Spiritual readings "Greetings from Whittier Presbyterian Church"
Oct. 2001
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Appeal for
Terrorist attack response help |
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Simplicity |
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Community and
United We Stand |
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Community |
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Church &
State |
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The Bible |
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Need for
Lifestyle change |
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Christian
Maturity |
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Terry Gross
interviews Karen Armstrong on Projection of hatreds |
What is a Post Traumatic Stress nation to do? As I have watched the reactions of people I know and over the television, I sense the need to get a good word out in the midst of many not-so-good words.
One way that I have responded is to set up the section of our church’s web page to deal with this. Go to the web page and click on “Terrorist Attack Response” down towards the bottom of the page. There you will find several articles that I think are helpful.
What do you find that is helpful? Can I put it on our web page or put at least a link to it? I would like to take a different direction through today’s email and ask for your input.
What have you found helpful in coping with the events and aftermath of Sept. 11?
What websites or other internet related materials do you know of?
There is a sense of great wisdom and what I would dare to call guidance of the Holy Spirit throughout our country. I rejoice in that. Let us all share together what we are finding to be helpful.
I’ll wait to hear from you.
Grace & peace
Geoff
See http://www.whitpresby.org/terrorist_attach_help.htm for new info.
The other morning my wife read a comment in the local paper about Baby-boomers learning a new value in these last days, the value of frugality. After I laughed about it I began thinking about the spiritual roots of frugality and found these words from Richard Foster on the spiritual discipline of simplicity. These words come from his book “Celebration of Discipline,” Harper and Row, 1978. He wrote a whole book in 1981 entitled “Freedom of Simplicity,” so apparently the idea had some power for him.
The Christian Discipline of simplicity is an ‘inward’ reality that results in an ‘outward’ life-style. Both the inward and outward aspects of simplicity are essential. We deceive ourselves if we believe we can possess the inward reality without its having a profound effect on how we live. To attempt to arrange an outward life-style of simplicity without the inward reality leads to deadly legalism.”
Among the challenges and tasks that lay ahead of us as a nation, certainly a little more deep simplicity, inner simplicity, would be helpful. May you continue to work at the challenge of maintaining a close relationship with God in and through all the challenges in your life.
Grace & peace
Geoff
See http://www.whitpresby.org/terrorist_attack_help.htm for new info.
Hiking info at http://www.whitpresby.org/summer_backpacking_2001.htm
Hike this Saturday, Oct. 13.
“ United We Stand” is a slogan heard much these days. There is a hint of community behind that slogan. Community is central to our faith, but I’m not sure it is central to our culture beyond a temporary crisis. In their book “Lord, Teach Us; The Lord’s Prayer & the Christian Life” William H Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas talk about the way the Lord’s prayer is meant to be a communal prayer.
“Christian salvation would have been quite a different matter, if God had taught us to pray, “My Father….give me this day my daily bread and lead me not into temptation….”
“Therefore it is never quite right to say things like, “Since I took Jesus into my heart,” or “Since I gave my life to Christ.” Our relationship to Jesus is his idea before it is ours. WE don’t take Jesus anywhere. He takes us places. Those who speak of having “a personal relationship with Christ,” are right, it is personal. But it is not private. We are all in this together. Therefore, you will note that we say the Lord’s prayer out loud, thus demonstrating the public nature of this faith.”
The Christian church continues to speak from the sidelines about the nature of life and community. We have a certain perspective that is needed in our time. May we in the church not forget the true nature of community, and may we not shrink from reminding those around us of the deeper community that God offers us.
Grace & peace to you.
Geoff
See http://www.whitpresby.org/terrorist_attack_help.htm for new info.
Hiking info at http://www.whitpresby.org/summer_backpacking_2001.htm
Hike this Saturday, Oct. 13.
Tuesday’s email was about the issue of community in this time of national crisis. Here is another reflection bearing on that idea. This comes from Ronald Rolheiser’s wonderful book, “The Holy Longing.” In a chapter talking about a spirituality of ecclesiology, he lists nine reasons why we should go to church. As you will see the reasons fit well with the idea of community.
“The Holy Spirit is not a piece of private property, neither is God’s call. The Judeo-Christian God is clear. Spirituality is not a private search for what is highest in oneself but a communal search for the face of God. The call of God is double: Worship divinity and link yourself to humanity. There are two great, equal commandments: Love God and love your neighbor. There can be no real Christian spirituality divorced from ecclesiology. To deal with Christ is to deal with church.
If you substitute the word community for either ecclesiology or church in the above paragraph, you will get the broader picture. Our faith is real clear about these two elements, loving God and loving neighbor. These two elements go together and we separate them only at cost to ourselves and those around us.
May you strive at keeping these two poles of faith together.
Grace & peace,
Geoff
In response to the events of Sept. 11, “Where do we turn for another way to think about what comes next?” Such is the by-line to an article that struck me in the Christian Century magazine of Oct. 10, 2001. The article was titled: “Reasons of State: What is Government For?” written by Robin W. Lovin, dean of Perkins School of Theology in Texas. The title speaks of the state, but if you can wade through all the words here, the article results in a clear call to the church. I’m going to excerpt from the article. If you can’t get a copy of the original, check their website in the next couple of weeks and see if they reproduce it there. http://www.christiancentury.org/
“The concept of war, then, probably won’t be much help in thinking about what comes next. That’s not to say that the military planners won’t need all their skill and experience, and it’s not to say that what comes next won’t seem like war to those who get caught in it. Those who were in lower Manhattan on September 11 have already noted the similarity. But politicians, civil servants and citizens need to think about what comes next in this conflict in some other way. Otherwise, it may be impossible to know when to stop, and difficult to prevent the list of targets from expanding until it includes not just those who harm us but those who refuse to help us, and eventually even those who disagree with us.
…There was another image invoked by President Bush, which came from another part of our past. It was the image of the frontier sheriff, imposing a rough order on an untamed territory, bringing criminals to justice with the slogan: “Wanted—Dead or Alive.”
“…The 19th-century “Wanted” poster is, of course, no tool for the 21st century. But the frontier image may help us understand that we are moving into new territory.
“We will not succeed if we try to provide that security all by ourselves…..We will require international collaboration on a scale we have not yet seen. We will need to take a real interest in the development and leadership of marginalized groups everywhere.”
“…The modern state, which has always accomplished its basic function of protection against violence by carefully controlling its own territory, will have to invent a new way to go about the task. The state which will emerge in this new situation may be fundamentally different from the state we have known since early modern times.”
“The church will be different too. But the church was here before the modern state, and the church will be here to establish a new relationship with whatever comes after it. In the time of transition, the church has a large task to remind people of realities that are even more enduring that markets, communication networks and nations. But the church would also do well to dust off the wisdom we’ve acquired about when it is appropriate to call something a war, and about what a state of any sort is required to do.”
My apologies for the length of this, but I felt it to be so insightful and relevant to us American Christians that I had to pass it along. Our faith is indeed pushed to new limits, new frontiers. But God has been there already and is eager to whisper in our ears some hints of where to go and what to do.
Grace & peace,
Geoff
We have started a new Bible/spirituality program at the church, “Daily Bread: Strength for the Journey.” Find out more here: http://www.whitpresby.org/daily_bread_info.htm Here are some words about the Bible that I find insightful. They come from Kathleen Norris’s book “Amazing Grace” in a chapter titled “The Bible: Illiteracies and Ironies”
“Many people these days feel an absence in their lives, expressed as an acute desire for “Something more,” a spiritual home, a community of faith. But when they try to read the Bible they end up throwing it across the room. To me, this seems encouraging, a place to start, as sign of real engagement with the God who is revealed in scripture. Others find it easy to dismiss the bible out of hand, as negative, vengeful, violent. I can only hope that they are rejecting the violence-as-entertainment of movies and television on the same grounds, and that they say a prayer every time they pick up a daily newspaper or turn on CNN. In the context of real life, the Bible seems refreshingly whole, an honest reflection on humanity in relation to the sacred and the profane. I can’t learn enough about it, but I also have to trust that what little I know, and proceed, in faith, to seek God there.”
I’m reminded of something Mark Twain was to have said: “Its not what I don’t understand about the Bible that bothers me, its what I understand all too well.” I have always heard that as Twain saying that it is difficult to do what the Bible tells us. One of the message of scripture that seems to get missed by such attitudes or remarks as Twain’s is that God also provides us the help, the power, the insight, the guidance of the Holy Spirit. May that help work in your life this day, as you seek God in scripture and your life.
Grace & peace
Geoff
I read a comment about the many American flags we see fluttering on cars these days. The ones on large, gas-guzzling cars send a mixed message. Excessive gas and oil consumption is part of the problem that we as a nation face as we contemplate future options. I was reminded of the thought of Thomas Berry in his book “The Great Work,” Bell Tower Publications, New York, 1999, wherein he speaks about the peril our planet faces from our misuse of it. He is an ecologist and takes an ecological standpoint. On page 110 he makes this statement:
“Never before has the human community been confronted with a situation that required such sudden and radical change in lifestyle under the threat of a comprehensive degradation of the planet and its major life systems. The difficulty can only increase. Tensions between capitalism and socialism, between liberalism and conservatism, are disputes over minor differences in comparison with the issues now before us. Both capitalist and socialist regimes are committed to ever-increasing commercial-industrial exploitation of the resources of the planet. Neither is acceptable to the ecologist.”
Given the profound re-examination of our life as a nation that we seem to be going through, we would be well-advised to listen to such as Berry, to help us with as big a picture as we can get in front of us. God has given us this planet for our use and enjoyment. Abuse will not be overlooked in the long run. Our responsibility as stewards of the earth may be sorely tested in the days to come. We must raise the caution about abusing what God has entrusted to us.
May you find greater clarity in your call from God in these days.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Craig Dykstra’s book “Growing in the Life of Faith; Education and Christian Practices”, Geneva Press, Louisville, KY, 1999, is full of wisdom about how we become mature followers of Christ and how we pass that faith on. On p. 71, using the analogy of learning to play baseball, he says this:
“Learning baseball requires playing the game, making the moves, developing the skills, thinking it through, and practicing over and over again in order to do it well. Dance is similar. So is surgery. We have a lot to learn from all this for purposes of education in faith. The practice of Christian faith is a lot more physical than we usually recognize or let on. It is a body faith, an embodied faith, that involves gestures, moves, going certain places (where people are hungry and thirsty, for example; where suffering occurs), and doing certain things. As with every other practice, learning the practices of the life of Christian faith involves practice, repeated participation in the bodily actions that make up those practices.”
As we continue in the life of faith, we find the truth of this example. Living spiritually is more than feeling good and more than repeating certain prayers daily, though both of those are elements in living spiritually. It is the discipline that is illustrated in Dykstra’s words that make spiritual living more and more a part of our daily life. It is a discipline that is practiced over and over again that brings us a growing sense or awareness of God’s presence in our world.
May you find the encouragement you need to pursue your particular spiritual discipline, day after day.
Grace & peace,
Geoff
Terry Gross runs a public radio talk show out of Philadelphia, PA called “Fresh Air.” A week or so ago she had as her guest Karen Armstrong, a British scholar who has written a great book on Islam. Armstrong’s most recent book is “The Battle for God” a book about fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. That book has gotten rave reviews and I look forward to reading my own copy. In the interview with Terry Gross these words were in the dialogue that took place:
Gross: This observation I’m about to make is probably no more than very cheap psychoanalysis. It has struck me, is it possible that someone like Mohammed Atta (suspected as one of the leaders in the Sept. 11 attack) is at war with himself, he has all these impulses to drink, to have sex, he’s fighting these impulses, he blames the West for it. Because he sees these impulses in himself, he is just so upset and outraged by it that he wants to kill the West, to kill that impulse in himself.
Armstrong: I Don’t think that is cheap psychology at all, I think it is acute observation. To commit an act like that you must be doing extraordinary violence to even your basic instinct of self-preservation. History is full of examples of when we are unhappy with ourselves, when we feel torn within ourselves, when we don’t know whether we are religious or secular….this kind of conflict is projected on the other. Christians did this during the Crusades, when we projected violence and intolerance upon Islam.
This issue of projecting our own sin and dark side upon someone or something else(whether it be the enemy of the day, Satan, our spouse, members of another race or whomever) is one of the traps that we humans set for ourselves and then get caught in. Jesus directs us towards a closer analysis when he reminds us to take the log out of our own eye before removing the speck out of the eye of another. It takes introspection and honesty to avoid this trap. That is a part of what the Christian discipline of confession is all about.
May you find the courage to be honest with yourself and the grace to lift your shortcomings to God, this day and all days.
Grace & peace
Geoff
