Couple of quotes

A couple of quotes from the Next Reformation blog.

It takes most men five years to recover from a college education, and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.

Brooks Atkinson, Once Around the Sun, 1951

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

e.e. cummings, 1955

Quotes to Remember

David Fitch has written a post of quotes - ones he wants to remember. I've just included the quotes here. For his comments on them you'll have to check out the original post.

David Coffey: “They say the difference between a Hollywood actor and a British actor is – the Hollywood actor will ask, “how will this script be modified to suit my strengths/personality? The British actor will ask, how can I do justice to what the author intended in this script?”

Dallas Willard: “Prayer is a power sharing arrangement for a world of recovering sinners. I’m talking to God about what we’re doing together.” … “in regard to Peter’s denial of Jesus, Jesus is working through a larger system of reality with Peter. He could have stopped him right there – instead he goes and prays for Him.”

N T Wright: “When we de-eschatologize the kingdom – we make it purely about a social ethic: Jesus’ message becomes – go out and hug a peasant now.” [Love that one!]

N T Wright again: “There are many Kingdom churches that don’t know what the cross is about and there are many cross churches which don’t know what the Kingdom is about … the Kingdom and the cross go inextricably together. They cannot be separated from each other.”

A comedian whose name Fitch has forgotten: “Every morning you need to get up, go to the mirror and look at yourself and say three times ‘It’s NOT about me, It’s NOT about me, It’s NOT about me.’ You need to repeat this again and again until you get it thoroughly into your soul. Only at that point then do you need to go back to the same mirror and say ‘It’s about me, It’s about me, It’s about me.’”

Fitch himself: “Because our pastors have been so trained to understand the ministry in terms of their own success, we have thousands of them who are either manic-depressive or egomaniacs.”

And himself again: “If you’re not careful (with the attractional ministry approach), you’ll end up looking back after 30 years of ministry realizing the high point of your ministry was that one moment in time when you finally got all 300 people to come to your church and be happy at the same time.”

What return?

A great organization is one that delivers superior performance and makes a distinctive impact over a long period of time. For a business, financial returns are a perfectly legitimate measure of performance.

For a social sector organization, however, performance must be assessed relative to mission, not financial returns. In the social sectors, the critical question is not 'How much money do we make per dollar of invested capital?' but 'How effectively do we deliver on our mission and make a distinctive impact, relative to our resources?'

From page 5 of Good to Great and the Social Sectors: a monograph to accompany Good to Great, by Jim Collins.

Real Church and Fun

Surely fun should be part of the program for humans who are at a stage of life when they laugh readily, behave outrageously and haven't forgotten the pleasures of play. Too often, however, that fun gets consigned to a special room somewhere apart from the "real" rooms in the church, complete with secondhand couches and televisions -- another nursery of sorts where they can be safe and not interrupt the adult world.

Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma
"Bringing up Bart" from catapult magazine

The brief article this quote comes from turns out to be about more than the pleasures of play. However, on the basis of what the quote itself says, I'd comment that all humans inhabit the stage of life referred to here. All of us can benefit from laughing readily, behaving outrageously and remembering the pleasures of play. If we can't, we're only half human, I suspect!

Being human...

To be human is to be responsible. That is the inner meaning of the "dominion" of Genesis 1:26, which is a dominion not of domination but of stewardship, taking care of the world's back yard ... God the world-maker is God the care-taker. Humans properly stand over other creatures only as they stand with other creatures, showing them love, giving them space, and granting them "rights."

- Kim Fabricius,
from his book, Propositions on Christian Theology: a Pilgrim Walks the Plank

I thought it was worth adding this from the book's blurb...
In this little book, a kind of contemporary enchiridion [handbook], Kim Fabricius engages some of the main themes of Christian theology in prose, poetry, and song (his own hymns). It does not aim to be systematic or comprehensive; rather it goes straight to the main contested areas in the church today, the red-button issues in doctrine, spirituality, culture, ethics, and politics.
Fabricius's imaginative vision and lively conversational style moving freely between the interrogative and the polemical, the playful and the profound invite us all to the vertiginous experience of faith. The book's concise format and no-nonsense approach make it a perfect guide for inquiring Christians as well as committed disciples and an ideal discussion-starter for both church groups and college classes.
The author's passionate commitment to a self-critical faith is a provocative invitation to religion's cultured despisers to join him if they dare on the plank.

And a little more on Fabricius himself:
After spending most of the 70s wasting his youth (which he reckons is better than having done nothing with it), he was blasted into faith reading Karl Barth’s Commentary on Romans. This led him pretty directly into ministry, which Kim describes as “that wonderful vocation provided by the good Lord for displaced Christian intellectuals who are useless at proper work.”

Invitation to Friendship

Charles Slagle, in his book, An Invitation to Friendship (volume two of From the Father's Heart), pg 12. (Published Destiny Image, 1999)

In both these books, the 'letters' are from God to one of his children.

I know that some people would have you believe that you can count on Me...only if I can count on you. What nonsense! You were counting on yourself more than you trusted in My power before My Spirit awakened your heart to know Me.
Why would I send you a message that would catapult you back ino the despair of that dark era? Religious minds are always setting deadlines. I Am Limitless Love, and I Am always extending lifelines.

I love the play on words between deadlines and lifelines here. And I enjoy the humour Slagle provides throughout these books - or God does...

Madeleine Delbrêl

Lord, let the thick skin that covers me not be a hindrance to you. Pass through it. My eyes, my hands, my mouth are yours. This sad lady in front of me: here is my mouth for you to smile at her ... This smug young man, so dull, so hard: here is my heart, that you may love him, more strongly than he has ever been loved before.

- Madeleine Delbrêl,
Missionary and activist (1904-1964)

The world goes back to being the world

Postmodernism helps us to understand that, as ethicist Stanley Hauerwas of Duke Divinity School puts it, after a few centuries in which the culture at large snuggled up to the church and was its ally in forming a least-common-denominator sort of civic faith in its citizens, the world has gone back to being the world. While we may intially hear this word as bad news, Hauerwas insists it is good news in that it gives us permission (not that we ever really needed it) to go back to being the church, to being a human community shaped by the particular worldview of scripture.

from The Postmodern Parish: new ministry for a new era, by Jim Kitchens. Published Alban Institute, 2003, page 14

People who love gardens

In a recent Books and Culture magazine, Alan Jacobs writes on Governing and Gardening, a book review of Tim Richardson's The Arcadian Friends: Inventing the English Landscape Garden.

A quote from Jacob's review:
Classical—or more specifically Palladian—buildings like Stourhead's Pantheon were common features on the larger estates, but there were also many kinds of pseudo-temple, the aforementioned grottoes, and, increasingly as the century wore on, hermitages. Usually the hermitages would contain statues or books, but it was sometimes thought that hermitages should be inhabited. Curiously, this becomes a major theme in Tom Stoppard's magnificent 1995 play Arcadia, during which Lady Croom hires a bumbling landscape designer named Noakes, whom she comes to refer to as "Culpability" Noakes [as opposed to Culpability Brown, the famous landscaper].
When Noakes tells her that he is building a hermitage, and she inquires where he plans to get a hermit, he stammers—not having considered this point—that he could perhaps advertise in the newspaper for one. To this Lady Croom replies, "But surely a hermit who takes a newspaper is not a hermit in whom one can have complete confidence."
A wonderful scene, and we learn from Richardson that it's not wholly fictional. The Hon. Charles Hamilton, in the course of creating what would become one of the masterpieces of the age at his estate Painshill, in Surrey, actually did advertise in the newspapers for a hermit to live in his hermitage. He offered said hermit not only (a very small) room and (meager) board but the princely sum of 700 guineas—about $50,000—upon certain strict conditions: for seven years the hermit could not shave, cut his hair, trim his fingernails, or speak to anyone.
On the plus side, he would receive a hermit's cloak, a human skull, and a Bible. Hamilton got a taker soon enough, and was quite pleased until—just three weeks into the experiment—the hermit was found carousing in a nearby pub and was fired on the spot. Thus confirming the wisdom of Lady Croom's suspicions.

Power/less

When God acts in culture, he uses both the powerful and the powerless alongside one another rather than using one against the other. To mobilize the powerless against the powerful would be revolution; to mobilize the powerful against the powerless would simply confirm "the way of the world." But to bring them into partnership is the true sign of God's paradoxical and graceful intervention into the human story.

Andy Crouch
Culture Making

Check out a shortish review of this book in an earlier post.

God's view of religion

From Charles Slagle's book, From the Father's Heart, page 76. God writing, with a degree of tongue-in-cheek, to his son, Charles.

Believe it or not, I too find religion boring - extremely boring. In fact, I often find it annoying. Has it occurred to you that I might be interested in many other subjects? I AM. My range of interest just might be even wider than yours!

I like various sports, arts, writing, music - and jokes. And although some would be shocked to hear it, I enjoy theatre and dancing immensely. And why not? I AM the Inventor, if you recall. I also happen to be very fond of animals. Or haven't you noticed? Oh, yes, I AM an incurable bird watcher and sparrows are some of My favourites. Geography and astronomy never cease to interest Me, and I also delight in chemistry and micro-biology. No doubt you have observed this.

Yet, like yourself, I AM repelled by meaningless rituals and routines. The realm of organised religion is very dull and drab, I think. Its goals and interests are mostly unrelated to Mine. If I attend a religious event, I do so strictly from a sense of duty - you can be sure of that. I make it a policy to attend only if I AM invited, so, as you surmise, I rarely go at all. By that I mean My heart is not in it. In one sense it would be impossible for Me not to be there. Perhaps that is what might be called one of the less fortunate aspects of being omnipresent?

We have more in common than you think! I find flowery speeches a bore, tradition tedious and I hate religiosity. But I do love people. That is why I can't just simply give up on the Church. But isn't that the way love is? Love doesn't have an 'off and on' switch. At least, My kind never does.

Besides, when I think of the Church I think of My family. In My view, the religious rat race is a universe removed from what the Church is really about.

The rocks cry out

There is a pervasive sense that things are not right in the world, and the gentle suggestion that maybe they don't have to stay this way.... But most Christian artists and preachers have remained strangely distant from human suffering, offering the world eternal assurance over prophetic imagination. Perhaps it should not surprise us that Jesus says that if the Christians remain silent, then the rocks will cry out ... or the rock stars, I guess.

Shane Claiborne
The Irresistible Revolution

Interesting statement, but is it entirely true?

The god of the market

Why is it that people who praise downsizing for its salubrious effect on the economy are invariably people in no danger of being downsized themselves? The market is now our supreme power. It is a god that requires human sacrifices to keep it pacified.

Russell Baker: The Market God. First published in the New York Times in March, 1996, but extraordinarily relevant to the current financial climate. The whole op-ed piece is worth reading for its wisdom in regard to the Wall Street mentality.

Perseverance

Perseverance is not an issue of talent. It is not an issue of time. It is about finishing. Talent provides hope for accomplishment, but perseverance guarantees it. John Maxwell.

Christmas probably doesn't seem like the time to be talking about perseverance, though perhaps for a number of people, persevering through what is for them a difficult time may be all they can achieve.

Maxwell has a story about Vonetta Flowers, the first African-American woman to win a gold medal in the Winter Olympics. It may make a useful story for a sermon of persevering - if not at Christmas, at least at some other time of the year (!)

Perseverance means succeeding because you are determined to, not destined to.

The need for women

It is not the intelligent woman vs. the ignorant woman; nor the white woman vs. the black, the brown, and the red - it is not even the cause of woman vs. man. Nay, it is woman's strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice. It would be subversive of every human interest that the cry of one half of the human family be stifled.
Woman ... daring to think and move and speak - to undertake to help shape, mold and direct the thought of her age, is merely completing the circle of the world's vision. Hers is every interest that has lacked an interpreter and a defender. Her cause is linked with that of every agony that has been dumb - every wrong that needs a voice....
The world has had to limp along with the wobbling gait and one-sided hesitancy of a man with one eye. Suddenly the bandage is removed from the other eye and the whole body is filled with light. It sees a circle where before it saw a segment. The darkened eye restored, every member rejoices with it.

Anna Julia Cooper
A Voice from the South (1892)

It's interesting to note the date on this, and how long it took for such an idea to be accepted.

Colin Greene

“…I firmly believe God is raising up a new generation of prophets and visionaries who are what I call ‘brokers of a new reality’. In other words they really want to know what is going on in our world on all kinds of levels, politically, economically, spiritually and culturally. They want to know what are the contours of the cultural space we presently inhabit and they want to be able to celebrate what is good about that process of rapid globalization, as well as critique what is dangerous and reckless about it. As an Anglican I want the Anglican church in the West to stop re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and accept that the Christendom ship is now sinking very quickly and will soon be gone below the waves of rapid fundamental change and innovation. The Anglican Church requires a new missional imagination and to do that it must re-engage with the biblical narrative in such a way that it can discover new ways of being church among the cultural refugee’s and spiritual seekers of our generation…”

Colin Greene, author of Metavista: Bible, Church and Mission in an Age of Imagination (Faith in an Emerging Culture Series)

Alan Hirsch calls this book: Well written, theologically stimulating, meticulously researched, and will no doubt be an authoritative text in its genre. But the best thing about Metavista is that it is simply great missiology in the Newbigin tradition.

Miroslav Volf

One can learn from God the Father no more about what it means to be a human father than one can learn about what it means to be a human mother; inversely, one can learn from God the Mother no more about what it means to be a human mother than on can learn about what it means to be a human father. Whether we use masculine or feminine metaphors for God, God models our common humanity, not our gender specificity.

Miroslav Volf
Exclusion & Embrace

While this makes sense, I'm inclined to disagree with it in some way. Knowing God as Father has definitely affected how I behave as father. I'd be interested to hear what other people think.

Daniel de Roulet

I have had to come to the hard conclusion in my own life that moments when I feel that God's plot has been lost are sometimes moments when I am trying too hard to hold on to my own conception of it. To work within the plot I have been given, keeping in mind God's good intentions for me and letting my hope for a good life be inspired by his plans, results in a deepening of me and service to others that would not have been possible if I'd had my way. It also breaks me open--and with that, I begin to love other people.... The mercy that fills this world has no bounds; we get back what we thought we had lost, in ways and to degrees we never could have imagined.

Daniel de Roulet
Finding Your Plot in a Plotless World

Jacques Ellul

Interesting quote today from Ellul; not sure, however, that I agree entirely that old age is a time when you're unable to serve the Lord.

Remember your Creator during your youth: when all possibilities lie open before you and you can offer all your strength intact for his service. The time to remember is not after you become senile and paralyzed! Then it is not too late for your salvation, but too late for you to serve as the presence of God in the midst of the world and the creation. You must take sides earlier--when you can actually make choices, when you have many paths opening at your feet, before the weight of necessity overwhelms you.

Jacques Ellul
Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes

Jim Wallis

As I speak and listen to large and diverse audiences in every part of the nation, I find a deep hunger, especially among members of the younger generation, for something worth committing one's life to.... The two great hungers of our time are the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social justice--and the connection between the two has great power to motivate people to action. The world is especially waiting for a new social and political agenda drawn not from bickering partisan loyalties, blatant ideological bias, or corrupting special interests, but rather from our deepest moral values.

Jim Wallis
The Great Awakening