email: whitpresby@mindspring.com
Spiritual readings "Greetings from Whittier Presbyterian Church"
June
2003 Emails
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Rowan Williams response to Sept. 11, 2001 |
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Howard Rice on maintaining faith |
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Rowan Williams on freedom of choice |
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Kingsolver on attitudes toward children |
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Chittitser on darkness |
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Chittitser on faith |
I continue to be fascinated with the short book by Rowan Williams, “Writing in the Dust,” Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K., 2002. Here is a section that speaks to me as I consider the continual bombardment of different colored terrorism risk alerts.
Heroism may be more remote in a postwar world, but it has not disappeared. Perhaps we should ask how we as societies come to grips with the idea that there is something, some balance of equity and mutuality, to be sustained that may require us to train ourselves in becoming familiar with risk and death, so that we recognize what needs to be done in crisis. ……..So can we stop talking so much about ‘war’, and reconcile ourselves to the fact that the punishment of terrorist crime and the gradual reduction of its threat cannot be translated into the satisfying language of decisive and dramatic conquest? Can we try thinking more about the place of risk and even loss in ordinary civil society; and about the moral resources needed to grapple with the continuing problems of shaping a lawful international order? The hardest thing in the world is to know how to act so as to make the difference that CAN be made; to know how and why that differs from the act that only releases or expresses the basic impotence of resentment.”
Is there not some relation between the kind of training Williams speaks about above and spiritual training or practice? Maybe with such training we will be less likely to impose our fears so murderously upon others. These are high stress times and I give thanks to God for people of faith, like Rowan Williams, who help us think through the times and articulate the real stresses we face. May you find the Spirit’s help and comfort in these times.
Grace & peace
Geoff
No emails next week as Geoff will be on vacation.
How do we maintain our faith? How does our faith help us cope with the pressures and challenges of life? These are questions we deal with all the time. There are opportunities to grow in faith and practice that are offered all the time. We will be having a one-day retreat based on the Companions on the Inner Way model at the end of this month, on June 28, 2003. It will be led by the Rev. Howard Rice. Here is a quote from his book, “Reformed Spirituality,” Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 1991.
“The shape of the Christian life is its piety or spirituality. Only through the careful self-discipline and the nurturing strength of the community of faith are Christians enabled to establish and sustain a spirituality rooted and grounded in faith. The spiritual life is one that requires constant practice if it is not to degenerate into religion that is little more than duty.”
Our one-day retreat will offer opportunities to learn or refine techniques of prayer which can indeed help us in our piety. Information and registration material can be found at the web site, at www.whitpresby.org/companions_one_day_2003.htm
May you find the help you need to practice your faith this day.
Grace & peace
Geoff
No emails next week as Geoff will be on vacation.
I have been truly captivated by the book by Rowan Williams, “Writing in the Dust, After September 11” Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K., 2002. In fact I’ve read it through 3 times now! At 78 short pages, it is not so daunting a task. Here is one of the nuggets of reflection that I keep returning to.
“But to get back to the main issue: we have something of the freedom to consider whether or not we turn to violence, and so, in virtue of that very fact, are rather different from those who experience their world as leaving them no other option. But if we have that freedom, it ought to be less likely that we reach for violence as a first resort. We have the freedom to think what we actually want, to probe our desires for some kind of outcome that Is more than just mirroring what we have experienced. The trouble is that this means work of the kind we are often least eager for, work that will help us so to understand an other that we begin to find some sense of what they and we together might recognize as good. It means putting on hold our most immediate feelings—or at least making them objects of reflection; it means trying to pull apart the longing to re-establish the sense of being in control and the longing to find a security that is shared. In plainer English, it means being very suspicious of any action that brings a sense of release, irrespective of what it achieves; very wary of doing something so that it looks as if something is getting done.
It means acknowledging and using the breathing space; and also acknowledging and using the rage and revengefulness as a way of sensing a little of where the violence comes from. I’d better say it again: this has nothing to do with excusing decisions to murder, threaten, and torment, nor is it a recommendation to be passive. It is about trying to act so that something might possibly change, as opposed to acting so as to persuade ourselves that we’re not powerless.
Williams goes on to make the obvious reference to the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus in Matthew 5-7, particularly Jesus’ words about how to treat enemies. Williams does a fine job of taking our feelings about September 11 and give them a thorough examination from the standpoint of the Christian faith. I believe we need more voices like his.
May you find the inspiration and encouragement you need from God in your daily life.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Someone loaned me a cassette copy of the book “High Tide in Tucson” by Barbara Kingsolver, Harper Audio/Harper Collins, New York, 1995. In one section Kingsolver talks about the disparity between attitudes towards children in Spain and in the USA. Here are some excerpts from what she has to say.
Children are cherished in Spain and treated like it. In the USA they are seen as a necessary evil or toxic waste product or, at best, their worth is tied to their dollar value.
Parents in the USA are left on our own; our social programs for children are hands down the worst in the industrialized world.
Kingsolver tells some stories of her personal experiences with her child both here and in Spain to illustrate her point. I don’t know what her faith perspective is, but I do know that Jesus and the Bible have some very specific things to say about children and how they are treated. The measure of our faithfulness can be taken in part by how we treat children and other vulnerable members of our society.
What is your attitude towards the weak and vulnerable? How do you measure your faith? May you find the guidance and compassion you need this day.
Grace & peace,
Geoff
In the light of pastoral concerns I’m aware of, I have looked through the book by Joan D. Chittister entitled “Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope,” Eerdmans/Novalis, Grand Rapids, Ottawa, 2003. She structures the book in pairs of chapters, joining each struggle with a gift that is called out by the dynamics of the struggle. Here is how she talks about the struggle of darkness.
“The great interruptions of life leave us completely disoriented. We become lost. The map of life changes overnight and our sense of direction and purpose goes with it. Life comes to a halt, takes on a new and indiscernible shape. Promise fails us and it is the loss of promise that dries in our throats. What was is no more and what is to come, if anything, in unclear. All the things we depended on to keep us safe, to show us the way, to give us a reason for going on, disappear. If the baby dies, I have no idea why I am still alive either. If the relationship ends, I am ashamed of my undesirability and hide my face from the rest of the world. If the job I love ends, I have no idea what to do with my life from one day to the next……..
Like Jacob, (in Genesis 32) I find myself in darkness. There is no God here…
The struggle now is to negotiate darkness of spirit. The ancients called it the dark night of the soul, this process of shedding everything in life except God. (Here she refers to Jesus’ use of the words of Psalm 22 while he is on the cross.)
Darkness becomes the incubator of light.
There is only one way out of struggle and that is by going into its darkness waiting for the light and being open to new growth.
This Friday, we will see what she has to say about the gift of faith, which she pairs with the struggle of darkness.
There are indeed times in life when it seems the whole world crashes in upon us. May these words of Joan Chittister be of help to you when you experience the deep pains of life.
Grace & peace
Geoff
In her book “Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope,” Eerdmans/Novalis, Grand Rapids, Ottawa, 2003, Joan D. Chittister pairs her chapters, joining each struggle with a gift that is called out by the dynamics of that struggle. Tuesday we heard some of her words on darkness. Here are excerpts from what she says in the chapter on the gift of faith, which is paired with the chapter on darkness.
Folklore teaches with great confidence that crises plunge us into faith. But the notion that here are no atheists in foxholes has all the comfort of a cliché and like most clichés offers little data to confirm the hope…
Even when we live in the presence of God our entire lives, there is no sudden spiritual awareness when the hard times come. There is just more of the same.
As W. H. Auden put it (in his poem “A Certain World” of 1970): ‘May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in God, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that ‘faith” is even more difficult for God than it is for us?’…
The source of struggle is not what is at issue. It is the value of struggling that grows us.
Sometimes, in the face of the God of life, the most faithful thing we can do is simply to keep on living.”
We long for more answers, more help and more insight than “simply keep on living.” But the truth is that often keeping on living is all that can be done.
May God grace you with strength and courage this day.
Grace & peace
Geoff
