Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Overcoming Alienation through Narcotics Anonymous - Abp. Lazar Puhalo

Lazar Puhalo

Overcoming Alienation through Narcotics Anonymous

 

One thing I look forward to during the week is our Narcotics Anonymous meeting at the monastery.

 

The longer I participate in it, the more I realise that sin is not our problem – alienation is the problem and sins are only some symptoms of it. That we are alienated from God – that is the correct understanding of the story of Adam and Eve and of the fall. This is so essential to understand, and we must put away from our hearts all thoughts of the juridical heresy of “Original Sin.”

 

Because of our alienation from God, we can also become alienated from each other, and from our own selves. Understanding this latter fact – alienation from one's own self – is of the utmost importance if one wishes to actually help anyone or support them in their struggle.

We may have 50 people in our Narcotics Anonymous group at any one time, but when we are gathered together, no one is alienated from the rest of the group. Everyone there is gathered with a people who understand them and know the meaning of their pain and suffering, of their trauma. No one is being made to feel that they are in alienation because of their race, past, colour, or sexual orientation. This is starkly unlike most religions –from so much of Christianity and Islam in particular. Everyone at N.A. is open to each other, to support them in their struggle, and to assure them that they are not alienated from those around them. That is one of the main healing features, and it is also one of the reasons why religion fails so often when it tries to help people who are addicted: our moralisation. Our penchant for trying to moralise everything often makes it impossible for us to help people who are truly traumatized, suffering, and in need.

 

One thing we are trying to do in our N.A. group is to help people discover an inner strength that they themselves have but did not know that they had. So far, I have never met anyone in the group who was truly an atheist.

 

We too often look for some "hypothetical moral issue" when dealing with people who have these traumas, when we should be looking at understanding their inner suffering and the source of their various alienations. Instead of "convicting them of their sin" (as the sectarians like to say), we help them to overcome their alienations.

This is the greatest value that I see in the Narcotics Anonymous movement.

Russia, Rwanda and Racism: The Perils of Beheaded Christianity - Sebastian Dortch

Even though bodies filled the morgue, and airstrikes destroyed hospitals, roads, and stores, Vitaliy Kim, governor of the Mykolaiv region of Ukraine, continued his daily walks, reassuring residents that victory was near.

“What can I say, the 17th day of war, all is well, the mood is excellent,” Kim said of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. “We have freedom and we’re fighting for it. And all they have is slavery. We want all our dreams to come true and we’re moving in that direction. Together to victory.”¹

Kim’s viewpoint was not limited to him. While six million people have fled Ukraine, those who remain have amazed the world with their resolve. Young and old, weak and strong, have banded together to fight insurmountable odds. A grand narrative captures them: they are free and willing to die to stay that way.

Ukraine’s story echoes a grander story found within the Trinity, where one of its members became human, was sacrificed, and raised from the dead to make way for us to join God’s family. It is a gripping tale – filled with plot twists, misery, and woe. Nevertheless, it is beautiful, winsome, liberating, and ennobling – a story of how light will defeat the darkness we see and experience today.

Victory already has been won. God conquered sin and death: not just the occasional missed mark we call sin, but the deep-seated incurvatus in se that animates our ways, systems, and history, and not just the last heartbeat we call death, but the Genesis 3 fractured relationship between God and ourselves. Once again, God is victorious. It is just many days it does not look that way.

CLICK HERE to continue reading / download the pdf

Sebastian Dortch attends Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he is working on a master’s degree in leadership, theology and society.

Notes:

1 “‘I’m Not Scared of Anything’: Death and Defiance in a Besieged Ukrainian City,” The New York Times, March 15, 2022, sec. World, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/15/world/europe/ukraine-mykolaiv-russia-war.html.

 

God Cannot Fix This. But They Made a Way. Bradley Jersak

GOD CANNOT FIX THIS.  BUT THEY MADE A WAY. 

Another mass shooting motivated by racial hate.

Another elementary school massacre.

Another foreign invasion, escalating civilian slaughter, evidence of war crimes.

Another moment of silence, another flag lowered, another platitude.

Another thought, another prayer, another child in a body bag.

God cannot fix this.

I received an angry message from someone who lives near Uvalde, TX—directed at Christians in general, berating us for doing nothing and for making matters worse, demanding proof for our faith and lashing at the hypocrisy of the church. Where’s this miracle-making God of ours? Why aren’t we out there, performing signs and wonders, and raising the dead?

Why isn’t God fixing this? Why aren’t we fixing this?

I hear the grief beneath the rage. I feel it too.

We cannot fix this.

Not even God can fix this.

God is not a fixer.

And when we become fixers, just look at what happens! Yes, we make it way worse.

Fix it? How? With magic prayer incantations? With louder sermons? With more morality police? With political force? With more guns and bombs? That’s exactly how we broke it in the first place.

God doesn’t fix this because God is not a ‘fixer.’ God doesn’t control or coerce or impose his will on anyone. We know this—just watch the news tonight. God is not that kind of saviour. And when we demand that kind of saviour, or try to vote in that kind of a saviour, or choose to be our own saviour, we create the very problem we need to be saved from.

We hear, “I alone can fix it.” And then we watch the mess get deeper and smellier and deadlier.

If God can’t fix it, what good is our faith?

And this lie slips in—that if God doesn’t intervene to fix our mess, then God can’t save us. That God’s ‘saviour’ label is belied by God’s criminal negligence as heaven passively watches the world burn. The absence of fixes by force feel like God has abandoned us and is ghosting our cries for help.

That’s how it feels.

And now here is the truth. Not a truth or my truth or some theory. I don't have time to waffle with those who demand a fix or fell for the fixers. The truth is that God knows the only way to restore everything and redeem everyone that is lost, broken, damaged, or demented. And God has, in fact, sown that way into the world and shown that way in Jesus Christ.

God says, “You want this fixed? No. It can’t be. But I’ve made a way.”

God has made a WAY to live, to walk, to be, through which all things shall ultimately be made new. That WAY has already been forged by the One who has shown us the path and has sown the seeds that [die to] save the world. That One, Jesus Christ, says no to fixing and yes to following.

If we want to be free—not the ‘freedom’ that says, ‘It’s my right to live as I please’ but freedom from fear for our children from hatred, bullets, guns, and bombs—all we’d need to do is live the WAY Jesus taught us to live in the grace he’s given us to live it. If we trust him enough to actually follow his lead, he will free us from the fear that leads to the hatred that leads to the violence that we expect God to magically force-fix. Even in the midst of this mangled shit-show humanity has created for ourselves.

No, God cannot fix this. But God made a Way. What is it?

The Way is not simply a vague, theological “faith in God and do as you please.”

It’s an actual, prescribed program for a completely nonviolent social revolution that establishes peace on earth (aka “the kingdom of God”).

It IS the grace of God revealed in Jesus' blueprint for the salvation of the world.

If we’re willing. [spoiler alert: we currently aren't]

Essentially, the blueprint is simple. Live the golden rule. “Treat others as you want to be treated.”

The golden rule is so basic to being human that it needn’t be a such a profound revelation—but I guess we needed one, because it appears across the teachings of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, and more. You’d think we’d give it a try.

But Jesus also knew that to get there, we’d need grace to transform us from the inside out. Jesus knew that conformity to external laws without a renewed heart always leads to workarounds and loopholes to skirt God’s eternal law of love (which is all the Jewish Law and Prophets were about, according to Jesus). So to internalize the love rule, in his Sermon on the Mount, the Rabbi from Nazareth added five ‘commandments’ that deepen the ten given at Sinai.  

In chapter six of his foundational book, What I Believe (1884), Leo Tolstoy summarized and explained the five straightforward requirements of the Jesus Way manifesto—what ‘follow me’ meant to Christ, specifically, in practice:

• “Be not angry, do not judge”—hatred in heart and on the tongue are the germ that leads to murder. (Matthew 5:21-26)
• “Do not lust”—coveting another person’s spouse leads to adultery and divorce (5:27-32).
• “Do not swear oaths”—which is a pledge to obeying the disobedient powers (5:33-37)
• “Resist not evil”—retaliation by violence is itself the evil we thought to resist (5:38-42)
• “Love your enemy”—Christ erases boundaries of hostility to the other, from personal animosity to xenophobia against foreign peoples (5:43-48)

Fix this? No. Follow this!

Tolstoy concluded,

If men abstain from practicing any one of these commandments, peace will be violated. Let men practice all these commandments, which exclude evil from the lives of men, and peace will be established upon earth. The practice of these five commandments would realize the ideal of human life existing in every human heart. All men would be brothers, each would be at peace with others, enjoying all the blessings of earth to the limit of years accorded by the Creator. Men would beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, and then would come the kingdom of God.

So, no, God does not fix this world, if that means restoration by coercive or magical forces that suspend and thus violate human freedom. God cannot fix this way because God is love.

Instead, God has sent a parade of messengers of peace, including the great prophets in many faiths, and ultimately Jesus... and continues to do so even now. As a would-be follower of Jesus, I can see and say that he established his peaceable kingdom and showed us, in a human life, the Way to bring it about.

Sadly, humanity continues to rush for the opt-out door—and worse, my critic is right: Christians are barging out the exit at the head of the mob-herd. Humankind, including his own movement, continues to reject the Jesus Way and the tragic results are observable.

Yeah, but…

If the Jesus Way requires my participation, what should I do if no one else signs up? If Jesus says, for example, NO WEAPONS OF DEATH, but everyone else says, “I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands,” then is it foolish or naive to be the sole exception? What happens if I'm the only unarmed person in the bunch? If everyone else is packing heat, aren’t I defenseless? Don’t I need to be the “good guy with the gun,” just in case? Otherwise, am I not throwing away my life?

You know, like Jesus?

Jesus responds in his sermon, “The wise person hears these words of mine and puts them into practice. It’s the fool who ignores them or justifies disobeying them. Take up your Cross and follow me, because only this narrow road—this minority report—leads to a social environment conducive to life and peace. Follow me because the broad road—the way of the herd—inevitably leads to death.” The way we’ve chosen has been falsified in this escalation of death—of racist massacres, school shootings, and military invasions. The militarized masses have not made us safer—any such claim is falsified by the blood of children.

Only the Jesus Way can lead to life and peace and freedom, even if you’re the only one who takes that path, even if that path includes losing your life to find it (Matthew 16:25).

The problem today is exacerbated by those who claim to follow Jesus while rejecting the requirements he describes as ‘following.’ We’re seeing a public phenomenon where those who retain the Jesus brand are the primary public lobbyists against the Jesus Way.

No wonder my critic lashed out.

I get it. And I can’t fix it.

But I’ve heard there’s a Way.

So now, I begin with the mirror, asking where I’m still walking the Jesus Way and where I’m not. I have my own eye-planks to deal with, starting with malice.

As my friend Jarrod says, “It’s easy to call someone out. Harder to call someone in. But it begins with confession.” So today, I confess. I have not followed Jesus well. This morning, I have stewed on some hate and called my brother “Raca” (lit., worthless, fig., asshole). I have already violated the first of Jesus five amendments to the Decalogue. 

Lord, have mercy. Don’t fix me. But please save me.

Lazar Puhalo - "Born of Water and Spirit" - Baptism in the Womb of the Virgin Bride

"Testing the Spirit" - Lazar Puhalo

QUESTION: Vladika, can you say something about the meaning of "testing the Spirit." What does that mean and can you give an example?

 

REPLY: One of the surest ways in our regular experience to "test the Spirit" is in the Divine liturgy. Ask yourself if, when the priest exclaims "let us depart in peace," has he left you in a condition where you can do that? The Divine Liturgy will always bring you to a spirit of peace, hope and joy. If you find yourself driven into an unpeacefulness during the liturgy it will be because of the sermon that the priest has given.

 

We have priests who would try to imitate the fanaticism of certain Evangelicals, raving, shouting preaching in an agitated and very unpeaceful manner, often gesticulating, waving their arms about and pacing back and forth like a man possessed or with some kind of mental illness.

 

But even without all the theatrics, if a priest is regularly preaching sermons that agitate your soul and agitate you against other people, then he is not preaching the gospel, rather he is preaching from his own passions, out of the fullness of his own heart, out of his own agitation of soul and unpeaceful spirit.

 

Too often, some of our priests who have forgotten for the moment that they are Orthodox rather than fundamentalist sectarians, will preach "culture wars," and secular politics rather than the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Did Christ preach the "sermon on the Mount" with agitated unpeaceful shouting, waving of arms and pacing about in an agitated manner?

 

The Divine liturgy brings us to the threshold of that "peace that passes all understanding," and while the priest may preach in a strong and firm manner, if he is truly Orthodox he will not be preaching in a raving, hysterical, gesticulating and unpeaceful manner. He will remember that the sermon is a part of the liturgy and is, therefore, liturgical in itself.

Nail Scars and Bullet Wounds - Isaiah 1:15 - Bradley Jersak

Nail-scars & bullet wounds.

"And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood."

-Isaiah 1:15

20 million guns sold in 2020
18.5 million sold in 2021

An Emmaus Way / Christotelic response to Isaiah 1:15 might see God's own hands "spread forth" in the cruciform, bearing bullet wounds, pleading with us, "Will you hide your eyes yet again?"

Somehow, we must get beyond the repetitious platitudes of ineffectual "thoughts n prayers" or news-cycle brief faux-outrage to find someone somewhere in whose authentic grief we can sit and practice co-suffering love.

 

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

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

I Wonder If I’ve Ever Really Understood the Gospel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wholeness

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

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

Peace be with me

Soundness of mind

• I no longer imagine vain things about myself.

• I believe what Love believes about me.

Peace be with me

Safety

• I treat myself with non-judgment and tenderness.

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

• I am a safe place for myself.

Peace be with me

Exemption from havoc, rage or war

• I am not at war with myself.

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

• There is no rage or tempest within.

Peace be with me

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

FOOTNOTES

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

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

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

4 John 8:32, ESV

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

6 Ibid. p. x

7 Ibid. p. 5

8 Ibid. p.7

9 Ibid. p.7

10 Ibid. p.7

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

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

13 Ibid. p.144

14 Ibid. p.125

15 Ibid. p.8

16 Ibid. p. 9

17 Ibid. p.134

Reflections on David Milgard - Wayne Northey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Wayne Northey 

 

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

The Adages of Erasmus: Philosophy, Formation, and Wisdom 

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

—Niccolo Sagundino

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

—William Barker       

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

—William Barker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ron Dart                             

When We Welcome the Child - Kenneth Tanner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Nature of Redemption - Lazar Puhalo

The mystery of redemption is co-suffering love, not divine revenge in the form of a substitutionary sacrifice.

The Orthodox concept of redemption may be briefly epitomized as follows. While “atonement” is not a usual Orthodox Christian term or expression, we may look at its actual meaning. "Atonement" is really "to remove (or overcome) the cause of separation." In other words, man is alienated from God by sin (that is, by his constant "missing of the mark"), and so he is in bondage to death. Since man sins continually because of the power of death, sin alienates man from God, and death perpetuates the alienation (and vice versa). By death, we fall short (again, by "missing the mark" — sin) of our original destiny, which is to live through unity with the Creator.

The following summary of the Orthodox teaching about redemption is drawn from various works by Fr John Romanides.

Christ saves men, who have fallen into the power of the devil, by breaking that power. He became Man for this purpose; He lived and died and rose again that He might break the chains by which men were bound. It is not His death alone, but the entire Incarnation, of which His death was a necessary part, that freed men from their captivity to Satan. By becoming Man, living a sinless life, and rising from the dead (which He could not have done unless He had first died), He introduced a new power into human nature. This power is bestowed on all men who are willing to receive it, through the Holy Spirit. Those who receive it are united with Christ in His Mystical Body, the Church; the corrupted human nature (the bad habits and evil desires, which St Paul calls "the old man" - Rom. 6:6; Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9) is driven out by degrees until at last it is expelled altogether, and the redeemed person becomes entirely obedient to the will! of God, as our Lord Himself was when on earth. The prisoner is set free from the inside; his mind and body are both changed; he comes to know what freedom is, to desire it, and by the Holy Spirit working within him, to break his chains, turn the key and leave the dungeon. Thus, he is freed from the power of sin. God forgives him, as an act of pure love; but the condition of his forgiveness is that he must sin no more. "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8-9) and we are made capable of ceasing to be sinners by the power of Christ's Resurrection, which has given us the power to struggle against sinfulness, toward moral perfection. We must not ignore the word “struggle.”

The advantage of this Orthodox teaching is that it is firmly based on the New Testament. "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself' (2 Cor. 5:19); the act of reconciliation is effected by God in the Person of His Son, for it is man that needs to be reconciled to God, not God that needs to be reconciled to man... Throughout the New Testament, we find the proclamation that Christ has broken the power of the devil, to which mankind was subject (see Lk.10:17-18; 11:22; 1Cor. 15:25; Ga1. 1:4; Co1. 2:15; 2 Tim. 1:10; Heb.2:14; Jn.10:11; 12:31; 16:11; 1 Jn. 3:8; and frequently in Revelation). Moreover, the Orthodox Christian teaching of the atonement requires no "legal fiction," and attributes no immoral or unrighteous action to God (as the neo-Christian Atonement doctrine does).

Man is not made suddenly good or treated as good when he is not good; he is forgiven not because he deserves to be forgiven, but because God loves him, and he is made fit for union with God by God's own power, with man’s own will co-operating... He is saved from the power of sin by the life of the risen Christ within him, and from the guilt of sin by God's forgiveness, for which his own repentance is a condition. Thus, salvation consists in the union of the faithful with the life of God in the Body of Christ (the Holy Church) where the Evil-One is being progressively and really destroyed in the life of co-suffering love. This union is effected by Baptism (the Grace of regeneration) and fulfilled in the Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, and in the mutual, cooperative struggle of Orthodox Christians against the power and influence of the Evil-One. This is precisely why the last words of the "Lord's Prayer" are, "deliver us from the Evil-One," and not "deliver us from evil."

Religious Particularity & the Cultural Canopy - Beyond Multiculturalism - David Goa w/ Brad Jersak

The words of Jesus Christ, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes unto the Father except by me” frame the backdrop for this conversation on particularity and universals.

The Jewish patrimony accents the gift of particularity. Christianity, like Islam and Buddhism, treasures its revelation and sees its significance for all times and places, a “universal” insight.

In modern liberal democratic societies the particularity of cultural gifts and the civil striving for universal rights and responsibilities is often confused and entangled.

David Goa and Brad Jerak, in conversation, walk into the thickness of religious particularity and think about the importance of the civil canopy of “universals.” The danger of absolutes and the importance of holding with care our ultimate concerns are tempered with and through friendship.