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A Word or Two

The Conversation of a Lifetime

‘He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. ”
“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”’
John 3:2-4

The man who was certain of everything is suddenly uncertain. The man who had control over his world is suddenly finding things beyond his control. The man who had it all figured out has his brain turned in figure 8’s.

Jesus reply to him, says in effect, “There is a reason you cannot figure this out Nic. You cannot see the Kingdom because you are not in it. You are not a part of it.” Nic who has all the best of spiritual pedigree does not have an adequate faith to see or enter or be a part of the Kingdom of God. He must be born again. He must be born from above.

His spiritual status, his Jewish nationality, his conformity to the law … his knowledge, his understanding, his prestigious religious role as noted in v. 10 … none of this is good enough. But he has no other spiritual card he can play. All human effort is never going to be enough. But all he’s got is who he is and what he is and Jesus says, that’s not enough. You must be born again.

Nic, like all of his generation, is looking for the Kingdom of God on earth. They want David’s throne restored and the Roman’s thrown out, and this great theocratic realm set up. But the Kingdom of God is not about a realm, it’s about a reign. It is the rule and reign of Jesus Christ in the human heart. A reborn heart, a new born life, born from above by the Spirit of God. It’s not about rebirthing a nation. It’s about building a Kingdom.

Nic learned that evening and we must learn anew: that you cannot buy or serve or work your way into the Kingdom of heaven. You cannot sacrifice, flatter or ingratiate your way into the kingdom of heaven. You can not beg, plead, pose your way in or reason, argue or debate your way in. You cannot moralize, theorize or rationalize your way in.

Jesus doesn’t care if you’ve got all the credentials of a Nic, or how religious you are, or how spiritual you seem, or what status you have or what degrees you hold: there is only one door-faith; there is only one means-grace; there is only one way-Jesus Christ; and there is only one outcome-eternal life. 

 …you never know (1) what will come of an everyday conversation. At the end of John’s gospel we find Nic at the foot of the cross, a fearless follower of Jesus who defies the Sanhedrin and identifies with fully with Christ. But he doesn’t get there if this conversation doesn’t happen in John 3.

Death and Dying – Precarity

precarity 
A state of being defined by its insecurity and vulnerability.

Precarity means something that can be given and taken away and for such a long time I thought that precarity must inherently be a bad thing or at least not a very Christian thing to feel that way when I know I felt delicate and I thought well surely I just have to get back to that place before where I felt durable. And then I read a wonderful comparison of the work of Dorothy Day, Catholic reformer, and compared with Reinhold Niebuhr, the amazing Protestant, theologian, and both of their account of the word precarity. Dorothy Day used it to describe the state in which we live as people of faith aware in the world, and yet delicate, and Reinhold Niebuhr described precarity as a way of describing the delicacy of our world, but hoping that we just need to plow through with faithfulness and reasonable good conscience and I was like no,I think I’m on the Dorothy side. I think that when we’re really honest most of the things that we build our lives on are things that can come apart in any moment, and once we know that, and can maybe live inside that with a little more honesty, we might begin to start to see different spiritual things than we did before . 

Kate Bowler

In a previous post I wrote about the impact avoidance of death has on Christian communities.

Kate Bowler’s observations about precarity further affirm my belief in the importance of memento mori1The term memento mori combines the Latin memini, “to remember, to bear in mind,” with morior, literally, “to die.” Taken together, the phrase serves as a warning: “Remember! You will die!”.

Beliefs not subjected to a crucible of memento mori  will atrophy and become mental assents; ultimately useless when death becomes a personal reality.

People who want to die well must be willing to confront their finitude. We do not have to accept death, invite it, or wish for it. But we must be prepared to say, “Yes, I am human and therefore mortal. One day I will die.” We cannot both cling to the indefinite extension of life and effectively prepare for death.2The Lost Art of Dying

We will fail to live/die well if we refuse to acknowledge that we are finite creatures.

The connection between memento mori and spiritual formation is so profound memento mori should be recognized and practiced as a spiritual discipline.

Practical suggestions for practicing memento mori :

And if we seriously engage the fact and reality of our coming day of our death, without falling prey to a morbid sentimentality about it all, memento mori has a surprising clarifying power: what ought and ought not be prioritized, what sort of life we want to live, what sort of human beings we want to be.

DO: Specific opportunities to practice Memento Mori

Keep tangible reminders of those who have died close at hand. I’m grateful for the leather bracelet I’ve been wearing since Christmas, a gift to me from Angela, the wife of my friend Clay. Clay died last year, same age as me, way too young, from cancer. Clay wore the bracelet during the final season of his life. It is now my most tangible memento mori.

Visit cemeteries and go to funerals: I hardly pass up an opportunity to wander slowly through a cemetery. Here in Florence I’ve visited the old cemetery behind San Miniato on the hill above our villa, as well as the cemetery above Monterosso in Cinque Terre, as well as the “Protestant cemetery” on the island of Capri. They are a wealth of wisdom and wonder. And in addition to wandering through cemeteries, go to funerals! The experience is most always salutary, in some fashion, and always sobering.

Begin with the end in mind,” as Stephen Covey puts it: this is not just good wisdom about project planning (have a clear idea of the desired outcome, and then design actions and strategies to get you to the desired outcome), but also good wisdom about a life: what kind of person are you seeking to become? What kinds of things do you want to characterize your life by the time you arrive at your death? Make this an actual practice: put things on paper, and give it appropriate self-reflection and contemplation.

Lee Camp –

memento mori practiced as an individual is vital but requires support of community which is strengthened in its practice of memento mori.

Practical ways Christian communities can practice memento mori3The Ars moriendi are two related Latin texts dating from about 1415 and 1450 which offer advice on the protocols and procedures of a good death, explaining how to “die well” according to Christian precepts of the late Middle Ages. :

  • Recognize and celebrate All Saints Day
  • Develop and implement meaningful ways to acknowledge deaths in the community.
  • Provide space for memorials
  • Encourage attendance at funerals
  • Initiate ars moriendi (The Art of Dying) ministries.

 “LORD, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered- how fleeting my life is. Psalm 39:4 NLT

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

  • 1
    The term memento mori combines the Latin memini, “to remember, to bear in mind,” with morior, literally, “to die.” Taken together, the phrase serves as a warning: “Remember! You will die!”
  • 2
    The Lost Art of Dying
  • 3
    The Ars moriendi are two related Latin texts dating from about 1415 and 1450 which offer advice on the protocols and procedures of a good death, explaining how to “die well” according to Christian precepts of the late Middle Ages.

So Much To Think About

Beauty

…we perceive beauty because it is real and true, and discover in it, a gateway into the mystery of the universe, that which lies beneath and within. 

FR Stephen Freeman


Idols

The prophets warned that the making of idols—those objects or ideas or affiliations that replace for us what should be ultimate—are destructive. At this moment, though, the idols don’t seem to be killing us. They seem to be helping us succeed. In reality, though, they are doing worse than killing us—they are deadening us.

Idols are useful. They draw people together. They give a person a sense of meaning, a cause for which to live and die. Nothing can mobilize a nationalistic sense of identity better than the chant “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” (Acts 19:28). Their usefulness, though, is the very reason the Bible says they are useless.

Idols have two fatal flaws: They are self-created and they are dead. The man who “falls in love” with his chatbot can have all the glandular sensations of what seems like a love affair. Ultimately, though, he has to know that what he “loves” is himself—what the algorithms repeat back to him is what he put there in the first place. Idols, the Bible warns, are dead. And what’s worse, the Bible warns, “Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them” (Ps. 115:8).

At the end of the path to idols, you end up enclosed in your own self, but a part of you knows that what’s controlling you is a construction of your making. You end up, moreover, dead—numb to the very source of your life and being. And then, seeking to answer the deadness, you construct some other idol to give a rush of what feels like life.

Russell Moore


Nazism 

Nazism was seductive precisely because it promised an immediate fix to parliamentary gridlock, an end to economic chaos, and a refusal to bow to the crushing indemnities and humiliating conditions imposed upon Germany by the western powers after the First World War. For many Germans, the Nazi party was an alternative and perhaps even the answer to the trauma, divisions, and poverty after the First World War.

Nazism was not an alien political doctrine that appeared out of nowhere. Nazism succeeded because it embodied what people either believed or wanted to believe. Nazism was an incredibly eclectic worldview, combining Darwinian science, pseudo-sciences like eugenics, incorporating some aspects of Lutheranism, elements of the philosophy of Nietzsche, the music of Wagner, Nordic mythology, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, numerology, idealized masculinity, nationalism, militarism, anti-communism, and belief in the magical power of ancient artefacts – it had something for everyone!

Nazism appeared to be scientific, spiritual, progressive, and effective, the new type of civilization the world needed. As a philosophy, Nazism was internally consistent to the point that it appeared self-evident to many people, which is precisely why it attracted supporters from all over Europe.

This is why many political philosophers and political theologians have spent so much time studying Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, because we want to understand how a totalitarian movement “works,” how does it seduces and succeeds? How can people participate in a sadist regime where it’s main mode of discourse is terror? We like to think that the Nazi leaders were either monsters or mad. But that probably says more about our sense of horror at the Nazis but does not really explain them.

But let’s be honest, it’s hard to understand the evil of the Nazis, we cannot imagine the rationality for it. But to prevent it one must understand it, which means we must engage in the unpleasant task of trying to get inside the head of the Nazis, into their mentality, look upon their brutality and banality, even if such a gaze burns our eyes.

Michael Bird


Theology

Theology’s mother tongue is prayer and confession, the language of the liturgy, but these aren’t genres so much as modes that transform disparate genres into vehicles of divine discourse. Like Jacob’s Ladder, the traffic runs both ways.

Brad East 

Belief

It is dishonest to cling to a belief which the facts will not support, but it is equally dishonest to withhold your assent from a belief if the evidence at your disposal is overwhelmingly in its favour.

G. B. Caird 


Experts

It is a curious fact that in this age of specialization we are prepared to trust the word of the expert in almost every other sphere, but in religion it is tacitly assumed that the person in the street knows best.

If we were consistent, we should pay at least as much respect to the saint in religion as we do to the genius in any other field of knowledge or experience.

If you want to be sure about Christianity, you must try it and see.

Yet only those who have sincerely tried to live the Christian life are qualified to pass judgment on the Christian faith.

G. B.  Caird 


Pandemic 

March 11, 2020

Four years ago today, society began to shut down.

Shortly after noon Eastern on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared Covid — or “the coronavirus,” then the more popular term — to be a global pandemic. Stocks plummeted in the afternoon. In the span of a single hour that night, President Donald Trump delivered an Oval Office address about Covid, Tom Hanks posted on Instagram that he had the virus and the N.B.A. announced it had canceled the rest of its season.

It was a Wednesday, and thousands of schools would shut by the end of the week. Workplaces closed, too. People washed their hands frequently and touched elbows instead of shaking hands (although the C.D.C. continued to discourage widespread mask wearing for several more weeks).
The worst pandemic in a century had begun.
Today, on the unofficial fourth anniversary, I’ll update you on where things stand.
The true toll
Covid’s confirmed death toll — more than seven million people worldwide — is horrific on its own, and the true toll is much worse. The Economist magazine keeps a running estimate of excess deaths, defined as the number of deaths above what was expected from pre-Covid trends. The global total is approaching 30 million.

This number includes both confirmed Covid deaths and undiagnosed ones, which have been common in poorer countries. It includes deaths caused by pandemic disruptions, such as missed doctor appointments that might have prevented other diseases. The isolation of the pandemic also caused a surge of social ills in the U.S., including increases in deaths from alcohol, drugs, vehicle crashes and murders.


Key to wisdom

One of the keys to wisdom is that we must recognize our own biases, our own addictive preoccupations, and those things to which, for some reason, we refuse to pay attention. Until we see these patterns (which is early-stage contemplation), we will never be able to see what we do not see. Without such critical awareness of the small self, there is little chance that any individual will produce truly great knowing or enduring wisdom.

Richard Rohr


View from the Front Porch

Discipleship

The word discipleship and the word discipline are the same word, which has always fascinated me. Once you have made the choice to say, “Yes, I want to follow Jesus,” the question is, “What disciplines will help me remain faithful to that choice?” If we want to be disciples of Jesus, we have to live a disciplined life.

BY discipline, | do not mean control. If I know the discipline of psychology or of economics, | have a certain control over a body of knowledge. If I discipline my children, I want to have a little control over them.

But in the spiritual life, the word discipline means “the effort to create some space in which God can act.” Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you’re not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn’t planned or counted on.

Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up.

Henry Nouwen

Our front porch is — that space in which something can happen that you hadn’t planned or counted on.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY