a church (re)Wired

No Garden to Get Back to: Understanding Post-Avatar Ecological Depressive Disorder is an article in Religion Dispatches by Ryan Croken.

It may be only a movie, but it is turning significant segments of its audience into eco-radicals. We can go ahead and dissect the film’s weaknesses, but as our planet dies, and politicians fail, is this really how we want to talk about the most influential ecological parable of our time?

I’m pointing us to this article on Avatar because it is an example of words I am slowly beginning to see in the media; as our planet dies. I’m not talking about wild apocalypticsm here, but simple acceptance on the part of many writers.  Our planet is dying. Maybe, just slowly, people are waking up at last.

We recently linked to similar sentiment expressed by Derek Jensen.  In that article the loss of hope leads, according to the author, to a re-empowerment, which will not happen until hope is lost. Byron Smith at Nothing New Under the Sun constantly talks about global warming and ecological issues generally,  in terms of ‘what is right’, not ‘rights’ or hopes, or technology. Smith’s PhD research focusses around: “What is a faithful Christian response to impending civilisational decline? What role ought nightmarish apocalyptic visions play in Christian moral reasoning on these matters?”  Read on >>>>

Today's link is the story of one man's journey. This is an educated and humane man.. and humble.  There are some deep insights about being human, and christian in this interview. It's from Religion Dispatches, where Jacob Needleman is interviewed by Lisa Webster.

You talk in the book about having remained an atheist, even during years of great interest—even expertise—in religion and theology.

Yes, deep down, no matter how much I appreciated and understood religion—because it was damned interesting, and it was philosophically honorable. I defended Judaism, I defended Christianity. I gave lectures on it. I wrote books and I could explain it. But down deep I still didn't believe that this idea of God corresponded to something out there, really. Or in here—either way.

My mind believed it. But somewhere down deep I didn't really. It was only when I actually touched a certain level of inner experience, and I said, Ah, that's it. Now I am absolutely certain that there is such a thing. I always believed, as I was studying these things, that there was something higher in the universe. I never thought it was a dead, mechanical universe, like scientism. It was only when I experienced it as part of me that I saw that it was true....

And people cannot listen to each other. When we’re talking, you and I, mostly when I'm talking and trying to listen to someone I maybe hear—if I’m lucky—one-third of what they say. Mostly I hear my own thoughts, and when I try to write down what they’ve said I mix it with my own thoughts. But there is a discipline which one can obtain. It’s not that hard. It’s to step back from one's own opinions, make a space in myself and let you in. I don't have to agree with you but I have to let you in, so that you are heard. I hear you. And you let me in. And that way something very beautiful can appear; I can still disagree completely with you, but I don’t deny your humanity.

The art of listening is the first step of every ethics. That's been misunderstood: as if to become good is to become ethical. But it’s not a question of acting and doing the right thing—that’s hard. But we can listen to the other, give our attention, which is our precious human substance, to the other person. When I give my attention to you it's a little bit of love, whatever you might call it: and that's the source of ethics. That's been lost entirely. And it's really practical, it can happen. But people can’t do it. They don't do it. They don't know they have this capacity. They think listening is simply waiting for you to pause so I can come in.... Read on >>>>

For a different Professor's view on religion, go here.

Put simply, religion is a complex phenomenon admitting of divergent traits. It has always focused on the human encounter with the transcendent. But it has also been shaped by the ideological, superstitious, power-seeking and fear-driven impulses that infect so much of human social life.

Hitchens’ instinct is to define religion in terms of the latter; to view religion as poisonous and to exclude from the scope of “religion” anything that doesn’t warrant such a judgment. Sewell’s instinct, by contrast, is to define religion in terms of the collective human quest to both understand the meaning of our numinous experience and deliberately connect with the transcendent—and as such, she views everything that Hitchens takes as definitive of religion as, instead, its corruption.

I suspect these opposing instincts may be rooted in our earliest encounters with religious life. While I can’t speak to Sewell’s experience, my own seminal experience of religion was embodied in my relationship with my grandfather who, when I was a child, served as the minister of a small church in coastal Oregon.... Read on >>>>

Australia Day tells us of the growing capture of traditional religious functions by the state, says Godless Gross, owning up that he's been awarded an AM.  "There are many who will find this as a bigger and nastier surprise than Pearl Harbour."

Gross points out the lack of ceromony with our Australian awards- "probably a predictable and dull affair behind locked doors.  There is much to be learned from the Church to promote this ritual and accordingly add gravitas to the awards themselves." 

It seems to me that a lot of churches have forgotten the lesson that Dick Gross is taking from them, and are also "predictable and dull affairs."   Read on >>>>

Subtitle: Why some congregations drive me crazy!

I first met the clash between introvert and extrovert before I really understood the words.  We would get home from a meeting, or a party, and my new wife would be full of energy, while all I wanted to do was go to bed. It took a while to work out that she, the extrovert, would gain energy from a meeting or party, and I would expend energy. She was ready to party on, while I needed to recharge. This sort of dichotomy affects us in lots of places, including church.

Richard Beck writes

That is, extraverts tend to be energetic and enthusiastic while introverts tend to be mellower or even melancholic... Do introverts fit in at church?... The answer, obviously, is that it depends upon what kind of church we are talking about. In liturgical churches I expect introverts and extroverts fare about the same. But in non-liturgical churches they may fare differently....

In ... highly sociable churches there is an implicit theological theme that marries sociability with spirituality. That is, being sociable—visiting intensively, and being willing to "get into each other's lives"—is highly prized. To a point, this is understandable. A sociable church is going to rely on extraverts to make the whole vibe work...

There can be huge problems arising from our personality types, and the corporate personality type of our church (or workplace.) Beck says

Now, you may say that these introverts just aren't good people. But you would be wrong. Introverts are very, very relational. They just aren’t sociable. And to confuse the two is a grave theological and ecclesial mistake.  But many churches fail to make this distinction. They tacitly set up the following equation for church life: Spirituality = Sociability.  Read on >>>>

There is something very attractive in  the image of Jesus sitting in the boat, as the people press in.  It was hung on our Sunday School wall,  and painted into story books. As a farm kid who grew up a long way from the sea, I had ambivalent attitudes to the sea, but this picture always communicated something about safety to me. I always had images of warm afternoons, with gently lapping water. The crowd- I don’t like crowds- was not oppressive, but friendly and familial. Sometimes it was barely there.

Oddly, the places of my childhood that fit the mood I have painted, have nothing to do with the seaside.  They conform to Sunday School Picnics, where the whole world  retreated, and we had a few hours of escape to run and race, and feast, and enjoy life. The picnics were in a creek bed with steep earthen cliffs. Each year the farmers would provide old empty wheat bags, in which we would sit and wildly slide down to the bottom of the creek. Many a child, in the absence of a handy bag, would wreck the seat out of their pants!

These first few stories of Luke have some of that sense of sun-drenched glory days about them. There is no ‘and immediately’ as in Mark. The pace is slower, more relaxed. “Once while Jesus was standing… Once, when he was in one of the cities…”

Perhaps I am a hopeless romantic, but some of my thinking for the week will be to reflect on the safety that is in gospel despite all the seriousness and challenge! Even at the moment of great challenge in today’s reading, Jesus says to Peter, “Do not be afraid.”  Read on >>>>

And what this means is not that modernity has made faith unreasonable. But it does mean that faith is more fragile and unstable. As are all things in the foreground. The fact that faith is a choice means that faith can be revisited and the reasons behind that choice opened up to scrutiny. Further, we are constantly in contact with people making their own faith choices and can't help but be affected by their reasons. No longer taken for granted, faith is always exposed to reflection and revisitation. When faith is a choice it needs to be reasserted, like all our other choices. It's like waking up every morning and deciding what to wear. The choice is an everyday object in the mind. Thus, we need to keep choosing faith, over and over. And, like all things in the foreground, this take a lot of time and effort. Faith is now hard work. And some people, not surprisingly, just get tired.

In short, faith is going to feel different in modernity. It's going to feel vulnerable and fragile. It's going to be effortful. All this is simply saying that faith has moved from the background to the foreground.

This insightful short post is at Experimental Theology, by Richard Beck. Personally, I can't see a lack of doubt as anything other than denial!  I am glad that there is so much more freedom than the closed choices that were there in my childhood. But as Dr Beck says... you can get tired of it!  Read on >>>>

When we talk about God, and about following Jesus, there are two extremes. Theology always operates around two poles.

One pole is the formal, or systematic expression of our faith. It is the carefully worked out theological system, that looks at everything we know about what Jesus said, and what the tradition has discerned about God. It is important to keep the tradition coherent.

The other pole is the situation ‘on the ground’ where we are. How much sense does the lofty theology from the theological school make when we are literally sitting in a creek around a cooking fire? The reality of the local situation must always be honoured, or else the theology is empty, and even abusive.

The local and the formal work in an ongoing spiral of dialogue, informing and correcting each other. When we speak theology we must always pay attention to both. To do otherwise will reduce us to empty, perhaps abusive, words at one extreme, or idiosyncratic nonsense, at the other.

Today’s link is a sermon from a colleague; Reverend Janet Weiblen. Janet shows us the two poled approach, keeping the tension which brings life and power to the sermon. Read and enjoy... and thanks to Janet.  Her text is 1 Corinthians 13.

Andrew

Do you know the lyrics to the Beatles song, “All you need is love?” For whatever reason, that song swirled around my mind as I contemplated these words from Paul. I knew the chorus, but I didn’t know the rest of the words—I was never much of a fan of the Beatles. So I Googled it, and when I found the words, I was disappointed. To me, they made little sense, and that made me wonder about Paul’s words: did they make sense to those to whom they were written, the people in the Corinthian church?... Read on >>>>

During my recent holidays, I planned to ride-return to a cousin’s home in Horsham, some 450 kilometres away.  This, in the middle of the Australian summer, is not an easy journey. Apart from requiring many miles ridden on one of Australia’s busiest interstate highways, the first two days in my planned outing were forecast to be 41 degrees Centigrade. They were days of “Catastrophic Fire Danger,” when ideally, one would not be out in the Adelaide Hills, or anywhere, on a bicycle.

Although I had every intention of staying in motels or cabins, I needed to be ready to sleep rough on the roadside, in case of injury or breakdown.  I needed to be survive a night of constant rain, even though we are in the summer drought. In fact, I rode one day in constant rain; we have bizarre weather in this country!

The critical element of summer riding is to have sufficient water.  My route was determined by this figure; my preferred route has too little guaranteed access to water to be used in summer time. 

The volume of water is not all that counts.  It needs to be drunk constantly, “pre-drinking” at a rate which matches the loss of fluid through sweat. This rate varies dramatically. From Bordertown to Keith is 56 kilometres.  I rode this in constant rain Tuesday January 12, drinking only a litre of water. On the previous day, for the 38 kilometres between Tintinara and Keith, in 45 degree midday heat, I drank 5 litres of fluid... Read on >>>>

I’m fresh back from holidays, ready to start work, just as Luke’s gospel gets down to the main act.  We have had the introductions in the first chapters: This is Who Jesus Is. It’s all formalised with his baptism and genealogy at the end of chapter 3. The temptations at the beginning of chapter 4 show us a person who has a very different approach from the ways of the world. (I’m always reminded of Jesus of Montreal high above the city, as the business men try to do a deal with him.)

When Jesus comes home to Nazareth he reads from Isaiah, reciting the centrality of the tradition of God’s compassion:

he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

Then he throws down the gauntlet to his people. If I were preaching at the opening of, say, a community health centre in my parish, I could read that text from Isaiah, and say “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” It would be true. But for Luke’s listeners, Jesus words are an unmistakable Messianic proclamation, not just one more small fulfillment of Isaiah.

I’ve spent some time thinking about the cliché of the gauntlet... Read on >>>> 

The article I am linking today, was published in 1975. It represents some of Walter Wink’s life and scholarly journey, and provides insight into our own. It is especially worth reading if we are wondering about the place of study and scholarship in a religious life. Wink's title was How I Have Been Snagged by the Seat of My Pants While Reading the Bible.

 Wink was completing his PhD dissertation in his first parish.

 Once during that period the chairman of the church’s official board asked me why I never preached on any of the New Testament passages which I was so exhaustively exegeting. I didn’t know. It was odd: I couldn’t say why, but I was very certain that I could not.... Now it is characteristic of most of us that when we uncover such anomalies as these, we dismiss them as aberrations of our own personal experience.

If nothing else, this article by Walter Wink should remind us that those "aberrations of our own personal experience" are rarely insignificant. They are telling us something about ourselves!  The question is, "What are they telling us?"  In Wink’s case the message was this:

Simply but quite precisely put, the historical-critical approach to biblical study had become bankrupt. Not dead: the critical tools have a potential usefulness, if they can only be brought under new management. But on the whole, the American scholarly scene is one of frenetic decadence, with the publication of vast numbers of articles and books which fewer and fewer people read. Most scholars no longer address the lived experience of actual people in the churches or society. Instead they address the current questions of their peers in the professional scholarly guild. The net result has been a gathering malaise, a crisis of morale, and a dawning recognition that what was once a vital contribution to the emancipation of people from the constrictions of dogmatism has become a new constriction in its own right.

Wink suggests that most biblical scholars entered the field called by a  hope of “human transformation.” He says this is lost in an inappropriate homage to “objectivity.”

…ineluctably we found ourselves jettisoning the very questions and interests that led us to begin. Read on >>>>

Dante is by Wendell Berry. (Hat Tip Richard Beck)

Dante

If you imagine
others are there,
you are there yourself.

Fred Plumer writes at Religion Online

I have always assumed that the progressive church was a response to God’s truth as revealed in Jesus and other enlightened teachers and prophets. It is a response to the slow unveiling of the secrets of the universe that continue to expand our understanding of this awesome and often unfathomable creation. It is a response to the ongoing scholarship that has exploded our understanding of biblical times, the historical Jesus and the development of religions in general. I have always assumed that the progressive church was both a response to and a search for truth....

Progress by definition means "to move forward"... Progress always means change, and change is seldom easy, especially when we are dealing with subjective and even sacred issues in our lives.

The truth of the matter is that the Christian movement, or what we now call the church, was always progressive. Jesus and his followers were change agents and that frankly, is what got them all into trouble. According to Mark, Jesus said, "The Sabbath law was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath law," as he intentionally broke the sacred Sabbath laws of his religion. It is hard for us to understand how jarring that would have been to people of his time. You can get some idea, however, if you go to Israel today and break a Sabbath law...

Plumer is making some important points here. If you read the article in full (it is quite short) you will see he is contrasting this approach with the idea that Progressive Christianity is a reaction to fundamentalism or the religious right. Adopting a "progressive" stance as a response to these misunderstandings of the faith is not to be progressive. It is to be reactionary. Christianity, by its nature, calls us to be progressive at the core of our being.

Plumer quotes Karl Rahner.

"...what is called knowledge in everyday parlance, is only a small island in a vast sea that has not been traveled... Hence the existential question for the knower is this: Which does he (sic) love more, the small island of his so-called knowledge or the sea of infinite mystery?

Again we see a contrast between being progressive and reactive. Reactionary faith may still be a small island of our own knowing which we value more than the "sea of infinite mystery." Being "progressive" as a response to fundamentalism falls into a trap which Mitroff and Bennis outline for us. Plumer quotes them also He says that in their 1989 book The Unreality Industry

They suggest that the "fundamental dialectic of our times is between reality and unreality, especially now that we have power to influence and create both." The reason we are creating "substitute realities", they argue, is that the world has become so complex that "no one person or institution can fully understand or control it."

"If humans cannot control the realities with which they are faced, then they will invent unrealities over which they can maintain the illusion of control." The question is, they write, do we have the courage to face directly and honestly the complex realities we are capable of creating and discovering or will we turn away from reality and invest our energy increasingly in the denial of reality?

As we disagree with, or even ridicule, fundamentalism, how much have we created our own "unreality" which is substantively no different to the unrealities of fundamentalism. How much, by contrast are we truly progessive?

A progressive faith is one that is willing to challenge the assumptions and to test the paradigm under which we are operating. It is not afraid to ask hard questions and to admit to doubt. Read on >>>>

Archive copy.

How do I work out what my values are? We are not encouraged to think too much about our values. It is easy for an employer to want us to just get on with the job- that’s their values. Working life is often busy and hard enough that we seem to use all our energy just keeping up from day to day. Add a relationship and kids, and who has time to reflect on values? "Many of our concerns are a cause of worry and anxiety. Each concern tends to become tyrannical and wants our whole heart, our whole mind and our whole strength. Each concern tries to become our god. The concern about work becomes a god for some, as does the concern for pleasure for others." Charles L Birch, A Purpose for Everything Chapter I

Values do not cease to exist just because we are not thinking much about them. If we ask ourselves what is really important to us, and what we really care about, we will have an answer. It may take a little while to get our minds into gear, but we all have a list of ideas about the things that really should be happening in the world, and what we would like to be doing.

My sense is that a fair amount of our dissatisfaction about life comes because we have drifted away from the things which are really important to us. I don't mean the things we feel we should say are important but the things that really do matter to us. The things we would talk about after two or three worry free nights round a camp fire. I think our values inevitably drift towards the things we actually do, but our aspirational values, the things we would really like to do, and which are truly important to us, do not give up the fight for our life easily, as it were. The tension between what we really want, and what we are doing, makes us unhappy, or sick, or worse. Indeed, the reason we sometimes end up wondering ‘how we got here,’ and scarcely recognising who we are, is because we have been so busy, we have not realised how far we have moved from where we were, and how much we have lived as a different person, with different values. Charles Birch says, "As the chasm between our inner intentions and outer acts, our pretensions and our practice, deepens, so does our hunger for wholeness." Charles L Birch, A Purpose for Everything It hurts.

How do I get in touch with my values? How do I find what is really important to me, and what I really care about? What do I really think should be happening in the world? And given that what I think is unlikely to influence too many people, is it even worth the effort?

I think it is. Knowing our valves, and trying to live by them, introduces a certain balance in our lives. Even if we cannot achieve all that we wish, we will at least be living our life moving towards some inner harmony, rather than being defined by the wishes (i.e. the values) of others.

To begin is very simple. We only need to ask ourselves, "What is really important to me, and what do I really care about? What do I really think should be happening in the world?"

The trick is to do this in a way that lets us hear our "inner self." It does not work well to sit down and work on our values, if we have the values of Coca Cola and Hungry Jacks blaring in the background. Without being melodramatic, we need to remember that the big companies of our day are trying to convert us to their values; specifically that one which says we will be happy if we buy their stuff. The key value of most of what we see around us and hear on TV and radio is that happiness, meaning, and satisfaction come from acquiring and consuming. We need to make space and quiet to think about what really matters for us, and to decide for ourselves whether we want to buy into the consumerism around us, or live another way.

It's also important to give the process time. If we've not had time to think about what's really important, because the last two years have been frantic, then we will not produce a ten page thesis on our core values in five short minutes. We need, usually, to revisit the questions over time, distilling and refining, reconsidering and testing.

Questions to ask in this distilling process, might include some of those below:

• What do I spend my time doing- especially my free time? Does this say something about what's really important to me?

• How much of what I do is just to block out the pain?

• What do I worry about? Does this say anything about my values?

• What am I ashamed of about myself? Why? What does this say about my values?

• Who do I really admire and look up to? Why is this? What would I change about the way I do things if I was working with that person?

• What are the things work asks me to do which I feel uncomfortable about? What does this say about my values?

There is a kind of balancing trick to do with these questions. It is important to get in touch with our feelings; they reveal much about our values. But we should not simply equate our feelings with our values. It is not that simple.

Is our reaction, our feeling, because we truly believe in a thing, or because we are feeling guilty, for example? Are we reacting to something our father always said, rather than something that is important to us? Sometimes our reaction to old parental values indicates we must move on. They were wrong- (for us, at least.) Other times we need to deal with our irritation and hurts about them, before we discover we can claim a particular value for ourselves, as our own.

There is a moral dimension to our values. Some aspirations are simply unworthy of our time, if not downright bad. But the beginning of the process, is to avoid pre-judging our values as we are rediscovering them. The important thing is to find out what we think and feel, and why. That kind of honesty is much more revealing than saying what we think we should say, or not owning up to deep desires, because we think they are wrong. It is important to begin by seeing just who we are. Even what, at first sight, we feel are unworthy longings, may reveal much deeper valves which are like gold. The conflicting voices within us are actually alerting us to our life issues, and our real values. Listen, don't just do what someone else said is the right thing. Don’t discount the feelings.

So here is the beginning: what really matters to us once we have shut out all the noise around us? What do we find we feel? What do we struggle with?

Andrew is on leave until 26/1. This article is taken from his personal website.

One of my colleagues told me that many mornings, just as he left for work, he would vomit. It was a classic case of someone’s core values being at odds with the values of their job. There is always some conflict when we are employed; life is not easy, and issues are rarely clear cut. If it’s like that at home, why would it be different at work?

I’m not talking about the difficulty of a job, but the values attached to a job. My colleague was in a difficult job. He was in the billing complaints department. That is difficult country, by definition. The problem was the total lack of sympathy with clients, and the complete refusal of any compromise, which was required by the employer. He was there to get the money, anyway possible. In the end, he left.

If we seek to run a business that is at odds with our core values, or work for a business at odds with our core values, we cannot be happy. We will always be in tension with our inner self. We will be in a constant state of moral conflict. But it will not remain static. Water always runs downhill, pressure between two points always seeks to equalise. In conflict situations we always seek to reduce our pressure, too. Where we are at odds with the values around us, we change the business, or the business will change us. It may not be obvious, and it may not feel better, but over time we will find that we have changed something, or been changed. If we have not changed the values of what is around us, we will likely have become inured, jaded, or just plain “used to” what once troubled us.

Values are not something static that we can pay lip service. They need rehearsal by living them out. What we do today is a practice for what we do tomorrow. And tomorrow we will do it a little easier.

We would laugh at someone who claimed to be an atheist but religiously followed their stars everyday. We are not what we claim to be, we are what we do.

It is true that we are always compromised; it is part of the human condition. But we can aspire to values beyond where we are now, and if we act them out- if we move towards them- practise will make better. If our job or our business plan requires us to deny our valves, and we capitulate, practise will not make perfect. Instead, we will become someone else.

If we never think about our valves then we are controlled by our job, and do not know who we are.

Andrew is on leave until 26/1. This article is taken from his personal website.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time TS Eliot Little Gidding

The word "simple" gets bad press. There are no simple answers, we are told. The problem, as I see it, is that we often confuse simple with simplistic, or with other conditions. We think about simple in simplistic terms. Simplistic means to over simplify. To state something simply, however, is to clarify, or to show the bones of the matter. Simple is often good.

When we think about life, and its purpose and meaning, we should distinguish between simple and simplistic. Simplistic is to see only black and white when life is mostly composed of grey; that is, a multiplicity of choices and dilemmas. It is wish fulfillment, and a denial of reality.

We need to distinguish between simple and ignorant. Ignorant comes up with an answer that doesn't take heed of all the facts or issues. Simplicity is not the problem here. Factual error is the problem. We also need to recognize the difference between simple and bigoted, where a short answer masquerades as simple. The short answer is not simple, but uses its brevity as a powerful way to endorse a prejudice.

Simple is also used as an excuse to ignore justice. A "simple" answer is simply to have the same flat tax for everyone. This is not simple; it is unjust... Read on >>>>

Andrew is on the last week of his holidays and will be back online next Tuesday (26/1)