Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

A Love worth Seeking.

More from Rowan Williams, this time from his sermon Loving God published in Open to Judgement (UK) and as A Ray of Darkness (US edition): 

“…The only love worth the name is God’s, and that is pure, uncaused. God does not love because [God] wants or needs anything: [God] loves the utterly unlovely and unloveable. We can’t love like that, because all our love is selfish, wanting our own profit. If I pretend to love God , all this means is that I want to use God to produce nice experiences for myself. The only proper response to God’s love is faith: blind trust and commitment, unadulterated by any search for experience…” 

One might add, unadulterated by any desire for personal gain, and so Williams’ can reflect: 

“…Like it or not, love is hopelessly entangled in need and dependence – the need to find in another, human or divine, human and divine, the happiness we cannot generate in ourselves; the recognition that we must let ourselves be made, to some degree, by others, because we cannot complete ourselves…” 

I was reflecting on just this theme in a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation with someone yesterday; this notion that in relationship we each act as “mirrors” for the other, a metaphor I got from Roger Housden in a reflection on the “hidden joy” of marriage: 

“In marriage there is no escape,” reminds author Roger Housden, “from the dark corners of another human being. There is no escape from the mirror another casts on my own sorry state”, nor we on theirs. It "summons into awareness”, he continues, “the fears, the resentments, the disillusion, the sheer difficulty that comes with the fact of being human.” 

But my, how we resist letting ourselves be made by an other. How we resist seeing and experiencing ourselves as the other sees and experiences us; resisting the very gift of the other, the gifts of their seeing and experiencing which become the means for our own change, growth, and quest to become more fully and deeply human; to live for freely and authentically; and to find our “completion”, as Williams reflects above. 

We make, and are made in our inter-dependence; in our need of others through whom we experiences the truths of who we are; others who will help us see our unconscious, our conditioned ways of being; our false selves and the possibilities of healing and wholeness through, and in, and for love. 

For love to work, we need the other/Other precisely because they are not like us. We need more than what Nick Cave calls “fair-weather” friends.  

Rowan Williams, St. Paul, the Church, The Bizarre, and the City

Ian Mobsby recently had the joy of participating in “Clergy Summit” in the Diocese of London. The summit was gathered under the theme “The Church in a World City”. 

Ian writes: 

“…Rowan Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury gave an inspiring address looking at what it means to be Christian and Church with a vision of inclusion and justice.  It was truly good to hear again this depth of ecclesiology beyond Christendom, the divides, the tribes, [and] getting to the heart of the faith.  It really spoke to me and encouraged me that much of what we hold dear in the Moot Community goes to the heart of what being church is in the 21st century.  He …gave us a great challenge drawing on writings of St Paul.  Listen and be inspired!” 

You can listen to, or download the talk here. 

Rowan Williams will be in NZ – 27^th October until 7^th November. Some detail here. More detail, presumably, will be forthcoming. 

I do know that he is preaching at the 10am service at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Auckland on Sunday 29^th October. I'm guessing room will be limited. 

The Revolutionary Nature of Contemplation

One of the many gifts of this journey called “Blogging”; or, perhaps better, one of the gifts of this (spiritual) practice is the gift of journeys and discoveries shared. The gift of collective “wayfaring”; the gift of learning from each other; the gifts of wisdom, serendipity, experience, insight and alternative perspective. 

I can’t begin to describe over this last 10-years how my journey has been enriched and added to by the many others who blog their journey’s, discoveries, experiences, learning, and resources. I might live at the bottom of the world, but the connections made possible across the globe by technology have been such gifts. Again and again I’m reminded we need each other – we need others. Discipleship, change, and growth – becoming more fully alive and human is not a solo-project. 

Today, I benefitted again from the gift of an other, a fellow-blogger and wayfarer: Sheila Pritchard. Sheila posted a quote from a recent address (10^th October 2012) by Rowan Williams to the Catholic Synod of Bishops in Rome. It was first address by an Archbishop of Canterbury to the Synod of Bishops in Rome. Pope Benedict XVI chaired the gathering. 

Here’s the quote from Williams’ address that Sheila posted on her blog yesterday: 

“… Contemplation is very far from being just one kind of thing that Christians do:  it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom – freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that comes from them. To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit.  To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter.” 

There is much in this quote, and in Williams’ complete address; much I will continue to reflect on and explore in the coming weeks and months. 

You will find the full address here. You might also find the transcript of his interview on Vatican Radio interesting.

Waiting with Our Response

“Choosing life instead of death demands an act of will that often contradicts our impulses. Our impulses want to take revenge, while our wills want to offer forgiveness. Our impulses push us to an immediate response: When someone hits us in the face, we impulsively want to hit back. How then can we let our wills dominate our impulses? The key word is wait. Whatever happens, we must put some space between the hostile act directed toward us and our response. We must distance ourselves, take time to think, talk it over with friends, and wait until we are ready to respond in a life-giving way. Impulsive responses allow evil to master us, something we always will regret. But a well thought-through response will help us to "master evil with good" (Romans 12.21).” 

- Henri Nouwen.

In his wonderful little book Writing in the Dust, Rowan Williams reflects on the same sentiment. We need to find ways to try to "hold the moment"; to create a "breathing space" - to sit with the pain, with the impulses, with the feelings; to face into them, to listen to them, and to wrestle with them "long enough for some of our demons to walk away." (p.78).  

Rowan Williams: Language under Stress: Poetry and Faith

It’s been great to listen in on a conversation between Rowan Williams and Fiona Sampson about poetry and religious language. 

In June (2012) Archbishop Rowan Williams met with poet and critic Fiona Sampson to discuss poetic and religious language at an event organised by the Royal Society of Literature. 

“The conversation began with the relationship between poetry and liturgy, and went on to consider register and rhetoric, metre and musicality, understatement and excess. Dr Williams spoke about his own experiences as a poet and translator, and said that growing up in a home where both Welsh and English were spoken had awakened him early to the notion that there is always more than one way of saying something. 

The Archbishop touched on the work of fellow poets such as Geoffrey Hill and George Herbert throughout the evening, and took questions from the audience at the end.  Summing up the power of poetic language, Dr Williams said "a mystery is not a corruptly protected secret - it is an invitation"…Simone Weil gets a positive mention as well. 

It’s a fascinating and evocative 58-minute conversation. One I’ll need to listen to again. You can find the downloadable podcast here.  

“When I Was a Child I Read Books”

Rowan Williams recently reviewed Marilynne Robinson’s 2012 publication When I Was a Child I Read Books. 

He writes:

“…These essays are pure gold. Written with all her usual elegance, economy, and intellectual ruthlessness, they constitute a plea for recovering the use of "liberal" as an adjective, and, what is more, an adjective whose central meaning is specified by its use in scripture. "The word occurs [in the Geneva Bible] in contexts that urge an ethics of non-judgmental, nonexclusive generosity" - and not a generosity of "tolerating viewpoints" alone, but of literal and practical dispersal of goods to those who need them.

Psalm 122 is, you could say, the theme song of this vision, and it is a vision that prompts Robinson to a ferocious critique of the abstractions of ideology - including "austerity" as an imperative to save the world for capitalism. She offers a striking diagnosis of the corrupting effect of rationalism: rationalism as she defines it is the attempt to get the world to fit the theory; and because the world is never going to fit the theory, the end-product of rationalist strategies is always panic… 

… She has no patience with fashionable complaints about the responsibility of biblical texts or historic doctrine for violence or prejudice - Bishop Spong, Gerd Lüdemann, and, for that matter, Adolf von Harnack and Julius Wellhausen, get short shrift for their dismissals of the faith and ethics of the Pentateuch. As she insists, the biblical record is distinctive in that it gives us the tools for its own spiritual and moral critique; it is a story not of triumphant obedience to the law, but of failure and dogged recovery through forgiveness…” 

You can read the full review here.

Rowan Williams’ 2012 Holy Week Lectures on St Paul

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, delivered a series of three Holy Week Lectures on the theme "St Paul: the Man and his Letters". 

The lectures took place in Canterbury Cathedral, England on 2nd, 3rd and 4th of April.  

Lecture 1 [50Mb, 52 mins]
In his first lecture, "Outsiders and Insiders: Paul's Social World" the Archbishop draws from the book of Acts and St Paul's letters to talk about the world in which Paul lived - a cosmopolitan world held together by the Greek language and the authority of the Roman Emperor, but where universal human rights and dignities did not exist. 

Lecture 2 [46Mb, 49 mins]
In his second lecture, "The Universal Welcome: Paul's Disturbing Idea", the Archbishop talks about Paul's concept of a new kind of community where the powerful divisions existing within society no longer matter.  

Lecture 3 [46Mb, 49 mins] 
In the third and final lecture, "The New Creation: Paul's Christian Universe", the Archbishop considers the process by which Paul came to understand that Jesus, one of his own contemporaries, was in fact the image of God.  

You will find the downloadable Mp3’s here. 

Ben Myers on Rowan Williams’ Theology: Succinctly!

Over the last few days I’ve been listening (and re-listening) to a succinct interview with Ben Myers in which he reflects on Rowan Williams’ theology. It’s a “whistlestop” overview of some of the key themes in Williams’ theology. Ben, as he’s done in his recently published book Christ the Stranger: The Theology of Rowan Williams (pub. 2012) does a fine job, within the time he has, of getting to the heart of the theological framework out of which Williams has operated. 

One could have wished for a longer interview, but for me it touched on the key themes that have become important to me and how I try to live – things I’ve appreciatively learnt (and am still learning) from Williams. 

Myer’s use of the analogy of marriage is a good one (if you’re married or have been), and is a grounded way of reflecting on the larger themes and challenges that Williams believes the church needs to grapple with; the ways of being that make space for, and are hospitable to the ‘other’ for the sake of the gospel.  Similarly, his reflections on how Williams understands community and relationships remain important and we will continue to need to find ways of embodying and enacting the needs and realities Williams invites us into.    

And in relation to Myers’ book I think the introduction to the radio interview gets it right: It is “a very accessible and engaging critical introduction to Williams’ substantial contribution to Christian theology.” 

The programmes promo also includes the following by way of introduction: 

“…Rowan Williams has just announced he’s stepping down as Archbishop of Canterbury. He’s held the office since 2003, the 104^th incumbent since St Augustine of Canterbury in 597. Rowan Williams will be leaving the post in December, and becoming Master of Magdalene College at Cambridge. Opinions vary widely about the success or otherwise of Rowan Williams’ leadership of the international Anglican Communion, spanning a decade of huge theological and political divisions, particularly over women priests and bishops, and homosexuality. 

Yet there is much stronger consensus on the point that Williams is a theologian of particular note, one of the most influential of our time. From Christian doctrine such as the resurrection, the nature and purpose of the church, and the Trinity, to the philosophy of religious language, and contemporary issues like religious pluralism, sexuality and the body, and economics and society ... Williams has brought a sophisticated and subtle intellect, a creative imagination, and a wide reading of literature, to his theological reflections. He’s also an acclaimed poet…”

You can find the (downloadable) interview 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. 

 

Rowan Williams: Kiss and Tell

I’ve been listening to Rowan Williams these last few days – well actually one 2002 talk several times. I’ve listened a lot to him over the years, but his 2002 Greenbelt talk – Kiss and Tell: Intimacy and Mystical Experience - is one of the very best talks I’ve heard him deliver, and as I’m discovering it benefits from repeated listening, not because its technical (and in that sense complex), but because its simultaneously accessible, profoundly human, and yet also deep – it’s content circling around the profundity of God’s love for us, and love for God, and the importance of human love and loving. He explores why we turn so often to the language of human love, loving, and intimacy to talk about and explore our experience of God.    

For me I couldn’t but help hear St. Paul and his letter to the churches in Corinth (1 Cor. 13:1-7). I’m glad too that over the years I’ve had the likes of Williams, the Christian Mystics and many other wise persons walking along side me, helping me change and deepen my experience of what it means to be fully human; what it means to be alive; and what it means to truly love. But, the journey is still not over, the unfolding continues. 

Other strands woven through the fabric of his talk:

• The importance of the Christian mystics, in particular: St. John of the Cross & St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
• The Song of Songs and the very human acts of yearning, passion, and hunger for another person – for love, and to be loved and wanted for who we are.
• Human loving, relating, and intimacy.
• The absence and withdrawal of love.
• The importance of love maturing and deepening.
• The mystery and depth of our humanity – there is always more; we’re always more than can be seen and experienced. The multi-dimensional, multi-layered realities of being fully and wholly human.
• The importance of the longevity of love and loving – love as something that matures and enlarges – enlarges our relating to self, others, and God. Love as a journey of unfolding.
• The inevitability that to truly love will also, as a consequence, entails the experience of pain. To feel no deep, wordless pain in our human relating and within the context of human intimacy is, as a corollary, not to have truly or deeply loved. Love hurts, but love is the source of the most profound and sublime joy, peace and deep contentment. 

If you haven’t heard Williams start with this talk (downloadable here), and then carry on with this Holy Week talks: here (the Narnia stories from 2011) and via here (on growing in prayer from 2009).