Tag Archive: resurrection
This week The Carmelite Centre has hosted a Symposium called: The Once and Future Reformation: The Way of the Spirit. The Symposium, 500 years on from Luther event, offers an opportunity to talk about the current need for renewal and reformation today, in the churches and in the world. The Symposium was diverse, ecumenical, and imaginative. Three days of lectures, reflections and discussion on ways of learning from the past, of living in the present and of looking to the future.
I was invited to present a paper, it was titled: Streets, Seminary and Sacred: Expressions of Theological Animation and Activism in Victoria – Thirty years on from the publication of Ched Myers’ Mark-as-manifesto text ‘Binding The Strongman’ this session will introduce some local current and legacy-influenced expressions of alternative radical discipleship and explore what this model has already and could yet offer for personal discipleship and broader church renewal through photos, stories, liturgy and lectionary.
I’d like to start by acknowledge that we gather on the land of which the Wurundjeri people have been custodians since immemorial – sharing and hearing stories of the Creator Spirit in this place. We acknowledge our elders past, present and future.
Thank you for inviting me to share today out of the radical discipleship expression. Swiss New Testament scholar Eduard Schweizer said: “discipleship is the only form in which faith in Jesus can exist.” Schweizers Australian student, Athol Gill’s, praxis-linked theological teaching, including Mark as a Manifesto for discipleship, animated church renewal movements across Australia in the 1970-80s – many here may have heard of the House of Freedom and the House of the Gentle Bunyip.
A young Ched Myers carries this teaching back to the US and it influences his own community at Berkeley and presumably the study that produces the book “Binding the Strong Man” in 1988. Although I have now read it myself I was fortunate enough to first be exposed to this idea of Mark as Manifesto by Marcus Curnow who managed, with Dave Fagg and drawing on the tradition of Quaker queries and advices to synthesise Myers 560-paged book into a single A4 page (there’s a copy here if anyone wants to have a look)
I moved to Melbourne from Wellington, NZ in 2006 and started to attend an evening church service called Seeds based on this charism. We met in a space called The Den on Little Collins St – which was and is still where the Youth & Schools team of Urban Seed operate from.
Urban Seed is an organisation that works with those who are homeless in Melbourne’s CBD –an outcome of discernment and response to Collins Street Baptist Church finding homeless people sleeping on their steps and seeking to ask, and answer, the question: “Who is my neighbour?”.
They invited young interns to move into the b
uilding behind the church called Central House to engage these neighbours relationally. Jim Barr, Peter Chapman of Common Rule, Gordon Wild and Tim Costello ran various bible studies and seminar series reflecting on the work.
This radical model of hospitality and engagement is still practised now with Geoff and Sherry Maddock with their son Isaac who are currently living in.
Finding Seeds and Urban Seed 
was my first exposure to this lived expression of radical discipleship and the practice of the ideas of Street, Seminary and Sacred – that’s Ched’s language for the spheres of Christian expression: activism, education and church.
In Seeds we referred to these 
areas as Know, Grow and Go, they correlated to Urban Seeds areas of work: Street & Hospitality, Youth & Schools, Advocacy & Engagement
Jesus’ call to preach, heal and cast out…
and if I may presume perhaps the three threads of the Carmelites: stillness and silence, express and explore, embrace and act.
The bringing together of these ideas, or the power of what can happen in the space where these areas overlap is where I think radical discipleship happens.
The etymology of the word radical is from the Latin word radix meaning root. Ched refers to radical discipleship as an invitation to join the
“messianic movement of rebellion and restoration, of repentance and renewal, a “way out of no way”
In his book “Does God need the Church?” Gerhard Lohfink suggests:
I’ve been fortunate enough to visit LA twice – living with Ched and his lovely wife Elaine Enns for a three month internship in 2012 and returning again for the Kinsler Institute in 2015 for two weeks and I found myself fascinated.
Ched believes there is a deepening gulf between these areas of Street, Seminary and Sacred as a result of a few factors:
- Credentialing systems for theology students are set by the accrediting institution not the church
- Professionalization means students need paid work to pay off student loans etc. and don’t always have the time or get given encouragement to engage in practical service to the poor or social movements
- Regular church goers can be insulated from the insights of academics and the challenges and causes of activists
- Faith-based activists can neglect disciplines of critical reflection – theological and political – of why they’re trying to change the world.
Ched believes these spheres are impoverished for being insulated from one another and says theological animation is key “to re-integrating the competencies of these alienated worlds of Christian witness”, believing that our focus instead should be in community formation, conscientization and capacity building in order to rehabilitate the church as a faith based movement of personal and social transformation. To provide some examples of what a re-integrated model might look like, I’m going to do an overlay now of a bible study series Ched did each morning of the Institute with some praxis examples from here in Melbourne and across Victoria.
“Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptised by John in the Jordan”
With this action Jesus was apprenticing himself to the peripheral, radical edge of his own tradition. The Jewish temple used water immersion for ritual purification after contact with the dead but this idea of baptism went beyond that. Jesus could have walked three steps behind a rabbi, gone to a good school but instead he choose the camel hair and honey guy.
While integration might have been Collins Street Baptist Church’s original vision (I don’t know) by the time I arrived at Urban Seed both the evening Seeds church and Tuesday morning Credo Gathering spaces were operating as distinct faith-expression spaces for staff, volunteers and community members or “punters” to gather.
This work needed its own faith expression, it’s own language, it’s own liturgy… many songs, stories and prayers have come out of these spaces… the Seeds Sacred song, the Gospel of Vic (a version of Mark contextualised for the Australian context based on a work by Athol Gill and his students called “Fair Dinkum Mark”), the Credo Lord’s Prayer… which I invite you to say with me now: “as we were taught”.
Illustration by Chris Booth https://ordinarytime.com.au
As residents moved out of Central House, some asked of themselves again:
“Who is my neighbour?”
People consciously decided to move into areas identified as among the lowest socio-economic/ disadvantaged: Norlane in Geelong, Long Gully in Bendigo and Footscray in the inner-west of the city.
Each of these areas had their own Seeds church community – usually having 10-12 members – and these separate communities came together a few times a year to covenant and retreat forming the Seeds network.
For many years, Urban Seed only started projects and had paid staff beyond the CBD in areas where Seeds Network groups were established.
Each of these groups elected to exist in marginalised areas. While each group discerned the expression of Know, Grow, Go in their area, responsive to the particular needs and context of their community and locality, all of them shared in common projects of neighbourhood hospitality whether community dinners, craft or breakfast clubs, wood fired pizzas… all spaces like Urban Seed’s Credo cafe where people from all walks of life: lawyers and homeless, financial traders and addicts, Richmond and Collingwood supporters… preparing and sharing a meal around a common table… people of all faiths and none but for many of those “discipling” this eating and drinking together is their expression and practice of communion and church.
Jesus isn’t just baptised in the Jordan but into the watershed. We understand the Holy Spirit not to exist only in people but in creation and the land… the Holy Spirit descends like a dove into Jesus. The Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness. Jesus uses the water as a pulpit forming a natural amphitheatre, he uses farming parables, living vine and living water metaphors and calls us to ‘consider’ (learn from) the lilies. What does the land and creation have to teach us?
What are the stories specific to the places we live and what are the justice issues affecting our neighbours that the good news can offer hope for? Last month in Footscray we ran a Stations of the Cross walk for Easter – we call it the way of the Southern Cross because Aunty Doreen Wandin re-named Spencer St station this, as an intersection for bus, train, tram lines it’s where many paths connect that lead us home much as people navigated by constellations. Uncle Wanta Jampijinpa has preached on the correlation of the stars of the Southern Cross to the wounds on Jesus’ body. At the Kinsler Institute, Bill Wylie Kellerman, United Methodist pastor and member of the Detroit Catholic Worker, ran a session saying that liturgy implicates. Undertaking activism on high holidays gives layers of meaning to the action. He said:
What does it mean for us as Christians or people of any faith – in this time, this place, this context – to be mindful of and respond well to matters of justice from a position of this belief? Myers says:
“We need to reclaim scripture as
our most powerful weapon of resistance.
Stories are the best weapon we have”.
We wanted to localise this idea here in Australia, the Indigenous Hospitality House (IHH) community shared their resource with us based on the work of Dr Norman Habel, the author of “Reconciliation: Searching for Australia’s Soul” which outlines the model for combining storytelling to action as a means for working towards right relationship between people and with the land…
This year’s walk visited seven sites from our shared history looking at issues we all grapple with:
What does it mean for us to stand outside the home of Sally Russell Cooper and talk about recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty – a thirst that has not been quenched we are given natives to take bear home with us and plant symbolic of the hyssop branch and our commitment to work for recognition and relationship in this land.
We stand outside Centrelink – “Woman, here is your son” who are we called to care for? As a parent to a child however could you count some cost of the the debt of raising up that is our privilege.
Standing under the Welcome Arch built by the grateful Vietnamese business community, we think of next-coming waves of refugees and asylum seekers setting out praying: Into your hands I commit my spirit…
There is suffering in these events, and there are questions for us to grapple with.
As we hear the words of Christ on the cross, we ask what insight might his words spoken in pain tell us?
Continuing this idea of bible in one hand and newspaper in the other, Jon and Kim Cornfords work developing the Household Covenant bible study series, arising out of Ched’s book on Sabbath Economics and Matt Colwell’s followup Sabbath Economics: Household Practices, inspires minute incremental changes in the ways we consume that are based on biblical practices of stewardship and Sabbath and jubilee economics… from the way we see credit and debt, to growing, eating and preserving, seasonally and sustainably.
Household Covenant – Jon and Kim Cornford http://www.mannagum.org.au/
Introducing yourself as Jesus of Nazareth from Galilee is not dissimilar from saying “he’s a Yorta Yorta man from up Cummeragunja way”, I’m living in Footscray by the Maribyrnong what does it mean for our discipleship to be placed within our locality and in relationship with the land?
Urban Seed Credo Pain in the Arts program
“As it is written…” the land we live on is filled with stories – do you know them?
On the healing rites walk we told the story of deadly Aboriginal woman Sally Russell Cooper, of the transphobic attack on Starlady and her friends in Footscray, the tragic stories of Kirsty and Joan aliases used by a community lawyer talking about user-experiences at Centrelink for struggling families, the story of the Maria an asylum seeker from East Timor…
these stories aren’t ‘just’ political, they’re personal. To be an active participant in restorative justice we need to know the problems of, and people directly experiencing, injustice.
What we know about Jesus birthplace is that it was a small village, about 4 miles (6.5kms) from Sepharus. There was an uprising against the colonising occupation there and the Romans crushed Sepharus and enslaved everyone… Jesus would have been 10 years old when this happened. Jesus and his Dad were tektons (labourers/carpenters/ construction workers) hired to help rebuild Sepharus… labouring under the bitterness of colonial occupation, this would shape your consciousness, this would have a huge impact… this is why context is so important. This is why story is so important. Jesus knows and quotes and draws on the history and experience of his people as relevant to speak into their current context and we need to do the same. The stories of Jordan, Israel and Egypt… for us might be the stories of a handful of dirt at Wave Hill, or the Franklin Dam that was never built…
People may well have heard of the Love Makes A Way movement of Christians engaging prayerfully and politically for the release, in particular of refugee and asylum seeking children, from detention.
What might be less known is that while some are participating in the action inside, others are participating outside: Keeping prayerful vigil, bearing witness, supplying snacks and singing. There is a Love Makes a Way songbook – as this group was looking for inspiration they turned to the Freedom Songs of the civil rights movement. Ched calls us to “sing about it until it can realised” and these songs call us into a place a freedom and hope that we will all “sit at the welcome table one of these days” together.
This is a story we identified with and apprenticed ourselves to and “As I go down to the river to pray…” becomes “As I go down to Bill’s [Shortens] office to pray, welcome the refugee, let them stay” or “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” becomes “Were you there when they turned the boats away?”
Drawing on the style we progressed to writing our own songs, and also asking ourselves whose are the local prophetic voices calling for change and Leunigs writing came to mind “Love is born… in the most unlikely place” (round), these are words we want to believe in these times. Will you stand and sing them with me?
Who are the writers in our context who are crying out for justice? Whose stories do we make time to listen to? What stories and traditions will you apprentice yourself to?
-ooOoo-
Jesus was an apprentice, a disciple of kingdom, land and story… scripture study informed his political and theological practice. Our scripture study should inform our political and theological practice.
The Kinsler Institute in 2015 was called “40/60/100”: A celebration of radical discipleship – closely echoing the numbers of the surprising yield of seed in good soil in Jesus’ Parable of the Sower (Mk 4:8). But for this particular Institute, they alluded to two milestones that we were celebrating: Ched Myers’ 60th birthday, and his 40 years in the radical discipleship movement, those two numbers add up to 100—which is how many folks they were hoping would show up to join the festivities…. there were more than that: activists, academics and preachers – yes – but artists, liturgists, poets, practitioners, organic farmers, the undocumented, money lenders, elders and babies, from across America and across a breadth of faith expressions… I can’t idealise these models of community – The House of the Gentle Bunyip didn’t last, Ched’s community at Berkeley didn’t last, the Seeds Network has not lasted what can’t be denied is that some expressions of the radical discipleship model continue to spring up – and, I think, are producing a surprising yield of seed.
Jokingly referring to the Institute as a clusterfest in his closing remarks on the last day Ched noted that when the people are gathered it should always feel part birthday party, part conference, part church, part action planning meeting… I hope I’ve been able to give you some small sense of this today. I want to close by saying to all of you the benediction we used in my Seeds community:
Rubem Alves tells a story of a spider, safe and happy over empty space – building her house – no hesitation and with precision. Fragile yet perfect, symmetrical, beautiful, fit to its purpose. “…I did not see her first move, the move which was the beginning of the web, the leap into the void…” (p.3)
What the spider needs to fulfil her intention is within her body. “Her body knows, her body remembers. But we have forgotten it.” (p.4)
Rubem Alves tells a story of a boy who found the body of a dead man
washed up on the edge of a seaside village.
There is only one thing to do with the dead: they must be buried.
In that village it was the custom for the women to prepare the dead for burial,
so the women began to clean the body in preparation for the funeral.
As they did, the women began to talk and
ponder about the dead stranger.
He was tall… and would have had to duck his head to enter their houses.
His voice… was it like a whisper or like thunder.
His hands… they were big. Did they play with children
or sail the seas or know how to caress and embrace a woman’s body.
The women laughed
“and were surprised as they realised that the funeral had become resurrection:
a moment in their flesh, dreams, long believed to be dead,
returning… their bodies alive again”. (p.24)
The husbands, waiting outside, and watching what was happening,
became jealous of the drowned man
as they realised he had power which they did not have.
And they thought about the dreams they had never had…
Alves ends this part of the story by telling that they finally buried the dead man.
But the village was never the same again.
“The dead man did not say one single word.
He was full of silence.
And his silence was the space of remembrance.
His dead body was full of their lost memories…” (p.31)
“Hoc est corpus meum. This is the bit of my flesh which became alive again by the power of the silence of this dead man…
What are we without the help of that which does not exist? – Valerie” (p.35)
Acts 17:22-31
Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’
Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
(NRSV)
Reading 1: (Read through twice) What word or passage touches/speaks to you?
Reading 2: How does this word/passage touch your life/experience?
Reading 3: How are we called into being/doing by this word/passage?
An outsider would not have noticed any visible changes. The same skies, the same seas. The same faces… But they know that everything was different. Their banal everyday life which they knew with such familiarity had been transfigured, They had been given new eyes and the solid objects and stone faces which filled their space became transparent. It was as if they saw invisible things which were visible only to those who had seen the angel troubling the waters of the pool – the dead man.
Normal mirrors reflect things which are present; but dreams show things which are absent… their stories about the dead man were stories about themselves. Stories not about what they were (that is what they saw when they looked in their mirrors…) but stories about what they desired to be: this is what they saw as they faced their dreams…
Inside our flesh, and mixed with the noises of Death, there is written an indelible story of beauty. And even without knowing we know that we are destined to this happiness: the Prince must meet Sleeping Beauty.
The villagers remembered. Their stories were the return of a lost time: the past, desired, repressed, forgotten, dead, resurrected from the grave.
…How could I explain to her that the story was always happening in the present just because it had never happened in the past, in the far distant land?
…the beautiful wants to return… its time is sacred; it is reborn every morning; it is the time of resurrection.
…Once upon a time, in a far distant land…” : a cloud of mist covers the narrative to conceal its real time and space which are ‘now’ and ‘here’… the ‘once upon a time, in a far distant land’ is a metaphorical was of speaking about a present loss.
p.39-41, The Poet, the Warrior, the Prophet
God of the all and the nothing
the making and unmade at the same time
the span of the universe and the seed
You believe in me and I must believe in You
the wheel turns, the fire burns
Allelujah, Allelujah
Talitha Fraser
Hey, here… I brought you something.
What is it?
It’s just a little branch I picked up. I think it’s beautiful.
Some trash you picked up somewhere?
One man’s trash is another…
Oh. You don’t want it?
No. Why would I?
Then I’ll keep it.
What for?!
That’s what I do.
Look for the beauty in things no one wants.
Look for the beauty in things that seem broken and useless and try and find a place for them.
It’s the way you see things that makes them matter.
(photo credit: chedmyers.org)
(to the Plowshares 8, with love)
by Daniel Berrigan
Some stood up once, and sat down.
Some walked a mile, and walked away.
Some stood up twice, then sat down.
“It’s too much,” they cried.
Some walked two miles, then walked away.
“I’ve had it,” they cried,
Some stood and stood and stood.
They were taken for fools,
they were taken for being taken in.
Some walked and walked and walked –
they walked the earth,
they walked the waters,
they walked the air.
“Why do you stand?” they were asked, and
“Why do you walk?”
“Because of the children,” they said, and
“Because of the heart, and
“Because of the bread,”
“Because the cause is
the heart’s beat, and
the children born, and
the risen bread.”
Reflecting these past weeks on the life and works of Daniel Berrigan who died 30 April 2016, he is now among that cloud of witnesses (Heb 12:1) that ask us to ask of ourselves: “On what will you spend your life?”. I think it is fair to say that he knew something of endurance, on the cost of that he commented: “I think it’s kind of the price you pay for the bus ride”.
In his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey suggests writing your own eulogy – what do you imagine you want to hear said about you by family, friends, colleagues… are you making the choices now… living the life now… that will lead you where you want to go? …that will see you develop and grow up to be the best you can imagine? I don’t imagine Daniel Berrigan did this exercise but I do not doubt he was effective. Why did he live as he did? Make the choices that he did?
“Because the cause is
the heart’s beat, and
the children born, and
the risen bread.”
What will you live for?
What makes your life meaningful will give you a meaningful life.
Do not wait until you are dying to start.
Apologies for my bitsy notes my hand wasn’t keeping up very well! Premise is this: What if our experience of the declining position and viability of the Western Church were good news? What if the confusion, failure, and ‘lost-ness’ of this ecclesial ‘dark night’ could be inhabited as a space where new ways of being church and of engaging the needs of the world might be revealed and lived into? This lecture will explore how the practice of contemplation might enable us to embrace rather than resist this experience, reconnect with the gospel dynamic of death and resurrection, and also be renewed for participation in divine liturgy, mission and justice.
photo source: http://www.eremos.org.au
Late 20th century saw a resurgence of contemplative practice, Merton, Keating, John Main – disciplined practice of silent prayer – waiting on God in deepening receptivity.
Not our own thoughts, even spiritual ones. Contemplative practice is healing for our culture – slowness, connectedness, way/method of prayer – grow into a personal relationship with God. Mystic = personal experience of God. Not a passing emotional state or passed down from leaders. In meditation we verify the truths of our own faith. What can mediation offer to the whole church body? Reconnects to gospel death and resurrection – engaging the decline and disorientation. “Emptiness” in he life of faith. Meditation – laying aside thought and waiting on God – demanding practice. Planning, worrying, daydreaming… need to lay aside self-consciousness itself. Thoughts carry egoic identification with it. Deep subversion of the self. It takes nerve to become quiet. Radical self-forgetting. Described by Cassian – “complete simplicity that demands not less than everything”; Buddhist – “eye that sees everything but not itself”; Main – “hand yourself over and hold nothing back, become self-dispossessed so as to receive our life back as a gift”. Experienced differently as individuals, how will it be experienced as a church? Jesus gives self to God. We claim vocation to be like Christ. Church won’t give it’s life/identity over – seeks to secure its identity – doesn’t like questions or change. Fails to realise the transformation it proclaims. What does ecclesial emptying look like?
liturgy
In ‘Writing the Icon of the Heart’, Ross describes being on a boat surrounded by icebergs and glaciers “stupefied by glory” – went to do communion. Inadequate to where they were. Cup and wine were an intrusion. Would have been okay if reached for our hands in silence or to pass elements but no, pulled out the book and started to read the words I usually loved. Words that shrank rather than grew…Distraction. Not illuminating. Need to get in touch with alienation… playacting. Not in touch with God, or my sin, or grace – went home frustrated.
Liturgy needs to point beyond itself, not be – or try to make itself – at the centre. Needs to emerge from deep listening and pre-packaged agenda is IN the way not OPENING up a way. our lives are already sacred and liturgy tries to remind us of that (doesn’t give us/make us sacred).
Words affect who we are and our becoming – affect our formation. Liturgy can’t be an end to itself. Must be willing to talk about self-dispossession and be willing to be dispossessed… not more relevant or ‘contemporary’ – a liturgy will be effective only insofar as it effaces itself. Every true sign must be self-effacing. Must start in silence and be listening and responding to what is given.
mission
does your church have meetings about getting new people to come and how to make them stay? do we extend good hospitality? is our community growing? sustaining? are we seen as welcoming? are we living up to our own idea of how welcoming we are? Genuine desire to do justice and be justified (confirmed we’re doing the right thing). Self-referencing and self-conscious… self-centred instead of “just”.
Genuine desire to welcome, but also desire to be ‘seen’ as “most inclusive parish” >> this is death dealing. Reassured not to see identity as “good”, give ourselves wholly, handing over ecclesial consciousness instead of wondering how we’re doing it >> get on with it.
Other experiences of Benedictus:
Community made up of secondary teachers (high needs students: drugs), climate change scientists, paediatrician, counsellors, lawyers, healthcare workers… don’t want to take energy from their vocation. Encourage and resource them to do the good work they are already called to… church might not “socially engaged”. Freedom, integrity and passion to love.
Encourage formation in contemplative ways – engage the world in different ways. Reflective peer groups. Signs of life and new ways of being. Relate to unhelpful patterns with awareness. “Why do I have this conversation with my mother every time…” , complaints about work but not making change… structured formation, how can you be liberated? Church calls us to this. Formation… in God’s work in the world, lay formation/lay ministry… not calling people into church building but equipping and sending out. Take these vocations as seriously as it takes its own. Can the church serve people as they serve the world? Not a church trying to preserve its own place and identity. But one that consents to its own self-effacement – we might not know if this group makes a different in individuals visiting once or regulars going back to their work… we might never know. Faithful communities point away from themselves. Well-meaning/patronising/complacent when needing the accolade of knowing the difference its making. Church needs to be faithful to its own vocation, as it discerns.
There is still gender related injustice. Anglican delegation of women in ministry “keep agitating”, lots of energy but little progress. Agitating a sign of false spirit. Agitating is a block to healing – avoiding what was necessary. Stop. Risk being fully present to the worlds pain and our response to it… discern your response out of that. Social action… not saying ‘do nothing’ but Rowan Williams ‘internal contemplation, makes space for truth, for Gods’s reality to come through.’
Depth, broken openness required of us as individuals and communities. Transformation of imagination and relationships – climate change, reconciliation with indigenous, gender… need to become aware of what we resist and fear. Let our hearts break open to receive larger vision. UN: St George slaying the dragon/Isaiah weapons to ploughshares… Leunig does this through prophetic invitation that inspires a bigger imagination.
what can we do?
Prayer of the heart: poverty/listening. Formation/contemplative action. Gift of our present ecclesial circumstances (moments of unintentional contemplation – moment of truth/revelation, stripped of illusion) inner alien and unsettling truth. Discovering ourselves to be less than we thought. Inadequacies. Deprived of familiar comforts – social status, political power… running on empty. Stave off descent into emptiness. What if rather than resisting we embrace the empty space? Disciples – didn’t know what they were hoping for. Poverty o spirit – reaching of our boundaries of being (can’t go on by ourselves) – made bigger. Be with broken-heartedness and poverty… live into the gift of new and expanded life. Not all at once… but little bits.
Need to be adequate to depths of worlds need, let go of limiting identity – let ourselves go – fall empty-handed into the hands of the living God. Follow Jesus into depth of death and chaos.
Become uncreated to be created. Broken to be a blessing to all.
Anabaptist/Quaker traditions haven’t had the identity/power in the same ways – what can these traditions offer us? Still need to be accountable to self. Still ways to manipulate e.g. silence can be wielded to mean something. Is the leader and the liturgy connected to deep ground? Not about individual preference/styles or arguing against communal worship. Sign is the vehicle that takes us to the encounter.
The church has no place of its own to secure and no need to be defensive.
There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within. And yet the same instinct tells us that this change is a recovery of that which is deepest, most original, most personal in ourselves. To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.
~ Thomas Merton
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