Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Athanasius: God did not make death - Fr. Kenneth Tanner

Athanasius says that God saw humanity falling from existence into nothingness, that God could not bear to lose the creatures he loved to non-existence—the ones in all creation that alone were made in the image of his eternity—and so the Son takes on the one human nature shared by all humans in order to rescue humanity from death.

I love the beauty of that.

Our human predicament finds one of its simplest biblical expressions in Wisdom 1:13-15,2:23-24 (which happens to be one way the lectionary preacher can go this coming Sunday if she chooses to preach on the Old Testament).

Here’s what those passages say:

“God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things so that they might exist; the generative forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them, and the dominion of Hades is not on earth.

“For righteousness is immortal. God created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his company experience it.”

The origin of human death is not God but “the devil’s envy” and humanity’s subsequent fall from the incorruptible life of God God intended for humanity.

Human death has its origin in demonic and human evil, in a privation of the good; death is here described (long before Paul) as opposed to God’s desire for humanity.

We cannot thrive as unalloyed cynics - Kenneth Tanner

Diogenes Sitting in His Tub (1860) by Jean-Léon Gérôme

I run with cynics. I find them in the church. I find them in bars and coffee houses and at baseball games and all over the screens we stare at all the time.

And the first thing I want to say is that I am at times one myself. The shadow of the world breeds cynicism in our souls. It is wise at times to be mistrusting of strangers, of leaders, of institutions, of politicians, of the people we are programmed all our lives to trust.

I get it.

I once served a weekend in jail for a protest. I have had asthma most of my life and it used to be a lot more severe than it is now. I woke up on my jail cot gasping for air. I shuffled across the common area to the nearest guard and handed him my medical slip. It was clear I was in distress. He crumpled it up, threw it on the ground, and walked away.

In one moment a lot of things I’d trusted in my privilege melted away. I have never thought of prisoners or guards in quite the standard way again. Now jails and prisons—when I am in them visiting prisoners or guards—are one of the few places I am able to see the world most clearly, in its brokenness and in its beauty.

In places of incarceration, all the bullshit and all of the distractions disappear. The failure of human justice and the goodness of divine mercy crystallize. I am not able to deny that the world is a living hell subservient to death. I am not able to escape to a realm of fantasy. I do some of my clearest thinking and living when I am behind bars.

And here’s what I’ve learned:

We cannot live well—we especially cannot thrive—as unalloyed cynics. It is not only not healthy, it is not honest to remain a vigilant skeptic. Eventually it becomes a kind of denial. Yes, the natural order is broken and people are crooked but that’s not nearly the whole story. Not by a long shot.

I need gratitude to live and to thrive and such thankfulness is as much about attitude—about an internal disposition granted by grace—as it is about gratitude’s gift to see things as they actually are, the capacity to remain in child-like awe at the wonder and beauty of everything even when you know all is not as it should be. Not by a long shot.

I need what Jesus calls the eyes to see—the eyes of faith, the eyes of the heart. I need to see the world and its people with the eyes of God, with the human and divine vision of Jesus that is mine by the Spirit.

If on a cloudless night you drive on Interstate 40 far enough into the desert of New Mexico and pull your car over and get out and look up, you’ll see a curtain made of stars, a fabric of lights, like a billowing lacework in the sky.

Have you ever seen a doe or a mare give birth or watched a Clark Little video of sapphire waves crashing on the dark blonde sands of the North Shore Oahu or walked among giant sequoias, their trunks worn by standing in forests for millennia?

And it’s not just raw nature that inspires wonder. There is the life of great cities like New York, Paris, or Shanghai, bustling hives of creative activity, everywhere the artistry of men and women who have erected from nature an intricate fabricated world to inhabit.

And while there’s plenty of darkness close at hand in our cities to inspire suspicion and detachment there is also—if one looks beyond the unswept alleys and the dead ahead stares of the rushed and preoccupied, beyond our collective caution and greed and disinterest—something to behold of the collective imagination and ingenuity and diversity of humanity, whom God has made in their image.

And there is also human courage and loyalty and empathy and self-sacrifice in places that are not shiny with constructed beauty or limitless resources. In places where the good things necessary to life are in shortest supply, we find the image of God in men and women is very much alive and well. We find a pure joy for life in places of genuine poverty.

We find pure joy amid hell.

It is, of course, Christ the human who is the true measure of humanity, who laid down his life so that we might find our life, our humanity, in him. And he is in his actions and words finally the end of all cynicism and suspicion and fear, the origin of faith and trust and confidence.

Look to Christ and trust and you will find joy not as anticipation of another place alien to earth or as a denial of this fractured one but by a transfiguring vision that sees this darkened planet with the vibrant colors and sacred textures of the kingdom God intends right here, right now, and onward, world without end.

You will see this created world not by the natural light of the sun or moon but by the uncreated light of the Father that shines on the face of Jesus Christ, the light that illuminates every thing and every person and reveals its, reveals her, hidden deep down goodness.

Review of Stan Paterson’s, ICE MAN - by Ron Dart

Review of Stan Paterson’s, ICE MAN: The Making of a Glaciologist. Papyngay Press, Oregon, 2013.  Review by Ron Dart

I have had an abiding interest in glacier trekking and glaciers for many a decade. Many tend to see the multiple receding and melting glaciers as climate canaries of sorts, alerting us to the obvious shifts and changes in global temperatures. Needless to say, the political right and left tend to differ rather graphically and how they interpret the causes and reasons for global warming. But, there can be no doubt we are living through the midst of a very real transition environmentally and the implications are not yet fully with us. There are, of course, the predictable henny-penny catastrophic types and, their inevitable counterparts, the deniers of the problem. Those who have lingered with glaciers for many years or, more importantly, viewed their life and research on glaciers as a vocation, Ice Man: The Making of a Glaciologist is a must-read primer.

There can be no doubt that Stan Paterson has lived the glaciologist vocation and Ice Man is a must read page turner that recounts and records Paterson’s journey, in 15 ample chapters, from the early 1950s  when Paterson was involved with the British North Greenland expedition to the Canadian Arctic, Alps and BC Coast Range. The vocation of a glaciologist presupposes a range of mountaineering skills and Paterson’s well-told tale threads together, in exquisite detail, his mountaineering and glacier life. The publication of his standard text, The Physics of Glaciers, has gone through a variety of changes since it was initially published in 1969 and its most recent edition (4^th) in 2011.

Paterson was given a PhD from UBC in 1962 for his pioneering work and in 2012, rightly so, he was honoured with the Richardson Medal of the International Glaciological Society.

The Preface by I.H.M. Smart, Introduction by David Fisher and the charming Forward by Myrtle Simpson (“Mountaineering with Stan Paterson”) make for a generous foray into Paterson’s well lived life as a mountaineer and glaciologist. Those who are keen to follow the unfolding journey of Paterson should take their time to savour each chapter as his life matures and his experience makes him one of the leading authorities in the world of glaciers. The fact Paterson worked for the Polar Shelf Project from 1962-1980 positioned him well for in-depth research on glaciers. Those who have less patience for the long and twisting path (chapters are short and informative, though) taken by Paterson in his mountaineering and glacier journey should turn to the final chapter, “Summing Up” (15), although much will be missed by such a shortcut.

There can be no doubt that Ice Man is a superb aerial overview of one of the most significant glaciologists of the 20^thcentury, and the fact his journey from Scotland to Canada opened up such possibilities for him in an area that is now front and centre for much research in our growing ecological crises.

montani semper liberi

Ron Dart              

 

Hope and the Tragic: Robinson Jeffers’ Alpine Christ, Milosz and Merton - Ron Dart

 

Jeffers room at Detjeen’s Big Sur

My wife (Karin) and I took, for our 40^thanniversary, to the Ucluelet/Tofino area on the West Coast of Canada. The waves from the ocean continually rose in thick white foams, crested, then crashed on the shoreline. Rocks and waves waged their ongoing, day by day, week by week, month and year by year contest, the craggy and rugged rocks momentarily protected we humans from being overwhelmed and swallowed up by the ocean, the tragic always nearby.

I was rereading the correspondence between Thomas Merton and Czeslaw Milosz when on our 40^th, the correspondence lasting from 1958 until Merton’s death in 1968 (2018 being the 50^thyear since Merton’s death and 60^thsince his probing and animated correspondence with Milosz began). I was taken by Milosz’s respect for Robinson Jeffers and the way Jeffers dared to gaze into the obstinate reality of the tragic and not flinch from going to such places---Jeffers and Milosz had suffered much in their lives and they had lived through a period of Western history in which much sadness and tragedy abounded. It was not that Merton did not want to face the tragic in the same way Milosz and Jeffers did (Merton followed Camus in such a trajectory), but in the inevitable tension between tragedy and hope, Merton leaned more to the hope side of the tension (while never negating the tragic) and Jeffers-Milosz tended to heed and hear the tragic and were slower in embracing hope. The perennial tension between the tragic and hope is foundational to minimal responsible thought in the area of spirituality, theology, philosophy, literature and political thought—the aberrations are naïve optimism and a form of realism that knows no hope.

It is 100 years this year since Robinson Jeffers The Alpine Christ was written (1918-2018). The date, of course, is significant. WWI had seen Western Civilization turn on itself, millions were killed or injured and, at a more personal level, Jeffers father (who he much admired) had died—in short, tragedy was in abundance. The waves of war had, like a Tsunami, overwhelmed the rocks and flooded the West in much pain and war. The Alpine Christ is not an easy poem to read but it does raise all the larger questions about the seeming absence, silence, eclipse of God in the midst of carnage and brutality. Such questions are asked often in more benign and secure historic moments and contexts but they become more pressing and intense when deaths mount and there seems no end to war (and the long-term implications of it). The Alpine Christ is set in Europe and the metaphor of the Alps (mountains) means the vision and view will be seen from a large and spacious one, a looking down into the valley of history, time and war (and the larger intellectual and practical implications of it). There are few who have dared to engage, in a significant way, Jeffers poetic power, but William Everson (a friend of Merton) did so more than most.

The sheer intellectual and poetic power of Jeffers, Everson, Merton and Milosz must be lived into if even a minimally mature notion of Christian faith is ever to be salvaged and lived from with some integrity and authenticity—tragedy and hopes—how are such tensions to be lived into and from?—naïve optimism is silly and a paralysing realism will not do. How can Everson, Merton, Jeffers, and Milosz point the way forward on this challenge to one and all on their all too human journey? The Alpine Christ is no Walt Disney ending but if Disney will not do, who can be trusted with such questions? What might be the limitations, even, of the cruciform, kenotic and suffering servant Christ as a way to answer such questions—Jeffers certainly pondered this in The Alpine Christ with his Christ-like figure of Manuel. It is these larger questions that we find attempts to answer in Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, Hardy, Nietzsche, Camus and Jeffers that need deeper and further pondering. 

Amor Vincit Omnia

Ron Dart    

All In: Jesus and the Vulnerability of God - Fr. Kenneth Tanner

When Jesus is on the Sea of Galilee with the disciples, and storm winds and waves frighten even seasoned fishermen, we find the God who made the waves, the wind, and the wood the boat is crafted from—who made everything and holds everything together—tired and asleep in the stern of the ship.

God is asleep on a boat, even though our first thought as readers is that, of course, Jesus, a mere human, is napping (and that is true, too).

What we tend not to ponder is that this one asleep on the cushion is the one who never slumbers nor sleeps, whoever watches over Israel and the world.

When the disciples awaken Jesus and he surveys the situation (and their hearts), he rebukes their fear, and a mere man stands up on two feet in a vessel sloshing with lake water and rebukes the wind: “Peace! Be still!”

Someone just like the rest of the disciples—with breathing lungs and a beating heart, groggy and finding his sea legs—makes the wind stop gusting and turns the waves to glass with his words.

As readers, we think Jesus is God and this awe-inspiring ability fits his divinity, but Jesus is also just a human, no more special in his biochemistry than anyone else in that boat on a sea gone wild.

Jesus is not Superman. He is as vulnerable in that moment as the disciples and the folks on the other boats in their crossing armada. Had his boat capsized or sank, and the storm continued to rage, he was as susceptible to drowning and death as anyone on any of the boats.

This story tells us that God takes actual risks, takes on the risks of being actually human when he comes among us in the flesh of Jesus. And we can be sure that he is as invested in our present storms—right there with us in the tumult saying “Peace. Do not be afraid.”

When we read every story about Jesus in this careful way that the first Christians taught us—realizing this protagonist is in every moment God “all‑in” and human “all‑in”—we begin to discern that something has happened forever in God and something has happened forever in us, because the Son who breathed the stars into fiery existence and set their courses in the sky, who made the orchid and the hummingbird, humbled himself and was made like us in every way: weary, thirsty, hungry, aching, longing, striving, rejected, fallen, marvelous clay that we are, that we might be as he is, as God from all eternity with his Father and their Spirit. World without end.

The Gospels remind us that in Jesus Christ, God leaves fingerprints, leaves DNA, wherever he goes. He left his fingerprints on the buckets they used to bail out the stormwater on the nearly-flooded vessel before continuing their crossing. He donates his DNA to us in the chalice on the table. Jesus is *human* without measure.

Jesus breathes the spirit of the Father’s loving-kindness on all things. By the Spirit, he calms seas, the raging oceans of the world, the raging waters inside the human heart. Jesus is *divine* without qualification.

And it’s proper here to note that Jesus calls upon the Spirit when as a human he does these miracles—never from self-interest, always to manifest the glory of the Father, and is not grasping at equality with God.

This gives us mere humans a pattern of prayer to emulate, invited as we are into the Father’s sovereign rule of all things, not as warlocks or wizards but as those who join his humble service to creation and all things, leaving the outcomes in his good and everlasting hands for his good ends.

Jesus shows us who God is and Jesus shows us who we are.

His blood, his touch, his stops of breath reconcile the creator and the clay that—as female and male—alone in all creation bears the image of God.

Jesus walks with us, walks as us now, and we participate by our prayers, by our touch, by our faith and compassion — sometimes even by our blood — in the renewal of all things.

And Jesus cares. About everything and everyone, whether or not we do. And it is good and proper for us to pause and ponder with the disciples: “What manner of human is this who makes the winds and seas obey?”

We see the likeness of Jesus in every human. We see like the likeness of Jesus in every Central American refugee. Would that they might behold in our faces the icon of his vulnerability, self-sacrificial love, and resurrection in this wild, wonderful world he became human to restore to life without end.

The Perisson Podcast with Andrew Klager and Jarrod McKenna – Donna Mulhearn : The being before doing

Be sure to subscribe on iTunes and leave a review.

And consider joining The Perisson Podcast's community on Patreon.

And since The Perisson Podcast is a production of the Institute for Religion, Peace and Justice, be sure to check out IRPJ's entirely online Certificate program that addresses many of the same themes as this podcast.

 

A Walk through Paul's Letter to the Romans: A Targum of Sorts - Sean Davidson

Paul's Letter to the Romans

There is no special identity that can save us, no privileged place to stand above the fray. We're all caught up in the great turning away, curving endlessly in on ourselves. But this isn't the end. God's tracked us down in his love. And he's gathered us to himself at the cross. Here, there's freedom to turn in faith and receive in joy. (Rom. 1-5)

Does freedom mean we can do whatever we want? Short answer: no. Of course, we *can*, but why would we? At the cross, we've joined with Jesus in his death that we might rise to share in his love. This isn't about following the rules more closely; that'll only tie us in knots. In good times and bad, it's about coming alive to the Spirit and walking in newness of life, anticipating the day when suffering and death will be no more. (Rom. 6-8)

Think of it: how amazing that salvation would come to unsuspecting outsiders through the failure of privileged insiders. This isn't cause for outsider pride. God continues to care for the insiders. And we're all being gathered in by grace alone. Let's seek to be faithful in a spirit of appreciation, wonder, and deep gratitude. (Rom. 9-11)

With all this in mind, press into your calling. Open your life wide to God that you may be transformed through and through. Then it will become natural to give and receive in community, sharing God's love among friends and enemies alike. Don't be a zealot [or a tyrant: certainly don’t use my words about respecting authority to oppress others if you happen to be in authority]. Instead, keep awake in the dawning light, doing good wherever you can. (Rom. 12-13)

Also, remember to be kind to people not like you. There will be times of disagreement in community. Some will feel free to do what others believe is wrong. It's OK. Respect each other and walk in love. Liberals: avoid contempt. Conservatives: avoid judgment. Instead, look to Jesus and seek to build each other up despite your differences. And may the God of peace be with you. (Rom. 14-15)

What's With Romans 13? Brad Jersak

Rom 12-13: The genius of Paul is that the Emperor he calls believers to submit to is one and the same evil he calls us to overcome with good.

NOTE: FOR A FANTASTIC ARTICLE ON OUR FIRST ALLEGIANCE TO CHRIST, see Greg Albrecht’s work titled, “On Nation Under God?” in our latest CWR magazine.

Romans 12

¹⁹ Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. ²⁰ On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
    if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

In Romans 12:19-21, Paul quotes Deuteronomy 32, citing the Lord’s declaration “it is mine to avenge” to argue that we should not seek vengeance, but rather work to “overcome evil with good.”

In its original context, Deuteronomy 32 was a celebration of vengeance! (Thanks to Derek Flood for pointing this out). The author says, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay … I will make my arrows drunk with blood, while my sword devours flesh: the blood of the slain and the captives, the heads of the enemy leaders.”

But Paul subverts the original intent of this passage, which originally advocated vengeance and violence, to promote enemy love!

In Paul’s context, especially writing to the persecuted Roman Christians, who was the enemy? It was Nero, the Roman Empire, the Imperial Beast, who would torture and slaughter many thousands of Christians and ultimately slay both Paul and Peter. That was the enemy. And Paul’s warning is to beware of joining the slave revolt or any violent insurgency against this demonic state, because that would only get you killed.

ARE YOU THIRSTY? adapted from Brad Jersak's "Her Gates Will Never Be Shut"

In night visions, the prophet saw a house on top of a mountain. A spring of water bubbles up from the floorboards and trickles across the floor. By the time it exits the door and crosses the deck, it is two feet deep. Running off the deck and toward the cliff, the stream becomes a powerful river. Then it plummets as a deafening waterfall, increasing in volume as it descends to the lush valley below.

I believe such dreams come from the same Spirit who enlivened John’s dreams, recounting spiritual truths in familiar ancient symbols, a foretaste of what is to come.

More than a foretaste—an inviting question: Are you thirsty? (cf. Isaiah 55:1–5) It’s the question that opens the door of the city and leads the way into it as far as the river’s source. It’s the invitation-question of the Spirit and the Bride to the nations outside. It’s the question that Rev 21–22 asks both then and now. Are you thirsty? As I’ve marinated in those chapters for the past two years, this vision has emerged for me…

Lost souls languish outside the gates of the great city, their thirst deepening as they fester in the smoking valley of Gehenna. Time has lost all meaning in this non-life of non-being. Lips and hearts are cracked with hopelessness like baked clay. Their time to choose has passed, their judgment just and certain, death eternal their lot. They cannot even make themselves care.

And then an intrusive question forms in their hearts. Are you thirsty?

Beyond ludicrous—the question reawakens the exiles to their torment and intensifies their thirst. Are you thirsty? They recall the pointless supplication, “Have pity on me and send someone to dip a fingertip in water to cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.” Hopeless.

But the question has begun its work. Hearts gaze longingly at the city walls. The question has energized a plea. What if we trudged out a pilgrimage to Zion’s gates to seek an audience with the King? What if—hope against hope—someone opened the gates? Even without hope or courage, the thirst itself drives them. Are you thirsty? There is no choice now. They must try.

Even as the damned set their hearts upon the journey, while still a good distance away, the heart of God is already turned toward them, for the question originated from his throne, amplified beyond the city walls by the voice of the Bride and the Spirit. The question and its answer gush out with life-giving rivers of liquid love. Christ, the river of living water, pours out of the open gates and into the valley of death. Streams flow into Gehenna, where green shoots spring up on widening banks and moisture feeds the valley.

Parched for life and love, the outcasts rush to the river, falling on their faces to lap up the sparkling water. Tasting the goodness gives them a thirst for even more. They are drawn, freely yet irresistibly, to follow the river upstream. Its path welcomes them in through the gates, beckons them up the streets, a clear path to its mountain source—to God himself.

As the rapids of Christ’s love flow out of the city, so the nations stream into the city, joining the Bride, exalting the Bride, becoming the Bride, ready for the love of her King.

My vision. Isaiah’s vision. John’s vision. God’s vision.

To what degree does this vision represent pure possibility—a choice we can pursue or reject? To what degree is it the eternally planned choice of God? How do our choices and God’s plan intersect? And for how long will God pursue the dream?

Julian of Norwich, the great mystic and doctor of the church, saw that end in her Revelations of Divine Love, through which she received this hope of assurance from Christ:

There is a deed that the blessed Trinity shall do on the last day, and when that deed shall be done, and how it shall be done, is unknown to all creatures under Christ, and shall be until it has been done…. This is the great deed ordained by our Lord God from eternity, treasured and hidden in his blessed breast, known only to himself, and by this deed he shall make all things well; for just as the Holy Trinity made all things from nothing, so the Holy Trinity shall make all well that is not well.

Bradley Jersak, Her Gates Will Never Be Shut (Wipf & Stock, 2009), 178-9.

The Creator Becomes Flesh, the Word Becomes Speechless - Kenneth Tanner

While we seek to escape our humanity, to abandon embodiment, to leave this world behind, the Creator *becomes* human—is made flesh and bones—and joins us as one of us in our broken world.

While we seek to escape our physical limitations, avoid suffering, and "shuffle off this mortal coil," God limits himself, takes on every human suffering, and embraces the world as it *is* in order to transfigure all things by incarnate wisdom and sacrifice.

While we seek to escape the alluring lights of Times Square and the dust and disease of Port-au-Prince, while we avoid the prisons, the hospice wards, and asylums, even as we despise our race, and with the demons accuse mankind of every villainy, God sides with humanity against all its accusers and despisers in Jesus Christ.

While we want to walk away from the confused and downtrodden, the different and the indifferent, even as we envy and hate the rich and (despite all of our talk) shun or keep at arms length the desperate needy, while we revolve those whose politics are different than ours, God walks right into the company of all women and men and loves them without qualification or distinction.

Trump supporters. Hillary voters. Rapists. ISIS fighters. Corporate Polluters. Abortionists. Bankers. Immigrants. Hunters. Black Lives Matter Activists. Antifa. The tiki torch crowd. Pick your enemy. God has reconciled all persons to himself.

While we love ideal human beings, whatever that ideal is for each of us, God loves real human beings as they are before any human loved him.

When you come to a patient, enduring peace with your embodied limitations, when you embrace humanity in all its sometimes perverse but always wondrous diversity, when you revere and love the creation, not longing for a disembodied existence (there is no resurrection without a body), or seeking the equivalent of some galaxy far, far away, you have begun to plant your feet firmly in the soil of redemption and reconciliation.

This is what it means to *begin* to speak the Gospel that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. If you want to speak the Gospel in America today, you could begin in no better way than this.

——

A meditation on Bonhoeffer's Ethics.

The Hands of Christ - Kenneth Tanner

The hands that crafted humanity from the dust are the hands that grasp Mary's finger as she looks on her infant God with awe.

The divine finger that etched the commandment concerning adultery into the stone on Sinai is the human finger that drew in the sand as the frenzied crowd picked up stones to slay the adulteress.

The hand that wrote on the palace wall that Belshazzar, the pagan king, had been weighed in the balance and found wanting is the hand that was nailed to the tree and bled for the failures and imbalances of every human tribe.

The fingers that set the moons and stars in the cosmos like a master jeweler, smear mud on the eyes of the blind so that they might once again behold the light of heaven.

And even as the cosmos is held in his hands—suspended on his charity, all things set in motion by his energies—his sacred hands are contained and constrained for nine months within the womb of the virgin.

The hands that deliver Israel from slavery in Egypt are the hands that offer the paschal cup that promises and will in time deliver the renewal of all things.

He opens his sovereign hands and feeds all the woodland, pasture, and desert creatures and his carpenter's hands take, and bless, and break the bread that grants life without end, the bread of Christ.

As the right hand of the Father, the hand of Jesus touches lepers, dines with tax collectors, offers living water to the woman whose people are the enemy of his people, and washes the feet of his followers—cleansing everyone he meets, because the Son only ever does what he sees his Father doing—and it is the risen, transfigured right hand that rests on the shoulder of John in the apostle's great vision of the world that is coming, and says to his beloved friend in a still small voice:

"Don’t be afraid! I am the First and the Last. I am the living one. I died, but look—I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave."

 

 

 

Phil Le Cheminant - Apophatic and Cataphatic Theology in The Cloud of Unknowing

In this essay, I will describe and critically analyze the author’s use of apophatic and cataphatic theology in The Cloud of Unknowing, commenting on the relationship between revelation, reason and mystery.

Apophatic and cataphatic

The Cloud is paradigmatically a method of apophatic contemplation. Hillary Kelleher offers us the words of Aquinas in the preface to his Summa Theologiae, “We cannot know what God is, but only what he is not.”[1]This is the undercurrent that runs through The Cloud. However, it must be observed that the anonymous author also makes recourse to cataphatic methods throughout. Harvey Egan writes, “Despite the apophatic emphasis of the Cloud, its kataphatic basis and moments stand out in bold relief.”[2]

The Cloud

Somewhat simplistically, the author categorizes people into four degrees of Christian living: “ordinary, extraordinary, unique, and ideal.”[3]Those transitioning from extraordinary to unique are led by the author down a path of spiritual contemplation reserved for the spiritually mature.[4]Here, the contemplator will “experience a darkness, a cloud of unknowing.”[5]This process is reminiscent of moving from ‘unconscious incompetence’ to ‘conscious incompetence’ as defined in the realm of psychology. Mary Frohlich reflects, “The more one knows God, the less one knows what one knows. The more one abandons oneself to God, the more one is ‘in the dark’ about what God is up to.”[6]

CLICK HERE to download the Full Article

[1]Aquinas, Summa Theologiae: Questions on God, ed. Brian Davies and Brian Leftow. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1st Part, Q. 3., cited by Hillary Kelleher, “'Light thy Darknes is': George Herbert and Negative Theology,” George Herbert Journal 28 (Fall 2004/Spring 2005)

[2]Harvey D. Egan, “Christian Apophatic and Kataphatic Mysticisms,” Theological Studies 39 (1978): 399–426, p. 409.

[3]Bernard Bangley, The Cloud of Unknowing (Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2006), 3.

[4]Bangley, The Cloud, xix.

[5]Bangley, The Cloud, 6.

[6]Mary Frohlich, “What I Know and Don't Know: A Christian Reflects on Buddhist Practice,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 21 (2001): 37–41, p. 41.

 

Institute for Religion, Peace and Justice - "This Just In" - Annual Newsletter

Dear friends, stakeholders, and others who are along for the ride!

It’s been one year since the Institute for Religion, Peace and Justice (St. Stephen’s University) launched on June 9, 2017. A lot has happened since then. A new Institute such as ours is confronted with challenges and opportunities, and we’ve been active in 2017/18 in many ways to continue our vision. But perhaps more importantly, we’ve been taking action to set us up well for future years to come.

The Institute for Religion, Peace and Justice wants to position itself as the purveyor of a well-designed, neatly packaged, one-stop curricular destination especially for Christians who want professional development, personal enrichment, or preparation for further studies in peace-related academic fields. These could be anyone from the thoughtful layperson to professional clergy, peace and development workers or aspiring theologians.

In an increasingly polarized political and cultural landscape, IRPJ is trying to become a refuge of intentional hospitality. This is the model we have used and continue to use when carrying out our many activities.

Without further ado, attached are a few of the highlights!

 

Download THIS JUST IN – IRPJ's annual newsletter (June 2018)

"Searching for Tao Canyon" - Book Review by Ron Dart

Pat Morrow, Jeremy Schmidt, Art Twomey, Searching for Tao Canyon (Rocky Mountain Books Ltd., 2018).

“The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.”
–Edward Abbey

My wife (Karin) and I have spent some challenging moments in slot canyons, sunlight teasing varied hues off rocks, wading through water knee and waist deep to reach dry ground and ledges, ever wary of flash floods. So, it came as a sheer delight when Searching for Tao Canyon came my way to review. It should be noted, at the outset, that this lavish book with exquisite photographs is, in many ways, a much delayed and necessary homage to the pioneering work of Art Twomey (a BC mountaineering legend of sorts who died tragically in the Purcell Mountains in 1997).

Twomey had his mentors of sorts but Searching for Tao Canyon is as much about a more meaningful way to live as it is about slot canyons and an artistic way of photographing their compelling and time shaped beauty. The book ends of this must read tantalizer and beauty of a book poignantly describe and discuss the early origins of slot canyon treks, the many challenges faced in reaching and photographing such sacred sites and some of those on such trips. Needless to say, the text is worth many a meditative read for a historic background into the rather new wilderness trekking in slot canyons of “fun-hogs” (not to be understood in a silly or narcissistic manner). Many of the best of the “fun-hogs” have been at the forefront of conservation and preservation, wilderness and wildness efforts.

The textual part of Searching for Tao Canyon is but the primer to the not to be missed photographs of various approaches to slot canyons and varied types of slot canyons. The colours, shapes and sizes of such canyons cannot but hold the curious for moments and hours, the wonderment within seeking such places of rare and often hidden bounties of nature. Gratefully so, the authors decided not to name or note the places in which some of the photographs were taken—tourists have predictable ways of destroying, in time, the very wildness they seek to see in their otherwise cabin’d, cribb’d and confin’d urban existence. 

The language of “Tao” was appropriately chosen as the title for this masterpiece of sorts, the Tao being the metaphor for the way and “that which is”—searching for the Tao is as much about being still, not searching, quiet enough to see what is not often seen. But, such an approach does also involve work to get to places where the hidden becomes revealed to the ardent and committed searcher and seeker. Both the written text and amply illustrated photographs illuminate such realities again and again. It is impossible to, in many ways, put this genius and pages turner of a book down—each lavish page is a portal into mysterious and often missed secrets of the rocks and rivers, weather and wildness. Each page can hold the attentive reader for rapt moments of invitational insight. Photographs of rappelling down into narrow canyon depths, mixed light playing off rocks, animals that dwell in such confines, narrow ledges to straddle, night skies and brilliant blue skies above, waterfalls and naked dives, showers and simple food in canyons all tell their compelling visual tale.

The “Contents” of Searching for Tao Canyon (fast moving text by Jeremy Schmidt) are divided into five nicely shaped sections: 1) Dedication: Art Twomey, 2) Preface: Heads Up, Fellow Desert Rats, 3) In the Jaw of the Dragon, 4) Tao Canyon and 5) Epilogue. Each of the accessible and readable sections are short and the reader cannot but be keen to know much more about such slot canyon grails that offer such superb photographs.Searching for Tao Canyon is brought to a close with two short pages on “Books We Like” and “Environmental Organizations”—merely entrees but worth the primer.      

There can be no doubt that in the last decade plus canyoneering and slot canyon trekking have become more prominent. Searching for Tao Canyon offers an informed, insightful and engaged way into how to truly seek, in a sustainable way, the ever elusive Tao that often remains hidden both in slot canyons and the slot canyons of the soul and life itself.  Many are the books published each year and few are the books that remain near and dear to that which remains—Searching for Tao Canyon definitely and decidedly remains in the latter class far from the transience of the former class—a must buy for soul and sanity.

Ron Dart        

Our Ascension with Christ -- Cooperating with Christ in the Renewal of All Things - Kenneth Tanner

Paul tells us we are ascended with Christ (past tense); that the Father has seated us with Christ in "the heavenly realms."

This is a mystical truth but no less real for the mystery. Jesus tells his disciples that he goes to prepare a place for them so that "where I am you may be also"...not just at the end of time but NOW.

Jesus takes our humanity into heaven so that heaven can inhabit our humanity. The kingdom life of the world to come is now within us as is Jesus himself...not as a wonderful thought, not symbolically, not even by imitation, but truly. This is the same reality of Christ himself that we call Eucharist.

Jesus and Paul speak of this union between Jesus and his disciples so often and so concretely that I wonder why it's not a greater fixture of contemporary Christian teaching.

"In Jesus, God has scars and God has memories..." Kenneth Tanner on the Ascension

"In the Incarnation, Christ is not trying to cling to divinity but to share it -- his divine life with the Father and the Spirit -- so he humbles himself and becomes human."

The Ascension changed everything, for the event discloses a great mystery: that to be God is, in essence, to be human, to be flesh and blood, because of Jesus Christ.

A human is now forever God in the person of the Son, and what it means to be God is now forever tied to *this* particular human being, and what it means to be human is now forever tied to this God.

As a fellow human Jesus is our mediator and advocate, made like his brothers and sisters in every way so that he might be One who rules and judges those whose existence he understands from the inside, because he lived our human story with us in the most vulnerable, authentic, and beautiful way.

In Jesus, God has a mother and a betrayer. In Jesus, God has scars and God has memories… of meals and laughter with his friends and cold nights huddled together against the desert air in cloaks, he recalls storms at sea and a grinding emptiness at the tomb of his friend.

In Jesus, God knows hunger and thirst and loneliness and pain. In Jesus, God knows the human devastation of divorce and disease and death.

In Jesus, the One like a son of man who's been given all authority in heaven and on earth is also one of us. And Jesus discloses a God who rules all things by a humility we cannot even begin to grasp. His power is disclosed in weakness and poverty, by surrender and trust.

The One who is to be our judge, renders his judgment on his human brothers and sisters from the brutal cross to which we nailed him: "Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing."

And he is now and forever there with the Father in the flesh, for us, and we are there close to the heart of Father in Jesus, as his body. We are mystically one with God in the humanity of Jesus and God is one with us, and loves us. Praise Him.

Ellul, Prayer & Three Grade 9 Girls - Sean Davidson

I’ve been reading Jacques Ellul on the difficulty of prayer in modern life. He writes:

“The man [sic] of our times does not know how to pray; but much more than that, he has neither the desire nor need to do so. He does not find the deep source of prayer within himself. I am acquainted with this man. I know him well. It is I myself.”

These are strong words, but they ring true somehow, and I get why Ellul would see it as a problem of our age generally.

At the same time, I think he overstates it.

I heard this story recently ...

It’s about three grade 9 girls sitting at a picnic table in a park. They had been friends through middle school and were talking about their friendship and how they wanted to keep connected even though they were going their separate ways in life.

One of the girls suggested they pray. This came out of the blue. She didn’t have a religious background and had grown up in a very difficult family situation. Somehow in this moment, it felt right to express her hopes and desires in prayer.

The girl next to her liked the idea. She didn’t have a religious background either and came from a similar life situation.

The last friend was surprised by all this talk about prayer. She thought of herself as a Christian, a follower of Jesus, and she had never heard her friends talk like this.

The other two girls had always sensed their friend might be religious somehow, but they had really never discussed it. Something felt different now.

“How do you pray?” the first girl asked her.

“It’s not hard,” she said. “You can say what you like to God. Like in a conversation ... with someone who loves you ...”

“Who should start?”, the second girl chimed in.

“I don’t know. How bout you guys go first and I’ll finish.”

And they prayed together sitting at that picnic table in the park.

No worry about proving if it’s true or deciding if it’s right. They just prayed—from the heart—like it was the most natural thing to do.

“What would you like to see Christianity become?" - Kenneth Tanner

A young atheist woman on Twitter who is estranged from the Christian Faith of her childhood asks “What would you like to see Christianity become in the U.S.?”

This is my 288-character or less (Twitter-limited) response.

I would like to see Christianity as a beacon of the immeasurable and unchanging love of God for all persons and for the creation. To return to telling the story that God made every person in love and that God so identifies with humanity that God forever became human in Jesus.

——-

And, yes, this incarnate Love also humbled himself, submitted to our terror and murder so that death might vanish from human nature like straw in fire, so that we might participate in the divine nature, so that we might live forever in the kingdom founded not on power as the world knows it but on the vulnerability that holds all things in life and in orbit, the energy of others-directed love and self-denial that ignites all stars in a hundred billion galaxies.

Christ and the Vilified Other - Brian Zahnd

Let me begin by talking about the land, the Holy Land, the land of the Bible. Geography played a significant role in shaping ancient Hebrew ethics and theology. Situated between the northern and southern superpowers of the ancient Near East, Israel lived under constant threat of invasion and occupation from these economic and military empires.

(In my writing and preaching I frequently reference empire. Allow me to give a definition. Empires are rich, powerful nations that believe they have a divine right to rule other nations and a manifest destiny to shape history. The Bible gives a sustained critique of empire from Genesis to Revelation — particularly in Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, the Gospels, Acts, and especially Revelation. Empires are an enemy of God’s purposes because what they claim for themselves — a manifest destiny to shape history and a divine right to rule other nations — is the very thing God has promised to his Son.)

Living in the shadow of the northern empires of Assyria and Babylon and the southern empire of Egypt, ancient Israel was extremely vulnerable to the expansionist policies of those powerful empires. The biblical history of Israel was a long narrative of threat and oppression. From this acute sense of vulnerability, Israel developed a keen concept of neighborly justice. One reason the Old Testament talks so much about neighborly justice is because the Hebrew people so often suffered from unneighborly injustice. When you’re the top dog you don’t think so earnestly about justice, but if you’re on the bottom you have a different perspective. There’s a reason Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. are probably the two best examples of American prophets. Their prophetic edges were sharpened on the cruel flints of slavery and segregation. The Hebrew prophetic tradition developed in the crucible of enduring threat, invasion, and oppression from Gentile empires. In this crucible of suffering a theology of justice was forged, but it also produced the slag of vengeance expectation.

Following Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Judea, the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem, and the forced deportation of Jews to Babylon in 587 BC, Isaiah of the Exile penned these words.

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God.
–Isaiah 61:1, 2

The Jewish people had been forced into exile in the foreign land of Babylon — they were the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, the prisoners. But the poet-prophet envisioned a coming Jubilee of liberation, restoration, and divine favor. When that day comes the poor will hear good news, the captives will be liberated, and the prisoners will be set free as God inaugurates a season of divine favor. Naturally, this prophecy became a primary text shaping Messianic expectations.

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FUNDAMENTALISM: Theology in the Service of Psychosis - Vaseilios Thermos

The academic literature connecting religious fundamentalism and psychosis is extensive. In my experience as both a clinical psychiatrist and priest, I believe that we see this illness both individually and collectively within the Orthodox Church. Fortunately, the solution to this spiritual illness lies in the very proclamation of the incarnation.

Paradoxically, although religious fundamentalism is a fanatical opponent of the discipline of psychology, it actually is a form of psychologism. It assesses through habit, not through truth. For fundamentalism, it is “familiar identity” that is at risk. Fearful of the complexity of the modern world (which has already evolved to the chaos of the postmodern one), it resorts to oversimplified solutions, because it cannot tolerate doubt, perplexity, or coexistence. In other words, fundamentalism “freezes” certain created and external elements of the tradition, which it believes to contain the truth of God. In doing so, fundamentalism immobilizes history, unaware that by doing so it enacts the very sin it claims to fight.

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This post originally appeared on PublicOrthodoxy.org. Reposted by permission