Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

“23 Minutes in Hell” or “23 Minutes in Fear?” Richard Murray

“23 Minutes in Hell” or “23 Minutes in Fear?”

Regarding those who claim to have had mystical and near death experiences regarding visitations to hell, I have no doubt many of them had heartfelt experiences. 

But, I also believe that what we have erroneously been taught to fear about hell can also allow for distorted, strange, and angst-ridden visions to result. And as to what testimony we should receive as personally authoritative, we each have to follow our spirit-quickened consciences of course. 

But, I don't take the bulk of these people's testimonies who have returned from Hell to have the strength of eternity. I have read several of their testimonies, including the "23 Minutes in Hell" book. The ones I have read all say that the number one quality of Hell is that nobody can EVER escape its torturous environment once they enter it. 

Well, my counter observation  is merely this-- they themselves were able to escape it, and the one fellow after only 23 minutes. These people don't just claim they saw Hell through an external window, but that they actually entered and experienced it, so their own quick escape seems to contradict their claim, at least to the inescapable aspect of it. 

And even if they did get a brief vision of it on some human level, how can they then claim to have witnessed an "eternal" aspect of it from only a brief time there? I can certainly see how our fractured and deceived inner states of being-- shame, guilt, bitterness, fear,and pride-- could all create hysterical delusions of toxic terror and hopeless agony. 

Jonah, when he was in the belly of the fish, thought he had been there for "eternity," but in truth it was only three days. And he was a changed man when he came out of the fish's belly. Jesus confirmed that Jonah's experience in the fish was a prophetic allegory of His own descent into hell. What seems one way to humans seems quite another way to God. 

I agree with F.F. Bruce that "eternal conscious torment" is inconsistent with the revealed nature of God in Jesus. This is why Jesus boldly declared in Acts 2 that the heavenly Father would NEVER abandon His son's soul in hell. 

And, regarding the people who claim hell is eternally inescapable because they have literally been there and back, let's not forget this champion truth. Jesus, according to Ephesians 4, kicked the gates of hell off their hinges as He "led captivity captive" and "ascended" into heaven so that He could "fill all things"— on, beneath and above the earth. 

In others words, Jesus, though He was weighed down with every sin of every human who ever lived had ever committed, proved that hell was NOT inescapable. Jesus not only escaped it, but He also "gutted" it of its misperceived power over humanity’s postmortem destiny. 

So perhaps these visions of Hell are simply our worst nightmares and fears amplified by suggestion, condemnation, and accusation which we feverishly project onto our postmortem expectations. But, as the Beloved John says, God continually shows Himself “greater than our heart” by showing us that no matter the garish nightmare state we may fearfully concoct, He WILL deliver us from it. 

I propose that God sees this whole dynamic far differently than do we. 

What if Hell (aka God's judgement fire of 1 Corinthians 3), from Gods viewpoint, was in truth a medical facility for the woefully wounded, the carnally crushed, the incessantly insecure, the insidiously indifferent, the feverishly fearful, and the murderously mad? 

What if Hell, from God's view, was a place of intimate healing where He rehabilitates humanity from all their self-obsessing, self-sabotaging, and self-cutting ways which result in them creating fanatical fig leaves of delusions behind which the fearful and unbelieving hide from God? 

What if God patiently endures and ministers to these sick people in, through, and around their delusions? What if God applies the intense "therapeutic treatment" needed to awaken these poor souls to the truth - - an ultimately irresistible truth which will set all men free - - God loves them and gave His life to cure them from their sicknesses?

Like the most intense form of chemotherapy we know in the physical, all the sin-masks and sin-identities which have cancerously grafted themselves onto our being will be irradiated and destroyed with the wise and curative fire of God. 

The human under judgment May suffer a searing "identity crisis" which, though in the long term will bring great positive transformation, may, in the short term, produce cathartic anguish and weeping.

On thing is for sure. God’s parental punishments are illuminative, curative, restorative, and rehabilitative. He is the Great Fatherly Physician who rescues and restores us from the gutter most to the uttermost.  And His quality work takes a lot longer then a mere 23 minutes to rightly perceive and understand.

"The Inklings and Culture" - Review by Ron Dart

Monika B. Hilder, Sara L. Pearson & Laura N. Van Dyke (eds.), The Inklings and Culture: A Harvest of Scholarship from the Inklings Institute of Canada (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020).

There has been, within Canada, a committed history of interest in the Inklings. My mother was faithfully involved with the Toronto group that published Pilgrimage: The Toronto C.S. Lewis Society (a magazine on Lewis and the Inklings in the 1980s-1990s, final edition 2009). The Canadian C.S. Lewis Journal: The Inklings, Their Friends & Predecessors that closed shop Autumn 2001 (lasted almost 30 years, 100 publications) was, in its last decade, published on the West Coast. But, it was with the founding of The Inklings Institute of Canada at Trinity Western University that a more mature and integrated vision of the Inklings came into being. The publication of The Inklings and Culture is the well-birthed child of such fine parenting.

The fact I took in Lewis and the Inklings with my mother’s milk, and, in some small way, contributed to The Inklings and Culture, means my decades-long journey (from the earliest years) was amply rewarded by heeding and reading the many and polyphonic voices in this well-tuned Inklings symphony.

The Inklings and Culture: A Harvest of Scholarship from the Inklings Institute of Canada is, indeed, a harvest and feast of a read. The tome is divided into 4 parts and 27 chapters. Each part is packed with insights and probes that make for creative reads and varied interpretations of the pure gold of Inklings life and thought: Part I: Literary Influences, Part II: The Christian Imagination, Part III: Artistic Responses, and Part IV: Contemporary and Theological Issues are not to be missed.

Most of the Inkling worthies step on front stage (MacDonald, Lewis, Sayers, Chesterton, Williams, Tolkien, and Barfield – some more obviously Inkling than others) and other lesser-known writers and artists who historically anticipated or had affinities with the Inklings in direct and indirect ways (Charlotte Bronte, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Anna Sewell, Bede Griffiths, and Reinhold Niebuhr are also mentioned and discussed).

Lewis decidedly leads the pack of articles with 15 of the 27 reflections dedicated directly to him, whereas Tolkien is featured in 5 articles and Sayers in 3 of the essays. MacDonald, Chesterton, Williams, and Barfield are momentarily on stage. But, there can be no doubt that Lewis is the main actor that speaks his speech well – not trippingly on the tongue as some do. The quality of essays and themes covered are of a high level and not to be missed. There can be no doubt that Hilder, Pearson and Van Dyke have done Canada well in their harvest of scholarship. The Canadian Inklings children have now matured as well-rounded, comprehensive, and creative adults, the table spread a bounty not to miss, much nourishment in the feast. I might also add that Hilder’s “Introduction” and Van Dyke’s “Chronology” makes the tome a greater, grander and fuller bounty not to miss.   

There can be no doubt those who anticipated the Inklings (MacDonald, Chesterton) and the Inklings did, in their unique way, unconceal, and by doing so, reveal a mother lode of mythic, imaginative and literary gold within the Western and Christian Tradition that had been somewhat concealed by a hyper form of right of centre Enlightenment rationalism and scientism. It was this healthy and full-bodied Christian romanticism and humanism that was the genius of the Inklings and why their presence ever persists to inform, instruct and point the way to finer and fitter trails worth the taking. There can be no doubt that The Inklings and Culture is Canadian scholarship at its evocative best and the impact of such a hefty tome will linger for many a decade and be a library from which future Inkling scholars will turn to slake a deeper thirst, the wine full-bodied and palette tasty.

Ron Dart           

We ARE the bowls of wrath - Lazar Puhalo

Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go, pour out the seven bowls of God’s wrath on the earth.”
--Revelation 16:1

It is simply a fact – a difficult reality – that some parts of the world which are now inhabited are becoming uninhabitable, and global warming is the source of this destruction of habitable land. The dangerous heat waves that we are expressing this year are now becoming a regular part of our reality, and many areas with arable land which produces food crops are becoming dried out and dead. These areas are also becoming slowly uninhabitable for human beings and other mammals. The refugees from these areas must go somewhere, and so the still viable human habitats are going to become so overcrowded that those areas will become rapidly degraded also.

We will hear fundamentalists, as usual, blaming God for this. Some of them will surely say this is God’s punishment on mankind for such and such or so and so.

However, as we have mentioned in an editorial back in 1975, the plagues listed in the Book of Revelation will come to pass, not by God’s action against man but because of man’s own avarice and callousness.

There is no doubt that we are seeing the beginning of an extremely tragic era and man’s history – or rather another stage in a tragic era that began decades ago. All the talk about the moral failings in sins of mankind pales to insignificance in the face of the great societal sin against God’s creation, against our own biosphere. There is no greater immorality than the denial of climate change and the refusal to engage in the problem.

The gross indifference and depravity of climate change deniers, of those who deny the human element and global warming, is mirrored in their self-absorbed indifference to the fate of their children and grandchildren. In discussing this matter, one idea that is important to refute is the idea that the results of this callousness and indifference toward our environment are in any way “God’s judgment or punishment.”

This is really a matter of societal suicide by means of self-indulgence and sheer arrogance. Human beings are themselves the living Bowls of Wrath mentioned in the Apocalypse – the Book of Revelation.

 

 

Q&R: How Naive Violence Fantasies Endanger Your Family - Brad Jersak

QUESTION

Recently, I had been reading David W. Bercot's insightful book, The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down. 

 

Our backstory: My spouse and I used to be "Preppers" and besides food, water, and other emergency supplies, we and all of our friends stocked up on guns and ammo. We claimed we were not doing it out of fear but to be wise and to have enough to share with others. In the past several years, I now see it as future-tripping and religious rationalization.

 

Apparently, the attitude among many conservative "Christians" is our need to fight for the right to bear arms and to be ready to defend property, self, or in these times, fight in a revolution.

 

For several years, I have been coming to terms with loving and blessing and forgiving my enemies. But a few chapters in Bercot's book, he shows via the scriptures that Jesus and Paul were nonresistant and never retaliatory. They never took up the sword or defended themselves verbally or physically.

 

My heart can believe Jesus functioning like that but we are having a hard time picturing ourselves acting without aggression if we found someone breaking into our home or doing some evil act against us. Any thoughts you care to share?

RESPONSE

Great question. There are a few ways to think about this.

 

I'll let Brian Zahnd address it briefly via a blog post. We think about this together a lot. https://brianzahnd.com/2014/07/hitler-invaded-house/

 

I would also recommend two other resources that show how preparing for violence is the real naive idealism versus Jesus' instructions, which are actually the higher realism:

 

Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers - https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1tm7j16

 

John Howard Yoder, What Would You Do? - https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/12887640

 

I also respond to the question here: https://www.ptm.org/q-r-christ-in-violent-world-brad-jersak

 

What I mean by the naivety of violence versus the realism of non-violence is this:

"The Entire Country is Haunted" - Wayne Northey

"As we’re seeing more and more every day, this entire country is a real-life Indian burial ground—one that criminals parading as teachers, religious leaders and politicians took great care to cover up." - Alicia Elliot

Years ago, I ceased “proudly calling myself Canadian.” I had persistently been disabused of imagining our country to be “righteous,” built, so the false narrative goes, upon “Christian” values–thought squandered in modernity–to which the “godly” of the land must call Canada back to save “our home and native land.” So as said the false narrative goes.

Our motto, finalized in 1921 along with a Coat of Arms, came about thus:

A Mari usque ad Mare comes from the Bible’s Psalm 72:8, which reads in Latin: Et dominabitur a mari usque ad mare, et a flumine usque ad terminos terrae. The King James version puts it into English: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”

…

On 29 September 1921, after viewing the final design, Joseph Pope, federal under-secretary of state at the time, wrote in his diary: “Our Arms are very handsome … everything that can be desired. The motto A Mari usque ad Mare, which is an original suggestion of my own, I regard as very appropriate.”

And “Dominion?”

. . . the term dominion was chosen to represent Canada as a whole when the British North America Act was drafted in 1867 [the year of the birth of Canada as a nation, known as Confederation].

In 1992, I bought a T-shirt produced by my then colleague Menno Wiebe of Mennonite Central Committee Canada, that reads:

In 1492 the Americans discovered Christopher Colombus on their shores. What do you suppose they thought about that?

A few notes about the above history, and some theological context:

The word “dominion” is from fraught translations in Genesis 1:26 & 28 with reference to nature; and in Psalm 72:8 with reference generally to people. In short, though tragically taken this way repeatedly over the centuries¹, it should never have been taken as “domination.”

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"The Inklings and Culture: A Harvest of Scholarship" - review by Ron Dart

Monika B. Hilder, Sara L. Pearson & Laura N. Van Dyke (eds.), The Inklings and Culture: A Harvest of Scholarship from the Inklings Institute of Canada (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020).

There has been, within Canada, a committed history of interest in the Inklings. My mother was faithfully involved with the Toronto group that published Pilgrimage: The Toronto C.S. Lewis Society (a magazine on Lewis and the Inklings in the 1980s-1990s, final edition 2009). The Canadian C.S. Lewis Journal: The Inklings, Their Friends & Predecessors that closed shop Autumn 2001 (lasted almost 30 years, 100 publications) was, in its last decade, published on the West Coast. But, it was with the founding of The Inklings Institute of Canada at Trinity Western University that a more mature and integrated vision of the Inklings came into being. The publication of The Inklings and Culture is the well-birthed child of such fine parenting.

The fact I took in Lewis and the Inklings with my mother’s milk, and, in some small way, contributed to The Inklings and Culture, means my decades-long journey (from the earliest years) was amply rewarded by heeding and reading the many and polyphonic voices in this well-tuned Inklings symphony.

The Inklings and Culture: A Harvest of Scholarship from the Inklings Institute of Canada is, indeed, a harvest and feast of a read. The tome is divided into 4 parts and 27 chapters. Each part is packed with insights and probes that make for creative reads and varied interpretations of the pure gold of Inklings life and thought: Part I: Literary Influences, Part II: The Christian Imagination, Part III: Artistic Responses, and Part IV: Contemporary and Theological Issues are not to be missed.

Most of the Inkling worthies step on front stage (MacDonald, Lewis, Sayers, Chesterton, Williams, Tolkien, and Barfield – some more obviously Inkling than others) and other lesser-known writers and artists who historically anticipated or had affinities with the Inklings in direct and indirect ways (Charlotte Bronte, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Anna Sewell, Bede Griffiths, and Reinhold Niebuhr are also mentioned and discussed).

Lewis decidedly leads the pack of articles with 15 of the 27 reflections dedicated directly to him, whereas Tolkien is featured in 5 articles and Sayers in 3 of the essays. MacDonald, Chesterton, Williams, and Barfield are momentarily on stage. But, there can be no doubt that Lewis is the main actor that speaks his speech well – not trippingly on the tongue as some do. The quality of essays and themes covered are of a high level and not to be missed. There can be no doubt that Hilder, Pearson, and Van Dyke have done Canada well in their harvest of scholarship. The Canadian Inklings children have now matured as well-rounded, comprehensive, and creative adults, the table spread a bounty not to miss, much nourishment in the feast. I might also add that Hilder’s “Introduction” and Van Dyke’s “Chronology” make the tome a greater, grander, and fuller bounty not to miss.   

There can be no doubt those who anticipated the Inklings (MacDonald, Chesterton) and the Inklings did, in their unique way, unconceal, and by doing so, reveal a mother lode of mythic, imaginative, and literary gold within the Western and Christian Tradition that had been somewhat concealed by a hyper form of right of centre Enlightenment rationalism and scientism. It was this healthy and full-bodied Christian romanticism and humanism that was the genius of the Inklings and why their presence ever persists to inform, instruct and point the way to finer and fitter trails worth the taking. There can be no doubt that The Inklings and Culture is Canadian scholarship at its evocative best and the impact of such a hefty tome will linger for many a decade and be a library from which future Inkling scholars will turn to slake a deeper thirst, the wine full-bodied and palette tasty.

Ron Dart           

     

Tree of Liberty or Tree of Life - Kenneth Tanner

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of patriots and tyrants.” —Thomas Jefferson (who venerated ‘nature and nature’s god’)

Thomas Jefferson

The Tree of Life does not require the blood of the martyrs and is not refreshed by their blood nor by the blood of tyrants.

The martyrs don’t die to accomplish anything—their deaths are not ‘useful’—nor because God needs their sacrifice—God desires the death of no one, desires not our sacrifices—nor because God is glorified in their deaths; no, the martyrs die because violence is the currency of the powers of this world. Violence is what the powers trust.

Instead, God converts the lives of the martyrs to his kind of life, which is never-ending love, and which never seeks vengeance, or to prove itself, or to take anything or anyone by force (on this side of death or in the life that is beyond the power of death).

“The desire of God for humans is the same desire God has for himself” (Chris Green) so that when God commands us not to kill this is an expression of his own way of being, a way of being he desires for us.

That the death of a martyr works some kind of good for God or the world, or worse, as one Christian theologian and pastor teaches, because God wills all that occurs in the world God is the sender of the person who blows up the church building, is the logic of terrorism not of the Christian faith.

We do not worship “nature or nature’s god,” as the pagans did, for nature is truly fallen. We venerate the God whose uncreated light shines in the face of Jesus Christ.

The satan - Michael Hardin

Editor's Note: Clarion previously (2016) posted Michael Hardin's 20-episode series on The satan as a weekly release. With Michael's permission, Clarion is pleased to make the PDF available: CLICK HERE to download

The pdf is an excerpted section from Michael's book, What the Facebook? Vol. 1 (foreword by Brad Jersak) and is available on Kindle and in Paperback HERE. "The satan" section begins with this preface:

 

Why this series on the satan?
by Michael Hardin

I am often asked about the devil or the nature of evil or why there is evil in this world. Some folks would prefer that I do not talk overmuch about this. They say, since Jesus has defeated the devil, we should not give it too much air time. They are correct. As Karl Barth observed, the Bible only mentions the devil to dismiss him. However, the Bible does mention the devil so we too, even as we dismiss its/his presence and work. We must first clear away some misconceptions in the first few posts and note that the concept of the devil has a history.

Before I begin, however, I will lay my cards on the table so that as you follow along you will not be too surprised at what you will see. Primarily what I will be doing in these posts is seeking to work out an understanding of evil from a human perspective. If you are familiar with my writings you will know that the mimetic theory of Rene Girard informs how I read the Bible. I read it first as an anthropological text and then (and only then) as a theological one. The cross before the resurrection as it were.

As we begin this journey I hope you will find that reframing our understanding of the devil contributes greatly to our understanding of just what it is that is overcome in the life of Jesus. I hope you will find the courage to “cast out the satanic influences and impulses” in your own life. We who live in the light of God’s great liberation in Christ are already aware of the power of the gospel to deal with our sin, our addictions and the way sin manifests itself in the structures of our life. The devil is not an elusive concept nor a free-floating spirit, nor a power to be feared. The satan had been crushed, laid low in the death of Jesus, never to rise, destined to doom.

You will notice that I do not capitalize the word satan. There are several reasons for this. Satan is not a name but a function (it means accuser). Second, the satan is not a person but a principle (more on this as our studies evolve). Third, the satan has been given way too much press in the Christian faith as a virtual equal or peer of God, as though God was a good eternal principle and the satan an evil eternal principle. Not so! Christians are not dualists; we are those who recognize that only Jesus has been given all authority and power (Matthew 28:16-20, Phil. 2:5-11).

Yet, it is also true that while Jesus has overcome the satan in his death and resurrection and ascension, it is also true that we still live between the times; we live as those who share in both this age and the age to come. We are still bounded in this life by sin, death and the devil, but even as we are bounded by such we are freed from fear of any of them. We are liberated from fear of judgment, for Jesus has forgiven us all of our sin. We are liberated from fear of death for we live in the promise of the resurrection of our bodies. We are freed from fear of the satan and freed from its authority over us by virtue of Jesus overcoming of the satanic principle. This is the gospel and it is good news indeed.

So while we will discuss the devil and at times it may appear as though the devil has the upper hand in human history, nevertheless we do so knowing that there is a world coming where sin, death, and the devil will cease to exist. We live, as the theologians put it, with an ever-expanding eschatological horizon opening up for us.

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Why I Don't Use the Language of "Christian Universalism" - Kenneth Tanner

I don’t use the language of “Christian universalism” because it’s too often associated with a false interpretation of reality, one that is absent repentance, theosis, and transfiguration.

We don’t enter the world that’s coming to this world without consent to the love that God is, by participating in the new humanity that God is in Jesus Christ, which is entirely a matter of grace but will not happen apart from our acceptance of the gift and our willing allegiance to the Giver, who leaves the human clothed in glory and in her or his right mind.

I believe it is the desire of God that all of his creatures come to exist as he exists, beyond the evil of death, which has been converted now as an entrance to life by the humanity of God in Jesus Christ, the One who has filled death, the grave, and hell with himself, and escaped them by embodied resurrection.

I believe that when “every knee bows” and “every tongue confesses” that that event will be an act of genuine freedom in all persons, a submission to the love that God forever is, to the beauty of the weakness of God on the cross, which is stronger than all the enemies of humanity, even the last enemy of humanity in the God we know as Jesus Christ—namely, death—and greater than any power which we can see (or ever will see) in nature or the cosmos.

Given humanity’s bold contempt to do and to say what is not a participation in the love that God forever is, our tendency to do and say what is opposed to our created goodness as persons made in God’s image (what the Scriptures call the “mystery of iniquity”), I do not know *when* or *how* this will happen in all persons but I trust that it will somehow happen in the end.

My friend Brad Jersak calls this “ultimate reconciliation.”

I trust that God gets what God wants and that what God sets out to do—to rescue his creation from futility, to arrest his image-bearers from a fall into non-existence—eventually somehow happens. Paul and John apparently do, too, if the New Testament witness is right.

It’s clear enough to me—though I don’t know what I don’t know—that this repentant transfiguration involves embracing the fire that is the love of God, a consuming fire that we can trust because the character of God revealed in Jesus Christ is a love that wounds us only to heal that which is not of love in us so that we can truly welcome judgment.

We can fall into the hands of God because those hands know how to remove the tares from our virtues and the wheat from our vices and leave us only the persons God intends for us to be with him in eternity.

Like the fire in the burning bush on Sinai, the love of God blazes but does not destroy. This judgment leaves us alive and forever changed.

Whenever Christianity “owns” a culture it becomes corrupt - Wayne Northey

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority." --Lord John Acton

There is a joke about a guy who is whitewashing a church when thunderstorms threaten, and he is running out of paint and time. So he adds water to the remaining whitewash to finish the job. Suddenly lightning flashes, thunder rolls, the rain unleashes, and much of the whitewash washes away! A Voice in the thunder declares: “Repaint, and thin no more!”

White Evangelical America has an enormous “repainting” job ahead if it genuinely aspires (pun an afterthought) to stop “thinning!” There seems little hope that collectively they will even begin to rise to the occasion! They would apparently rather whitewash their own sin-decrepit churches–and risk tragically scuttling America even more so in the process.

In place of that, for those WACs who might have eyes to see, ears to hear, let the lightning flash, the thunderstorm and attendant Voiceroll–“on like a river, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream!”²Amen!!!

CLICK HERE for Waynes full article

 

Haiti's history and fate is entwined with America - Wayne North America

Wayne Northey: Haiti is a made-in-France-and-America tragedy . . . Please see Egberto Willies on this:

My wife Esther and I visited there in 1991, after attending a United Nations Restorative Justice Conference in San José, Costa Rica. We said in response that if we ever complained again about our circumstances, it was already too much . . . We felt similarly upon in 2018 visiting Rwanda–though its economic recovery since the 1994 genocide is miraculous.

David Cayley’s masterful and massive 2021 Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey explicates Illich’s critique of Western development philosophy (and heuristically all things Illich!) of which Haiti is prime exhibit. The author of the highlighted article writes:

Haiti has provided an anthology of cautionary tales of how 20th-century foreign aid and development assistance can go wrong, including a mess of failed projects that followed the cataclysmic 2010 earthquake in the country, which killed hundreds of thousands of people.

See too Ryan C. Berg’s July 8, 2021: Moïse’s assassination is a tragic reminder of Haiti’s unraveling democracy. We read:

Haiti’s constitutional crisis has failed to register with many Washington policymakers as well as those in the international community for far too long — in part, thanks to the plethora of challenges already present in the Western Hemisphere. Notwithstanding the Biden administration’s claims to the contrary, the inattention of US policymakers in recent years has contributed to the country’s rapid unraveling.

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Deconstruction & Bricolage: Derrida or Descartes? Sean Davidson with Brad Jersak

"To say that Rachel Held Evans and Nadia Bolz-Weber were important to me at the time would be an understatement. When I discovered Rachel’s blog, I was furiously sorting through the rubble of my deconstructed worldview. The more I read from and about Rachel and Nadia, the more I began to believe in the church and also in this emergent, progressive, different kind of Christianity. Over time, I began to reconstruct my faith—but it was a fragile faith, and admittedly, it rested in their hands. Once it became clear that they had no intention of apologizing and making things right, I knew I was done."¹

Sean: There's lots going on in this article, and I don't want to diminish the grief people are feeling around abuse of leadership, but I've found myself reflecting on this paragraph from the author's personal narrative. It's interesting how she had "rested" her faith in the hands of Christian leaders and was “done” when the leaders gave reason for disappointment. This is concerning ... I’d suggest that this person has been discipled into a kind of idealism that's managed to survive the deconstructive process.

• idealism 
• disillusionment
• redirected idealism 
• unbelief

There’s a pattern here. And notice: Jesus is nowhere to be found in the story …

One of the problems with this practice of “deconstruction” is that it is treated as a prelude to “reconstruction”. That makes it something very different than what Derrida and co. meant by it. Deconstruction for him/them was about revealing and teasing out internal contradictions to a structure of meaning rather than leveling things to the ground. What "ex-vangelicals" are calling “deconstruction” seems more related to Cartesian doubt (cf. René Descartes - 1596-1650) than deconstruction in the classic sense. It’s a return to early modernity rather than an embrace of postmodernity.

Brad: Yes. I guess we need to admit that the current use of the term has as little to do with Derrida as the term gay has to do with joviality. Sixty years on, usage does determine meaning. But this is right where we need to apply Derridean deconstruction to the assumptions of the new usage.

Sean:  I think that's right. Of course, terms can change over time, but the current popular practice is difficult to square with the classic one. Again, it’s more about Descartes than Derrida. In Discourse on Method, René Descartes recounts how he had practiced a kind of radical doubt in the interests of absolute certainty. It is a kind of certitude that is wrapped in notions of predictability and safety. That’s how many people are practicing “deconstruction.”

Brad: So even the goal (certitude) was off. And the means to that goal (radical doubt). The modernist lust for certitude. The current herd thinks they’re letting go of certitude while still desperate for it (as over against radical trust).

Sean: That seems to be part of the story at least. Derrida notes in "Structure, Sign and Play" that philosophers up to and including Nietzsche and Heidegger try to anchor their philosophies in some transcendental idea or concept. He accuses even the proto-postmoderns of “metaphysical thinking”. This is what deconstruction is about—revealing the internal contradictions. And rather than paving the way to "reconstruction" it basically reveals that we are bricoleurs or practitioners of bricolage.

Brad: What does he mean by that?

Sean: Imagine Robinson Crusoe washed up on the beach making use of anything he’s got on hand—the leftovers of previous systems and structures that no longer apply in exactly the same way in the current circumstances… That’s the spirit of bricolage. 

Bricolage comes from the world of art and is closely related to rhetorical invention. Robinson Crusoe didn’t fret about the meaning things had in a different place and time. He got on with using them in his current circumstances. In bits and pieces--innovating and improvising, sometimes in ways that would’ve conflicted with earlier structures and systems.

Deconstruction in the classic sense can help us get to that place. We don’t have to worry about stock monolithic institutions and methods, worrying about which one is right and which one is wrong. We can discern the bits and pieces at hand and their use for thriving, given what’s been revealed.

There’s a risk built into this. It’s not easy to get everything right from the outset. So it goes with adventures. We need to find ways of being faithful ourselves and helping others to do the same but there may come a time when we run into difficulties and find ourselves disappointed or even disillusioned, and we should be wary of blaming an entire system or structure for these crises as if those systems and structures could have ever delivered. This is the risk of life within the church and beyond the church.

Of course, systems and structures can be improved upon and reformed, and that can be really important work. Please don't hear me saying that systemic problems aren’t worth correcting. Still, the goal isn’t to perfect the systems and structures such that we can finally be safe/secure in ourselves and our sense of identity. What we’re after is the abundant life that Jesus promised—a life that constantly arises from crisis ...

What’s interesting to me is that so many people undergoing “deconstruction” in the popular sense tend to be oriented to theology as system, hermeneutics as method, church as institution, etc., rather than faith in the living God via Jesus. You don’t hear folks who are deconstructing or reconstructing talk about Jesus.

Here's more from Derrida on bricolage from the same essay I refer to above:

“The bricoleur, says Levi-Strauss, is someone who uses 'the means at hand,' that is, the instruments he finds at his disposition around him, those which are already there, which had not been especially conceived with an eye to the operation for which they are to be used and to which one tries by trial and error to adapt them, not hesitating to change them whenever it appears necessary, or to try several of them at once, even if their form and their origin are heterogenous—and so forth. There is therefore a critique of language in the form of bricolage, and it has even been said that bricolage is critical language itself… If one calls bricolage the necessity of borrowing one's concepts from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent or ruined, it must be said that every discourse is bricoleur.”²

On this basis, the Sermon on the Mount would be bricolage. So too the parables. So all of Jesus’ teaching. Paul and the apostles too. And let’s add the church fathers … Something shifts in the so-called scholastic age with the great summas … There was this effort to systematize according to method in the interests of mastery and that instinct gets carried into the Enlightenment. 

You’d expect more people to become comfortable with bricolage if they were really practicing Derridean deconstruction rather than Cartesian doubt.

All that to say, I'm with you. We need more Derrida—not only that we might learn a healthier practice of deconstruction but also that we’d become more self-aware bricoleurs.

NOTES

1. Caroline Ann Morris, "Why I Don't Care about Nadia Bolz-Weber's New Book," Women in Theology (Feb. 15, 2021). https://womenintheology.org/2019/02/15/why-i-dont-care-about-nadia-bolz-webers-new-book/?fbclid=IwAR2znc7lOsuZiYxyHkAGa4a9jIKA8Kgnpy5b-rbAvrI78fRE3PqurYG0N5g

2. Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”1 (1970). http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f13/DrrdaSSP.pdf.

 

Tongues of Fire (Not Fire in Our Tongues) by Gaby Viesca

Tongues of Fire
(Not Fire in Our Tongues)

Open Table Conference - June 27, 2021

Gaby Viesca

Lately, I’ve been paying close attention to the role that language plays in the shaping of our communities, our relationships, and the way we experience God. In the short time I’ve lived in the United States, I’ve seen a significant increase of violence, division, and polarization. And one thing I’ve noticed is that at the heart of so much of this violence and hatred is language: the things we say to each another (or about each other).

As we all know, language is a very powerful thing. It has the power to unite us or divide us, it has the power to inspire us, or put us down, it can bring comfort to others, or it can inflict pain. It’s a very powerful tool for communication. But besides being a powerful tool for communication, language happens to be one of the most powerful markers of identity of a person. Our language locates us within a particular culture, a particular group (oftentimes a particular ethnicity), and a particular context. In a country like the U.S., where there are so many different groups of people coexisting together, this difference in language and culture can be very difficult to navigate–especially when you’re not part of the dominant culture.

I don’t think I need to give a whole lot of examples to prove this point, but I do want to share one sentence that I hear a lot here in the U.S., and that is: “You’re in the United States, you speak English.” I don’t bring this up to be antagonistic. I’m not saying everyone in the U.S. holds this posture, I know that’s far from the truth. I bring this up because I want to trace its history. This is history that Christians need to remember.

We need to remember that, historically, so much of the expansion of Christianity has been intrinsically tied to different forms of oppression, domination, and abuse. That’s not news to anyone, I know. What is worth mentioning, however, is that during colonial times, one of the most common forms of domination and control came through the imposition of the conquerors’ language upon the conquered people.

Here is a brief excerpt from a letter written in 1609 by the London Council of the Virginia Company. This document included “Instructions” (that was the actual name of the document) for the governor of Jamestown to institute a plan, using force if necessary, to educate the children of the Weroances (Algonquian leaders) “in [the English] language, and manners;” for “if you intreate well and educate those which are younge and to succeede in the government in your Manners and Religion their people will easily obey you and become in time Civil and Christian.”¹ (Italics are mine)

Hermeneutics of an Enlightened Conscience - Richard Murray

If nothing else, Law School taught me to be intellectually flexible about the text of the law -- what the text might mean, what it could mean, what it shouldn't mean, and how its various applications could be evolved by engaging it as an open rather than a closed text. The law allows for what is beautifully termed "the enlightened conscience of the jury" to be the ultimate determiner of whether the spirit of the law has been broken in many given situations. 

In short, I learned in law school how to always at least try to read and interpret the law with my conscience. 

I practiced law for 4 years before I encountered Christ. Right after that, in 1990, I left my practice for two years and attended seminary at Regent University. Sometimes I asked questions that got me on the professors' bad side. 

One such incident occurred during my first week in my hermeneutics class. I was excited because I was sure this class would show me the best way to read the Scripture, particularly the Old Testament. Here the professor said we would learn rules that would keep us from ever quoting passages out of their historical or grammatical context. 

There was no place allowed for our conscience to be our illuminative guide in any of these concreted rules. If Scripture, by the surface letter, portrayed God as a child-drowning, infant-burning, throat-slitting, plague-sending, people-smiting killer, then our conscience couldn't dare say otherwise. I thought to myself, "I came to seminary to learn this?"

The more I learned these clinically complex rules, the more disturbed I became. I had studied the Bible with fresh eyes for the previous 15 months before entering seminary and had noticed a very obvious thing. When Jesus, Paul, and most of the other New Testament writers, quoted the Old Testament, they broke every rule this professor was advocating. They all routinely took Old Testament Scripture out of its original historical context, out of its original grammatical context, and out of its surface meaning context. Instead, they freely reinterpreted the Old Testament passage altogether whenever they felt inspired to do so. This blew my mind. Below were some of the examples I raised to my professor.

Old Testament "historical characters" were depersonalized to instead represent New Testament spiritual dynamics. In Galatians 4:21-31, the characters of Sarah and Hagar, along with Isaac and Ishmael, were now transfigured by Paul to instead represent two distinct and contrasting covenants. Hagar and Ishmael were transfigured into the Old Covenant of the law, while Sarah and Isaac were transfigured into the New Covenant of the Spirit. 

Similarly, entire "historical narratives" were reinterpreted as allegories meant to illuminate our own current spiritual journey as New Covenant Christians (1 Corinthians 10:1-11). Here,the Israelite's  PHYSICAL walk through the waters of the Red Sea in the Old Testament transfigured into a type of our SPIRITUAL walk into being baptized into Christ. Elsewhere, in the book of Hebrews,  Israel's Old Testament journey into the Promised land was now transfigured by the writer of Hebrews into an allegory of a New Testament believer's journey to enter into the spiritual and relational rest of God where we cease from our own works and enter into His (Hebrews 4:1-11).

Old Testament ceremonial "objects" were transfigured to now represent some aspect of Jesus and His Kingdom of light. Jesus frequently allegorized objects in the Old Testament. Using key imagery from Old Testament passages which were ONLY seen as literal, He would then transfigure their literal meaning into an allegorical application toward Himself. He referred to Himself as the Temple of God (John 2:19-22), the true manna from heaven (John 6:50), Jacob's supernatural ladder (John 1:51), the sign of Jonah (Matthew 12:38-40), the IAM burning bush of Exodus 3 (John 8:58), the Brazen Serpent in the wilderness who was lifted up on a pole to provide healing for all (John 3:14-15), etc. 

Let's look at some other examples from the mind of Paul. Literal foreskin-circumcision in the Old Testament transfigures into spiritual heart-circumcision in the New Testament (Romans 2:29). The Law written on literal-tablets of stone in the Old Testament transfigures into the Law of Christ's love written on the spiritual-tablets of our heart in the New Testament (2 Corinthians 3:3-9). The literal-temple in the Old Testament transfigures into the spiritual-temple of our living bodies in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). The writer of Hebrews, in fact, in chapters 9 and 10 transfigures all the Temple objects, the Temple ceremonies, and even the law itself, into allegorical shadows of a greater inner dynamic to be found now only in Christ. Paul confirms this in Colossians 2:17 when he likewise transfigures the Old Testament's holy days, its dietary laws, and its religious festivals into allegorical shadows of spiritual realities found in Christ. And the list goes on and on.

The point is that all these New Testament applications listed above of were all out of context, both grammatically and historically. In short, Jesus, Paul, and the other New Testament writers would have flunked my (and most any other) seminary class on hermeneutics. That should give us pause. 

Jesus and the New Testament writers reimagined the Old Testament as a treasure trove of subtext-- imbedded shadows, symbols, metaphors, enigmas and and types which all point to some facet of Jesus and the Kingdom of God. This is the type of allegory in which the Old Testament text means MORE or OTHER than what it is grammatically and contextually saying. And so should we. 

The New Testament now fills in the gaping holes in knowledge about God's nature which the Old Testament left us. And when these gaps are filled, the semantic content of the Old Testament changes into Christological manna.

And by the way, I never did get an answer from my seminary professor.

Probes and Provocations - Recent Postings by Wayne Northey

WAYNE NORTHEY, Canada's conscience for restorative justice, is at it again, with his regular probes and provocations! Do visit the following four links for his reflections and commentary:

How did a small town in Canada become one of the hottest places on Earth?

This article discusses the backstory to the heatwave that hit Lytton, BC, a primarily First Nations village of 250 that has since gone up in flames. Tragically, it was also the site of one of Canada's infamous residential schools, where across Canada, so many children were abused, died, and were buried in unmarked graves. Speaking of which...

The Catholic Church must come clean—completely—about what it did to Native Americans

As Wayne says, "Yes, that we non-aboriginals living downstream from all these events, to this very moment, are beneficiaries, every last one of us raised with ill-gotten privilege. Yes, that we settler Canadians need collectively to atone. Yes, that we other religious groups created no outcry throughout this genocidal horror. Yes, that we settler Canadians cannot celebrate 'Canada' with a clear conscience–ever (again)!"

Pope Francis is not a liberal! (He’s not a conservative either.)

Speaking of the Catholic Church, Wayne also responds to an article by James T. Keane, which says, "Pope Francis is not a liberal! He is not a conservative either. In fact, like most of his predecessors (and many of his brother bishops), Pope Francis does not land coherently anywhere on the axes of American politics. And we should be happy about that."

War Criminal Found Dead at 88

And finally, a piece about the track record of global calamity left in the wake of Neo-Con politician Donald Rumsfeld, whose career climaxed and ended during the George W. Bush regime. With the chaos and strange indignities of the Trump era, Wayne reminds us of the cost of the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz doctrine of global domination.   

The Error of “Precept upon Precept” Literalism - Richard Murray

Aren't we supposed to read the Bible literally, "precept upon precept, line upon line?" 

No. In fact, is the way we're NOT to read the Bible. In fact, the Bible warns us on its face not to so read it.

There is a well known teaching ministry which bases its name on Isaiah 28:13. Their stated focus is to teach the word of God "precept upon precept, line upon line" using what they call "Inductive Bible Study."  The key to rightly reading the Bible, this ministry holds,  is to convert all the Scriptures into a system of orderly precepts using strict rules of grammatical logic and historical context.

Here is the ironic catch. 

The very  passage this teaching ministry names itself after is quoted COMPLETELY out of context. The Isaiah passage emphatically warns us NOT to read Scripture "precept upon precept, line upon line," for to do so will cause us to "fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken."

Here is the full passage:

"Therefore shall the word of Jehovah be unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little; THAT they may go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken." 

Just as 2 Corinthians 3:6 warns us to NOT  read Scripture "by the letter, for the letter kills but the Spirit gives life," this Isaiah passage warns us to NEVER read the Bible as mere precepts to be systematically arranged according to the logic of men. To do so will cause us to fall backward and be taken by satanic snares of literalism.

Thus, the very name of this well known ministry violates their own central rule of interpretation which forbids taking any scripture out of context. "Precept upon precept"  is, in the context of this passage, a bad thing and not a good thing. Now, this ministry has certainly blessed many, but not BECAUSE of their precepts-based focus, but DESPITE it. 

And, in fact, the context of this Isaiah 28:9-13 passage reveals another dynamic truth.

"For with stammering lips and another tongue He will speak to this people, to whom He said, 'This is the rest with which you may cause the weary to rest, and, This is the refreshing:' yet they would not hear." Isaiah 28:11–12

Paul quoted (completely out of context I might add) verse 11 above in 1 Corinthians 14:21 right in the middle of his teaching on tongues.  This is the only New Testament reference to this Isaiah passage that I am aware of, so what is said here is crucial. His point is amazing. The people who only read the Bible "precept upon precept, one upon line" are unable to "hear" non-precept based revelation from the Holy Spirit through the gifts of the Spirit (here the gift of tongues specifically), an experience Isaiah prophetically calls a "rest" and "refreshing." 

But, because  those who read the Bible "by the letter" choose to view God's  word as mind-formulated precepts rather than spirit-quickened illumination, they will not be able to hear the teachings of the Holy Spirit, and so will fall backward and be snared. 

Nothing is more offensive to the legalistic mind than relying on tongues and their interpretation. Yet, Paul is promoting BOTH tongues and their wonderful "interpretations" as well when he quotes this Isaiah passage. Do people misuse spiritual gifts, such as tongues? Yes, on a large basis, but then again, people misuse most everything which originally came from God, so that's hardly a helpful point. Paul praised God for the revelatory gift of tongues, one which he claimed to use MORE than did all the Corinthians put together. The key, as it is with all spiritual gifts, is to use them well. What is wonderfully Spirit-given can also be wonderfully Spirit-driven.

Wasn't the purpose of the gift of tongues at Pentecost to show that whereas earthly languages have confused and divided us, as allegorized in the babble of Babel, Christ has now given us a better and brighter heavenly language to help unite and heal us? God, by this gift, was telling all men to loosen their grip on their own natural understanding, to stop idolizing language, to stop worshipping the dead letter, and to stop obsessing over the literal. 

Instead, there is a non-verbal land of milk and honey waiting for us. This land flows with unspoken unctions, transcendent tingles, virtuous vibes, inner illuminations, incomprehensible utterances, and groanings beyond words. 

When I now think of God, words no longer initially come to mind. Rather, a "tone," a "vibe," a "sensation," a "knowing" fills my heart with divine recognition. Words can then follow, inspired words, poetic words, passionate words. But language here never leads. It always follows.

This doesn't mean we still don't fervently esteem and meditate on Scripture, but it does reveal that the catalyzing agent of all heavenly revelation has got to be the Holy Spirit alone. It's  "way" we receive from God here that matters, through our Spirit-quickened conscience, not rigid man-made rule of interpretation we are chained to follow. Jesus said the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth, not the Holy Scriptures.

Once we contrast how wearisome, futile, carnal, and uninspiring "precept upon precept, line upon line" Bible reading truly, we can take Isaiah's advice and "rest" and "refresh" into something better. When we aggressively yield to our inner Spirit-quickened glowings and showings, Scriptures quickly become tender friends instead of legalistic task masters. This is the "rest" and "refreshing" these two passages promise. Let's set our hearts and minds to enter this wonderful state of being.

Au-Delà des Excuses à la Va-Vite, et de L'atténuation de la Culpabilité - Bradley Jersak

AU-DELÀ DES EXCUSES À LA VA-VITE, ET DE L'ATTÉNUATION DE LA CULPABILITÉ

BRADLEY JERSAK
Trans. Andre Lefebvre

Dire que "je suis désolé" peut être une bonne chose, et même être nécessaire.

Mais comme le dit mon ami Paul Young, qui a lui-même survécu à des abus en série dans l'enfance, "Dire qu'on est désolé peut parfois dériver et emprunter des voies nuisibles".

Je trouve utile l'approche de l'amende honorable (réparation) adoptée par les programmes anonymes (12 étapes), et j'ai remarqué qu'ils font une distinction entre présenter des excuses, et faire amende honorable :

"Considérez les amendes honorables comme des actions qui démontrent votre nouveau mode de vie [...] alors que les excuses ne sont essentiellement que des paroles. Lorsque vous faites amende honorable, vous reconnaissez et alignez vos valeurs avec vos actions en admettant vos erreurs et en vivant selon vos principes."

L'approche par amende honorable, adoptée par les communautés de rétablissement, permet d'éviter certains pièges courants dans lesquels j'ai moi-même trébuché. Parmi ces pièges, j'ai fait l'expérience des erreurs dommageables suivantes lorsque j'ai présenté des excuses :

1. Lorsque j'ai utilisé le mot "désolé" comme un moyen de manipuler les sentiments des gens à mon égard.
2. Lorsque j'ai utilisé le mot "désolé" comme une expression d'apitoiement sur soi.
3. Lorsque j'ai utilisé le mot "désolé" pour contrôler la conversation et l'issue de tensions ou de conflits.
4. Quand j'ai utilisé "désolé" pour essayer d'obtenir un "désolé" en retour de l'autre.
5. Quand j'ai utilisé le mot "désolé" pour essayer d'obtenir le pardon de ceux qui sont en colère contre moi.
6. Quand j'ai utilisé le mot "désolé" pour éviter l'examen de conscience, le repentir ou le changement réel.
7. Quand j'ai utilisé le mot "désolé" comme un mécanisme de défense ou un bouclier de déni.

Je pourrais continuer. Ce ne sont que sept des erreurs que j'ai commises. Ce sont des erreurs sociales que les colons du Canada et des États-Unis continuent de commettre avec les nations indigènes et ceux réduits en esclavage par les colons, surtout dans nos célébrations nationales du 1er et du 4 juillet, lorsque notre gratitude fait abstraction du coût payé par ceux pour qui notre arrivée est devenue si tragique.

Je dois/nous devons apprendre à relier le mot "désolé" avec le mot "affliction" ... ainsi, je reconnais que j'ai/nous sommes responsables d'avoir causé une profonde détresse, et je deviens/nous devenons disposés à supporter et à ressentir du chagrin pour nos actions, et nous voulons sincèrement réparer les choses.

Que pourraient provoquer mes amendes honorables quand les torts que j'ai/nous avons causés ne peuvent pas être facilement réparés, et risquent même de ne pas être pardonnés par ceux que j'ai offensés? Au lieu d'élaborer un déni, une attitude défensive et des fausses excuses, je peux/nous pouvons commencer par assumer ma/notre propre responsabilité et apprendre à vivre mes/nos amendes honorables.

À quoi pourrait ressembler le fait de vivre nos amendes honorables dans le cas des révélations de 2021 sur les tombes non identifiées des enfants autochtones, qui ont souffert des horreurs dans des pensionnats administrés par l'État et le clergé? Voici une clé pour vivre nos amendes honorables: nous ne décidons pas tout simplement des sacrifices qui ont un sens pour nous. Nous devons demander à ceux qui ont subi ces préjudices de décider cela et de nous en informer.

Une *véritable* réconciliation ne peut pas consister "d'excuses platoniques", sinon cela devient une autre offense que les colons imposent AUX peuples des Premières nations pour masquer leur propre culpabilité et manipuler les résultats. Une réconciliation ne peut certainement pas éviter de faire face à la vérité (et à la colère et au chagrin) du traumatisme générationnel des survivants. Et il ne faudrait surtout pas que ce soit un autre processus que nous "colonisons" juste pour rétablir le statu quo.

Nous pourrions au moins faire une prise de conscience: le Centre national pour la vérité et la réconciliation a été créé au Canada. Extrait de leur site:

Le CNVR sensibilise les Canadiennes et les Canadiens sur les profondes injustices infligées aux Premières Nations, aux Inuits et à la Nation métisse lors du retrait forcé des enfants de leur famille pour les placer dans les pensionnats indiens, ainsi que sur les mauvais traitements généralisés subis dans ces pensionnats.

Nous préservons la mémoire de ces violations des droits de la personne et encourageons la poursuite de la recherche et des apprentissages sur les séquelles des pensionnats indiens. Notre but consiste à honorer les survivantes et les survivants et à favoriser la réconciliation et la guérison en nous appuyant sur la divulgation de la vérité.

Le Centre national pour la vérité et la réconciliation (CNVR) est chapeauté par un Cercle de gouvernance. Le Cercle est formé de survivantes, de survivants et de représentantes et représentants de l’Université du Manitoba et d’autres partenaires. La majorité des membres du Cercle de gouvernance font partie des Premières Nations ou sont Inuits ou Métis.

Le Cercle de gouvernance est guidé par un Cercle des survivants, ainsi que par des aînés et des gardiens du savoir.

La mise en place de ces structures a été essentielle pour veiller à ce que les survivantes, les survivants et les partenaires se trouvent toujours au cœur même du CNVR et pour que le CNVR honore et fasse respecter le droit et les protocoles autochtones.

~ Eugene Arcand, No 781, survivant des pensionnats et membre du Cercle des survivants, Nation crie de Muskeg Lake.

En tant qu'immigrant canadien de troisième génération, je crois qu'il est à tout le moins de ma responsabilité d'explorer les 94 appels à l'action lancés et gérés par le CNVR... et au lieu d'un moment de silence une fois par an, je peux parcourir ces appels à l'action et m'informer ensuite de nos progrès auprès de mon député provincial et de mon député fédéral. Je peux également investir du temps à visiter ces liens dans le cadre de ma contribution à faire amende honorable, cherchant à comprendre, et apprenant à mieux écouter.

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"Désolé" ne dit pas vraiment grand-chose. Mais je le suis, désolé. Aujourd'hui, je suis présent à la tristesse des autres.

Je reconnais avec gratitude que je vis sur le territoire traditionnel et non cédé du peuple Stó:lō.

Robyn Wrigley-Carr's "Music of Eternity: Meditations For Advent With Evelyn Underhill" - review by Ron Dart

Robyn Wrigley-Carr, Music of Eternity: Meditations For Advent With Evelyn Underhill (SPCK: London, 2021).

Advent is one of the turning points in the Christian liturgical year and such a turning season does welcome deeper reflections on the meaning of the faith journey. Evelyn Underhill understood this turn to inner depth in a substantive way and the role of Advent in such deeper dives for the eternal pearl. Robyn Wrigley-Carr has once again produced a masterpiece of insight and wisdom in her heeding and hearing the way Underhill internalized the music of eternity in her Advent reflections.

Music of Eternity has a compelling and apt “Introduction”, by the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell. In fact, Music of Eternity will be his Advent book for 2021—high praise indeed for such a beauty of a primer on Underhill and Advent. But, there is much more worth pondering as we pass through the portal of Music of Eternity into the sanctuary of Underhill and Advent, Robyn being the Beatrice of sorts.

Music of Eternity is divided into 4 sections: 1) Prevenience: Welcoming God’s Coming (God Is), 2) Advent: Awaiting God’s Coming (Christ Is Coming), 3) Emmanuel: Recognizing God’s Coming (Christ Comes), and 4) Holy Living: Embracing God’s Coming (God Has Come). Each of these main sections are broken down into smaller bite-size pieces in which the meaning of Advent is probed in an ever fuller and more mature way and manner. Needless to say, the 4 sections correspond to the 4 weeks of Advent. In each of the sections, Robyn weaves together quotes from Underhill on Advent with her significant thoughts on the perennial relevance of both Advent and Underhill for us today on our all too human journey. The “Prologue” by Robyn is worth many a meditative read just as the “Epilogue” (Come, Lord Jesus) and Appendix (Editing the Excerpts) makes for a fine finale to Music of Eternity. There is, also, at the end of each meditation section thoughts “For Discussion” and a “Prayer”.

I might add by way of a kindly criticism that it might have been valuable if some attention had been paid to Underhill’s more political and peace writings in the book, Advent and Underhill, in their time and ethos, certainly in the thick of tragic war and peace issues.  

It would be somewhat remiss of me to ignore the evocative cover on the book. The obvious music of eternity that permeates the creative cover cannot be missed, each image more than a welcome to the senses to address the soul about Advent and yet a further journey. The winter blue sky, snow on the ground, flakes of white falling and yet flowers blooming (eidelweiss) from the snow, birds in song and an empty path and bench welcoming one and all to the journey. The courage needed to take the next invitational step forwards and onwards, to sit on the bench and listen, the path in the winter season a gift if understood aright. Such is the meaning of Advent, Underhill’s offered music and Robyn’s interpretive gift of Underhill and Advent, a letter from eternity. Can we hear the music?

Ron Dart