I know, strictly speaking, this post is by definition a matter of faith, and therefore should be posted on my other blog, but I thought for general amusement purposes, it would be better suited here.
When my Dearly Beloved and I were affirmed as candidates to the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church in 2007, all the current candidates told us we should enjoy the forthcoming Summer as our last "free" Summer, because every Summer from now on would be occupied with placements and, eventually, ministry.
I should have realised it at the time, but these injunctions to enjoy our last "free" Summer were a harbinger that the Universe's sense of humour was about to swing into action at our expense. For this Summer has been anything but "free", and my Dearly Beloved and I have been kept quite busy with matters ministerial.
This state of affairs has arisen because our much-loved local minister has fallen prey to a severe back condition that requires him to spend extended periods in enforced immobilisation. And that's before the necessary surgery occurs, which will entail further rest and recuperation. So, the church council decided that, given two of its congregation are candidates to the ministry (you know who I'm talking about, don't you?), it would be a terrific idea if they were temporarily appointed as ministerial locums.
Now, before I go any further, I have to say that my Dearly Beloved and I are counting ourselves as extremely fortunate that we are members of a congregation blessed, not only with a brilliant leadership group, but any number of gifted and capable people as well, which means that much of the burden that being a ministerial locum might otherwise involve has been taken off our shoulders. So it's not like we'd want you to believe that we were suddenly presented with the task of looking after a congregation all on our own. Still...
There's been enough to be getting on with. I won't go into all the boring details, except to say that this Summer past has been anything but restful! I can hear the Universe laughing its cosmic head off even as I type. And people keep assuring us that this has all been good experience - and they're right - but I can't avoid the sneaking suspicion that I'm owed a long, lazy Summer before such things vanish into the realms of past experience...
Ah, well, c'est la vie! And I have to admit, there have been some profound and thought-provoking moments in all of this, including some interesting personal insights and an apposite reminder about the need for personal humility. Most importantly, it has reminded me of the needs for grace and sensitivity when dealing with others, that everything we do in faith is an act of ministry - and that ministry exists for purposes that have nothing to do with our own desires and ends.
We're not sure how long the present interim arrangements will last; with the support of the church council and the congregation, we're taking this one day at a time. And most of all, we're praying our minister makes a full recovery and is back on deck as soon as the healing process allows.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
One has to accept life on the same terms as the public baths, or crowds, or travel. Things will get thrown at you and things will hit you. Life's no soft affair. (Seneca)
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Friday, February 01, 2008
Sunday, January 20, 2008
A Gentle Reminder...
For those of you who missed my earlier posting on this matter, I now have two blogs. Confessions from a Comfortable Couch will continue to contain my musings and ramblings about life in general.
However, I now have a specific blog for matters of faith - reflections, sermons I've preached, prayers, etc - which now appear on my other blog The Still Circle.
Also, you should catch my Dearly Beloved's blog with some of her latest entries - a sermon she preached recently, as well as some Advent reflections. Great stuff, especially the beautiful pictures that accompany her posts.
Talk to you soon,
BB
However, I now have a specific blog for matters of faith - reflections, sermons I've preached, prayers, etc - which now appear on my other blog The Still Circle.
Also, you should catch my Dearly Beloved's blog with some of her latest entries - a sermon she preached recently, as well as some Advent reflections. Great stuff, especially the beautiful pictures that accompany her posts.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Friday, November 23, 2007
My Other Blog
Now that my Dearly Beloved and I are formally candidates to the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church in Australia, and because we are starting to get many more opportunities to preach sermons, lead worship services, and do other associated activities, I have decided to start another blog dedicated to sharing my sermons, prayers, and reflections on faith.
The new blog is called The Still Circle.
But don't worry! I won't be climbing off the Comfy Couch any time soon - I'll still be ranting about all sorts of stuff from the serious to the silly on these pages; it's just that matters of faith will now have their own dedicated site.
I'll begin the new blog with the most recent sermon I preached on Luke 21:5-19, and will also add a couple of recent reflections that have already appeared on this blog. However, as time goes on, I'll add more and more new stuff.
So, there you go - something new. Once you've had fun bouncing around on the Comfy Couch, you can pop over to the Still Circle for some calming down and spiritual centering.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
The new blog is called The Still Circle.
But don't worry! I won't be climbing off the Comfy Couch any time soon - I'll still be ranting about all sorts of stuff from the serious to the silly on these pages; it's just that matters of faith will now have their own dedicated site.
I'll begin the new blog with the most recent sermon I preached on Luke 21:5-19, and will also add a couple of recent reflections that have already appeared on this blog. However, as time goes on, I'll add more and more new stuff.
So, there you go - something new. Once you've had fun bouncing around on the Comfy Couch, you can pop over to the Still Circle for some calming down and spiritual centering.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Monday, November 05, 2007
My Dearly Beloved Speaks!
On the weekend, my Dearly Beloved preaced the sermon at our local Uniting Church congregation. And what a fantastic job she did, too! Using multimedia, a sense of humour, and some pecant observations, she turned the familiar tale of Zacchaeus up his tree into a challenging and thoughtful exploration of friendship, and what the friendship of the divine means for humankind.
She's posted an account on her blog - I urge you to take a look, it will be well worth your while.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
She's posted an account on her blog - I urge you to take a look, it will be well worth your while.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Where is God Taking Me?
Last night, I watched the final installment of the wonderful television series The Abbey, which was featured on the ABC's Compass program.
One of the things I have found fascinating about the show is how the five women who were chosen to live in the Abbey and experience the daily life of the nuns - ordered according to the Rule of St Benedict - adjusted to the discipline of monastic life. Most people, I suspect, believe that living in a monastery is easy, that it involves little more than saying a few prayers, doing a few chores, and basically having a lot of leisure time to laze around and do very little. But the reality is quite different: as the nuns kept reminding the women (and the audience), the rhythm of daily life is governed by the seven daily prayer and worship sessions (which begin at 4:30am!), around which the various jobs of the self-sufficient abbey must be completed. In other words, the life of the nuns is one of work suffused with prayer and contemplation. It amounts to a very full day, seven days a week; and the women discovered for themselves how difficult it actually is.
Another interesting aspect was the amount of silence which the women had to keep - not only at night (the "Great Silence") but also during many parts of the day. This is something which the Rule insists upon in order that the individual might develop the capacity to really listen; listen to the secrets of their true self, to what their life experience is saying to them, to what God is saying to them. Some of the women were actively searching for God; others were either dubious about God, or didn't see God as relevant. But the silence forced them to be open to the possibility of God, and to the fact that God might actually be speaking to them. And that was very confronting for them, because they were used to a world of noise, to the sound of their own and others' voices. It was not simply the amount of silence that troubled them, but its depth, and what it was revealing.
But there is also another reason why this aspect of silence engaged me. This reason resides in the fact that silence, for me, has never been a troubling or confronting experience. On the contrary, I have always found silence deeply comforting and refreshing; it is in silence, and stillness, in the almost physical quietude of the "dark, sacred night" (to quote from the song What A Wonderful World) that I have most deeply and powerfully experienced the presence of God. So, unlike these women, silence for me has never been a problem; what I have flinched from is crowd and noise and the absence of quiet.
Which isn't to say that I'm anti-social. Rather, that I've never been very good at "working a room" or introducing myself to strangers, or just thrusting myself into a conversation. Nor am I very good at "small talk"; a conversation I can sustain until the cows come home, but ask me to talk about the weather, and I'm lost. You could also say that I'm not an "events" kind of person: my idea of a good night out is a sharing a meal and a drink and chatting with a couple of friends in a snug pub or nice restaurant. Likewise, I prefer entertaining a few friends at home and cooking them dinner than going to a club or a loud party.
Yes, there is an element of shyness involved, but it's also part of my nature to prefer calm and convivial events rather than a roisterous "bash". I was even like this as a teenager (much to my mother's exasperation!). But in light of The Abbey and observing the women's difficulty with silence, I am prompted to reflect on my difficulty with noise, especially in the context my candidacy to the ordained ministry.
Will my preference for silence, for small, quiet events, sometimes even solitude, interfere with my pastoral duties and responsibilities? Will my natural reserve, containing as it does an element of shyness, prevent me from being open and welcoming to people? Will my difficulty with "small talk" stop me from engaging with others?
I don't think so. Afterall, I've managed to make friends with many people, partly off my own bat and partly through association with others. Moreover, my work in the union movement was intensely pastoral, requiring me to engage with people and enter into their suffering. And when it comes to functions, I've always managed to find a way to break the ice, however awkwardly. So I don't think my natural inclinations will cripple my capacity to be sociable.
But it will be a struggle, and a struggle for my whole life. I am conscious of that fact, even as I am conscious of the difference between difficulty and debilitation. But the point is not so much how I will deal with situations I find confronting but the fact that God is seemingly taking me into places and situations in which will have to square up to these confrontations. You see, as I was watching The Abbey, it occurred to me how many times I have told people that, had I been born in another time and place, I would almost certainly have ended up in a religious community. Moreover, this is a prospect that I still find deeply compelling: the notion that, at the end of my life, when I have done all there is to do in the world, I could spend the last years of my existence with God.
But I dare say that will never eventuate, even as I know it will always remain an attractive possibility. Because I think the point is that my life is not meant to be comfortable, that faith is not about letting me escape from the world, but enter into it. Not that I think any of the sisters in the Benedictine monastery that was featured in The Abbey are inadequate types who cannot cope with the world; on the contrary, I think they are performing a profound service in which they offer a radical alternative to the materialism and self-absorption of the present cultural climate. What I mean is that I suspect, for me, entering a religious community would in many respects be the "easy option", it would represent a retreat from the life of the world I find so often confronting and challenging. And, for me, I think that is the point of the ordained ministry; it's about not letting me get away with the "easy option", with taking the line of least resistance.
Recently, in another post, I wrote this about myself:
I suspect I will be both bruised and blessed along my journey. I don't look forward to the bruises; but I will try and see beyond them to the blessings.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Easy street never leads anywhere. (Anonymous)
One of the things I have found fascinating about the show is how the five women who were chosen to live in the Abbey and experience the daily life of the nuns - ordered according to the Rule of St Benedict - adjusted to the discipline of monastic life. Most people, I suspect, believe that living in a monastery is easy, that it involves little more than saying a few prayers, doing a few chores, and basically having a lot of leisure time to laze around and do very little. But the reality is quite different: as the nuns kept reminding the women (and the audience), the rhythm of daily life is governed by the seven daily prayer and worship sessions (which begin at 4:30am!), around which the various jobs of the self-sufficient abbey must be completed. In other words, the life of the nuns is one of work suffused with prayer and contemplation. It amounts to a very full day, seven days a week; and the women discovered for themselves how difficult it actually is.
Another interesting aspect was the amount of silence which the women had to keep - not only at night (the "Great Silence") but also during many parts of the day. This is something which the Rule insists upon in order that the individual might develop the capacity to really listen; listen to the secrets of their true self, to what their life experience is saying to them, to what God is saying to them. Some of the women were actively searching for God; others were either dubious about God, or didn't see God as relevant. But the silence forced them to be open to the possibility of God, and to the fact that God might actually be speaking to them. And that was very confronting for them, because they were used to a world of noise, to the sound of their own and others' voices. It was not simply the amount of silence that troubled them, but its depth, and what it was revealing.
But there is also another reason why this aspect of silence engaged me. This reason resides in the fact that silence, for me, has never been a troubling or confronting experience. On the contrary, I have always found silence deeply comforting and refreshing; it is in silence, and stillness, in the almost physical quietude of the "dark, sacred night" (to quote from the song What A Wonderful World) that I have most deeply and powerfully experienced the presence of God. So, unlike these women, silence for me has never been a problem; what I have flinched from is crowd and noise and the absence of quiet.
Which isn't to say that I'm anti-social. Rather, that I've never been very good at "working a room" or introducing myself to strangers, or just thrusting myself into a conversation. Nor am I very good at "small talk"; a conversation I can sustain until the cows come home, but ask me to talk about the weather, and I'm lost. You could also say that I'm not an "events" kind of person: my idea of a good night out is a sharing a meal and a drink and chatting with a couple of friends in a snug pub or nice restaurant. Likewise, I prefer entertaining a few friends at home and cooking them dinner than going to a club or a loud party.
Yes, there is an element of shyness involved, but it's also part of my nature to prefer calm and convivial events rather than a roisterous "bash". I was even like this as a teenager (much to my mother's exasperation!). But in light of The Abbey and observing the women's difficulty with silence, I am prompted to reflect on my difficulty with noise, especially in the context my candidacy to the ordained ministry.
Will my preference for silence, for small, quiet events, sometimes even solitude, interfere with my pastoral duties and responsibilities? Will my natural reserve, containing as it does an element of shyness, prevent me from being open and welcoming to people? Will my difficulty with "small talk" stop me from engaging with others?
I don't think so. Afterall, I've managed to make friends with many people, partly off my own bat and partly through association with others. Moreover, my work in the union movement was intensely pastoral, requiring me to engage with people and enter into their suffering. And when it comes to functions, I've always managed to find a way to break the ice, however awkwardly. So I don't think my natural inclinations will cripple my capacity to be sociable.
But it will be a struggle, and a struggle for my whole life. I am conscious of that fact, even as I am conscious of the difference between difficulty and debilitation. But the point is not so much how I will deal with situations I find confronting but the fact that God is seemingly taking me into places and situations in which will have to square up to these confrontations. You see, as I was watching The Abbey, it occurred to me how many times I have told people that, had I been born in another time and place, I would almost certainly have ended up in a religious community. Moreover, this is a prospect that I still find deeply compelling: the notion that, at the end of my life, when I have done all there is to do in the world, I could spend the last years of my existence with God.
But I dare say that will never eventuate, even as I know it will always remain an attractive possibility. Because I think the point is that my life is not meant to be comfortable, that faith is not about letting me escape from the world, but enter into it. Not that I think any of the sisters in the Benedictine monastery that was featured in The Abbey are inadequate types who cannot cope with the world; on the contrary, I think they are performing a profound service in which they offer a radical alternative to the materialism and self-absorption of the present cultural climate. What I mean is that I suspect, for me, entering a religious community would in many respects be the "easy option", it would represent a retreat from the life of the world I find so often confronting and challenging. And, for me, I think that is the point of the ordained ministry; it's about not letting me get away with the "easy option", with taking the line of least resistance.
Recently, in another post, I wrote this about myself:
And I think therein lies the reason why God is leading me down this path. Jacob wrestled with God all night and ended up with a limp and a dislocated hip; he was renamed Israel, which apparently means "he struggles with God". And that is what faith is; not an easy assurance, but a struggle, a wrestling match from which we come away both bruised and blessed. It bruises us because it confronts and challenges us deeply, with the most powerful and painful aspects of our existence; but it also blesses us because from that suffering arises a richness and depth of being that would not otherwise be possible.I don't think God wants me to be happy; I think God wants me to be fully human, to be what I truly am. I think God wants to take me out of my comfort zone of complacency and familiarity, so that I can grow up, and love, and be loved. And in order to do that, I need to heed the call of vocation which God has been issuing to me my whole life long.
I suspect I will be both bruised and blessed along my journey. I don't look forward to the bruises; but I will try and see beyond them to the blessings.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Easy street never leads anywhere. (Anonymous)
Saturday, October 27, 2007
A Taste of Things to Come
Yesterday, my Dearly Beloved and I (along with Sue, our fellow newby candidate) went along to the Uniting Church Theological Hall in Melbourne for a "New Candidates Day" to get a taste of what life will be like once we commence our candidates' study and formation in 2008. It was also the last day of the teaching year for the existing candidates, so we were also able to get an insight into a day in the life of the Hall.
In a sense, we had already been welcomed to the Hall by the Uniting Church Candidates Association (which glories in the acronym UCCA). All the new candidates had been sent a lovely card welcoming us to the community of candidates and faculty, and each card featured a beautiful photograph taken by one of the existing candidates (another Sue) during her travels in the Holy Land.
It was nice to receive the warm and generous welcomes of the existing candidates. But it was also instructive to read the exhortations that we enjoy our last summer of freedom - a reminder that next summer we will be on our first field placement in another congregation, quite possibly in a rural area. So that was both exciting in the sense of having something to look forward to, but also slightly intimidating, in that the weight and seriousness of the vocation we are undertaking started to manifest itself.
So, feeling a little like children on their first day at school, my Dearly Beloved and I turned up at Hall - and were immediately greeted and made welcome by all. I was especially touched and humbled to see my friend Caro, whose father recently passed away, there to greet us and share the day. It was a powerful indicator of the grace and spirit that is required to undertake and sustain ordained ministry.
After a brief but moving morning prayer service, the new candidates spent the morning going through various items of "housework" - an introduction to the hall, the ordination requirements, the formation process, etc. Then we broke for morning tea, during which time we discovered how strong the sense of community is at the Hall, as candidates and faculty mingled and talked and shared a cuppa and some food. After morning tea, the new candidates joined the existing candidates and observed presentations that were being made as part of their assessment for a subject entitled "Mission and Evangelism". I don't know about my Dearly Beloved or Sue, but I was impressed with - and a little intimidated by! -the quality of the presentations, and the obvious amount of work that had gone into them. It was an indicator of the standards we will need to achieve as candidates in the future!
Lunch was again a communal affair, consisting of a delicious soup and savoury bread, followed by fresh fruit. During lunch, the new candidates were also given a briefing by the Candidates Association about life at Hall from the candidates' perspective, as well as some of the relevant issues which form the basis of ongoing dialogue with the faculty. We were also informed that there are a number of committees on which students sit that are integral to the life of the Hall and its relations with the United Faculty of Theology, of which it is a constituent member - and, later that afternoon, I was approached and asked if I would like to be a member of one such committee; UCCA works fast!
After lunch, an interesting forum on being an ordained minister and relating to the media was conducted by the Synod's media officer. This was followed by a wonderful Eucharist service, featuring sung responses and a powerful sermon delivered by a guest Lutheran pastor. Then the day concluded with drinks and nibbles, again involving the whole faculty and candidates.
So - an informative, intense, encouraging, uplifting, intimidating, compelling, engaging day. As my Dearly Beloved said later, it was a day that made you realise for the first time the fact that our vocation to ordained ministry is no longer somewhere in the future - it's now a present reality. And that reality is both filled with expectation and hope - and is also a little scary. But what impressed me most about the day was the intense atmosphere of community: the love and support and encouragement were almost palpable. Whatever the difficulties and struggles of the journey ahead, I know my Dearly Beloved and I won't be walking the road alone; we are part of a community now, and that precious gift is valuable beyond estimation.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Virtue shuns ease as a companion - it demands a rough and thorny road. (Michel de Montaigne)
Sunday, October 14, 2007
The Reason Why
On the weekend, a friend asked me: "This ministry thing - it's a bit of a turnaround for you, isn't it? I mean, when I first met you, you were kinda anti the whole God thing."
I knew what she was saying - and I knew why she was saying it. It's the same question that many people have asked me - that I have asked myself. Why do I want to enter the ordained ministry? What's it about, this sense of vocation? Is it a sudden thing - or if not, why haven't we known about it? Why have you been keeping it a secret?
Well, let me state two things right at the beginning: one, I haven't been keeping anything a secret; and, two, I didn't receive a visitation: no lights in the sky, no heavenly choirs, no commands from above. What has been happening to me is a process, and for a long part of that process, I didn't know I had a call to ordained ministry; didn't know, or didn't want to know. A call from God is something you can suppress just as easily as an unpleasant memory; but part of the process of response, just as part of the process of confronting our inner demons, involves facing that which we would prefer to deny.
I'm not going to give you my life history: how I grew up in the Catholic church; how I became alienated from Catholicism in my late teens; how I spent my twenties convinced that there was no place inside a faith community for me, that I was, in effect, an exile; how I began the healing process firstly through my discovery of Stoic philosophy, and secondly through my work in the union movement; how I gradually came to realise the possibilities for faith and faith community and how this was realised through my relationship with my Dearly Beloved. All of that would take far too long, and quite a bit of it's not for public consumption, anyway. Suffice to say, it's the background.
The bottom line is that God has always been a presence in my life. When I say "presence", I don't mean physically - although I do mean it literally. I have always felt God particularly strongly in silence, in the still darkness of the night, and in the astonishing grandeur and complexity of the cosmos; perhaps that's why I've always felt drawn most strongly to the meditative and contemplative aspects of faith. Perhaps the best way I can describe it is that God has always stood at my left shoulder: not looking over my shoulder, checking up on what I was doing, or whispering in my ear; just there, sometimes a comfort, but more often than not a burden. Something I tried to shrug off, but it just wouldn't let me go.
And the key to understanding what I'm talking about lies in that word burden. Faith for me is not a release, it's not something that makes my life easier; but that's the point. Faith is not meant to be some glib, smug assurance of our rightness or our righteousness; it's not meant to confirm our prejudices or pander to our ego. It's meant to be something that challenges us, that we wrestle with and struggle for, that forces us to walk paths clouded by uncertainty and doubt and fear. Faith is something that's meant to take us out of our comfort zones, that drags us into the world and forces us to live, to have the wholeness and fullness of life in all its abundance: the good, the bad, the indifferent.
And it was all that struggling that I did in my teens and twenties and early thirties that has lead me to this place; because I think I was wrestling with God, with the presence of God that I didn't want to acknowledge, that I tried to buck or ignore, that I wanted so much to be gone so I could maintain my anger and hurt and disappointment at the church. And what pissed me off more than anything was God's sheer persistence, the fact that God wouldn't go away; not demanding, not cajoling, not judging - just standing there at my left shoulder, reminding me of God's presence. No matter how I rationalised or justified, or tried to have a bet either way, God just stayed put.
Way back when I started this blog, I wrote about C S Lewis and his book The Problem of Pain. What I didn't say at the time was that, powerful though this book was for me, even more striking was his "spiritual autobiography" Surprised By Joy. In it, Lewis describes his own difficult, conflicted, wrenching journey of faith; how he tried to be an atheist and couldn't convince himself; how he tried to equivocate and theoretically agree that while there might be a God, that God really didn't have much to do with being or existence; and how, having tried to avoid the issue and construct his own reality, he was left with no choice except to conclude that God not only existed, but as was an actually presence - a reality - in his life.
I know that some sections of the Christian community have tried to turn Lewis into some kind of evangelical hero: the atheist turned convert who became one of the most powerful apologists for Christianity. But the truth, it seems to me, is much simpler: Lewis was an intensely human person who struggled for much of his life with faith, and with the possibility of God, and whose faith was not a "road to Damascus" experience but a process in which the continual presence of God acted like a kind of slow wearing away, grinding down all his evasions and avoidances until he was unable to do anything other than face that truth by which he was confronted.
I don't want to put myself in the same class as C S Lewis, but the story he tells in Surprised By Joy is one that resonates to the core of my being. I was never an atheist, but I did go through the hurtful, damaging process of alienation; and for years afterwards, I did try to console myself with intellectualising my anger with God and the church. Until, ultimately, one day, I could no longer defend my prevarications, not even to myself. Much though I didn't want to, I had to submit; that is, I had to be honest with myself and face that calling I had tried to hide from for most of my life, but which had eventually uncovered my hiding place and exposed me to the light of day.
In the motion picture Shadowlands, C S Lewis (played brilliantly by Anthony Hopkins) asks the question: does God want us to suffer? And then he asks a second question: what if the answer to the first question is "yes"? Then he concludes by saying:
You see, I don't think God wants us to be happy. It's not that God wants us to be unhappy - it's just that our happiness has nothing to do with it. We imagine that our childish toys will bring us all the happiness there is, and that the walls of our nursery circumscribe the limits of the world. But something must drive us out of our nursery, and into the world of others - and that something is suffering. What God wants is for us to grow up, to leave the nursery, to love and to be loved. We are like blocks of stone, and the blosws from the sculptor's chisel that strikes us so hard that we can scarcely bear the pain, are nonetheless what make us perfect.
I don't think God wants me to be happy; I think God wants me to be fully human, to be what I truly am. I think God wants to take me out of my comfort zone of complacency and familiarity, so that I can grow up, and love, and be loved. And in order to do that, I need to heed the call of vocation which God has been issuing to me my whole life long.
When I first started telling people I knew about the fact that I would be following my vocation, someone jokingly asked me, "Does that mean we can't swear or tell dirty jokes around you?", to which I flippantly replied, "Shit, no!". Another person said: "Does this mean you've "found God"?", to which I again flippantly replied, "Hardly; if God's got any brains, I'll be the last person who finds him." And I was keen to tell people - only half jokingly - that I hadn't suddenly acquired a saintliness or a sanctity that I hadn't previously possessed. But beneath the flippancy was a desire to assure people that I hadn't changed; I was still me, it was just that I was going to be more fully me - more properly me - than I had been up until that time.
So there you have it: that's the reason why. Does God talk to me (ie: do I hear voices in my head?). No, I don't. And I don't have visions, either. Because when it comes to communication, God's dialogue with me has been one of proximity, not conversation. And at last - at long last - I've finally started to listen.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. (C S Lewis)
I knew what she was saying - and I knew why she was saying it. It's the same question that many people have asked me - that I have asked myself. Why do I want to enter the ordained ministry? What's it about, this sense of vocation? Is it a sudden thing - or if not, why haven't we known about it? Why have you been keeping it a secret?
Well, let me state two things right at the beginning: one, I haven't been keeping anything a secret; and, two, I didn't receive a visitation: no lights in the sky, no heavenly choirs, no commands from above. What has been happening to me is a process, and for a long part of that process, I didn't know I had a call to ordained ministry; didn't know, or didn't want to know. A call from God is something you can suppress just as easily as an unpleasant memory; but part of the process of response, just as part of the process of confronting our inner demons, involves facing that which we would prefer to deny.
I'm not going to give you my life history: how I grew up in the Catholic church; how I became alienated from Catholicism in my late teens; how I spent my twenties convinced that there was no place inside a faith community for me, that I was, in effect, an exile; how I began the healing process firstly through my discovery of Stoic philosophy, and secondly through my work in the union movement; how I gradually came to realise the possibilities for faith and faith community and how this was realised through my relationship with my Dearly Beloved. All of that would take far too long, and quite a bit of it's not for public consumption, anyway. Suffice to say, it's the background.
The bottom line is that God has always been a presence in my life. When I say "presence", I don't mean physically - although I do mean it literally. I have always felt God particularly strongly in silence, in the still darkness of the night, and in the astonishing grandeur and complexity of the cosmos; perhaps that's why I've always felt drawn most strongly to the meditative and contemplative aspects of faith. Perhaps the best way I can describe it is that God has always stood at my left shoulder: not looking over my shoulder, checking up on what I was doing, or whispering in my ear; just there, sometimes a comfort, but more often than not a burden. Something I tried to shrug off, but it just wouldn't let me go.
And the key to understanding what I'm talking about lies in that word burden. Faith for me is not a release, it's not something that makes my life easier; but that's the point. Faith is not meant to be some glib, smug assurance of our rightness or our righteousness; it's not meant to confirm our prejudices or pander to our ego. It's meant to be something that challenges us, that we wrestle with and struggle for, that forces us to walk paths clouded by uncertainty and doubt and fear. Faith is something that's meant to take us out of our comfort zones, that drags us into the world and forces us to live, to have the wholeness and fullness of life in all its abundance: the good, the bad, the indifferent.
And it was all that struggling that I did in my teens and twenties and early thirties that has lead me to this place; because I think I was wrestling with God, with the presence of God that I didn't want to acknowledge, that I tried to buck or ignore, that I wanted so much to be gone so I could maintain my anger and hurt and disappointment at the church. And what pissed me off more than anything was God's sheer persistence, the fact that God wouldn't go away; not demanding, not cajoling, not judging - just standing there at my left shoulder, reminding me of God's presence. No matter how I rationalised or justified, or tried to have a bet either way, God just stayed put.
Way back when I started this blog, I wrote about C S Lewis and his book The Problem of Pain. What I didn't say at the time was that, powerful though this book was for me, even more striking was his "spiritual autobiography" Surprised By Joy. In it, Lewis describes his own difficult, conflicted, wrenching journey of faith; how he tried to be an atheist and couldn't convince himself; how he tried to equivocate and theoretically agree that while there might be a God, that God really didn't have much to do with being or existence; and how, having tried to avoid the issue and construct his own reality, he was left with no choice except to conclude that God not only existed, but as was an actually presence - a reality - in his life.
I know that some sections of the Christian community have tried to turn Lewis into some kind of evangelical hero: the atheist turned convert who became one of the most powerful apologists for Christianity. But the truth, it seems to me, is much simpler: Lewis was an intensely human person who struggled for much of his life with faith, and with the possibility of God, and whose faith was not a "road to Damascus" experience but a process in which the continual presence of God acted like a kind of slow wearing away, grinding down all his evasions and avoidances until he was unable to do anything other than face that truth by which he was confronted.
I don't want to put myself in the same class as C S Lewis, but the story he tells in Surprised By Joy is one that resonates to the core of my being. I was never an atheist, but I did go through the hurtful, damaging process of alienation; and for years afterwards, I did try to console myself with intellectualising my anger with God and the church. Until, ultimately, one day, I could no longer defend my prevarications, not even to myself. Much though I didn't want to, I had to submit; that is, I had to be honest with myself and face that calling I had tried to hide from for most of my life, but which had eventually uncovered my hiding place and exposed me to the light of day.
In the motion picture Shadowlands, C S Lewis (played brilliantly by Anthony Hopkins) asks the question: does God want us to suffer? And then he asks a second question: what if the answer to the first question is "yes"? Then he concludes by saying:
You see, I don't think God wants us to be happy. It's not that God wants us to be unhappy - it's just that our happiness has nothing to do with it. We imagine that our childish toys will bring us all the happiness there is, and that the walls of our nursery circumscribe the limits of the world. But something must drive us out of our nursery, and into the world of others - and that something is suffering. What God wants is for us to grow up, to leave the nursery, to love and to be loved. We are like blocks of stone, and the blosws from the sculptor's chisel that strikes us so hard that we can scarcely bear the pain, are nonetheless what make us perfect.
I don't think God wants me to be happy; I think God wants me to be fully human, to be what I truly am. I think God wants to take me out of my comfort zone of complacency and familiarity, so that I can grow up, and love, and be loved. And in order to do that, I need to heed the call of vocation which God has been issuing to me my whole life long.
When I first started telling people I knew about the fact that I would be following my vocation, someone jokingly asked me, "Does that mean we can't swear or tell dirty jokes around you?", to which I flippantly replied, "Shit, no!". Another person said: "Does this mean you've "found God"?", to which I again flippantly replied, "Hardly; if God's got any brains, I'll be the last person who finds him." And I was keen to tell people - only half jokingly - that I hadn't suddenly acquired a saintliness or a sanctity that I hadn't previously possessed. But beneath the flippancy was a desire to assure people that I hadn't changed; I was still me, it was just that I was going to be more fully me - more properly me - than I had been up until that time.
So there you have it: that's the reason why. Does God talk to me (ie: do I hear voices in my head?). No, I don't. And I don't have visions, either. Because when it comes to communication, God's dialogue with me has been one of proximity, not conversation. And at last - at long last - I've finally started to listen.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. (C S Lewis)
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
The Envelope Please...
Yesterday afternoon, as I was coming home from another day at uni, I turned the corner into my street, and as I strolled toward home, saw the postie pulling away from my letterbox, having stuffed a fistful of mail into the box.
Now I wonder, I thought, could that be....?
I was expecting a letter. Indeed, I was expecting two letters, one for myself, the other for my Dearly Beloved. They were advices from the Uniting Church in Australia's Victorian-Tasmanian Synod telling us whether or not we had been affirmed as candidates to the ordained ministry.
I'll be honest with you here: I had been sweating on this letter. And the reason was that I frankly thought it would be bad news: the answer would be, well, if not no exactly, then not yet. I was expecting the Synod to say that while they recognised I had a genuine call to ministry, I needed to further develop the graces and giftings by which that call was accompanied, and re-apply for affirmation at a later date.
Why was I thinking this way? Not because I thought I'd had a particularly bad time at the Selection Conference, which had been held over the course of the weekend just passed. The questioning had been close and intensive, at times a little confronting, and the role-playing scenarios were conducted in the fish-bowl like atmosphere of constant scrutiny by the Selection Panel. But I thought I had more than held my own. Rather, as the weekend progressed, I developed the nagging suspicion that the Panel members thought that I needed more exposure to the wider Uniting Church, that as a prospective ministry candidate I was perhaps a little "under done"; there seemed a definite "theme" developing which underlay the questions I was being asked.
Mind you, I certainly understood why this might be the case. Compared to my Dearly Beloved, I have been a member of the Uniting Church for a relatively short period of time, having undergone my own journey of faith that involved growing up a Catholic, becoming alienated from Catholicism in my late teens, spending most of my twenties wrestling with matters of faith and church, before finally entering the Uniting Church in my thirties. Under these circumstances, the church were perfectly entitled to enquire about the depth of my faith and conviction, and whether or not I was truly responding to a call of God on my life, or if I was applying to candidate for other reasons.
And so I was given a good grilling by the Panel members. As I say, I was of the belief that I withstood the pressure and responded effectively; but whether this would be enough to overcome any misgivings was a completely open question. I came away from he conference completely unsure of what to think.
At least, that was the case in respect of myself; about my Dearly Beloved I had no doubts whatsoever. She performed brilliantly over the course the weekend, going from strength to strength. That she would be affirmed I had no doubts whatsoever.
So, as the postie zipped past me on his motorbike and I approached the letterbox, a small quiver of mingled hope and unease fluttered through my nervous system. Had I passed this final test of what had been a long and exhaustive process; or would I fall at the final hurdle? Or would I have to wait another 24 hours to learn my fate?
The letters from Synod were waiting in the letterbox. With fumbling fingers, I opened the envelope. Within the Express Post envelope was an ordinary mail envelope. I opened this second envelope and wrenched open the letter within.
It is with joy that we affirm your sense of call and acknowledge the gifts and graces you bring to ministry...
I had made it! The Synod had accepted my application! Woo-hoo!
I called my Dearly Beloved to convey the news to her, as well as the entirely expected result that she, too, had also been affirmed by the Selection Panel. Then a round of phone calls to family and friends, especially Jim and Ris who supported us through the weekend, and Ian and Margery who provided us with some much-needed time-out on Saturday night. And also to our local minister, Ian, who has been such a wonderful fount of support and grace through the application process.
Now that the euphoria has died, I realise that the hard work begins now. Three years (at least) of formation and training at Theological Hall, over and above my BTheol degree studies, as well as congregational placements and, ultimately, a year as an intern before I can be ordained. Moreover, I am deeply conscious of the trust and responsibility that has devolved upon me. But it will be wonderful having my Dearly Beloved with me at Hall; and with humility, hard work, and a little grace, this new beginning will lead to many wonderful and faith-affirming experiences.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: No man is so completely happy that something somewhere does not clash with his condition. It is the nature of human affairs to be fraught with anxiety; they never prosper perfectly, and they never remain constant. (Boethius)
Now I wonder, I thought, could that be....?
I was expecting a letter. Indeed, I was expecting two letters, one for myself, the other for my Dearly Beloved. They were advices from the Uniting Church in Australia's Victorian-Tasmanian Synod telling us whether or not we had been affirmed as candidates to the ordained ministry.
I'll be honest with you here: I had been sweating on this letter. And the reason was that I frankly thought it would be bad news: the answer would be, well, if not no exactly, then not yet. I was expecting the Synod to say that while they recognised I had a genuine call to ministry, I needed to further develop the graces and giftings by which that call was accompanied, and re-apply for affirmation at a later date.
Why was I thinking this way? Not because I thought I'd had a particularly bad time at the Selection Conference, which had been held over the course of the weekend just passed. The questioning had been close and intensive, at times a little confronting, and the role-playing scenarios were conducted in the fish-bowl like atmosphere of constant scrutiny by the Selection Panel. But I thought I had more than held my own. Rather, as the weekend progressed, I developed the nagging suspicion that the Panel members thought that I needed more exposure to the wider Uniting Church, that as a prospective ministry candidate I was perhaps a little "under done"; there seemed a definite "theme" developing which underlay the questions I was being asked.
Mind you, I certainly understood why this might be the case. Compared to my Dearly Beloved, I have been a member of the Uniting Church for a relatively short period of time, having undergone my own journey of faith that involved growing up a Catholic, becoming alienated from Catholicism in my late teens, spending most of my twenties wrestling with matters of faith and church, before finally entering the Uniting Church in my thirties. Under these circumstances, the church were perfectly entitled to enquire about the depth of my faith and conviction, and whether or not I was truly responding to a call of God on my life, or if I was applying to candidate for other reasons.
And so I was given a good grilling by the Panel members. As I say, I was of the belief that I withstood the pressure and responded effectively; but whether this would be enough to overcome any misgivings was a completely open question. I came away from he conference completely unsure of what to think.
At least, that was the case in respect of myself; about my Dearly Beloved I had no doubts whatsoever. She performed brilliantly over the course the weekend, going from strength to strength. That she would be affirmed I had no doubts whatsoever.
So, as the postie zipped past me on his motorbike and I approached the letterbox, a small quiver of mingled hope and unease fluttered through my nervous system. Had I passed this final test of what had been a long and exhaustive process; or would I fall at the final hurdle? Or would I have to wait another 24 hours to learn my fate?
The letters from Synod were waiting in the letterbox. With fumbling fingers, I opened the envelope. Within the Express Post envelope was an ordinary mail envelope. I opened this second envelope and wrenched open the letter within.
It is with joy that we affirm your sense of call and acknowledge the gifts and graces you bring to ministry...
I had made it! The Synod had accepted my application! Woo-hoo!
I called my Dearly Beloved to convey the news to her, as well as the entirely expected result that she, too, had also been affirmed by the Selection Panel. Then a round of phone calls to family and friends, especially Jim and Ris who supported us through the weekend, and Ian and Margery who provided us with some much-needed time-out on Saturday night. And also to our local minister, Ian, who has been such a wonderful fount of support and grace through the application process.
Now that the euphoria has died, I realise that the hard work begins now. Three years (at least) of formation and training at Theological Hall, over and above my BTheol degree studies, as well as congregational placements and, ultimately, a year as an intern before I can be ordained. Moreover, I am deeply conscious of the trust and responsibility that has devolved upon me. But it will be wonderful having my Dearly Beloved with me at Hall; and with humility, hard work, and a little grace, this new beginning will lead to many wonderful and faith-affirming experiences.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: No man is so completely happy that something somewhere does not clash with his condition. It is the nature of human affairs to be fraught with anxiety; they never prosper perfectly, and they never remain constant. (Boethius)
Friday, September 07, 2007
What A Week!
This has been the week from hell.
As you will recall from my last missive, I had to undergo surgery on my left eye last Friday due to the fact that the retina in said eye decided right now would be a good time to detach - again. I've always said that the universe has a sense of humour, and that while we mightn't always see the humour in the gag, at least we could draw consolation from being the butt of cosmic jokes beyond our control. But seriously, folks, this time I'm going to complain to the gag writer!
The surgery itself went fine: accompanied by my Dearly Beloved, we bowled up to the Royal Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne at the appointed time. My last conscious thought as they put me under was that the anesthetic nurse's gloves smelled; the next thing I know, I was being encouraged to wake up and tilt my head to the left as far as I could. The significance of that last instruction will shortly become obvious.
As with the last time, the staff were superb. The nurses were compassionate and attentive, the surgery team were calm and encouraging, and the catering and ancillary staff were cheerful and considerate. Just one more demonstration of how incredibly fortunate we are in Australia to have a functioning public health system; and how we must guard this precious resource from being dismantled into an American-style health-care for the wealthy dysfunction.
Of course, retinal surgery is a fairly significant procedure, so I wasn't expecting to come out of the surgery without some discomfort. But, as I knew from last year's experience, this would quickly wear off, leaving me to deal with the more gruelling rigours of the recovery process itself. And this is why that instruction, as I emerged from he anesthetic fug, to tilt my head to the left became significant. Because, unlike last year, when I had to lie on my stomach for a week to aid the healing process, this time I had to lie on my left side. All the time. For a week. I couldn't lie on my back or my right side or my stomach; only on my left side, with just ten or so minutes every hour for the purposes of getting up and stretching my limbs and obtaining some relief.
Well, it was sheer agony. Lying on my stomach last year put a lot of pressure on my lower back, but that could be countered by stuffing a few pillows under my hips to flex my spine. This time, however, there was no relief, and the pain was spread over a series of pressure points: face, neck, shoulder, and hip. And all on the left side.
By the third day, my whole body was throbbing with pain. My face ached, my neck ached, my shoulders and hips ached: even my bones ached, throbbing with a deep seated pain that made me wonder if this was what it was like having leukemia or being a bone marrow doner. It got to the point when the only comfortable condition was unconsciousness - but even that was an elusive bliss, because the pain completely destroyed my sleep patterns, necessitating my retreat first to the sofa bed in the spare room; then, when that became unendurable because of its metal frame, the couch in the living room.
And to top it all off, I was suffering from caffeine withdrawal, owing to the fact that I hadn't had any coffee since the Saturday after the operation. Not that I drink much coffee as it is, but even a lifetime of moderate usage was enough to provoke crippling headaches to go along with all the other malaises as a consequence of my not imbibing. A compelling cause for reflection on the power of addiction!
All of this would have been bad enough were it not for the addition of the hours that just dragged past in empty procession. I couldn't read, couldn't watch TV, couldn't do anything to occupy my mind except listen to the radio and mark off the passage of time via program changes and hourly news updates. I practically colonised the lounge-room, with pillow, doona, and radio, the latter my only weapon for combating the empty desolation of enforced idleness. Thank heaven for Radio National is all I can say!
Not that this week has been a walk in the park for my Dearly Beloved. She was unwell herself over the weekend and at the beginning of the week; and since she is a secondary school teacher, the year is rapidly approaching the business end of the calendar, with final exams and all the pressures and anxieties of stressed students. To make matters worse, my chronic insomnia has played havoc with her own need for regular sleep.
Sooooo - here we are at the end of a pretty awful week, both exhausted, both not exactly in tip-top shape, and both of us having to face the Uniting Church Victorian-Tasmanian Synod Selection Conference for people applying to candidate to the ordained ministry. This is the apogee of a long process for both of us: the final stage of the church's discernment of our sense of call to ordained ministry. After this weekend, which is an intense series of interviews, presentations, and role plays, the Church will decide whether or not it discerns our call to ministry, and whether or not as a consequence it will accept our applications to candidate.
You'd think all this would be enough to terminally depress a person and put them off the whole project altogether. Except for the fact that my Dearly Beloved and I have had the terrific pastoral support and care of our minister, Ian, and of the North Ringwood Uniting Church community; we've had lots of encouragement and best wishes from friends, family, and acquaintances; and, most importantly, we'll have the support of our friends Ris and Jim at the Selection Conference, and also of Ian and Margery by way of a dinner debrief on Saturday night. All of these examples of care and support have buoyed our spirits; but most of all, we are committed to our respective and shared sense of vocation to serve in God's ministry, and we trust that God's ineffable presence in Christ and the Holy Spirit will help the Church discern our call.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: Fortune has not yet turned her hatred against all your blessings. The storm has not yet broken upon you with too much violence. Your anchors are holding firm, and they permit you both comfort in the present, and hope in the future. (Boethius)
As you will recall from my last missive, I had to undergo surgery on my left eye last Friday due to the fact that the retina in said eye decided right now would be a good time to detach - again. I've always said that the universe has a sense of humour, and that while we mightn't always see the humour in the gag, at least we could draw consolation from being the butt of cosmic jokes beyond our control. But seriously, folks, this time I'm going to complain to the gag writer!
The surgery itself went fine: accompanied by my Dearly Beloved, we bowled up to the Royal Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne at the appointed time. My last conscious thought as they put me under was that the anesthetic nurse's gloves smelled; the next thing I know, I was being encouraged to wake up and tilt my head to the left as far as I could. The significance of that last instruction will shortly become obvious.
As with the last time, the staff were superb. The nurses were compassionate and attentive, the surgery team were calm and encouraging, and the catering and ancillary staff were cheerful and considerate. Just one more demonstration of how incredibly fortunate we are in Australia to have a functioning public health system; and how we must guard this precious resource from being dismantled into an American-style health-care for the wealthy dysfunction.
Of course, retinal surgery is a fairly significant procedure, so I wasn't expecting to come out of the surgery without some discomfort. But, as I knew from last year's experience, this would quickly wear off, leaving me to deal with the more gruelling rigours of the recovery process itself. And this is why that instruction, as I emerged from he anesthetic fug, to tilt my head to the left became significant. Because, unlike last year, when I had to lie on my stomach for a week to aid the healing process, this time I had to lie on my left side. All the time. For a week. I couldn't lie on my back or my right side or my stomach; only on my left side, with just ten or so minutes every hour for the purposes of getting up and stretching my limbs and obtaining some relief.
Well, it was sheer agony. Lying on my stomach last year put a lot of pressure on my lower back, but that could be countered by stuffing a few pillows under my hips to flex my spine. This time, however, there was no relief, and the pain was spread over a series of pressure points: face, neck, shoulder, and hip. And all on the left side.
By the third day, my whole body was throbbing with pain. My face ached, my neck ached, my shoulders and hips ached: even my bones ached, throbbing with a deep seated pain that made me wonder if this was what it was like having leukemia or being a bone marrow doner. It got to the point when the only comfortable condition was unconsciousness - but even that was an elusive bliss, because the pain completely destroyed my sleep patterns, necessitating my retreat first to the sofa bed in the spare room; then, when that became unendurable because of its metal frame, the couch in the living room.
And to top it all off, I was suffering from caffeine withdrawal, owing to the fact that I hadn't had any coffee since the Saturday after the operation. Not that I drink much coffee as it is, but even a lifetime of moderate usage was enough to provoke crippling headaches to go along with all the other malaises as a consequence of my not imbibing. A compelling cause for reflection on the power of addiction!
All of this would have been bad enough were it not for the addition of the hours that just dragged past in empty procession. I couldn't read, couldn't watch TV, couldn't do anything to occupy my mind except listen to the radio and mark off the passage of time via program changes and hourly news updates. I practically colonised the lounge-room, with pillow, doona, and radio, the latter my only weapon for combating the empty desolation of enforced idleness. Thank heaven for Radio National is all I can say!
Not that this week has been a walk in the park for my Dearly Beloved. She was unwell herself over the weekend and at the beginning of the week; and since she is a secondary school teacher, the year is rapidly approaching the business end of the calendar, with final exams and all the pressures and anxieties of stressed students. To make matters worse, my chronic insomnia has played havoc with her own need for regular sleep.
Sooooo - here we are at the end of a pretty awful week, both exhausted, both not exactly in tip-top shape, and both of us having to face the Uniting Church Victorian-Tasmanian Synod Selection Conference for people applying to candidate to the ordained ministry. This is the apogee of a long process for both of us: the final stage of the church's discernment of our sense of call to ordained ministry. After this weekend, which is an intense series of interviews, presentations, and role plays, the Church will decide whether or not it discerns our call to ministry, and whether or not as a consequence it will accept our applications to candidate.
You'd think all this would be enough to terminally depress a person and put them off the whole project altogether. Except for the fact that my Dearly Beloved and I have had the terrific pastoral support and care of our minister, Ian, and of the North Ringwood Uniting Church community; we've had lots of encouragement and best wishes from friends, family, and acquaintances; and, most importantly, we'll have the support of our friends Ris and Jim at the Selection Conference, and also of Ian and Margery by way of a dinner debrief on Saturday night. All of these examples of care and support have buoyed our spirits; but most of all, we are committed to our respective and shared sense of vocation to serve in God's ministry, and we trust that God's ineffable presence in Christ and the Holy Spirit will help the Church discern our call.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: Fortune has not yet turned her hatred against all your blessings. The storm has not yet broken upon you with too much violence. Your anchors are holding firm, and they permit you both comfort in the present, and hope in the future. (Boethius)
Monday, August 20, 2007
Agape Service
Last night, my Dearly Beloved and I (aided and abetted by our trusty band of liturgical co-conspirators at Ringwood North Uniting Church) led an Agape Service. This service was part of a series of monthly services which we've titled "Pilgrimage Services" - both to reflect our individual and communal journey of faith, and to highlight the fact that these services have been a deliberate exploration of the rich tradition of Christian prayer and worship styles.
The agape (pronounced a-gah-pay, from the Koine Greek meaning love) is one of the most ancient traditions in Christianity, stretching back to the period of the early church community when there was no institutional church. Instead, Christians would gather at someone's home and celebrate their faith through a communal meal that commemorated both the Last Supper and the fellowship of their faith community.
For the purposes of this service, we borrowed heavily from the wonderful Iona Abbey Worship Book, which itself is a product of the Iona Community in Scotland. The Worship Book had lots of resources for Agape Services, including prayers and service structure, and we both drew on these and constructed the service in our own way with PowerPoint presentations, music, recordings, and periods of meditative silence. We also included a simple meal of soup (my Dearly Beloved made pumpkin, while Murray, one of our number, provided minestrone) and bread and water. We then followed with a communion that, instead of containing a formal liturgy, simply involved the group sharing delicious oatmeal cookies (thanks Nicola!) and grape juice; our minister, Ian, spoke a simple but powerful blessing, and we partook of the elements.
The group ate and drank in a deep, contemplative silence in which the bond of unity and sense of community were almost physical. There was a truly wonderful sense of spiritual presence, of the love and grace of God. I have always believed in the KISS principle, and last night helped reinforce my sense that the simple is so often the most profound and moving.
In lots of ways, it was an appropriate occasion. Earlier that day, my Dearly Beloved and I attended the wedding of our friends Bron and Fletch. It was a lovely service, elegant but uncomplicated, achieved with a real depth of emotion and occasion. And during the regular service that morning, my Dearly Beloved had cleverly used the classic Dr Seuss story, Horton Hatches an Egg, during the Children's Service to illustrate the themes of faith and commitment. So to finish off the day with an Agape Service felt like a more than germane bookend to the events of the day.
And it's always instructive what you can learn from others. One of the participants jokingly quipped that it was disappointing that we weren't reclining - a reminder of the fact that, during the early Christian period, such meals as the Agape would have been eaten while reclining, not sitting. And during a conversation with another participant, I learned that the Lindisfarne Community in northern England have also produced a Worship Book that contains lots of resources for community worship. I reckon the odds are pretty good my Dearly Beloved and I will be checking out - and making use of - this book in the near future!
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: The greatest truths are the simplest; and so are the greatest men. (Julius & Augustus Hare)
The agape (pronounced a-gah-pay, from the Koine Greek meaning love) is one of the most ancient traditions in Christianity, stretching back to the period of the early church community when there was no institutional church. Instead, Christians would gather at someone's home and celebrate their faith through a communal meal that commemorated both the Last Supper and the fellowship of their faith community.
For the purposes of this service, we borrowed heavily from the wonderful Iona Abbey Worship Book, which itself is a product of the Iona Community in Scotland. The Worship Book had lots of resources for Agape Services, including prayers and service structure, and we both drew on these and constructed the service in our own way with PowerPoint presentations, music, recordings, and periods of meditative silence. We also included a simple meal of soup (my Dearly Beloved made pumpkin, while Murray, one of our number, provided minestrone) and bread and water. We then followed with a communion that, instead of containing a formal liturgy, simply involved the group sharing delicious oatmeal cookies (thanks Nicola!) and grape juice; our minister, Ian, spoke a simple but powerful blessing, and we partook of the elements.
The group ate and drank in a deep, contemplative silence in which the bond of unity and sense of community were almost physical. There was a truly wonderful sense of spiritual presence, of the love and grace of God. I have always believed in the KISS principle, and last night helped reinforce my sense that the simple is so often the most profound and moving.
In lots of ways, it was an appropriate occasion. Earlier that day, my Dearly Beloved and I attended the wedding of our friends Bron and Fletch. It was a lovely service, elegant but uncomplicated, achieved with a real depth of emotion and occasion. And during the regular service that morning, my Dearly Beloved had cleverly used the classic Dr Seuss story, Horton Hatches an Egg, during the Children's Service to illustrate the themes of faith and commitment. So to finish off the day with an Agape Service felt like a more than germane bookend to the events of the day.
And it's always instructive what you can learn from others. One of the participants jokingly quipped that it was disappointing that we weren't reclining - a reminder of the fact that, during the early Christian period, such meals as the Agape would have been eaten while reclining, not sitting. And during a conversation with another participant, I learned that the Lindisfarne Community in northern England have also produced a Worship Book that contains lots of resources for community worship. I reckon the odds are pretty good my Dearly Beloved and I will be checking out - and making use of - this book in the near future!
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: The greatest truths are the simplest; and so are the greatest men. (Julius & Augustus Hare)
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Orthodoxy and Freedom
Way back in July, when my Dearly Beloved and I appeared before the Maroondah Presbytery as part of our ongoing application to candidate to the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church, I was asked by one Presbytery member how I would deal with the issue of orthodoxy and the requirement to uphold the doctrinal teaching of the church.
I was asked this question because, in the course of my presentation to the Presbytery, I had articulated my conviction that Christianity was essentially a faith of freedom. In this respect, I had described the received tradition of the Church not as the be-all-and-end-all of faith, but as its starting point, the basis from which, in the light of new information and new understanding, Christians could make their faith relevant to the present and enable it to be open to the future. In my view, tradition is not - and cannot be - that which ties us to the past; rather, it is the foundation for the future, that which enables us to take new directions and move toward new horizons.
Thus, it seemed to me that the unasked question behind the question was, given my views about Christianity as a faith of freedom, how would I accept the authority of the Church and articulate its doctrinal position?
As far as I am concerned, this is a perfectly legitimate - indeed, a necessary - question, because it asks for a clarification of what is meant by "freedom". Is the "freedom" which I believe is the core of Christian faith an anarchic liberality, a free-for-all that gives permission to individuals to believe what they choose, and act accordingly? Or is this "freedom" one that exists within a context of a particular understanding of the nature of faith, and the nature of the relation between humankind and God?
And my answer, emphatically, is the latter. Christianity is a faith that embodies a particular understanding of freedom grounded in the ministry of Christ, and of Christ as God's self-revelation in the world. But what is this particularity?
Firstly, I think the freedom of Christian faith arises from the fact that Christ came to bring humanity life, and life in abundance. Not, however, the "abundance" of so-called prosperity theology, which is the mere subordination of Christianity to free-market capitalism; nor is it the "abundance" of leading a life of ease or unending happiness, which is the yoking of faith to our wish-fulfilment. On the contrary, the abundance which Christ offers is a life lived fully, a life in which we enter into the fullness of our human nature. Moreover, it is a life in which we engage with every dimension of experience - the good, the bad, the indifferent - on the basis of faith, instead of simply using faith as a consolation for hardship or suffering. It is, in short, the experience of life in which faith is a philosophy for being, and not merely the expressed assent to doctrinal statements.
Secondly, I believe this freedom exists in a context in which doctrine and credal statements form the framework that enables the expression of freedom, instead of restricting or curtailing its expression. Thus, doctrine becomes not a cage but a launching place for the freedom of Christian faith, the basis upon which people - both individually, and as members of a faith community - can explore, question, examine, debate, and enter into the depths of faith as a lived, interior experience, instead of a mere ritualistic or formulaic process. In other words, it is a context in which freedom arises from doctrine and credal statements liberating the individual rather than confine them to a particular viewpoint or understanding.
Thirdly, I believe that the combination of the first two points - faith as a philosophy of being, and as a context in which doctrine enables the expression of freedom - combine to produce a third context: the freedom to reinterpret the past in light of new knowledge and new understanding in order to attain a deeper and richer understanding. This is innovation not as breaking with the past - which is not really innovation at all - but as drawing on the past in collaboration with new insights in order to be relevant in present contexts and open to new futures. This is the freedom to engage in innovation that honours the past and reaches toward new horizons.
Thus it is that I answered the question that was put to me by saying that the issue of orthodoxy and authority and tradition was dependent on how one viewed these aspects of the faith experience: were they chains that tied us to a dead past, or were they the foundations that enabled us to have a living present reality and also entertain prospects for future development. If the former, then orthodoxy was an oppressive weight; if the latter, then it was a liberating, life-giving force.
My view is definitely the latter.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. (Cardinal Newman)
I was asked this question because, in the course of my presentation to the Presbytery, I had articulated my conviction that Christianity was essentially a faith of freedom. In this respect, I had described the received tradition of the Church not as the be-all-and-end-all of faith, but as its starting point, the basis from which, in the light of new information and new understanding, Christians could make their faith relevant to the present and enable it to be open to the future. In my view, tradition is not - and cannot be - that which ties us to the past; rather, it is the foundation for the future, that which enables us to take new directions and move toward new horizons.
Thus, it seemed to me that the unasked question behind the question was, given my views about Christianity as a faith of freedom, how would I accept the authority of the Church and articulate its doctrinal position?
As far as I am concerned, this is a perfectly legitimate - indeed, a necessary - question, because it asks for a clarification of what is meant by "freedom". Is the "freedom" which I believe is the core of Christian faith an anarchic liberality, a free-for-all that gives permission to individuals to believe what they choose, and act accordingly? Or is this "freedom" one that exists within a context of a particular understanding of the nature of faith, and the nature of the relation between humankind and God?
And my answer, emphatically, is the latter. Christianity is a faith that embodies a particular understanding of freedom grounded in the ministry of Christ, and of Christ as God's self-revelation in the world. But what is this particularity?
Firstly, I think the freedom of Christian faith arises from the fact that Christ came to bring humanity life, and life in abundance. Not, however, the "abundance" of so-called prosperity theology, which is the mere subordination of Christianity to free-market capitalism; nor is it the "abundance" of leading a life of ease or unending happiness, which is the yoking of faith to our wish-fulfilment. On the contrary, the abundance which Christ offers is a life lived fully, a life in which we enter into the fullness of our human nature. Moreover, it is a life in which we engage with every dimension of experience - the good, the bad, the indifferent - on the basis of faith, instead of simply using faith as a consolation for hardship or suffering. It is, in short, the experience of life in which faith is a philosophy for being, and not merely the expressed assent to doctrinal statements.
Secondly, I believe this freedom exists in a context in which doctrine and credal statements form the framework that enables the expression of freedom, instead of restricting or curtailing its expression. Thus, doctrine becomes not a cage but a launching place for the freedom of Christian faith, the basis upon which people - both individually, and as members of a faith community - can explore, question, examine, debate, and enter into the depths of faith as a lived, interior experience, instead of a mere ritualistic or formulaic process. In other words, it is a context in which freedom arises from doctrine and credal statements liberating the individual rather than confine them to a particular viewpoint or understanding.
Thirdly, I believe that the combination of the first two points - faith as a philosophy of being, and as a context in which doctrine enables the expression of freedom - combine to produce a third context: the freedom to reinterpret the past in light of new knowledge and new understanding in order to attain a deeper and richer understanding. This is innovation not as breaking with the past - which is not really innovation at all - but as drawing on the past in collaboration with new insights in order to be relevant in present contexts and open to new futures. This is the freedom to engage in innovation that honours the past and reaches toward new horizons.
Thus it is that I answered the question that was put to me by saying that the issue of orthodoxy and authority and tradition was dependent on how one viewed these aspects of the faith experience: were they chains that tied us to a dead past, or were they the foundations that enabled us to have a living present reality and also entertain prospects for future development. If the former, then orthodoxy was an oppressive weight; if the latter, then it was a liberating, life-giving force.
My view is definitely the latter.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. (Cardinal Newman)
Thursday, July 26, 2007
The Substance of Faith
Yesterday, I attended my first lecture in "The Triune God", one of the theology subjects I am studying this semester.
This subject is concerned both with Trinitarian theology and with the Christian understanding of God as a Triune being: that is, one Being with three Persons. The former concerns the specifically Christian doctrine of the Trinity; the latter is how Christians speak of God, how Christians understand the nature of the Godhead.
The focus of this lecture was the placement of Trinitarian theology and the Christian understanding of the Triune God at the centre of Christian faith. All the other teachings of the church - the Incarnation, the Resurrection, Salvation - are founded in and predicated upon the Christian teaching about the Triune nature of the Godhead. There are several reasons for this centrality, but one of the most important is that it goes to the identity of Christian faith.
The Trinity is the specific and particular claim about God made by Christian faith. Only Christianity understands the Godhead in Trinitarian terms: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is the creator, source, and basis of all life; the Son is the Father's decisive act in creation; the Holy Spirit is the Father's ongoing presence in and engagement with the world. God is one Being in which reside three Persons who exist in relation with one another and with the created order. The Son and Holy Spirit are not separate beings, or created beings, or subordinate beings; they are co-eternal and coeval with the Father, of one Being and "of one substance" as the Nicene Creed affirms.
But the other, often not considered point here is that this issue of Christian identity is important for interfaith dialogue. Too often, in my view, interfaith dialogue is predicated upon ignoring the differences between faiths and concentrating on the things held in common by different faiths. In other words, the differences between faiths is seen entirely in pejorative terms, it is seen as a negative; and to counter this "negative", it is necessary to focus on the "positive" of commonality.
I can understand why this attitude exists: partially, it is an attempt to counteract prejudice and ignorance; and, partially, it is deeply psychologically satisfying. However, I think it is misguided. I'm not suggesting that we ought not concentrate on the commonalities; what I think is that we should change our attitude to the differences. Indeed, I think we should celebrate them.
As an example, I look at the phenomenon of the so-called "interfaith minister". This is the subject of a documentary series currently running on the wonderful Compass program on the ABC. These "interfaith ministers" essentially conduct services that not only draw on the rituals and traditions of the major faiths, but also of movements such as neo-paganism and gaianism. I must confess that I viewed this development with considerable reservations, for three essential reasons.
Firstly, it seemed to me that this movement was based on wish-fulfilment: that is, the desire to "unify" the faiths so that people could have the comfort of a religion that pointed to a single, overriding truth that enabled them to avoid having to wrestle with the difficult questions posed by religious diversity. Again, while this may be psychologically satisfying, it strikes me as possibly the least appropriate basis upon which to found an approach to faith.
Secondly, it seemed that this movement was a process of manufacturing a "faith" that essentially doesn't stand for anything or amount to anything. You simply can't throw together a mish-mash of theologies and rituals and expect that it will amount to anything substantial or relevant. Yes, it might be satisfying from the perspective of making you "feel good" or enabling you to get away with not thinking deeply about faith, but there is a vast difference between a spirituality that is founded upon an understanding of God and God's relation to the universe (and which grapples with all the questions, doubts, and ambiguities which this entails), and a "spirituality" that is just a construction whose purpose is to facilitate the desires and inclinations of the individual.
Thirdly, and most importantly, I think this movement toward "interfaith ministers" can actually do a lot of harm, not least because it fails to honour the differences between faiths, and to acknowledge the beauty, power, truth, and poignancy that resides within, and is articulated by, these differences. In other words, the "interfaith minister" movement simply papers over the differences between faiths, as if dialogue could actually be facilitated by pretending these differences don't exist, and that the way forward is to just bung the symbols and rituals of different faiths together and essentially ignore their theologies. But this fails to understand that it is the differences between faiths that is the basis of individual faith conviction; that theological integrity resides, not in cobbling together some religious hodge-podge of beliefs and practices, but in simultaneously asserting the truth of faith claims while at the same time acknowledging and respecting the claims of others.
In other words, the "interfaith ministry" movement is a cop-out, just the latest manifestation of the infection of faith by self-helpism.
And this is why yesterday's lecture resonated so strongly for me: because it reinforced the necessity for me, as a Christian, to articulate the truth of the Christian faith; and, at the same time, to celebrate and see the majesty and beauty and legitimacy that exists between and across faiths because of their differences. It is not difference by which we should be frightened; it is the mediocrity of superficial "unity".
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: "There is very little difference between one man and another, but what there is is very important." (William James)
This subject is concerned both with Trinitarian theology and with the Christian understanding of God as a Triune being: that is, one Being with three Persons. The former concerns the specifically Christian doctrine of the Trinity; the latter is how Christians speak of God, how Christians understand the nature of the Godhead.
The focus of this lecture was the placement of Trinitarian theology and the Christian understanding of the Triune God at the centre of Christian faith. All the other teachings of the church - the Incarnation, the Resurrection, Salvation - are founded in and predicated upon the Christian teaching about the Triune nature of the Godhead. There are several reasons for this centrality, but one of the most important is that it goes to the identity of Christian faith.
The Trinity is the specific and particular claim about God made by Christian faith. Only Christianity understands the Godhead in Trinitarian terms: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is the creator, source, and basis of all life; the Son is the Father's decisive act in creation; the Holy Spirit is the Father's ongoing presence in and engagement with the world. God is one Being in which reside three Persons who exist in relation with one another and with the created order. The Son and Holy Spirit are not separate beings, or created beings, or subordinate beings; they are co-eternal and coeval with the Father, of one Being and "of one substance" as the Nicene Creed affirms.
But the other, often not considered point here is that this issue of Christian identity is important for interfaith dialogue. Too often, in my view, interfaith dialogue is predicated upon ignoring the differences between faiths and concentrating on the things held in common by different faiths. In other words, the differences between faiths is seen entirely in pejorative terms, it is seen as a negative; and to counter this "negative", it is necessary to focus on the "positive" of commonality.
I can understand why this attitude exists: partially, it is an attempt to counteract prejudice and ignorance; and, partially, it is deeply psychologically satisfying. However, I think it is misguided. I'm not suggesting that we ought not concentrate on the commonalities; what I think is that we should change our attitude to the differences. Indeed, I think we should celebrate them.
As an example, I look at the phenomenon of the so-called "interfaith minister". This is the subject of a documentary series currently running on the wonderful Compass program on the ABC. These "interfaith ministers" essentially conduct services that not only draw on the rituals and traditions of the major faiths, but also of movements such as neo-paganism and gaianism. I must confess that I viewed this development with considerable reservations, for three essential reasons.
Firstly, it seemed to me that this movement was based on wish-fulfilment: that is, the desire to "unify" the faiths so that people could have the comfort of a religion that pointed to a single, overriding truth that enabled them to avoid having to wrestle with the difficult questions posed by religious diversity. Again, while this may be psychologically satisfying, it strikes me as possibly the least appropriate basis upon which to found an approach to faith.
Secondly, it seemed that this movement was a process of manufacturing a "faith" that essentially doesn't stand for anything or amount to anything. You simply can't throw together a mish-mash of theologies and rituals and expect that it will amount to anything substantial or relevant. Yes, it might be satisfying from the perspective of making you "feel good" or enabling you to get away with not thinking deeply about faith, but there is a vast difference between a spirituality that is founded upon an understanding of God and God's relation to the universe (and which grapples with all the questions, doubts, and ambiguities which this entails), and a "spirituality" that is just a construction whose purpose is to facilitate the desires and inclinations of the individual.
Thirdly, and most importantly, I think this movement toward "interfaith ministers" can actually do a lot of harm, not least because it fails to honour the differences between faiths, and to acknowledge the beauty, power, truth, and poignancy that resides within, and is articulated by, these differences. In other words, the "interfaith minister" movement simply papers over the differences between faiths, as if dialogue could actually be facilitated by pretending these differences don't exist, and that the way forward is to just bung the symbols and rituals of different faiths together and essentially ignore their theologies. But this fails to understand that it is the differences between faiths that is the basis of individual faith conviction; that theological integrity resides, not in cobbling together some religious hodge-podge of beliefs and practices, but in simultaneously asserting the truth of faith claims while at the same time acknowledging and respecting the claims of others.
In other words, the "interfaith ministry" movement is a cop-out, just the latest manifestation of the infection of faith by self-helpism.
And this is why yesterday's lecture resonated so strongly for me: because it reinforced the necessity for me, as a Christian, to articulate the truth of the Christian faith; and, at the same time, to celebrate and see the majesty and beauty and legitimacy that exists between and across faiths because of their differences. It is not difference by which we should be frightened; it is the mediocrity of superficial "unity".
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: "There is very little difference between one man and another, but what there is is very important." (William James)
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Time and Tide
Yesterday, I was cleaning out the inbox from my email (that's the kind of exciting thing I get up to when my Dearly Beloved is not about), when I stumbled across my quiz results for the Select Smart Belief System Selector web quiz. I had taken this quiz in a moment of idle curiosity some years ago, and the results were sitting in my inbox, forgotten until I rediscovered them.
Now, I take these quiz thingies with more than a grain of salt, largely because, methodologically speaking, they are quite simplistic in their either/or format, and are thus open to manipulation. You can pretty much produce the result you want by thinking about the answers you need to provide in order to arrive at said results. Self-reporting is a notoriously unreliable process. (That's why, among a whole host of other reasons, I think the entire Myers-Briggs getup is a load of dangerous pop-psychological garbage - but that's an entire other issue!)
Anyhoo, these qualifications aside, I normally try and answer these quizzes as honestly as possible, even when I think the best answer I can give to the questions provided doesn't really reflect my point of view at all. I'm usually pretty sure of what the result will be notwithstanding, although, on occasion, I do manage to surprise myself - or is it that the quiz surprises me?
The point being that, last time I took this quiz, these are the top ten results (in percentage terms) that my quiz produced (the results go up to 26 rankings, but I'm not going to impose them all upon you):
#1: Humanist (100)
#2: Unitarian Universalist (92)
#3: Theravada Buddhist (85)
#4: Atheist/Agnostic (81)
#5: Liberal Quaker (76)
#6: Neo-Pagan (63)
#7: Taoism (60)
#8: Orthodox Quaker (54)
#9: Mainline Liberal Protestant (47)
#10: Mahayana Buddhist (46)
Now, there are a few interesting results here that require a bit of discussion in light of my present status as a Christian who is studying theology and hoping to candidate to the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church in Australia.
The Humanist rating doesn't surprise me much at all, given that, at the time, I was not a member of the church and still identified myself primarily in terms of the Stoic moral philosophy I had first encountered in my early 20s. Neither was I terribly surprised by the appearance of Theravadan and Mahayanan Buddhism in the top ten. Aside from the fact that Buddhism is a non-theist faith, thus aligning it somewhat with the humanist philosophical tradition, Theravadan Buddhism might be described as the "monastic" tradition of Buddhism, reflecting my own sense that had I been born in another era, I might have ended up as a member of a religious order; whereas Mahayanan Buddhism, whilst the more "popular" school of Buddhist practice, nevertheless preserves the traditions of meditation and contemplation toward which I am personally strongly inclined.
The atheistic/agnostic tag did surprise me somewhat. I have never been an atheist personally, despite all my struggles with coming to an understanding of faith over the course of my life. Moreover, the terms "atheist" and "agnostic" are not interchangeable; they are not similes, and do not represent the same thing; but this confusion between the two is not uncommon. I can only surmise that the appearance of this rating in my top ten reflects the level of scepticism I held at the time about matters of faith; and which, to an extent, I still hold today as a necessary part of faith. That is to say, my belief that faith, and the claims of faith, must be held with a certain humility in the understanding that God is not who we think God is, that God is wider than our thoughts and our capacity to comprehend, and is revealed as a transcendent mystery and not a mapped-out, pinned down, packaged in a box certainty.
The appearance of Universal Unitarian, Liberal Quaker, and Orthodox Quaker puzzled me, as I knew - and still know - next to nothing about these traditions and their theological perspectives. Perhaps I'm more ecumenical than I thought! The Taoism suggestion wasn't that much of a surprise, as I have read the Tao Te Ching (as well as the Analects of Confucius and the Book of Mencius) and found much within it that resonated with both Buddhist and Stoic moral philosophy. The Neo-Pagan rating had me frankly scratching my head; to be brutally honest, I think the "pagans" are a bunch of cultural-imperialist, cherry-picking from other traditions to suit themselves tossers! Especially the "druids" and all the others who carry on with "Celtic spiritual" practices, not least because the truth is almost next to nothing is now known of the ancient druidic traditions and beliefs, and what they actually stood for and practiced (the Romans did a very thorough job of wiping them out).
The interesting one is the appearance of Mainline Liberal Protestant. Although at number nine and less than 50%, it does, perhaps, reflect the fact that I was starting to drift toward a Protestant church as a possibility for re-connecting with a faith community. Indeed, I had certainly started to become increasingly aware of the Uniting Church in Australia, and was intrigued by its bringing together of three denominational traditions, and also impressed by its commitment to social justice. Now, I know the Uniting Church does not define itself as a "liberal" church - it is far too broad and diverse a community for any single label to do it justice. But perhaps what this quiz result reflected was that, although I still predominantly identified myself in humanist/Stoic terms, perhaps the possibilities of faith and a place in a Christian community were starting to make themselves apparent.
The upshot is that, stirred by curiosity as a result of stumbling across this quiz, I decided to do it again. And this time, the top ten results came out like this:
#1: Mainline Liberal Protestant (100)
#2: Liberal Quaker (88)
#3: Orthodox Quaker (84)
#4: Hinduism (82)
#5: Unitarian Universalism (81)
#6: Eastern Orthodox (74)
#7: Roman Catholic (74)
#8: Neo-Pagan (73)
#9: Seventh Day Adventist (71)
#10: Sikhism (66)
The most significant outcome of the quiz was that Mainline Liberal Protestant has shot up to the #1 position. Hardly surprising given the fact that I am now a practicing Christian and member of the Uniting Church (bearing in mind my caution about applying the term "liberal" exclusively to the UCA), and reflective also of the theological conclusions and resolutions to which my struggles with faith have arrived.
Interestingly, both the Buddhist and the Taoist influences seem to have declined, despite the ongoing reverence for, and resonances with, both traditions that I continue to feel to this day. I think this reflects two developments: firstly, that I have come to a particular and specific theological conviction in terms of faith practice and identity; and, second, that they have not so much disappeared from my life as moved from the psychological and philosophical foreground to the background. In this respect, they reflect the change which the influence of Stoic moral philosophy has undergone in my life; Stoicism now forms part of the philosophical bedrock of my Christian spirituality, but is no longer part of my up-front, "headline" theological thinking.
I was surprised by the Neo-Pagan rating still making it into the top-ten, especially given my views about "pagans", expressed above (it dropped from 6th to 8th position on the list, but actually increased in percentage terms). And I'm frankly astounded by the Seventh-Day Adventist aspect, especially since I regard Seventh Day Adventism as, at best, a kind of quasi-Christian sect inhabiting the extreme fringe of the Christian world (along with Mormonism, Christian Science, and other products of the so-called Second Great Awakening in 19th Century America). The relevance of the Liberal and Orthodox Quaker elements, and of the Universal Unitarianism, remains, as with the previous quiz result, a complete mystery to me.
The two developments which really grabbed my attention, however, were the appearance of Hinduism and Sikhism in the top ten, as well as Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Regarding the former, whilst I have a little knowledge of Hinduism, I am hardly an expert; and I have next to no knowledge of Sikhism other than that it is (I think) an offshoot from Hinduism. Given the affinities between Hinduism and Buddhism (although there are, obviously, critical differences), I would have thought that the disappearance of Buddhism from the top ten would have mitigated against both Hinduism and Sikhism making an appearance; but apparently not!
And as for the emergence of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy into the top ten, well, I think that can be explained in two ways. Firstly, it simply reflects the affinities between all denominations of the Christian community, the shared theological traditions, worship practices, liturgical resources, and doctrinal bases. My location with a mainline Protestant church necessarily involves my location within the wider Christian church, Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy included. Secondly, I think my finding a place within a Christian faith community, and the theological and philosophical conclusions which doing so necessarily involves, combined with my theological studies at an ecumenical faculty, means I have re-engaged with the Catholic traditions in which I grew up, and from which I became alienated in my youth; and this necessarily precipitates an affinity for the traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Catholic and Orthodox churches in many respects being mirror images of one another.
An example of this is sacred music: I have always loved the Western Church's tradition of sacred music, and in recent years have discovered the sublimely beautiful sacred music tradition of the Eastern Church. Partly because they are similar and serve similar purposes; but also because of the differences. For example, whereas in the Western church, the voices of the upper register tend to get emphasised, in the Orthodox tradition, the voices of the lower register tend to be more prominent. Rachmaninov's stunning All Night Vigil and Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom being ethereal, spell-binding examples.
So what can be made of these results? Probably not much. But I do think they reflect, however imperfectly, the philosophical, theological, and intellectual journey on which I've been engaged for much of my adult life, and the incredibly rich and diverse opportunities for growth and understanding that have been opened up to me as a result.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: To change your mind and to follow him who sets you right is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before. (Marcus Aurelius)
Now, I take these quiz thingies with more than a grain of salt, largely because, methodologically speaking, they are quite simplistic in their either/or format, and are thus open to manipulation. You can pretty much produce the result you want by thinking about the answers you need to provide in order to arrive at said results. Self-reporting is a notoriously unreliable process. (That's why, among a whole host of other reasons, I think the entire Myers-Briggs getup is a load of dangerous pop-psychological garbage - but that's an entire other issue!)
Anyhoo, these qualifications aside, I normally try and answer these quizzes as honestly as possible, even when I think the best answer I can give to the questions provided doesn't really reflect my point of view at all. I'm usually pretty sure of what the result will be notwithstanding, although, on occasion, I do manage to surprise myself - or is it that the quiz surprises me?
The point being that, last time I took this quiz, these are the top ten results (in percentage terms) that my quiz produced (the results go up to 26 rankings, but I'm not going to impose them all upon you):
#1: Humanist (100)
#2: Unitarian Universalist (92)
#3: Theravada Buddhist (85)
#4: Atheist/Agnostic (81)
#5: Liberal Quaker (76)
#6: Neo-Pagan (63)
#7: Taoism (60)
#8: Orthodox Quaker (54)
#9: Mainline Liberal Protestant (47)
#10: Mahayana Buddhist (46)
Now, there are a few interesting results here that require a bit of discussion in light of my present status as a Christian who is studying theology and hoping to candidate to the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church in Australia.
The Humanist rating doesn't surprise me much at all, given that, at the time, I was not a member of the church and still identified myself primarily in terms of the Stoic moral philosophy I had first encountered in my early 20s. Neither was I terribly surprised by the appearance of Theravadan and Mahayanan Buddhism in the top ten. Aside from the fact that Buddhism is a non-theist faith, thus aligning it somewhat with the humanist philosophical tradition, Theravadan Buddhism might be described as the "monastic" tradition of Buddhism, reflecting my own sense that had I been born in another era, I might have ended up as a member of a religious order; whereas Mahayanan Buddhism, whilst the more "popular" school of Buddhist practice, nevertheless preserves the traditions of meditation and contemplation toward which I am personally strongly inclined.
The atheistic/agnostic tag did surprise me somewhat. I have never been an atheist personally, despite all my struggles with coming to an understanding of faith over the course of my life. Moreover, the terms "atheist" and "agnostic" are not interchangeable; they are not similes, and do not represent the same thing; but this confusion between the two is not uncommon. I can only surmise that the appearance of this rating in my top ten reflects the level of scepticism I held at the time about matters of faith; and which, to an extent, I still hold today as a necessary part of faith. That is to say, my belief that faith, and the claims of faith, must be held with a certain humility in the understanding that God is not who we think God is, that God is wider than our thoughts and our capacity to comprehend, and is revealed as a transcendent mystery and not a mapped-out, pinned down, packaged in a box certainty.
The appearance of Universal Unitarian, Liberal Quaker, and Orthodox Quaker puzzled me, as I knew - and still know - next to nothing about these traditions and their theological perspectives. Perhaps I'm more ecumenical than I thought! The Taoism suggestion wasn't that much of a surprise, as I have read the Tao Te Ching (as well as the Analects of Confucius and the Book of Mencius) and found much within it that resonated with both Buddhist and Stoic moral philosophy. The Neo-Pagan rating had me frankly scratching my head; to be brutally honest, I think the "pagans" are a bunch of cultural-imperialist, cherry-picking from other traditions to suit themselves tossers! Especially the "druids" and all the others who carry on with "Celtic spiritual" practices, not least because the truth is almost next to nothing is now known of the ancient druidic traditions and beliefs, and what they actually stood for and practiced (the Romans did a very thorough job of wiping them out).
The interesting one is the appearance of Mainline Liberal Protestant. Although at number nine and less than 50%, it does, perhaps, reflect the fact that I was starting to drift toward a Protestant church as a possibility for re-connecting with a faith community. Indeed, I had certainly started to become increasingly aware of the Uniting Church in Australia, and was intrigued by its bringing together of three denominational traditions, and also impressed by its commitment to social justice. Now, I know the Uniting Church does not define itself as a "liberal" church - it is far too broad and diverse a community for any single label to do it justice. But perhaps what this quiz result reflected was that, although I still predominantly identified myself in humanist/Stoic terms, perhaps the possibilities of faith and a place in a Christian community were starting to make themselves apparent.
The upshot is that, stirred by curiosity as a result of stumbling across this quiz, I decided to do it again. And this time, the top ten results came out like this:
#1: Mainline Liberal Protestant (100)
#2: Liberal Quaker (88)
#3: Orthodox Quaker (84)
#4: Hinduism (82)
#5: Unitarian Universalism (81)
#6: Eastern Orthodox (74)
#7: Roman Catholic (74)
#8: Neo-Pagan (73)
#9: Seventh Day Adventist (71)
#10: Sikhism (66)
The most significant outcome of the quiz was that Mainline Liberal Protestant has shot up to the #1 position. Hardly surprising given the fact that I am now a practicing Christian and member of the Uniting Church (bearing in mind my caution about applying the term "liberal" exclusively to the UCA), and reflective also of the theological conclusions and resolutions to which my struggles with faith have arrived.
Interestingly, both the Buddhist and the Taoist influences seem to have declined, despite the ongoing reverence for, and resonances with, both traditions that I continue to feel to this day. I think this reflects two developments: firstly, that I have come to a particular and specific theological conviction in terms of faith practice and identity; and, second, that they have not so much disappeared from my life as moved from the psychological and philosophical foreground to the background. In this respect, they reflect the change which the influence of Stoic moral philosophy has undergone in my life; Stoicism now forms part of the philosophical bedrock of my Christian spirituality, but is no longer part of my up-front, "headline" theological thinking.
I was surprised by the Neo-Pagan rating still making it into the top-ten, especially given my views about "pagans", expressed above (it dropped from 6th to 8th position on the list, but actually increased in percentage terms). And I'm frankly astounded by the Seventh-Day Adventist aspect, especially since I regard Seventh Day Adventism as, at best, a kind of quasi-Christian sect inhabiting the extreme fringe of the Christian world (along with Mormonism, Christian Science, and other products of the so-called Second Great Awakening in 19th Century America). The relevance of the Liberal and Orthodox Quaker elements, and of the Universal Unitarianism, remains, as with the previous quiz result, a complete mystery to me.
The two developments which really grabbed my attention, however, were the appearance of Hinduism and Sikhism in the top ten, as well as Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Regarding the former, whilst I have a little knowledge of Hinduism, I am hardly an expert; and I have next to no knowledge of Sikhism other than that it is (I think) an offshoot from Hinduism. Given the affinities between Hinduism and Buddhism (although there are, obviously, critical differences), I would have thought that the disappearance of Buddhism from the top ten would have mitigated against both Hinduism and Sikhism making an appearance; but apparently not!
And as for the emergence of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy into the top ten, well, I think that can be explained in two ways. Firstly, it simply reflects the affinities between all denominations of the Christian community, the shared theological traditions, worship practices, liturgical resources, and doctrinal bases. My location with a mainline Protestant church necessarily involves my location within the wider Christian church, Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy included. Secondly, I think my finding a place within a Christian faith community, and the theological and philosophical conclusions which doing so necessarily involves, combined with my theological studies at an ecumenical faculty, means I have re-engaged with the Catholic traditions in which I grew up, and from which I became alienated in my youth; and this necessarily precipitates an affinity for the traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Catholic and Orthodox churches in many respects being mirror images of one another.
An example of this is sacred music: I have always loved the Western Church's tradition of sacred music, and in recent years have discovered the sublimely beautiful sacred music tradition of the Eastern Church. Partly because they are similar and serve similar purposes; but also because of the differences. For example, whereas in the Western church, the voices of the upper register tend to get emphasised, in the Orthodox tradition, the voices of the lower register tend to be more prominent. Rachmaninov's stunning All Night Vigil and Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom being ethereal, spell-binding examples.
So what can be made of these results? Probably not much. But I do think they reflect, however imperfectly, the philosophical, theological, and intellectual journey on which I've been engaged for much of my adult life, and the incredibly rich and diverse opportunities for growth and understanding that have been opened up to me as a result.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: To change your mind and to follow him who sets you right is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before. (Marcus Aurelius)
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Another Step Forward
Last night, my Dearly Beloved and I took another step forward in the application process to candidate for the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church. Along with another applicant, we presented ourselves before the full Maroondah Presbytery and made submissions as to why we should be affirmed in our application and go forward to the Selection Conference in September.
We had already met with and been interviewed by the Presbytery's Candidates Committee, which involved a detailed and in depth examination of our faith journey to this point in our lives, and our reasons for applying to candidate as ministers. The interview was very thorough, with lots of probing and thoughtful questions, and conducted in an atmosphere of respect and support for the interviewees. We already knew that the Candidates Committee were going to recommend to the full Presbytery meeting that we be affirmed in our application, but that, of course, didn't mean we still didn't have to present ourselves before the Presbytery and make our case.
This involved each of the applicants making a short speech to the Presbytery and then answering any questions from the floor. We had to keep our speeches short because, aside from not wanting to bore anyone to tears, the Presbytery had a very full agenda to get through - which made the task of providing the meeting with a reasonable insight into our lives, our faith journey, our spiritual gifts and passions, and our reasons for applying in a bite-sized presentation very tricky indeed!
But we managed it. After doing so, we went out of the meeting room with a number of support people to await the Presbytery's verdict. Naturally, we were slightly apprehensive, and very grateful for the presence of the support people by whom we were accompanied. And then we were called back - feeling, I have to admit, slightly like prisoners being called back to court to hear the verdict! - and were informed that the Presbytery was very enthusiastically affirming and supporting all the applications.
A break for supper was called. All the applicants were immediately flooded by the rest of the people present at the meeting with their warm congratulations and expressions of support. It was wonderfully affirming and heartening to be the subject of such generosity and kindness, especially given the nerves that had accompanied the process. Needless to say, we went away feeling both slightly exhausted and on quite a high!
So, we have successfully negotiated the congregational and Presbytery phases of the application process - we now have to prepare for the Selection Conference in September. I am sure this will be an equally nerve-racking event - although we were glad to hear from one of the candidates present at the meeting last night that she quite enjoyed the conference! - but I am sure with a little help from our friends, and a little grace, we will have as enriching and positive an experience as we did last night.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4: 6-7)
We had already met with and been interviewed by the Presbytery's Candidates Committee, which involved a detailed and in depth examination of our faith journey to this point in our lives, and our reasons for applying to candidate as ministers. The interview was very thorough, with lots of probing and thoughtful questions, and conducted in an atmosphere of respect and support for the interviewees. We already knew that the Candidates Committee were going to recommend to the full Presbytery meeting that we be affirmed in our application, but that, of course, didn't mean we still didn't have to present ourselves before the Presbytery and make our case.
This involved each of the applicants making a short speech to the Presbytery and then answering any questions from the floor. We had to keep our speeches short because, aside from not wanting to bore anyone to tears, the Presbytery had a very full agenda to get through - which made the task of providing the meeting with a reasonable insight into our lives, our faith journey, our spiritual gifts and passions, and our reasons for applying in a bite-sized presentation very tricky indeed!
But we managed it. After doing so, we went out of the meeting room with a number of support people to await the Presbytery's verdict. Naturally, we were slightly apprehensive, and very grateful for the presence of the support people by whom we were accompanied. And then we were called back - feeling, I have to admit, slightly like prisoners being called back to court to hear the verdict! - and were informed that the Presbytery was very enthusiastically affirming and supporting all the applications.
A break for supper was called. All the applicants were immediately flooded by the rest of the people present at the meeting with their warm congratulations and expressions of support. It was wonderfully affirming and heartening to be the subject of such generosity and kindness, especially given the nerves that had accompanied the process. Needless to say, we went away feeling both slightly exhausted and on quite a high!
So, we have successfully negotiated the congregational and Presbytery phases of the application process - we now have to prepare for the Selection Conference in September. I am sure this will be an equally nerve-racking event - although we were glad to hear from one of the candidates present at the meeting last night that she quite enjoyed the conference! - but I am sure with a little help from our friends, and a little grace, we will have as enriching and positive an experience as we did last night.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4: 6-7)
Friday, June 29, 2007
Atheists and Theists of the World - Unite!
Well, I certainly got a response to my letter to the editor, published in The Age newspaper yesterday. Of course, I don't know how many people wrote to The Age, or whether the consensus view was for or against the case for mutual engagement that I outlined, but this letter published in today's edition is obviously the most vitriolically opposed (scroll down to the letter entitled "Problem With God").
A number of issues arise. Firstly, the author of this letter obviously only had access to the much truncated version of my letter that was eventually published; this may have affected the tone of this individual's response. Secondly, I don't know how extensive this responding letter was edited; that is, whether the published portion represents the thrust of the letter or just its most inflammatory aspects. Thirdly, and following on from the second point, I don't know how representative this letter was of the responses received, or whether The Age simply elected to publish the most trenchant response in order to generate a confrontational dichotomy.
Assuming, however, a minimum of editing and that the letter as published does accurately represent the author's views, this response is indicative of the approach adopted by fanatical atheists determined to misrepresent people of faith as irrational, superstitious fools who literally believe in anything. Briefly stated, the features of this letter are as follows:
A number of issues arise. Firstly, the author of this letter obviously only had access to the much truncated version of my letter that was eventually published; this may have affected the tone of this individual's response. Secondly, I don't know how extensive this responding letter was edited; that is, whether the published portion represents the thrust of the letter or just its most inflammatory aspects. Thirdly, and following on from the second point, I don't know how representative this letter was of the responses received, or whether The Age simply elected to publish the most trenchant response in order to generate a confrontational dichotomy.
Assuming, however, a minimum of editing and that the letter as published does accurately represent the author's views, this response is indicative of the approach adopted by fanatical atheists determined to misrepresent people of faith as irrational, superstitious fools who literally believe in anything. Briefly stated, the features of this letter are as follows:
- The patronising tone is typical of militant atheism. But this tone is quite deliberate, and serves a specific purpose. In the same way that certain fundamentalist Christians (for example) begin every theological sentence they utter with the phrase "Biblically speaking" in order to both assert their moral superiority and denigrate their opponents' theological credibility, so militant atheists use this kind of tone to imply both their superior reasoning capacity and undermine the rational credibility of their opponents.
- The next feature is obfuscation. Note how the author states that I complained about journalist Catherine Deveny "highlighting the absurdities of irrational belief". But a careful reading of my letter, even in its edited form, reveals that I did no such thing. What I did say in my letter was that Ms Deveny would be better served refraining from taking the easy option of mocking the abuses of faith that cultural practice or personal vanity sometimes impose, and instead make the effort to understand the interior, lived experience of faith. But this obfuscation, like the patronising tone, is quite deliberate: it is intended to project the militant atheist as the defender of reason and reasonableness against the raving illogicity of theism.
- The next feature is dismissal. The author refers to " 'the lived experience of faith', whatever that is", suggesting that my characterisation of faith as an actuality that informs the life of the theist is, in fact, just a clever confabulation of empty words. The writer then goes on to tell me what this experience actually is: 'the "feel-good" trust in an imaginary friend, or the "fellowship" from "belonging" to a "communion" with a "higher purpose"'. In other words, faith is either a quaint superstition in someone who doesn't actually exist, or a cosy social club for people too afraid to face the world and who accordingly invest themselves with a higher moral purpose as a compensation. Again, the objective is portrayal: the militant atheist has intellectual depth and credibility, whereas the theist is essentially a phoney - and a coward, to boot.
- After all this posturing comes condemnation. The author details various atrocities and horrors perpetrated in the name of faith and / or religion, and on the basis of these, condemns faith in its entirety as irredeemably corrupt and destructive. Of course, the author is careful not to detail all the positive and constructive and humane endeavours undertaken by millions of people around the world and across history on the basis of their lived experience of faith. But beyond this, the author's purpose is simple: any crime perpetrated in the name of God is sufficient to discredit faith in toto. As if: a) people of faith were incapable of being outraged by, and responding to, wrongdoing perpetrated in the name of their faith; and b) religious belief alone is capable of producing crimes and horrors and atrocities. In short, people of faith are by definition mindless automatons incapable of independent thought; faith as a lived experience does not involve wrestling with conscience, or holding in tension the claims of institutional authority with the promptings of individual conviction - it is just a process for mass producing clones who are happy to be complicit in inhumanity.
- Finally, the writer finishes with another round of obfuscation spiced by a dose of pretence to objectivity. Obfuscation in the form of suggesting that I claimed the "consequences of irrational belief" could be separated from religious practice - which I patently did not. The pretence to objectivity is the reference to the crimes of Hitler and Stalin, a passing acknowledgement to non-religiously motivated crimes that is intended solely to boost the militant atheist's "credentials" as an objective, non-partisan humanitarian (an especial irony given atheism was the official theological position of the Soviet Union).
So what is to be made all of this? Reflecting on the last 24 hours, I have become convinced that the problem is not the rise of "assertive atheism". Rather, the problem is that the debate has degenerated into a slanging match between entrenched militants on both sides, whose objective is not to engage in meaningful dialogue and mutual understanding, but to assert their claims to truth to the exclusion of all others. The result is that moderates, both theist and atheist, are being trodden on and silenced, leaving the field to the fanatics and agents provocateur on both sides.
The solution to this can only come through an alliance of moderate, thinking atheists and moderate, thinking theists. By this, I mean those atheists who do not automatically assert that the phrase "thinking person of faith" is an oxymoron; and, likewise, those theists who do not automatically assume the term "atheist" denotes a rabid, aggressively blustering anti-theist. In other words, those theists and atheists who understand they have more in common with one another through a commitment to genuine dialogue and engagement, than they do with the hard-liners on their "own side".
Not that I'm suggesting for a moment that such an alliance should involve each side meekly accepting the views of the other, or conveniently looking the other way in respect of those positions or arguments with which they disagree. Rather, it is the commitment to a genuine process of exchange, in which each side, with humility and integrity, seeks to genuinely understand the other, and apply this understanding to their own assumptions and insights. In short, a process of mutual enrichment based on mutual respect and a shared determination to reject fanaticism.
Of course, I understand that forging such an alliance will be extremely difficult. But I think we owe it to ourselves to try; and I think the cost of not making the attempt will be far too high. Certainly, allowing the fanatics on either side to rule the roost will be to no-one's benefit.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Farce is a genre that's closer to tragedy in its essence than comedy is. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
Thursday, June 28, 2007
The Need For Engagement
I am a regular reader of The Age Online - which, as the name suggests, is the Internet version of Melbourne's terrific The Age newspaper. Indeed, it's part of my daily routine to read The Age Online to get my fill of what's been happening in the world.
One of the great aspects of TAO is its opinions section. That's because it provides a forum for all sorts of views on all sorts of issues. Many of the views expressed I disagree with; others I find myself in furious agreement with. Then again, some others I find I partially agree with and partially disagree with.
Of course, like every other paper, TAO has regular columnists who provide us with their thoughts on a daily or weekly basis, and "guest" commentators who are either commissioned to write a piece on a particular issue, or whose opinions are sourced from other media outlets. One of TAO's regular columnists is a person by the name of Catherine Deveny. Ms Deveny has been writing for TAO for a couple of months now, and I've noticed a pattern with her columns: she seems to take a particular delight in both wearing her oft-proclaimed atheism on her sleeve, and taking as many potshots as she can against anyone who believes in God.
Ms Deveny's style is simple: she locates any story she can about something absurd or vicious or idiotic being done in the name of God and / or religion, and proclaims, ipso facto, that this "proves" what an appalling thing it is to be a person of faith, and how much more enlightened and superior are those of us who aren't possessed by such a dreadful malaise.
I don't know what Ms Deveny's agenda or motives are. Perhaps she had an awful experience of institutional religion at another time in her life (something to which I can relate) and is angry and bitter and determined to "educate" the world as to the inhumanity of faith. Perhaps she genuinely believes the whole experience of faith is evil and destructive, and sees the need for a "crusade" to eliminate religious belief from the human condition. Or perhaps she just takes a particular pleasure from writing deliberately provocative and accusatory statements about faith and then sitting back and smugly viewing the resulting outrage as proof of her postulate.
Which is a pity. As I've said elsewhere on this blog about Richard Dawkins, the unfortunate thing about these all-religions-are-bad types is that whatever legitimate criticisms they make are buried beneath a veritable landslide of invective, hostility, and sneering name-calling (never mind the intellectual laziness and dishonesty - ironically, the very things which belief in God is supposed to produce - which litter such works). But the bigger disservice they perpetrate is that in adopting such a vindictive approach, they in fact destroy the good they might otherwise do by offering a reasoned and alternative critique of faith. People of faith cannot live in a vacuum; they must accept that others think differently, and attempt to engage with that difference in order to have a healthier, more robust understanding of their own faith.
But that of course requires that those who do not share a belief in God must likewise be prepared to engage with the interior experience of faith, and not simply rest content with mocking some of the absurd agglomerations that humans sometimes impose upon faith through cultural practice or personal vanity. Engagement takes real intellectual vigour and strength; mocking is the easiest thing in the world.
Alas, Ms Deveny's latest column fails this test - just as so many of her previous columns have done likewise. She takes a story about some girl in the UK suing her school because they won't let her wear a "purity ring" - apparently, a sign that, as a "Christian", she has taken a pledge of chastity until she gets married - as yet another indicator that all people of faith are morons. Or, in Ms Deveny's own words, we're all "barking mad". Moreover, the fact that this same school allows Muslim girls to wear headscarves is adduced by Ms Deveny as further evidence that faith is a matter of "mumbo-jumbo" and would be best jettisoned altogether.
Well, I wrote a letter to the editor, didn't I? Not in righteous anger, mind, merely pointing out that Ms Deveny's column might serve some useful purpose if it was about genuine engagement and not self-righteous mockery. Well, the letter was published, albeit in truncated form (you will need to scroll down the page to the letter entitled "Understand the Experience of Faith").
However, given the editing applied to this letter, I have reproduced it below in full.
One of the great aspects of TAO is its opinions section. That's because it provides a forum for all sorts of views on all sorts of issues. Many of the views expressed I disagree with; others I find myself in furious agreement with. Then again, some others I find I partially agree with and partially disagree with.
Of course, like every other paper, TAO has regular columnists who provide us with their thoughts on a daily or weekly basis, and "guest" commentators who are either commissioned to write a piece on a particular issue, or whose opinions are sourced from other media outlets. One of TAO's regular columnists is a person by the name of Catherine Deveny. Ms Deveny has been writing for TAO for a couple of months now, and I've noticed a pattern with her columns: she seems to take a particular delight in both wearing her oft-proclaimed atheism on her sleeve, and taking as many potshots as she can against anyone who believes in God.
Ms Deveny's style is simple: she locates any story she can about something absurd or vicious or idiotic being done in the name of God and / or religion, and proclaims, ipso facto, that this "proves" what an appalling thing it is to be a person of faith, and how much more enlightened and superior are those of us who aren't possessed by such a dreadful malaise.
I don't know what Ms Deveny's agenda or motives are. Perhaps she had an awful experience of institutional religion at another time in her life (something to which I can relate) and is angry and bitter and determined to "educate" the world as to the inhumanity of faith. Perhaps she genuinely believes the whole experience of faith is evil and destructive, and sees the need for a "crusade" to eliminate religious belief from the human condition. Or perhaps she just takes a particular pleasure from writing deliberately provocative and accusatory statements about faith and then sitting back and smugly viewing the resulting outrage as proof of her postulate.
Which is a pity. As I've said elsewhere on this blog about Richard Dawkins, the unfortunate thing about these all-religions-are-bad types is that whatever legitimate criticisms they make are buried beneath a veritable landslide of invective, hostility, and sneering name-calling (never mind the intellectual laziness and dishonesty - ironically, the very things which belief in God is supposed to produce - which litter such works). But the bigger disservice they perpetrate is that in adopting such a vindictive approach, they in fact destroy the good they might otherwise do by offering a reasoned and alternative critique of faith. People of faith cannot live in a vacuum; they must accept that others think differently, and attempt to engage with that difference in order to have a healthier, more robust understanding of their own faith.
But that of course requires that those who do not share a belief in God must likewise be prepared to engage with the interior experience of faith, and not simply rest content with mocking some of the absurd agglomerations that humans sometimes impose upon faith through cultural practice or personal vanity. Engagement takes real intellectual vigour and strength; mocking is the easiest thing in the world.
Alas, Ms Deveny's latest column fails this test - just as so many of her previous columns have done likewise. She takes a story about some girl in the UK suing her school because they won't let her wear a "purity ring" - apparently, a sign that, as a "Christian", she has taken a pledge of chastity until she gets married - as yet another indicator that all people of faith are morons. Or, in Ms Deveny's own words, we're all "barking mad". Moreover, the fact that this same school allows Muslim girls to wear headscarves is adduced by Ms Deveny as further evidence that faith is a matter of "mumbo-jumbo" and would be best jettisoned altogether.
Well, I wrote a letter to the editor, didn't I? Not in righteous anger, mind, merely pointing out that Ms Deveny's column might serve some useful purpose if it was about genuine engagement and not self-righteous mockery. Well, the letter was published, albeit in truncated form (you will need to scroll down the page to the letter entitled "Understand the Experience of Faith").
However, given the editing applied to this letter, I have reproduced it below in full.
Many people today describe themselves as "atheist" or "agnostic" or simply as "non-believers" for a variety of reasons ranging from their own experience of institutional religion to a straightforward scepticism about the existence of God. Personally, I welcome the increasing public profile of such persons, partly for the social diversity they provide, but mostly because they require persons of faith to engage with that scepticism and bring it to bear on their own understanding of faith.
However, for the exchange to be genuine, the encounter must operate both ways: those who are sceptics must seek a genuine understanding of the interior experience of faith, and use this to shine a light on their own reservations about religion or the existence of God. Only by doing so can people of each persuasion develop a genuine understanding of, and appreciation for, the other.
It is therefore disappointing that Catherine Deveny's latest column (Age 27/6) continues what is her apparent obsession with mocking the exterior absurdities that people sometimes attach to religion, as opposed to any genuine effort on her part to engage with the interior experience of faith. Does she really think things like "purity rings" are the hallmarks of belief in God and the expression of faith? Does she not understand that most Christians reading an article about a girl suing a school over an item of jewellery will roll their eyes in despair, knowing how superficial critics of faith will seize on this as yet more "evidence" of the absurdity of belief in God? Can she truly not distinguish between the lived experience of faith and the cultural agglomerations and personal vanities that are sometimes imposed upon it?
It is clear Ms Deveny sees herself as some kind of Australian equivalent of Richard Dawkins. My appeal to her is to drop this pretension and meaningfully engage with the interior reality of faith, and not merely some of the bizarre or absurd accoutrements of religion. By all means be sceptical or critical; but please do it from a position of genuine engagement, and not sneering self-righteousness.
Not that I expect Ms Deveny will change. But all we can do is keep trying to put the case that the phrase "thinking Christian" (or Muslim or Jew or Hindu, or Buddhist, etc) is not an oxymoron. Hopefully, there are enough "thinking atheists" who will likewise see the need for engagement and will respond.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: A critic is a failed writer - but then, so are most writers! (T S Eliot)
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Friedrich Nietzsche: Not The Devil In Disguise
I've been reading and thinking a lot about Friedrich Nietzsche lately.
Nietzsche does not enjoy a good press among Christians. Those Christians who have any knowledge of his work tend to think of him as one of the great 19th Century humanist bogeymen, a vitriolic anti-theist who vilified the church, mocked faith, and made such outrageously provocative statements as "It's indecent to be a Christian these days" and, more famously, "God is dead".
So it's hardly surprising that Christians tend to take a dim view of Nietzsche. But I have a somewhat different view of poor old Friedrich; indeed, I think he is one of the most misunderstood and wrongly maligned figures in human intellectual history. And the reason why I hold this view is grounded in the social and historical context in which he operated.
By Nietzsche's lifetime, the church, in Europe and elsewhere, had come to be seen not as the agency through which society was challenged and renewed, but as one of the pillars of the establishment supporting the status quo. The church was middle-class, complacent, and conservative, smugly assured of its own moral superiority, and deeply suspicious of any move toward change or re-ordering. The country parson with his butterfly collection, the metropolitan priest with his well-made house, the bishops and prelates with their palaces and political privileges: all these were viewed as emblematic of a church that was out of touch with the reality in which most people lived, and indifferent to the fate of those for whom it should have been caring.
So it comes as no surprise that Nietzsche's devastating critique should have burst into this insular, self-satisfied world with the force of an exploding bomb. This was especially the case given he was himself the son of a clergyman; and although Nietzsche was devoted to his father, and later paid for a beautiful headstone to be laid on his father's grave, in which was inscribed a passage from 1 Corinthians 13:8 - Love never dies - Nietzsche was excoriated by the Christians of his time. Indeed, in the parish registry that records his birth, someone later wrote: Friedrich Nietzsche - a known anti-Christ.
But was this fearful, demonising reaction warranted? True, Nietzsche wrote many harsh and uncompromising things about Christianity, much of which can be arguably viewed as excessive or overstated. But within this excess and overstatement lay a core of legitimate criticism overlooked by Nietzsche's detractors; indeed, they often failed to see that this over-the-top style itself served an important purpose.
Firstly: what was Nietzsche's principle objection to Christianity? Well, he didn't object to Christianity as such, he objected to the platitudes and home-spun homilies to which he felt conventional, unthinking faith gave rise. For example, Nietzsche argued that traditional Christian consolations that experiences such as sickness, failure, and suffering were "all part of God's plan" or "would turn out for the best" were highly destructive, because they involved a denial of life and prevented humans from achieving their full potential. Nietzsche based this objection on his principle that the truly healthy person does not seek to avoid or minimise suffering or hardship, nor do they even accept it as part of the reality of being; instead, they actively embrace "negative" experiences as part of the totality of existence, a totality that needed to be engaged with as a whole in order for a person to live a truly happy life.
Nietzsche argued that the "religion of happiness", the view that happiness is either the absence or minimisation of suffering, was implicit in traditional Christian consolations. By arguing that negative experiences were all "part of God's plan", Christians of the conventional variety denied humans their capacity to respond to the vicissitudes of life, and thereby caused themselves and others to lapse into apathy and lassitude. Likewise, by suggesting that everything would "turn out for the best", they provided false comfort that only exposed people to even greater suffering once "the best" did not eventuate. Nietzsche argued that a far better approach was be to meet suffering and hardship head on; that instead of tying to console ourselves, we should appreciate the value of hardship, its capacity to add meaning and fulfilment to our lives. This was the attitude to life which Nietzsche attributed to the "superman", a concept later misappropriated and warped by the Nazis to justify their theories of racial superiority.
Nietzsche compared the complacent, self-satisfied Christianity of his own time with the faith of the early church. He argued that the early church, in its attitudes, had been much closer to the "superman", the truly healthy human being, because it enabled people to engage with life and deal with suffering in ways that added meaning to existence. By contrast, the conventional Christianity Nietzsche saw around all around him was content with platitudes and maxims that unhealthily restrained human nature, restricting its capacity to wrestle with suffering and emerge as something greater than it had been previously. In other words, Nietzsche believed that Christianity could only have value if it was direct, vigorous, and muscular, instead of timorous, conventional, and apathetic.
Secondly: what was the point of the hyperbolic language in which Nietzsche often couched his criticism? Simply, it was to get a reaction. But a reaction not for the purpose of attention-seeking or self-aggrandisement; on the contrary, Nietzsche was trying to rouse those whom he saw as fatally asleep, and he felt the best way he could do this was to alert Christians, through the medium of harsh language, to the existential danger of their condition. Nietzsche felt that once they were awake, and once they had sufficiently recovered from the shock of waking, they would be able to rationally analyse their position, and thereby be motivated to change their approach to life and faith.
Alas, he was only partially successful. He certainly shocked many Christians out of their complacency; but they never really got over the experience. Instead of turning the energy of their shock into reforming Christianity, they utilised it to attack Nietzsche and denigrate him as an "anti-Christ" and a subversive. Well, he may certainly have been a subversive, but it was a subversion that was desperately needed.
And how is any of this relevant today? Quite simply because there has been much discussion among Christians (and people of faith generally) as to how they respond to the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins, and their loud and vociferous attacks on faith and religion. Some argue that they should be simply ignored. But I think this would be a mistake for two reasons; one, because it would leave the intellectual field to Dawkins and co, and I don't think they deserve it; and, two, because sticking our heads in the sand would do an injustice to both ourselves and our critics. Others believe we should use Dawkins' and Hitchins' own weapons against them, and deal insult for insult, gross generalisation for gross generalisation. But I also think this, too, would be a mistake, because descending into the sewer of ignorance is, ultimately, an ineffective weapon; you only end up tainting yourself.
So how should we respond? Quite simply, by adopting a Nietzschean approach, by becoming "supermen" who engage with and embrace our critics, who wrestle with their criticisms and incorporate them into our life experience in order to become something greater than the sum of our parts. That does not mean we must meekly accept any old calumny which Dawkins or Hitchins choose to throw at us, nor that we refrain from arguing back or pointing out the flaws, errors, inconsistencies, and downright untruths of their position. Rather, it means that we should see Dawkins and Hitchins not as our enemies, but as people doing us a great and necessary service; for beneath the hyperbole and prejudice are legitimate criticisms that should spur us to reform and renewal - without in any way compromising our opposition to their anti-theism.
Afterall, it was Karl Marx, that arch-atheist of all atheists, who, writing about Nietzsche, declared: "Shame on you, Christians! Shame on you that it took an atheist to demonstrate to you the essence of your own faith!".
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Philosophy is common sense in a dress suit. (Oliver Braston)
Nietzsche does not enjoy a good press among Christians. Those Christians who have any knowledge of his work tend to think of him as one of the great 19th Century humanist bogeymen, a vitriolic anti-theist who vilified the church, mocked faith, and made such outrageously provocative statements as "It's indecent to be a Christian these days" and, more famously, "God is dead".
So it's hardly surprising that Christians tend to take a dim view of Nietzsche. But I have a somewhat different view of poor old Friedrich; indeed, I think he is one of the most misunderstood and wrongly maligned figures in human intellectual history. And the reason why I hold this view is grounded in the social and historical context in which he operated.
By Nietzsche's lifetime, the church, in Europe and elsewhere, had come to be seen not as the agency through which society was challenged and renewed, but as one of the pillars of the establishment supporting the status quo. The church was middle-class, complacent, and conservative, smugly assured of its own moral superiority, and deeply suspicious of any move toward change or re-ordering. The country parson with his butterfly collection, the metropolitan priest with his well-made house, the bishops and prelates with their palaces and political privileges: all these were viewed as emblematic of a church that was out of touch with the reality in which most people lived, and indifferent to the fate of those for whom it should have been caring.
So it comes as no surprise that Nietzsche's devastating critique should have burst into this insular, self-satisfied world with the force of an exploding bomb. This was especially the case given he was himself the son of a clergyman; and although Nietzsche was devoted to his father, and later paid for a beautiful headstone to be laid on his father's grave, in which was inscribed a passage from 1 Corinthians 13:8 - Love never dies - Nietzsche was excoriated by the Christians of his time. Indeed, in the parish registry that records his birth, someone later wrote: Friedrich Nietzsche - a known anti-Christ.
But was this fearful, demonising reaction warranted? True, Nietzsche wrote many harsh and uncompromising things about Christianity, much of which can be arguably viewed as excessive or overstated. But within this excess and overstatement lay a core of legitimate criticism overlooked by Nietzsche's detractors; indeed, they often failed to see that this over-the-top style itself served an important purpose.
Firstly: what was Nietzsche's principle objection to Christianity? Well, he didn't object to Christianity as such, he objected to the platitudes and home-spun homilies to which he felt conventional, unthinking faith gave rise. For example, Nietzsche argued that traditional Christian consolations that experiences such as sickness, failure, and suffering were "all part of God's plan" or "would turn out for the best" were highly destructive, because they involved a denial of life and prevented humans from achieving their full potential. Nietzsche based this objection on his principle that the truly healthy person does not seek to avoid or minimise suffering or hardship, nor do they even accept it as part of the reality of being; instead, they actively embrace "negative" experiences as part of the totality of existence, a totality that needed to be engaged with as a whole in order for a person to live a truly happy life.
Nietzsche argued that the "religion of happiness", the view that happiness is either the absence or minimisation of suffering, was implicit in traditional Christian consolations. By arguing that negative experiences were all "part of God's plan", Christians of the conventional variety denied humans their capacity to respond to the vicissitudes of life, and thereby caused themselves and others to lapse into apathy and lassitude. Likewise, by suggesting that everything would "turn out for the best", they provided false comfort that only exposed people to even greater suffering once "the best" did not eventuate. Nietzsche argued that a far better approach was be to meet suffering and hardship head on; that instead of tying to console ourselves, we should appreciate the value of hardship, its capacity to add meaning and fulfilment to our lives. This was the attitude to life which Nietzsche attributed to the "superman", a concept later misappropriated and warped by the Nazis to justify their theories of racial superiority.
Nietzsche compared the complacent, self-satisfied Christianity of his own time with the faith of the early church. He argued that the early church, in its attitudes, had been much closer to the "superman", the truly healthy human being, because it enabled people to engage with life and deal with suffering in ways that added meaning to existence. By contrast, the conventional Christianity Nietzsche saw around all around him was content with platitudes and maxims that unhealthily restrained human nature, restricting its capacity to wrestle with suffering and emerge as something greater than it had been previously. In other words, Nietzsche believed that Christianity could only have value if it was direct, vigorous, and muscular, instead of timorous, conventional, and apathetic.
Secondly: what was the point of the hyperbolic language in which Nietzsche often couched his criticism? Simply, it was to get a reaction. But a reaction not for the purpose of attention-seeking or self-aggrandisement; on the contrary, Nietzsche was trying to rouse those whom he saw as fatally asleep, and he felt the best way he could do this was to alert Christians, through the medium of harsh language, to the existential danger of their condition. Nietzsche felt that once they were awake, and once they had sufficiently recovered from the shock of waking, they would be able to rationally analyse their position, and thereby be motivated to change their approach to life and faith.
Alas, he was only partially successful. He certainly shocked many Christians out of their complacency; but they never really got over the experience. Instead of turning the energy of their shock into reforming Christianity, they utilised it to attack Nietzsche and denigrate him as an "anti-Christ" and a subversive. Well, he may certainly have been a subversive, but it was a subversion that was desperately needed.
And how is any of this relevant today? Quite simply because there has been much discussion among Christians (and people of faith generally) as to how they respond to the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins, and their loud and vociferous attacks on faith and religion. Some argue that they should be simply ignored. But I think this would be a mistake for two reasons; one, because it would leave the intellectual field to Dawkins and co, and I don't think they deserve it; and, two, because sticking our heads in the sand would do an injustice to both ourselves and our critics. Others believe we should use Dawkins' and Hitchins' own weapons against them, and deal insult for insult, gross generalisation for gross generalisation. But I also think this, too, would be a mistake, because descending into the sewer of ignorance is, ultimately, an ineffective weapon; you only end up tainting yourself.
So how should we respond? Quite simply, by adopting a Nietzschean approach, by becoming "supermen" who engage with and embrace our critics, who wrestle with their criticisms and incorporate them into our life experience in order to become something greater than the sum of our parts. That does not mean we must meekly accept any old calumny which Dawkins or Hitchins choose to throw at us, nor that we refrain from arguing back or pointing out the flaws, errors, inconsistencies, and downright untruths of their position. Rather, it means that we should see Dawkins and Hitchins not as our enemies, but as people doing us a great and necessary service; for beneath the hyperbole and prejudice are legitimate criticisms that should spur us to reform and renewal - without in any way compromising our opposition to their anti-theism.
Afterall, it was Karl Marx, that arch-atheist of all atheists, who, writing about Nietzsche, declared: "Shame on you, Christians! Shame on you that it took an atheist to demonstrate to you the essence of your own faith!".
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Philosophy is common sense in a dress suit. (Oliver Braston)
Sunday, June 10, 2007
My First Sermon
The universe has been having some fun at my expense this week.
This morning I was scheduled to deliver my first sermon. The opportunity to do so arose because our local minister utilised the long weekend to take a more than well-earned break. Fortunately, my local Uniting Church congregation is blessed with any number of people who can lead a service and preach a sermon; but given my Dearly Beloved and I are presently applying to candidate to the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church, our minister offered us this chance to preach in his absence.
My Dearly Beloved has had some opportunity to preach as a consequence of her work as a school teacher; and so she graciously allowed me to take up the offer to preach this sermon. Moreover, our minister has generously offered to mentor my Dearly Beloved and I and take us through some of the issues, methods, and skills of preaching; and so I thought this would be an unprecedented opportunity to get some preaching experience under my belt.
I won't bore you with all the details of how I went about constructing the sermon; afterall, everyone approaches this task differently, and everyone has their own method that works for them. But I will say how gratified (and surprised) I was to discover that many of my initial impressions gelled closely with observations made by the various biblical commentaries I consulted; and, more importantly, how such commentaries enabled me to expand upon my first reading, enabled me to access a more complete insight that was a combination of personal reflection and the wisdom of those much more learned than myself.
I guess that's just a long-winded way of saying I was delighted to realise I didn't get it completely wrong!
Additionally, having the benefit of my Dearly Beloved's experience as an English teacher, and our minister's experience as a, well, minister, really made the difference in shaping my sermon from a rambling mish-mash into an at least vaguely coherent commentary. So I was reasonably confident that I'd be able to deliver something worth making people get up on a Sunday morning to listen to.
All I had to do was deliver the sermon. And that's where the cosmos stepped in.
For the past week, I have been battling a cold that started as a mild irritation in my throat on Monday, and by Friday had become a full-blown malaise characterised by a running nose, a throbbing head, burning eyes, and a 48-hour absence of sleep. And all this in a week in which I was meant to be studying for my Greek and Biblical Text exams scheduled for next Tuesday. To make matters worse, given this was to be my preaching debut, my parents decided they would attend the service to watch their little boy in action. Needless to say, I wasn't in any fit state to be doing any studying; and it was looking like I wasn't going to able to deliver any sermon, either! My preaching "arrival" looked over before it had even commenced!
The universe was pissing itself, no doubt. Personally, I had no trepidations about my capacity to deliver the projected sermon - a decade addressing meetings of angry union members as an organiser had more than prepared me for facing a church congregation. The issue was whether or not I'd be physically capable!
Fortunately, my condition improved over Saturday, due in large measure to hefty doses of medication, aided and abetted by 8 blissful hours of uninterrupted sleep on Saturday night. By Sunday morning I was feeling as washed out as a load of winter washing, but my nose had stopped dripping, my throat was no longer burning, and my eyes had returned to their normal focal acuity (admittedly not great). My voice still sounded like a kazoo with a severely strangled hernia, but as I explained to the congregation, having suffered for the sake of this sermon, it was now their turn to do likewise.*
Anyhoo, the upshot is that everything went swimmingly. Not because I was particularly good, but because the congregation responded with the grace and generosity which I have now come to expect from them. They laughed at all my gags, didn't yawn or fidget, somehow managed to preserve interested expressions on their faces, and after the service offered much undeserved praise and compliments. And because they are such good and generous people, I was able to walk away from the service with a nice inner glow! (Mum and Dad also thought I did good, too!)
So, all in all, a wonderfully affirming and rewarding experience. Now all I have to do is cram a week's worth of study into the next 24 hours!
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: Sermons are like pie-crusts: the shorter the better. (Austin O'Malley)
*Yes, I know this is an old gag, but under the circumstances, highly appropriate!
This morning I was scheduled to deliver my first sermon. The opportunity to do so arose because our local minister utilised the long weekend to take a more than well-earned break. Fortunately, my local Uniting Church congregation is blessed with any number of people who can lead a service and preach a sermon; but given my Dearly Beloved and I are presently applying to candidate to the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church, our minister offered us this chance to preach in his absence.
My Dearly Beloved has had some opportunity to preach as a consequence of her work as a school teacher; and so she graciously allowed me to take up the offer to preach this sermon. Moreover, our minister has generously offered to mentor my Dearly Beloved and I and take us through some of the issues, methods, and skills of preaching; and so I thought this would be an unprecedented opportunity to get some preaching experience under my belt.
I won't bore you with all the details of how I went about constructing the sermon; afterall, everyone approaches this task differently, and everyone has their own method that works for them. But I will say how gratified (and surprised) I was to discover that many of my initial impressions gelled closely with observations made by the various biblical commentaries I consulted; and, more importantly, how such commentaries enabled me to expand upon my first reading, enabled me to access a more complete insight that was a combination of personal reflection and the wisdom of those much more learned than myself.
I guess that's just a long-winded way of saying I was delighted to realise I didn't get it completely wrong!
Additionally, having the benefit of my Dearly Beloved's experience as an English teacher, and our minister's experience as a, well, minister, really made the difference in shaping my sermon from a rambling mish-mash into an at least vaguely coherent commentary. So I was reasonably confident that I'd be able to deliver something worth making people get up on a Sunday morning to listen to.
All I had to do was deliver the sermon. And that's where the cosmos stepped in.
For the past week, I have been battling a cold that started as a mild irritation in my throat on Monday, and by Friday had become a full-blown malaise characterised by a running nose, a throbbing head, burning eyes, and a 48-hour absence of sleep. And all this in a week in which I was meant to be studying for my Greek and Biblical Text exams scheduled for next Tuesday. To make matters worse, given this was to be my preaching debut, my parents decided they would attend the service to watch their little boy in action. Needless to say, I wasn't in any fit state to be doing any studying; and it was looking like I wasn't going to able to deliver any sermon, either! My preaching "arrival" looked over before it had even commenced!
The universe was pissing itself, no doubt. Personally, I had no trepidations about my capacity to deliver the projected sermon - a decade addressing meetings of angry union members as an organiser had more than prepared me for facing a church congregation. The issue was whether or not I'd be physically capable!
Fortunately, my condition improved over Saturday, due in large measure to hefty doses of medication, aided and abetted by 8 blissful hours of uninterrupted sleep on Saturday night. By Sunday morning I was feeling as washed out as a load of winter washing, but my nose had stopped dripping, my throat was no longer burning, and my eyes had returned to their normal focal acuity (admittedly not great). My voice still sounded like a kazoo with a severely strangled hernia, but as I explained to the congregation, having suffered for the sake of this sermon, it was now their turn to do likewise.*
Anyhoo, the upshot is that everything went swimmingly. Not because I was particularly good, but because the congregation responded with the grace and generosity which I have now come to expect from them. They laughed at all my gags, didn't yawn or fidget, somehow managed to preserve interested expressions on their faces, and after the service offered much undeserved praise and compliments. And because they are such good and generous people, I was able to walk away from the service with a nice inner glow! (Mum and Dad also thought I did good, too!)
So, all in all, a wonderfully affirming and rewarding experience. Now all I have to do is cram a week's worth of study into the next 24 hours!
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: Sermons are like pie-crusts: the shorter the better. (Austin O'Malley)
*Yes, I know this is an old gag, but under the circumstances, highly appropriate!
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Wonderful Sacred Art
Check out My Dearly Beloved's Blog for a link to some wonderful sacred art she's uncovered. Well worth the visit.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality. (John Ruskin)
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality. (John Ruskin)
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