religion, and the World that Never Was (pub. 2013), or his 2014 publication, which looks really interesting (but too expensive) Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters.