The Internet Monk Archives

For Advent — Fr. Thomas Hopko: 55 Maxims

Bruegel,+P.+the+Elder,+Hunters+in+the+Snow+1565 — The Hunters in the Snow, Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Father Thomas Hopko (1939–2015) was a prominent teacher, speaker, and theologian in the Orthodox Church of America. Recently, I came across his list of “55 Maxims” and found them interesting and instructive. I think simple lists like this can be useful in penitential seasons like Advent. They help me focus and reflect on my life before God. They give me simple “hooks” I can remember as I seek to love God and my neighbors.

In one of the editions of his podcast, “Speaking the Truth in Love,” Fr. Thomas explained how this list came to be.

A few years ago, I was asked: “Father Thomas, if you summarized, in the shortest form, what a practical life of a believing Christian, of a human being who believes in God and believes in Christ, what would it be like? What kind of maxims or rules would that include?”

And in response to that request, I made up a list of what I called “55 Maxims,” 55 things that a believer, very simply, would do if they were really a believer and were really obedient to God and wanted to live the way God would have us live.

Here is the list:

Be always with Christ and trust God in everything.

Pray as you can, not as you think you must.

Have a keepable rule of prayer done by discipline.

Say the Lord’s Prayer several times each day.

Repeat a short prayer when your mind is not occupied.

Make some prostrations when you pray.

Eat good foods in moderation and fast on fasting days.

Practice silence, inner and outer.

Sit in silence 20 to 30 minutes each day.

Do acts of mercy in secret.

Go to liturgical services regularly.

Go to confession and holy communion regularly.

Do not engage intrusive thoughts and feelings.

Reveal all your thoughts and feelings to a trusted person regularly.

Read the scriptures regularly.

Read good books, a little at a time.

Cultivate communion with the saints.

Be an ordinary person, one of the human race.

Be polite with everyone, first of all family members.

Maintain cleanliness and order in your home.

Have a healthy, wholesome hobby.

Exercise regularly.

Live a day, even a part of a day, at a time.

Be totally honest, first of all with yourself.

Be faithful in little things.

Do your work, then forget it.

Do the most difficult and painful things first.

Face reality.

Be grateful.

Be cheerful.

Be simple, hidden, quiet and small.

Never bring attention to yourself.

Listen when people talk to you.

Be awake and attentive, fully present where you are.

Think and talk about things no more than necessary.

Speak simply, clearly, firmly, directly.

Flee imagination, fantasy, analysis, figuring things out.

Flee carnal, sexual things at their first appearance.

Don’t complain, grumble, murmur or whine.

Don’t seek or expect pity or praise.

Don’t compare yourself with anyone.

Don’t judge anyone for anything.

Don’t try to convince anyone of anything.

Don’t defend or justify yourself.

Be defined and bound by God, not people.

Accept criticism gracefully and test it carefully.

Give advice only when asked or when it is your duty.

Do nothing for people that they can and should do for themselves.

Have a daily schedule of activities, avoiding whim and caprice.

Be merciful with yourself and others.

Have no expectations except to be fiercely tempted to your last breath.

Focus exclusively on God and light, and never on darkness, temptation and sin.

Endure the trial of yourself and your faults serenely, under God’s mercy.

When you fall, get up immediately and start over.

Get help when you need it, without fear or shame.

I question a few of these maxims that and I would love to ask Fr. Hopko to clarify them were he still with us.

For example, #37 — “Flee imagination, fantasy, analysis, figuring things out.” As stated, I find this much too broad to be helpful. We have discussed many times how imagination is a key to a vibrant and fulsome faith, and as for “analysis” and “figuring things out,” well it seems to me that this is one of the great gifts our Creator has given to us, to be used wisely of course. Perhaps Fr. Thomas is warning us against those flights our minds can take which keep us from staying grounded or attentive to the life that is right before us, and if so, he has a point. But I often find that being imaginative and analytical help me do that too.

I would also be careful about #38 — “Flee carnal, sexual things at their first appearance.” Again, this is sound advice when one knows that such things lead to temptations that distract and attack us. However, to many ears (including mine) this can sound like an old religious cliché arising from false teachings about the body and “earthly pleasures.” For those who are married, this counsel needs to be clarified. And in the context in which we live, with overly-sexualized images and messages everywhere you turn, what does “flee” mean? As the Apostle Paul reminded us, we cannot go out of the world.

But I accept them and will think of them as small points that simply require clarification.

Some of these maxim I embrace as great treasures, for example:

#18 — Be an ordinary person, one of the human race.

#34 — Be awake and attentive, fully present where you are.

#53 — Endure the trial of yourself and your faults serenely, under God’s mercy.

And, in line with our emphasis on mercy this year, #50 — “Be merciful with yourself and others.”

Much to meditate on here. Thanks to the late Fr. Hopko for providing the material for my Advent contemplation this year.

I hope it will help you too.

Dickens and Christmas: My Take

Dickens and Christmas: My Take
In which Chaplain Mike responds to two recent posts about Christmas and the way we celebrate the season.

• • •

Readers: Feel free to click the links and read the complete posts by Scot and Trevin. I have excerpted what I think are the most pertinent passages.

Scot McKnight: “Dickens Christmas is no more Christian than a Starbuck image”

A Dickens Christmas is about joy and singing and big family dinners and dashing to and fro giving and receiving, and caring for the poor and turkeys and frosty windows. It’s now about Christmas trees and open mouths singing carols in the snow with stars in the sky.

[I]t is not the church’s mission to tell the world a Dickens Christmas story. It is the church’s mission to tell the real story about Christmas, about a God who entered into the world in a socially shamed family in order to lift the socially shamed to the highest name ever. I can’t imagine Starbucks telling that story well.

Trevin Wax: “In Defense of Christmas Cheer”

Scot is absolutely right about Charles Dickens’ view of Christmas not being synonymous with the Bible’s. But behold a very good point, with a perfectly wrong conclusion! “I say the less Dickens the better,” he writes.

Bah humbug to Scot’s bah humbug!

I agree we need more emphasis on the real meaning of Christmas, but I believe, in this, Dickens is our ally, not our foe. Why? Because the Dickens vision of Christmas would be impossible apart from a society in which the values of Christianity had taken root. G. K. Chesterton described Dickens’ Christmas as a defense of “eating, drinking and praying which to moderns appears irreverent, for the holy day which is really a holiday.”

“Joy and singing and big family dinners and giving and receiving and caring for the poor” may not be what the original Christmas was all about, but it’s certainly part of Christianity as an atmosphere, is it not? And no one succeeded at creating “atmosphere” better than Dickens.

…Scot is right to remind the church about our mission “to tell the real story about Christmas, about a God who entered into the world in a socially shamed family in order to lift the socially shamed to the highest name ever.” Yes and Amen.

Playing Scrooge to his Scrooge, however, I would only add: the Dickens vision of Christmas does not take away from the truth, but complements it. ‘Tis the season for joy and feasting! So give me a hearty helping of meat and potatoes, and another slice of Dickens’ pie.

• • •

Chaplain Mike:

Both Scot and Trevin make good points, but I also think that they are talking past each other to some extent.

The most significant phrase in Scot’s article is “the church’s mission” — “It is not the church’s mission to tell the world a Dickens Christmas story. It is the church’s mission to tell the real story about Christmas…”

In Trevin’s piece, I would highlight “Dickens is our ally, not our foe,” “it’s certainly part of Christianity as an atmosphere,” and “the Dickens vision of Christmas does not take away from the truth, but complements it.”

Let me start by responding to Scot.

I would want to question Scot as to what he means, specifically, by “the church” in this context. Is he speaking of the church in its gathered state, as a community of people that comes together to worship Christ, proclaim the good news in word and sacrament, and mark the season? Or is he speaking of that and also of the role of individual Christians as members of the church as they are scattered among their neighbors and living among the community and participating in its cultural practices? When he says that it is the church’s mission to tell Christmas’s real story, is he saying that both churches and individual Christians should stand apart from cultural celebrations and counter them by this more accurate message? Should we — more or less — be iconoclasts when it comes to Dickens and/or other cultural practices that have attached themselves to Christmas?

I don’t think that is what Scot means, but I know Christian people and Christian churches who take that stance, whether it’s about Dickens or Santa or singing Christmas carols during Advent. In context, his post was written to counter the recent “Starbucks” controversy, and I simply think he was making a point: “If you’re going to complain about Starbucks taking certain symbols out of Christmas, then you should stop and remember that such symbols are not really part of the Christmas story anyway.” I interpret Scot’s post as a firm reminder that we have gotten the Story of Christmas mixed up with lots and lots of cultural baggage, and that, in order to make the biblical narrative clear, we ought to not emphasize all that stuff as much as we do in order to tell the Story of Christmas clearly.

Scot’s no iconoclast, I’m sure; he’s just trying to balance things out a bit. At least that’s how I read him.

Now, a few words about what Trevin says.

Trevin, it seems to me, is concerned to remind us that what is “biblical” or “Christian” can go beyond the actual outline and text of the Story. When the narrative of Jesus takes hold in various places around the world, not only do people change, but so do cultures. “Joy and singing and big family dinners and giving and receiving and caring for the poor” are vitally connected to the spirit of the Christmas Story, even though they may not detail that narrative for people.

Therefore, I hear him saying, “Be of good cheer!” He encourages us away from an iconoclastic spirit to celebrate Dickens and any other Christmas tradition that reflects the spirit and virtues of the true Nativity. He writes, “Christianity is not generosity, but generosity is part of Christianity. Who knows? Perhaps when caught up in the moment of cultural gratitude, the secular heart may long for Someone to thank.”

Trevin’s point is not that different from that of the Apostle Paul, who urged the Philippians, “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8). Paul’s list of virtues is taken from Greek culture, not any specific biblical text or tradition. He expects the Philippian believers to affirm the god-like evidences of moral excellence that are reflected throughout their world, not just in scripture.

Trevin wants a Jesus-shaped Christmas too, and he sees that Dickens can fit into that quite nicely.

Finally, a word from your chaplain.

Both Scot and Trevin are making a point about keeping Christmas Christian. I have a slightly different take.

I think this discussion would be helped by making a couple of distinctions.

First, let’s distinguish between the Story of the Nativity and cultural Christmas celebrations. They never have been the same thing, and we shouldn’t expect them to be. Scot is right in reminding us to keep the narrative primary and Trevin is right to say that this can have cultural ramifications. But I say, even if the cultural celebrations don’t exhibit or promote Christian themes, Christians are still free to participate in them as fellow human beings with their neighbors as a part of life in this world. We shouldn’t feel it necessary to baptize everything we do as “Christian” — even Christmas!

Secondly, we should distinguish between what churches as gathered communities of believers do and what individuals do in personal practice as they live among their neighbors and in their communities.

I would follow Scot’s counsel to leave Dickens (and other cultural additions of Christmas) out of the church as much as possible. When the church gathers, it should be all about the Story, and our practices, preaching, and programs should focus on that. Whatever we do should distract as little as possible from the message as Scot outlined it. Christians should not expect their churches to provide a “Dickens Christmas” atmosphere for them. And in terms of outreach, I don’t think churches should expend huge amounts of resources to imitate our culture’s rituals in order to attract people and then throw Jesus in for good measure. Be the church. Focus on the Story. Follow the liturgical year, proclaim the Word, serve the Sacraments, reenact the drama of redemption in worship and teach the biblical narrative. When you gather, let the Messianic hope shape your Christmas.

But then, churches, set your people free to go home and live among their neighbors. Don’t try to control them with a lot of rules about the hows and whys of participating in the cultural celebration of the holidays. Let the Holy Spirit guide them. If they want to play Santa with their children, don’t look down on them. If they want to use the season as their time to give extravagant gifts to one another, don’t criticize. Feasting? Alcohol? Office parties? Silly Christmas songs and movies or over-the-top decorations? Special fund-raising drives for the poor? Rich desserts and hot toddies? Let them “Dickens” up (or “Santa” up, etc.) Christmas as much as they want to.

In my opinion, these issues are adiaphora — I’m not concerned with “making them Christian” or “finding the Christianity” in them. This is mostly about people enjoying life through participating in cultural celebrations, just like some people are sports fans and others take up any number of avocations and recreational pursuits. Even though these cultural practices coincide with a Christian holy day, we don’t have to agonize about making sure they’re “Christian” or faithful to the Story to enjoy them.

If churches have taught people the Story deeply and faithfully encouraged them to be people of faith, hope, and love, and if their pastors have walked with them and have given them spiritual direction about loving God and loving their neighbors, we need not think we must direct the details of their lives. Immerse them in the Story, but don’t insist that there is one specific “Christian” way to think about or do all of this.

I’m thinking that some of the things Michael Spencer wrote about Halloween practices in America could be said equally about Christmas — basically: lighten up, love Jesus, and enjoy as you wish.

Mondays with Michael Spencer: November 30, 2015

Return of the Prodigal Son (detail), Rembrandt

The story of the prodigal son is often judged as the most effective of Jesus’ parables. Certainly it is the most emotionally powerful, as it touches close to circumstances that are timeless. One of my personal treasures in a copy of Rembrandt’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” which was the subject of Henri Nouwen’s excellent book on the parable and the painting.

I’ve always been fascinated by the original setting of this story. What was the audience and setting that first heard Jesus tell this story? In the movie “Jesus of Nazareth,” Jesus tells the story to the “sinners and tax collectors” at Matthew’s dinner party (Mark 2:15-17), while the disciples- especially Peter- play the role of the older brother standing outside the party, looking in the door. At the conclusion of the story, Peter comes into Matthew’s house, apologizes to Jesus and accepts Matthew as a brother.

Despite the Hollywood spin on that particularly setting, it is entirely believable to me that the story of the prodigal son was told with the intention to create a particular kind of community, and not just to invite individuals to respond to God’s offer of forgiveness.

This may sound odd to many of us because we almost exclusively hear this story used in preaching and teaching as an appeal to the individual. Even with much recent attention to the older brother or the father as a focii of the story, there are still many examples of the story being used almost exclusively as an invitation to prodigal sinners to believe the Gospel of the forgiveness.

Henri Nouwen closes his book with an wonderful chapter called “Living the Painting.” He suggests three ideas that have permeated his own application of the story of the prodigal as he has encountered it in scripture and Rembrandt’s painting. The themes are, interestingly, themes that can be pursued as individuals, but are best pursued in community. (It was the “Prodigal Project” that moved Nouwen from academia to chaplaincy at the Le’ Arche Community, where he spent his last years caring for the handicapped and those who cared for them.)

First of all, there is the “homecoming” of the prodigal son himself. The story of the prodigal can be very complex when we try to deal with all the reasons that the son leaves home or that the father allows him to be so foolish, but the story comes into bright focus on the road home. There will be a homecoming, but what kind will it be? Jesus was creating narrative tension like a good novelist. The son has come to the end of his resources and his rope. He’s been humiliated by events and forced to reconsider his life and his relationship to his father.

If you are impressed with the son’s repentance, you aren’t following the story. This is the original episode of “Survivor,” and the son is calculating how he can avoid starvation and see another day. His repentance- like all our repentance- is inadequate. It’s “sincere”…..kinda sortof. It has the right words, but if you suspect this is less than enough to gain his father’s complete forgiveness, you would be right.

The “homecoming road” is the point of real surprise. Here is where I wonder if readers realize how Jesus’ audience would have anticipated these events in the real world. A middle eastern father who had been subjected to the disrespect and embarrassment of this son’s choices would have stayed aloof. He wouldn’t have left this chair, his room or his house to meet such a son. He quite possibly would have refused to see the son for many days. It would have been more appropriate for the son to find a relative who could represent him to his father. (In fact, in some gospel tellings of the story, such a mediator would play the role of Jesus going before an “angry” father.)

Instead, the father acts in a way completely inappropriate for his station and his situation. He looks at the ragtag returning son, and is- like Jesus- filled with compassion. He leaves his chair, his room, his house. He runs- yes, runs- past his servants and employees. He runs and embraces a son he believed was dead to him. Without a word from the son, he embraces and kisses him.

The “homecoming” is already under way before the son has said a word. True to his plan, the son attempts his scripted speech, which now seems ridiculous in view of the father’s emotional reception. There is no doubt that the son has been restored from the very moment that the father sees him. In fact, the son’s speech seems almost funny, as the father is clearly not waiting for it, or particularly paying attention. He is going beyond just a welcome, or even a restoration. He is treating the son as if he were returning in honor or great victory. The father has eliminated the shame of the son’s leaving and the shame of his failure (which were surely evident in his attire and his appearance), replacing it all with the symbols of highest honor and exaltation. The son is treated as a groom, or an heir.

Jesus’ hearers would have been stunned. The father’s actions were insane. His demonstration of acceptance overturned what it meant to be a father in his culture. It ignored the loss of family honor and the son’s disrespect and sin. Instead, the father follows and acts out his feelings of love and compassion- feelings that might be understandable, but were not to be publicly expressed.

Of course, this is exactly what Jesus was doing in his ministry. His audience could see it any time they looked at Jesus’ disciples, healings or exorcisms. They could see it in his treatment of women, outcasts and sinners. Jesus was welcoming Matthew, Zaccheus and Mary Magdalene. He was giving homecoming to the demon-possessed and the unclean. In his words and actions, he was the father in this story. Jesus was presenting God in a way that was revolutionary to his hearers.

But this is more than a good story. It has a purpose. Jesus was creating a community that would keep the homecoming going. The Jesus movement was a homecoming movement. An ongoing party of welcome for prodigals by a father who has thrown convention aside and adopted a new way of being family. A homecoming movement that should perpetually have the character of the father’s party and the father’s willingness to set aside shame and “morality” for the delight of grace.

Advent I: A Holy Year of Mercy

Advent I
A Holy Year of Mercy

We will be moving “Sundays with Michael Spencer” to Mondays this year so that we may follow the liturgical calendar with our Sunday posts.

On Sundays we will also emphasize “mercy,” following the lead of Pope Francis, who on December 8 will open the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica to inaugurate the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy (click link to go to the official website).

We do this, not because all of us here at Internet Monk are Roman Catholic, but because I think this emphasis on God’s mercy and showing mercy to others is timely and significant in these days of polarization, mistrust, fear, and violence. It would be good and salutary if all Christians everywhere would embrace this.

Here are the first three points from the Pope’s Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy (April 11, 2015):

1. Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy. These words might well sum up the mystery of the Christian faith. Mercy has become living and visible in Jesus of Nazareth, reaching its culmination in him. The Father, “rich in mercy” (Eph 2:4), after having revealed his name to Moses as “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex34:6), has never ceased to show, in various ways throughout history, his divine nature. In the “fullness of time” (Gal 4:4), when everything had been arranged according to his plan of salvation, he sent his only Son into the world, born of the Virgin Mary, to reveal his love for us in a definitive way. Whoever sees Jesus sees the Father (cf. Jn 14:9). Jesus of Nazareth, by his words, his actions, and his entire person reveals the mercy of God.

2. We need constantly to contemplate the mystery of mercy. It is a wellspring of joy, serenity, and peace. Our salvation depends on it. Mercy: the word reveals the very mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. Mercy: the ultimate and supreme act by which God comes to meet us. Mercy: the fundamental law that dwells in the heart of every person who looks sincerely into the eyes of his brothers and sisters on the path of life. Mercy: the bridge that connects God and man, opening our hearts to the hope of being loved forever despite our sinfulness.

3. At times we are called to gaze even more attentively on mercy so that we may become a more effective sign of the Father’s action in our lives. For this reason I have proclaimed an Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy as a special time for the Church, a time when the witness of believers might grow stronger and more effective.

Francis will open the Holy Door on December 8, which marks the 50th anniversary of the closing of Vatican II. When St. John XXIII opened that Council, he indicated the path the Church was poised to follow: “Now the Bride of Christ wishes to use the medicine of mercy rather than taking up arms of severity…”

As we enter this new liturgical year, a year of receiving and extending God’s mercy, may mercy triumph over judgment as Pope Francis’s dream is fulfilled: “How much I desire that the year to come will be steeped in mercy, so that we can go out to every man and woman, bringing the goodness and tenderness of God! May the balm of mercy reach everyone, both believers and those far away, as a sign that the Kingdom of God is already present in our midst!”

• • •

PRAYER OF POPE FRANCIS FOR THE JUBILEE OF MERCY

Lord Jesus Christ,
you have taught us to be merciful like the heavenly Father,
and have told us that whoever sees you sees Him.
Show us your face and we will be saved.
Your loving gaze freed Zacchaeus and Matthew from being enslaved by money;
the adulteress and Magdalene from seeking happiness only in created things;
made Peter weep after his betrayal,
and assured Paradise to the repentant thief.
Let us hear, as if addressed to each one of us, the words that you spoke to the Samaritan woman:
“If you knew the gift of God!”

You are the visible face of the invisible Father,
of the God who manifests his power above all by forgiveness and mercy:
let the Church be your visible face in the world, its Lord risen and glorified.
You willed that your ministers would also be clothed in weakness
in order that they may feel compassion for those in ignorance and error:
let everyone who approaches them feel sought after, loved, and forgiven by God.

Send your Spirit and consecrate every one of us with its anointing,
so that the Jubilee of Mercy may be a year of grace from the Lord,
and your Church, with renewed enthusiasm, may bring good news to the poor,
proclaim liberty to captives and the oppressed,
and restore sight to the blind.

We ask this of you, Lord Jesus, through the intercession of Mary, Mother of
Mercy; you who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever.

Amen.

Saturday Ramblings: November 28, 2015

1973-AMC-Matador-Coupe — 1973 AMC Matador Coupe

In honor of my brother-in-law with whom we just spent Thanksgiving, who once drove a bright orange version of this ’73 beauty, we feature today’s two-door Matador, which he lovingly remembers as “a piece of junk.” Of course, he only paid 300 bucks for it, but it is true that AMC/Rambler made some dreadful cars in the 1970s. This one looks like it will do for taking us rambling, however, so climb in and let’s go!

Along the way, just because we can, and to conclude the Church Year 2014-2015 with a bit of levity, we feature a fond look at nuns having fun as we ramble.

Nuns Having Fun (18) — Turkish nun taking aim at a Russian fighter jet. Now you know…

An advertisement featuring the “Lord’s Prayer” was banned in theatres in England recently, creating a lot of discussion and debate. Here is the ad:

Bishop Steven Croft of Sheffield responded with a piece in the Washington Post offering reasons why the theatre companies might have been right to do so. First, he outlines the facts:

The Church of England has produced a 60-second commercial. The only words are the words of the Lord’s Prayer, said by children, the bereaved, people at work and so on. The ad is to promote a new Web site, JustPray.uk. The plan was (and is) to show the film before Christmas at screenings of the new “Star Wars” film to help everyone think about prayer and to pray. What could be more simple?

The distributors have declared the Lord’s Prayer unsuitable for screening. They believe it carries the risk of upsetting or offending audiences.

He then gives seven reasons (one for each line of the prayer) why this prayer speaks powerfully against “the point of view of global corporations and consumer culture, . . . [and] the perspective of the gods and spirits of the age.” He concludes:

There are only 63 words in the Lord’s Prayer. It takes less than a minute to say them.

Yet these words shape our identity, give purpose to our lives, check our greed, remind us of our imperfections, offer a way of reconciliation, build resilience in our spirits and call us to live to the glory of our creator.

No wonder they have been banned in the boardrooms of consumer culture.

Nuns Having Fun (19) — The Cubs are negotiating with the agent for Sister Mary Catherine, a starting pitcher who (it is reported) has a “wicked” fastball.

In an article at RNS questioning whether humans are hard-wired for violence, Marcia Pally writes:

It turns out, however, that we’re evolutionarily wired not for violence but for cooperation. ‘The vast majority of the people on the planet,’ writes Douglas Fry, ‘awake on a typical morning and live through a violence-free day — and this experience generally continues day after day after day.’

The real story should be the 13,748 gazillion times human beings default to cooperation and kindness!

Noting that this should motivate us to do more research on the real causes of violent behavior, she notes that many blame religion. However, she analyzes and then rejects that notion, concluding that “blaming religion for human aggression is like blaming adultery on the marriage vows.”

Furthermore, she notes that evolutionary biology and anthropology do not support the notion that violence leads to evolutionary advantage, but that “hyper-cooperation” brings the most benefits. Why then don’t we cooperate more? Pally puts her finger specifically on two perversions in our cultural relationships: (1) fear, and (2) the absence of self-transcendent meaning.”

Nuns Having Fun (8) — Nuns in Denver, CO going one toke over the line. Sweet Jesus.

In September, the company that makes and sells Nutella started a marketing campaign that allows fans of the hazelnut spread to personalise a 750 gramme or one kilogramme jar. Everyone but one five-year old girl in Shellharbour, New South Wales, Australia, that is.

You see, her mom named her Isis, after the Egyptian goddess Isis, revered as a matriarch and friend of the disadvantaged. She also named her 8-year-old son Odhinn after a god in Nordic mythology. Odhinn gets the Nutella, Isis is out of luck.

Here's little Isis, snuggling with her mom, just before she beheaded her. — Here’s little Isis, snuggling with her mom just before she beheaded her.

Heather Taylor, the little girl’s mother, was quite upset, but as Michael Koziol writes in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Unforeseeable though it may have been, the Taylor family are now dealing with the consequences of the unfortunate name choice. Ms Taylor has to shield her daughter from news reports, and regularly receives looks of disbelief in public places.

“I am starting to get to the point where I don’t want to call her name out,” she said. “Because she’s going to start noticing people looking.”

Ms Taylor also feels particularly aggrieved by a Woman’s Day article published earlier this month, which ranked “Isis” as No.1 on a list of 12 baby names that should be criminalised.

Hey, guess what No. 2 on the list is?

Nutella.

You can’t make this stuff up.

The Cubs are also looking for a contact hitter. Sister Rosa, who practices with a ruler every day in her classroom, rarely misses when she swings.

A group of 100 African-American pastors and religious leaders is scheduled to meet at Trump Towers in Manhattan at 1 p.m. on Monday. I can’t believe I am actually writing this, but the group is expected to endorse The Donald for president.

Pastor-Darrell-Scott-featur — Pastor Darrell Scott, here shown with his eyes open

Alan Rappeport of the New York Times reports that Trump appears to have overcome some of the problems dealing with race that his campaign has had, at least with this group of black ministers, and they are ready to put their stamp of approval on him. Rappeport writes:

Darrell Scott, the pastor of the New Spirit Revival Center in Ohio, helped organize the coalition of religious leaders and said that after meeting Mr. Trump in person he was convinced that Mr. Trump was the candidate best suited to be president. He also said that the public portrayals of Mr. Trump as a racist and demagogue seemed unfounded after they spoke.

“I was looking for some subtle hints of racism,” Mr. Scott said. “I didn’t see it at all.”

Mr. Scott, who said he was a registered Democrat who had voted for President Obama, said that he had been impressed by Mr. Trump as a leader and that he liked his ideas for improving the economy. He said that when he closed his eyes and listened to all the candidates, he found Mr. Trump to be the most appealing.

Yeah, and if I close my eyes and listen, the only thing I hear is circus music.

Some orders use a labyrinth, but for the Sisters of St. Thomas nothing stimulates contemplation better than a walk across the “monkey bridge.”

I was not aware of this. Amazon has apparently converted the U.K. through the gospel of Black Friday. Even though they do not (of course) celebrate our U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, we still were able to infect them with the shopping bug.

Helaine Olen at Slate reports:

The e-commerce juggernaut first introduced Black Friday to Britain in 2010. The concept proved popular. As a result, other U.K. retailers began to offer Black Friday discounts, both online and in stores.

But it wasn’t until 2013 that the day achieved something near the legendary status in Britain that it enjoys in the States. That’s when Asda, a U.K.-based superstore owned by, yes, Walmart, began to run Black Friday promotions in its physical stores promising “earth-shattering deals” with “unbeatable” prices. The chain’s chief merchandising officer specifically cited Walmart’s Black Friday sales as an inspiration. Guess what happened next?

British consumers, who for years had thrill-watched American Black Friday shoppers on YouTube, knew exactly what to do. They mobbed the front doors of Asdas across the British isles hours before the 2013 Black Friday sales began, and then, as if on cue, began to fight over the goods when allowed inside. There were reports of a “stampede over cut-price televisions” at a Belfast, Northern Ireland, Asda, and a “scuffle” over the same product at one located near Bristol, England.

The article goes on to describe other “scenes that shamed Britain.” Ha, ha, the U.S. wins again! And it’s not even really worth it for the stores. According to Olen’s report:

Now, it seems, the British are stuck with Black Friday much as American retailers are—their shoppers now expect it. Some retail analysts predict customers will spend more than 1 billion pounds on combined online and in-store shopping this Friday.

Nonetheless, it’s not even clear Black Friday is a win for British or American retailers, never mind shoppers. LCP Consulting reported only a third of retail executives they surveyed in the United States and Britain claimed the shopping holiday was profitable, with another 28 percent saying it was not only a money loser, but “unsustainable.”

For our musical selection today, we present Adele’s remarkable performance of “When We Were Young” from SNL last week. Her new album, “25,” was just released.

Another Look: Preparing for a New Church Year

Note from CM: In 2010, we did a series on “Church Year Spirituality.” November is the month when we complete the annual liturgical cycle and prepare for a new Church Year, which begins the first Sunday in Advent (Nov. 29 this year). Here is the first post from that series. We present it in order to help us all prepare for the first Sunday in Advent this weekend.

• • •

Christians who follow the liturgical calendar will begin a new year of living in the Gospel with the commencement of Advent on Nov. 29.

The diagram on the right gives an overview of the annual Church calendar.

Advent is the season when we prepare for Christ’s coming. (4 weeks)
Christmastide is the season when we celebrate Christ’s incarnation. (12 days)
In Epiphany, we remember how Christ made God’s glory known to the world. (up to 9 weeks)
The Lenten season leads us to the Cross, the climactic event in Holy Week, which concludes Lent. (40 days plus Sundays)
Eastertide (the Great 50 Days) celebrates Christ’s resurrection, new life, and his ascension to glory. It concludes on the 50th day, Pentecost, the day of the Spirit’s outpouring.
The Season after Pentecost (or Trinity, or Ordinary Time) is the time of the church, when by the Spirit we live out the life of the Gospel in community and in the world. (up to 29 weeks)

I don’t know why so many Christian groups think they need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to “discipleship programs.” This time-tested annual pattern for the life of individual believers and the Church together that is focused on Christ, organized around the Gospel, and grounded in God’s grace, is sheer genius. It is simple enough for a child. It offers enough opportunities for creativity and flexibility that it need never grow old. Each year offers a wonderful template for learning to walk with Christ more deeply in the Gospel which brings us faith, hope, and love.

My favorite book on church year spirituality is Robert Webber’s Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year. Here is his summary of the subject:

Ancient-Future Time presents the historical understanding of the Christian year as life lived in the pattern of death and resurrection with Christ. This spiritual tradition was developed in the early church and has been passed down in history through the worship of the church. It enjoys biblical sanction, historical staying power, and contemporary relevance. Through Christian-year spirituality we are enabled to experience the biblical mandate of conforming to Christ. The Christian year orders our formation with Christ incarnate in his ministry, death, burial, resurrection, and coming again through Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost. In Christian-year spirituality we are spiritually formed by recalling and entering into his great saving events. (p. 21f)

In today’s post I will merely list five primary reasons why I think it advantageous for Christians to form their spiritual lives — their walk with God through Christ — around the liturgical year. Then, throughout the month on subsequent Sundays, we will take these points and expand upon them. We will continue exploring and discussing this over the next two weeks as we prepare for our new Church Year to begin on Nov. 30.

Five Reasons to Practice Church Year Spirituality

It enables us to live in God’s Story. Church Year spirituality forms Christian people around the story of redemption in Christ. It does not focus on “principles” or “steps” or “programs” for spiritual growth. It is thoroughly Jesus-shaped and uses the biblical story to conform our lives to his. As Israel was shaped by their story of slavery, redemption, covenant, and Promised Land, so the New Israel is formed by the story of Messiah.

It keeps the main thing the main thing. Church Year spirituality is Christ-centered. It is shaped around the events of his incarnation, ministry, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and the outpouring of his Spirit. At every turn we see Jesus, we hear Jesus, we follow Jesus.

It recognizes that one’s calendar forms one’s life. Church Year Spirituality is down-to-earth, utterly realistic about the day to day, season to season patterns of life that shape our behavior. All our lives we have developed habits by the way we mark and use our time. A spirituality formed around the Church Year is designed to form our habits around following Jesus. We take the place of disciples, and walk through the same experiences they had as they lived with Jesus day in and day out, season after season, over the course of three years.

It links personal spirituality with worship, family, and community. Church Year Spirituality recognizes both the individual journey and the corporate pilgrimage. What happens on Sundays is of a piece with what happens during the week as our corporate worship and our daily lives as individuals and families are shaped around the story of Jesus.

It provides a basis of unity and common experience for Christians everywhere. Our unity with other Christians is in the Gospel story. This is summarized in the Apostles’ Creed and the other creeds of the church. Propositional doctrinal statements have their place as ways to express more detailed understandings of the meaning and significance of God’s saving acts, but our unity with other believers is in Christ. We celebrate this throughout the year when churches of various traditions and denominations celebrate the Church Year and conform their worship and congregational lives to it.

I hope this introduction is helpful. Advent begins on Sunday, kicking off another year of shaping our lives according to Jesus and his Story.

When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” (John 1:38-39)

It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. (Col 1:28)

A Thanksgiving Sonnet

A Thanksgiving Sonnet
2015

When in these dark’ning days the world goes bare
And gray the sky above and brown beneath
When I awake to frosty silver morns
Break out my woolen coat and cross the heath
All life seems to have fled and left behind
A scene bereft of color’s warm embrace
Through breath’s cold haze and woodsmoke’s tang I step
And twist and squint and guard my naked face
Though colorless and chill may be this morn
Though darkness deepens, short’ning days anon
Though limbs strain starkly, vainly to the clouds
Though death reigns and all to this place must come
I bow my head in thanks defiantly
And dream about the spring inside each tree

Randy Thompson: Thanksgiving – You can’t sell gratitude

Note from CM: We’re thankful for our friend, Randy Thompson, who, along with his wife Jill has a wonderful ministry of hospitality and grace in the beautiful mountains and woods of New Hampshire called Forest Haven. Forest Haven is a Christian organization whose purpose is to provide a rural, quiet place of healing hospitality and spiritual refreshment for Christian ministers and missionaries, and their spouses, who need time away from their responsibilities to draw closer to God.

Shortly after Halloween, Randy wrote this meditation on Thanksgiving.

• • •

As I write, the Halloween decorations are being taken down and the Christmas decorations are going up. Halloween candy is selling at half price to clear the way for Christmas candy. Yet again, the marketing steamroller of these mega-profitable holidays has gone right over Thanksgiving and squashed it.

It’s hard to make money on Thanksgiving, unless you’re a turkey or cranberry farmer. It’s a holiday built on the sense that we have received much, that God has, for His own inscrutable reasons, been good to us. It is a time to reflect on what we have, and how we got it, and at the heart of it all is the God who gives us what we have, directly or indirectly. The God who created us with gifts and abilities that enable us to provide for our own needs as well as the needs of those we love. You can’t sell gratitude. You don’t make money on thankfulness. No wonder retailers fast forward from October 31 to December 25 and bypass November completely.

Thanksgiving, it seems to me, should be a quiet holiday, a time for grateful people to share meals together and make good use of the traditional fruits of fall harvest– apples, pumpkins, potatoes, and squashes. Turkeys too.

One of the most intimate things human beings do is eating together. In traditional societies, an invitation to share a meal with someone at their home was not just to eat food together, but an offer of friendship. Such hospitality had an almost sacramental quality, where an invitation to dinner at someone’s house was an opening of that person’s heart. Food became something more than just something to chew on.

Maybe you’re thinking that the Thanksgiving dinner you’ll be going to won’t be warm and friendly. Maybe there are family tensions and estrangements that are only temporarily put aside; maybe your shared meal will be awkward, and the pleasantries strained, if not phony. Never mind. The meal itself has a healing quality to it, despite family frictions and personal histories. It is a feast, and, even if the hearts of those who come to share it don’t or can’t enter into it appropriately, it still is a feast–a festival that recognizes, however dimly, that God is good, that His creation is good, and that God loves His creation enough to send His Son into it, who invites us to join him in another, greater feast which he asked us to eat regularly in remembrance of him.

Thanksgiving originated as a sacred meal that served as a vivid reminder of God’s presence, providence and blessing to those pilgrims who survived that first, terrible year in Plymouth Colony. Let this Thanksgiving meal be the same for you. Let it be, in your heart, the recognition that God has been faithful and good. Let it be a meal of hope looking forward to better things. Even if everyone else at the meal sees only food on the table, make sure that you have eyes to see beyond the food and even the people sitting there to what that food means, and Who’s hospitality it is, finally, that is being offered and to Whom we offer thanks.

And, to have such eyes is to have the eyes you need to see the star the magi saw, that leads you to Bethlehem, to the birth of a baby. . . but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Blessings to you all

The two sides of wonder

Yesterday, we highlighted William P. Brown’s point that “the experience of wonder comes unbidden, as a disruption and, ultimately, as a gift.”

But this must be balanced by what he goes on to say. For wonder is more than a gift to be received. When we meet it, wonder enlivens us, awakens us, inspires us, and calls us into a new atmosphere of wanting to know, to see, to understand, to appreciate, and to love more. It creates hunger as well as satisfying. It not only stops us in our tracks, it calls us to journey onward to new places. In this way, wonder begets more wonder.

Yes, wonder is akin to mystery, but it is far from ignorance, blissful or otherwise. Philosophers, both ancient and modern, have identified wonder’s luring yet perplexing character as the very basis of deep inquiry. Socrates famously claimed that “wonder is the only beginning of philosophy,” the love of wisdom. Put more provocatively, wonder is “surrendering ourselves to the eros of inquiry.” It is both wonder’s gravitational pull and its “frightening indeterminacy” that keeps the pursuit of wisdom ever ongoing, ever generative and open to the new.

Wonder, thus, is a paradox: it instills a reverent, even fearful, receptivity toward the other, a posture of standing back or bending the knee. Such is wonder’s afinity with awe. At the same time, wonder quickens the desire to venture forth, toward the source or object of wonder. Wonder kindles the “eros of inquiry,” the desire to know intimately but never fully, for the full satisfaction of desire entails, paradoxically, the death of desire. Wonder cultivates an emotional and cognitive openness that is genuinely receptive yet ever restless. Such are the two sides of wonder: awe and inquiry. Born of awe, wonder is intimately more active than awe. Wonder animates: “In wonder I want to leap or run, in awe to kneel.”

• William P. Brown

Brown then goes on to discuss a phrase prevalent throughout the Hebrew Bible: “the fear of the Lord.”

This was helpful to me. We think of fear as an avoidance response, he says, but the scriptures present a different kind of fear, which he calls an affiliative fear. This kind of fear draws us toward God rather than causing us to flee. To be sure, Brown writes, in wonder we “tremble at the threshold of approach,” but it doesn’t set us running out the door in panic.

In wonder God both encounters and engages us, confronts and captivates us, startles and stimulates us.

William Brown gives this a name I find wondrous: “fear seeking understanding.”

Let’s go marveling

You are the God who works wonders.

• Psalm 77:14

• • •

Let’s go marveling.

“This felicitous phrase is taken from the great Methodist preacher Fred Craddock, who tells of the ancestral practice of taking walks every Sunday afternoon and finding things to marvel at and to share with others” (Wm. P. Brown).

I’ve just begun reading a new book by one of my favorite Bible scholars and theologians, William P. Brown. You have seen posts here about his book, The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder, which greatly expanded my understanding of how the Bible presents creation.

He has now written a book discussing some of the same texts and a number of others to explore the idea of “wonder,” to “follow a biblical itinerary of wonder from start to finish.” It’s called Sacred Sense: Discovering the Wonder of God’s Word and World, and it is Brown’s effort to explore some wondrous passages in order to experience more fully the wonders of God’s world.

I mention it today, at the outset of this Thanksgiving week, to say that I think a sense of wonder is essential to the attitude of thankfulness. It is when we go through life “marvelling” that we find ourselves most filled with gratitude. “Gratitude” comes from the same root as the word “grace,” and being grateful involves recognizing that my very existence, life, and what I am and have is gift.

The introduction to William Brown’s new book is called, “Wonder’s Wonder.” It is a meditation on the concept and an encouragement to let ourselves be “lost in wonder, love, and praise,” as we sing in the old Wesleyan hymn. With approval he quotes this part of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition:

The emotion excited by the perception of something novel and unexpected, or inexplicable; astonishment mingled with perplexity or bewildered curiosity.

I especially like that last phrase: “astonishment mingled with perplexity or bewildered curiosity.” Here is a sense I find mostly missing in the Christian world with which I am most familiar. I find enthusiasm, excitement, a sort of adolescent exhilaration that interprets relatively banal events with words like “awesome.” But genuine awe — jaw-dropping astonishment that feels as much like fear as joy — is rare.

Brown notes that wonder can spring from unsettling experiences of disorientation, overwhelming us, throwing our preconceived ideas into question, and leaving us breathless, wordless. When Jacobs says, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it!” (Gen. 28:16), he is undone, barely capable of arising. Brown calls this the “Wow!” response.

Wonder can also come from seeing what one called a “sense of perfection in the ordering of the world.” This is profoundly orienting rather than disorienting wonder. Seeing how things actually and elegantly fit together to create something wonder-full is the task of scientists, artists, musicians, story tellers and sages. William Brown calls this the “Yes!” response that complements the “Wow!” Something deep within us responds to beauty, symmetry, and the overwhelming rightness of something we encounter.

We shall continue our discussion of this in days to come, but I want to look ahead a bit and introduce a point that I find key to this whole matter. Here are William Brown’s own words:

In wonder the object of knowing never becomes conquered territory or something consumed. To know something in wonder is to participate rather than to appropriate; it is to be awakened and made vulnerable, transformed in an ongoing adventure of knowing. In wonder, mystery remains, but it remains ever alluring, drawing us into greater awareness. Wonder is prompted by something or someone quintessentially other, wholly outside of us yet striking a resonant chord deep within us. Wonder is being touched by otherness, and it requires becoming vulnerable to the source or object of wonder. Whether in beauty or in ugliness, the experience of wonder comes unbidden, as a disruption and, ultimately, as a gift.

Our cultural predilection would be to see cultivating wonder as yet another method for coming to know God, one way among others. But we do not control wonder. We do not consciously initiate encounters that take our breath away and bring us to our knees. As C.S. Lewis was surprised by joy, so wonder must ever be something we meet, not manufacture.