Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Steve Bynum - "Targeted" - A Response to the Buffalo Massacre

I wonder if I've ever really understood the gospel - Susan Carson

I Wonder If I’ve Ever Really Understood the Gospel

I’ve started a Master of Ministry at St. Stephens University. It’s a beautiful and challenging journey, and I’m just getting started. With theologians and teachers like David Moore, LA Henry, Bradley Jersak and Peter Fitch (to name just a few), I’m finding a bigger and more beautiful gospel. On the way, I’m unlearning a lot, and I’m grateful. Here’s just a glimpse into my takeaways from our first module.

I wonder if I’ve ever really understood the gospel. Yes, I’ve been following Jesus for decades.  Yes, I’ve been transformed and healed over time. Yes, I’ve prayed with a lot of people and seen some beautiful things happen. But my privilege is a veil that keeps me from seeing the gospel fully as liberation. 

I’ve talked about freedom, yes, but mostly in terms of personal freedom and healing. Freedom for myself and others from personal oppression in a spiritual sense. It’s a privileged view of liberation because I don’t feel the need for more. Yes, I see the inequities, the things wrong in our world, and they grieve me.  But I don’t feel them in a marginalized, queer, black or brown kind of way. Not at all.  

I wonder if I’ve ever really understood the gospel. If the gospel is good news to the poor, then I can’t understand or proclaim it from a privileged position. I can only understand, proclaim and live the good news of liberation from the margins, in solidarity with–or better, perhaps, in submission to–the poor, the ignored, the despised, the un-privileged. And I can only do this if I intentionally become less. If I yield my seat at the table to voices who understand liberation in a way I never will. I must become a listener, a follower, one who submits my privilege as a platform for others. If my privilege serves a purpose at all, it serves only to empower a liberation movement led by people who understand the good news far better than I do. 

If it’s not good news to the most marginalized person in the room, it’s not good news.  

I wonder if I’ve ever really understood the gospel. That thought feels freeing and terrifying. Because I don’t really believe–not really–that there’s enough at the table for everyone. That the wedding feast is a feast for all of us. Is it possible that those of us who live with privilege are the most impoverished in spirit? We hold and cling and build from fear. 

I wonder if I’ve ever really understood the gospel. That a very good God comes to us in human form, in poverty and in solidarity with the poor and marginalized and sick, to show us the way to be human. Self-emptying, self-giving, self-sacrificing love. Jesus leads a liberation movement that is social and relational and costly.  

Or maybe, as a woman, I have tasted this. Maybe I know more of this than I’ve let myself know. But I’ve accepted it or owned it in a way that hasn’t made room for anger. What if I let myself get angry? This question from David Moore stays with me. 

The first black people I remember seeing were the servers at my grandparents’ country club. The white people sat at the table. The black people stood around us, waiting on us. As I hold the memory, I see Jesus standing with them. Then I see a bigger table; we are all around it together. It just keeps getting bigger. And the bigness distances us from each other. 

What if it’s not about one bigger table that distances?  What If together, in Christ, our bread and wine, we are the table? Together as one, there is enough. What if the communion table within each of us makes us one?

The contemplative journey—silence, listening, attention—is about becoming less. Emptying. So that what is false and shaped by un-love, damaged by the violence of life, takes up less space. So that what is false and loud and self-promoting gets quiet to make space for others to breathe, for others to enter and be heard. Here I begin to notice that it’s less about my individual self and more about the whole.  

This is the kind of diminishing I choose (on my best days). Not diminished by others, but chosen by me. I become more, not less, as I live in the union of love. In this space I learn to offer myself freely, without fear, becoming more fully myself.

What if I become more whole and holy not in my individual self but in my connection with others? In holy attention to the other that makes space. Here the lines between our individual selves become more porous and the love begins to seep through. All rooted in love, we grow together to become the banqueting table. 

 

--Susan Carson (she/her) founded Roots&Branches in 2012 with a passion to create safe spaces for transformational encounters with Jesus through listening prayer and spiritual practices. As a spiritual guide, she has facilitated meaningful encounters with Jesus for hundreds of spiritual seekers. Susan is author of rooted (IN): Thriving in Connection with God, Yourself, and Others, and host of the rooted (IN).ten.tionally podcast. Susan has a breadth of leadership experience, serving as the founder and leader of Christian AIDS Network, as curriculum and communications developer for Kerus Global Education, as Pastor and Director of Curriculum for Vineyard Community Church, and as founder and director of her own business Last Word Communications. Susan has over 25 years of experience in training and curriculum development. She’s a certified Spiritual Director through Sustainable Faith School of Spiritual Direction.  Find out more at susancarson.net and rootsandbranchesnetwork.com.

Cole Arthur Riley's "THIS HERE FLESH" - Review by Felicia Murrell

In crafting This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley says she knew she wanted the book to end at liberation. And that she wanted to start at dignity, to ground people in this belief that this is a journey, something that feels most true about the black origin. “The origin story of the world,” Cole writes, “and the dark and stars that hold it is one of dignity. The divine is in us.”¹

Cole believes this journey of inherent worth is one we all deserve to take. And I believe This Here Flesh, Riley’s brilliantly poignant debut book, is a worthy guide.

Paraphrasing the author’s own words: In the trajectory between dignity and liberation, Cole Arthur Riley shares the immediacy and lasting effects of pain filtered through fear and expressed in lament and rage. Then the book cycles back through repair, memory and joy.

Dr. Barbara Holmes calls This Here Flesh “a tapestry of memories and invites people in.”² And like Dr. Holmes, I was “completely swept up.” Enthralled. Enchanted.

The journey through remembering can lead to our liberation. But it will require our participation and our surrender. “…we are worthy of tending to the pain of the past,”³ writes Cole in This Here Flesh.

Paul Young says, “the unexposed is the unhealed.” There is no trajectory to liberation that does not chart a course through Truth. “You will know the truth,” says Jesus, “and the truth will set you free.”⁴

“… I think every act of fidelity to a truth in you is an act of liberation,”⁵ writes Cole.

Denial does not liberate. Liberation unfolds in our moment by moment, daily participation with Love - seeing ourselves through the eyes of Divine Love, believing what Christ believes about us, aligning the ways that we live and move and have our being with Love’s truth.

“…contemplative spirituality is a fidelity to beholding the divine in all things.”⁶ …even in yourself. The journey through re-memberance begins with your own origin story, your inherent dignity. Remembering that you are the very good of Creator’s workmanship.

In every place within your being that you have labeled yourself as ‘not’ or ‘less’ or any measure of comparison rooted in scarcity and inadequacy, may you once again be re-membered to your significance, to the truth of your being. You are good. You are good. You are very good.

“… name the truth of [your] dignity like a mercy new each morning,”⁷ invites Cole Arthur Riley.

“How can anyone who is made to bear likeness to the maker of the cosmos be anything less than glory? This is inherent dignity,”⁸ she writes.

“…we ourselves are made of the dust, mysteriously connected to the goodness of the creation that surrounds us.”⁹

“If God really is three parts in one like they say, it means that God’s wholeness is in a multitude.…the individual, collective, and cosmic journey is the path of unearthing and existing in our liberation. …To answer the question of how one becomes attuned to liberation, I think we must ask ourselves: What sounds are drowning it out?”¹⁰

We can never be whole alienated in our separate selves. Our wholeness is intricately bound in a symbiotic relationship to the circle of life. Who or what is drowning your sound?

Cynthia Bourgeault uses the etymology of the Latin word personare: to resonate with and describes personhood as one through whom the whole resounds.¹¹

How is the whole resounding through you? How are you taking your place in our collective belonging And if you aren’t, what’s holding you back from the Circle? Where do you need to be re-membered so that you can liberate your unique expression of Love?

“I don’t know if liberation depends on our reconciliation with others,” writes Cole Arthur Riley in This Here Flesh, “but I am certain it at least depends on our reconciliation with ourselves.”¹²

Reconciling myself to myself leads to shalom. “…like the ancient ritual that precedes the Eucharist,”¹³ travel around yourself, she invites, and pass the peace, grounding yourself in “embodied declarations of dignity and worth.”¹⁴

Wholeness

• As I participate with Love, I live and move and have my being in ways that are congruent with my inherent dignity.

• I honor and behold the divine in my humanity. Both are worthy of my compassion.

Peace be with me

Soundness of mind

• I no longer imagine vain things about myself.

• I believe what Love believes about me.

Peace be with me

Safety

• I treat myself with non-judgment and tenderness.

• I will not participate in my own self harm. I am safe with myself.

• I am a safe place for myself.

Peace be with me

Exemption from havoc, rage or war

• I am not at war with myself.

• I am no longer driven by or addicted to chaos.

• There is no rage or tempest within.

Peace be with me

“What is shalom but dignity stretched out like a blanket over the cosmos?”¹⁵

Pause and think about it. How did repeating those declarations feel? Did you note any tension or unease? Was it comforting (or awkward) to pass the peace to yourself? Where has the instrument of peace been withheld from you? Might this journey be an invitation from Divine Love to reclaim it? What embodied declarations would you add to those above?

“…dignity,” Cole writes, “was not and is not something that can be taken. Glory can’t be unborn. The devil didn’t make anyone, and I don’t think he has the power to unmake anyone. Our walk to liberation requires us to parse truth from trick. And to ask ourselves, What does evil have to gain in tricking us into believing we are anything less than glorious? I would venture to guess it swallows our belonging first; and then it colonizes our body.…And last, I believe, it steals our love. For who can accept love that they do not believe exists for them?”¹⁶

Start at your origin story. But don’t start at the pain, don’t start with negation. Start with the profound depth of Love. Start with Divine Love singing over you and rejoicing over you with shouts of joy. Remember who you are and where you come from… Remember the Love. Let it resound in every part of who you are until the whole resounds through you.

“To be human in an aching world,” writes Cole Arthur Riley, “is to know our dignity and become people who safeguard the dignity of everything around us....Everything should be called by its name.”¹⁷

In the beholding of our own liberation, may we participate with Love as agents of justice in the restoration of dignity and freedom for all. Say their name.

 

FOOTNOTES

1 Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh Convergent Books (2022), pg. 5

2“The Cosmic We Season 2, Episode 5 podcast, “Exploring the Power of Story with Cole Arthur Riley,” Hosts: Dr. Barbara Holmes & Donny Bryant

3 Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh Convergent Books (2022), pg. 136

4 John 8:32, ESV

5 Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh Convergent Books (2022), pg. 188

6 Ibid. p. x

7 Ibid. p. 5

8 Ibid. p.7

9 Ibid. p.7

10 Ibid. p.7

11 Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing: Reclaiming An Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart, Jossey-Bass (2003).

12 Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh Convergent Books (2022), pg. 144

13 Ibid. p.144

14 Ibid. p.125

15 Ibid. p.8

16 Ibid. p. 9

17 Ibid. p.134

Reflections on David Milgard - Wayne Northey

It was a shock, followed by great sadness, to have heard the news today of David’s passing. 

In 1989, newly hired to head the Restorative Justice work of Mennonite Central Committee Canada, I was perusing correspondence of my predecessor, Restorative Justice pioneer, Dave Worth, and discovered David Milgaard in those letter exchanges. At the time he was in Stony Mountain Prison, near Winnipeg. We began our own correspondence that soon developed into a warm friendship. These past several years, we remained in touch regularly. David, who was pure heart, was a loyal friend. 

Through the tireless effort of his mother, Joyce, who died in March 2020, liberal MP Lloyd Axworthy raised his case in Parliament in 1991, claiming it was a great travesty of justice. On April 16, 1992, David was released from prison on a stay of proceedings—instead of receiving a new trial. He had served 23 years for a rape and murder he had not committed. 

Not until July 18, 1997, was David exonerated through DNA evidence. The Saskatchewan government finally apologized for its wrongful police investigation, prosecution, and imprisonment. The real rapist and killer—since deceased Larry Fisher—had been known to police at the time due to other sexual assault convictions, had been living in the same neighbourhood as his victim, and had been questioned about the crime and released by police... Vancouver’s The Innocence Project, and many others, estimate that as many as one in ten convicted of a serious and violent crime knew nothing about it at all, until their charge was laid. 

It took two additional years for David to receive compensation for pain, suffering, lost wages, and legal fees. 

He was only 17 years old when first incarcerated. What could have been the best years of his life were snatched from him. Despite that, I never experienced David expressing self-pity or bitterness. He had been raped in prison, shot in the back by police after an escape, suffered many prisoner indignities, and attempted suicide. 

After his release, David lived for a few years in Vancouver. Our family saw a lot of him then. He often would hop on a bus, seemingly heading wherever it was going, then he’d call us on his way back to pick him up for a visit—once, with a stray dog—at about 2:00 a.m.! When eventually compensated, his wanderlust continued by jet. 

David keenly embraced Restorative Justice: a peacemaking not war-making response to crime. He excoriated prisons, not only because of his harrowing 23 years inside but because he knew all reputable evidence-based studies worldwide find they almost invariably achieve far less than, if not the inverse of, their stated lofty aims. David knew/knew of Order of Canada recipient Ruth Morris who co-edited with Canadian criminologist Gordon West The Case for Penal Abolition, which presents a compelling rationale. In August 2020, David and I recorded on Zoom a presentation about aspects of that (RJWorld eConference, August 22 - 31, 2020: David Milgaard & Wayne Northey). 

David was appointed and remained deeply committed to the Independent Review Board Working Group, an entity whose creation was ordered by Justin Trudeau in December 2019. 

In 2016, he invited me to attend Simon Fraser University’s Ting Forum on Justice Policy: a Symposium on Wrongful Convictions and Criminal Investigative Failures (Session 6: Voices of the Wrongfully Convicted / The Innocence Project - School of Criminology - Simon Fraser University (sfu.ca)). Along with others, David presented powerfully about "the crime of punishment" (title of famous psychiatrist Karl Menninger’s book). Post-incarceration, he ever echoed Canadian philosopher John McMurtry’s words: 

As with past monstrous systems of cruel and systematic oppression, we see how morally blind the conventionalised [retributivist] mindset can become. 

David always wished to make this sink in: a tunnel vision justice system that brutally scapegoats its “guilty” victims gets it wrong by all estimates one in ten times! And who, he wondered, holds all its actors accountable? 

Thank you and farewell David, my dear friend, for a life of deep caring, passionately lived. As often approvingly said in prison, you “walked the talk.” 

—Wayne Northey 

 

"The Adages of Erasmus" - Philosophy, Formation and Wisdom - Ron Dart

The Adages of Erasmus: Philosophy, Formation, and Wisdom 

I can hardly say what nectar, sweet as honey, I sip from your most delightful Adages, rich source of nectar as they are, what lovely flowers of every mind I gather thence like a honeybee, carrying them off to my hive and building them into a fabric of what I write. To their perusal, I have devoted two hours each day.

—Niccolo Sagundino

As an expression of the Renaissance love of antiquity and as a work of instruction and reference, the Adages is unsurpassed in its sweep… There is a close relationship between the Adages and Erasmus’ other widely known works, from The Praise of Folly to the Colloquies.

—William Barker       

As a synthesis of classical and Renaissance proverb lore the Adages has never really been superseded.

—William Barker

There is a way of doing philosophy that is about parsing various arguments, using inductive, deductive, and logical arguments to reach reasonable conclusions, or studying the different positions of philosophers across the centuries of time. Such an approach to thinking and being has played a prominent role in shaping how the discipline, understanding and significance of philosophy are practiced. But, there is another approach to philosophy that comes as a check, balance, and counter to these rather orthodox tendencies. This approach is more concerned about wisdom and insight, formation and ordering desires, and the use of parables, stories, myths, and varied folk tales to illuminate the journey. It was such an understanding of philosophy that held Erasmus and his ever-growing Adages.

The Adages drew deeply and thoroughly from the Greek and Latin wisdom traditions and the Christian internalization of such an aphoristic and parabolic approach to insight, short stories are portals into the larger cathedral of seeing the journey in a fuller and more discerning way and manner. The Adages went through many an edition and grew larger and more expansive as reflections as the compilation developed.

The initial publication of the Adages left the press in 1500, while Erasmus was still a young man in his early 30s. The turbulence of the emerging reformation was still in the future. The 818 proverbs listed in the 1500 edition were shorter, commentaries on them briefer. But, each of the 818 graphic tales told, each summarizing markings to note on the journey are keepers not to miss. The growing interest in such wisdom tales meant Erasmus was inspired to add to his collection. Erasmus took to Italy in 1508 and, when there, met one of the foremost printers of the time: Aldus Manuzio. Manuzio walked the extra mile to encourage and support Erasmus in his journey with proverbial aphorisms, the “hasten slowly” and symbol of the dolphin and anchor but a pointer to the layered tale of “The Labours of Hercules”.  The 1508 edition of the Adages was much expanded. The 3260 aphorisms now included a growing commentary on them. But, in Erasmus’ sagacious and applied way, he blended the aphorism as a timeless insight to a timely application to the dilemmas and challenges of the early 16th-century ethos. In short, the timeless wisdom and myths of the classical tradition could still speak in a timely way to the obvious problems of Erasmus’ historic and troubling context.    

One of the more perennial adages that held both the classical way of thinking (much concealed in the literal and external, much more revealed in the deeper internal probes) was the myth of “The Sileni of Alcibiades.” I supervised an MA thesis that was completed in 2005 called “The Silenus Metaphor: The Inner Spirit Theology of Erasmus. and the Colloquies”.  The external reality of Silenus tends to be offensive, bordering on the grotesque and lacking appeal, whereas the inner reality of Silenus is ripe with beauty, insight, and wisdom. Those who only see with the physical eye see not—those who have been trained to see with the inner, searching, and spiritual eye see much that the literal and empirical eye sees not. Such is, when understood aright, the purpose of the proverb, adage, and folk tale.

The third and more engaged social and political commentary of the Adages was published in 1515. Margaret Phillips has called this Erasmus’ “Utopian edition”—gone are the wisdom saying that merely float above time and history—the 1515 edition does have a tendency to apply such insights to the pressing social, political, religious, and economic issues of the time. The reformation was heating up in both the Roman Catholic and potential Protestant tribes and Erasmus was alert to such realities—his first revised edition of the New Testament was published in 1516—many were the revisions that questioned the Vulgate and offended the conservative Roman Catholic Sanhedrin.

The Adages continued to grow in size and scope as an eager audience delighted and were charmed by such compact and succinct summaries of insights and longer commentaries on them. Some of the adages grew in length, such as “War is sweet to those who have not tried it,” which became a bestselling booklet. Another work, “Twice cooked cabbage is death,” which refers to something said that is silly that can be initially tolerated but when mindlessly repeated, again and again, tests the patience to the tolerant extreme.

The fourth edition of the Adages was published in 1517-1518, the fifth edition in 1520, the sixth in 1523, the seventh in 1526, the eighth in 1528, the ninth in 1533, and the final edition months before Erasmus’ death in 1536. The final total of adages reached a staggering 4151 by the end of Erasmus’ formal publishing journey. After the death of Erasmus, additions were made to the rather large and imposing collection and many were the shorter and more abridged versions.  There can be no doubt, though, that Erasmus used the adage and proverbial approach to formation and wisdom to highlight how the classical world that he has inherited had much wisdom and insight, and by common grace, saw deeply and meaningfully into the substantive issues of our all too human journey.

The publication of The Adages of Erasmus in 2001 (more than 20 years now since its publication) by the University of Toronto Press is, in many ways, a tome more than worth the owning—like Sagundino, I would agree, the nectar is indeed sweet, lovely flowers visited, honey bees of insight carried to the hive of the mind--a daily lingering and inwardly digesting of them essential for a deeper formation of desires and longings to their true home, hearth, and end. Even though The Adages of Erasmus does not include all the 4151 adages, there is more than enough in this bounty of the book to be a hiking companion until our journey comes to an end.

Ron Dart                             

When We Welcome the Child - Kenneth Tanner

Among earth’s biological species humans are the least instinctually equipped to survive. It takes much more than a decade to give a child a fighting chance.

The nascent humans and human children of our species are the most vulnerable on our planet without the constant unconditional care and regard of parents, communities, and nations. And God chose to become a nascent human! Ponder that.

Yet in a desire for power we “weaponized” these little humans, to win seats, control outcomes, and force what can only be acquired by the heart and welcomed freely: the immeasurable, timeless gift of the child.

The majority of these little ones are future women and the children of the marginalized: persons of color and the poor, who in their poverty and ethnicity bless societies with the very presence of God.

In the parade of memes and sound bites on all sides it’s the child that’s missing and the child that’s exploited for our narcissistic cultural conflicts, as are the children at our southern border, bloodied in the war-torn apartment complexes of Europe and the Middle East, hungry to learn in America’s inner-city schools, the neglected and hopeless of our fentanyl wastelands.

Yes, women are exploited and abused and left to fend for themselves, bearing the greatest burden of human existence without complaint and with grace, and their bodies are sacred, owing of a far deeper reverence than either American extreme seems capable of imagining.

But it’s not just the bodies of women that are at stake; it’s also the bodies of the smallest of our species, the faces of the poorest, which as our wisdom teaches are one body with us, and with us comprising one human body in Jesus Christ.

Reverencing the bodies of humans—women and children—means treasuring them in our laws and in our hearts by advocating for their priority and providing for their natural flourishing.

One cannot enforce this vision of “all for one and one for all” interdependence. It’s costly and depends on the “let it be to me” of every human.

Yet what a gift awaits! When we welcome the refugee child, the abused child, the unwanted child, the unexpected child, and women, we welcome God.