DanSheffield

through black spruce and identity politics

Several years ago I read Through Black Spruce, by Joseph Boyden. A film adaptation of this story premiered at TIFF recently. It's a powerful story of contemporary indigenous life set in both Northern Ontario and several mega-cities. At the time of the book's release in 2008, it was highly acclaimed. As was his previous novel 2005 novel, Three Day Road.

It was only after the release of his 2013 novel, The Orenda, that Boyden began to be questioned about his claimed aboriginal identity. I have a suspicion that the shaming of Boyden began because certain elements didn't like the content of that novel. There is so much to be explored in the story of his shaming -- the "real" issues behind the APTN "expose" of Boyden, and the white liberal, neo-colonialist progressives who made the story "popular," etc.

But what really grabbed me this week was this CBC conversation with Tina Keeper, one of the aboriginal producers of the new film. She's a personal friend of Joseph Boyden. The article touches on an issue that I raise frequently, "who gets to tell whose story?" Keeper is aware that working on a project like this involves a cooperative, collaborative process in an industry where indigenous people are in short supply. She says:

"There are some cultural elements that need to be addressed and how we work together, absolutely. I'm not talking about those things, I'm talking about how do we collaborate and work together," she says. "Because I know [Indigenous people have] been so discarded and so dismissed in the history and the cultural memory of this country, so I just feel that it's important for us to understand all of that when we're collaborating."

For me, that is a positive "way forward" approach to navigating our differences. Being aware of our own "stuff," paying attention and listening authentically to others, and then collaboratively finding a way to work together -- because together is much better than separate or oppositional.

holy ambivalence and Christian community

Interesting reflections on the social and cultural milieu that we find ourselves in -- in this book review/essay by Brad East, Holy Ambivalence, in Los Angeles Review of Books. And what it means to be the people of God in the midst of these times. His question, What to do about Liberalism?

There are four basic approaches. First, retrenchment: liberalism has problems like anything else, but it’s nothing a little more liberalism can’t fix. Second, ambivalence: liberalism has endemic, insoluble problems, but it’s what we’ve got, and the status quo, however bad, is better than any known alternative and thus worth ameliorating in whatever small ways we can. Third, rejection: liberalism is an abject failure, unworthy of being propped up any longer, though admittedly there is no ready-made substitute for it. Fourth, replacement: liberalism has reached its end, and there are far more just political forms available if only we would have the courage to open ourselves to radical change

East is writing a review of Patrick Deneen's book, Why Liberalism Failed. 

In short: “Liberalism has failed.” But “not because it fell short, but because it was true to itself. It has failed because it has succeeded.” Indeed, “the ruins it has produced are the signs of its very success. To call for the cures of liberalism’s ills by applying more liberal measures is tantamount to throwing gas on a raging fire.”

Apart from its effects, what is most insidious about liberalism is the way it hides itself as an ideology. It is so deeply interwoven with our life and thought that it has become the air we breathe, the water we swim in, the operating system we take for granted — until the whole system crashes. We are, Deneen argues, in a version of Plato’s cave, so mesmerized by the movie-set backdrops on the walls that we don’t realize they are two-dimensional projections. We need to get out, to seek the light. We need to expose our condition for what it is.

...

Liberalism was sold as a rescue from the state of nature, in which isolated individuals languished at war with others to secure their interests. But no such state ever existed, nor its lonely human protagonist — until liberalism’s triumph, that is. The liberal state created the subject it purported to save.

East then examines James K A Smith's recent, Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology, where ensues a discussion about how Christians should conduct themselves in our interactions with the public space. 

We are first of all, not thinking or believing creatures, but desiring animals. And what we love above all we worship. Such worship is neither individualistic nor disembodied but enacted in corporate rituals of ultimate concern. These practices habituate us, forming and redirecting our loves to objects that constitute visions of the good, of what it means to flourish as human beings. Such routines of the body do most of their work at an unconscious level; the mind follows the heart, and the heart directs the body, which reciprocates in kind.

Smith's classic illustration of this (from earlier works) is the shopping mall; our weekly trips habituate us to consumption; and the vicarious habits of screen-viewing (whether FB, gaming, TV or Netflix)...

Smith’s answer is threefold. First, the church is called and sent by God into the world to love its neighbors, serve the common good, and bear witness to the way of Jesus. So there is no avoiding the encounter, because it is divinely mandated. Second, the church’s own liturgical practices are the heart of its life for a reason: centered on the worship of God, who alone is worthy of it, they have the power, through God’s own action, to form, equip, and commission believers for faithful life and witness in society. Their loves properly ordered, Christians are empowered by the sacramental practices of the local worshiping community to resist the liturgical capture of the state — though this contest of loves ought to be made explicit, the better to know where the danger lies.

That's what I have appreciated about Smith's suggestions over the years -- the church needs to proactively provide an alternative formation to what we are already formed by -- the social and cultural milieu in which we swim/navigate each day.

In sum: Worship as “the civics of the city of God”; mission as the motivating force for participating in the earthly city; holy ambivalence as the character of such participation; hope in the heavenly city as the tether suspending its citizens here below, as they await the return of the King.

That's the phrase that caught my attention -- holy ambivalence. I've voted on the left side of the political spectrum all my adult life, and will probably continue so. There is just as much "disconnect" from a Christian worldview in conservative politics as there is in liberal politics, so I choose the vision that "up-front" says we should care for the vulnerable among us. But my personal stance is one of ambivalence -- there is no perfect political system conjured by human beings. In the end it is how we conduct our personal lives and the community of people we do that with, that makes any real differences.

I have found the understanding of human psychology and sociology (the human condition) that Christian Scriptures describe to be very accurate in my own experience. I find the loving, sacrificial, others-orientation of the Jesus story, as a response to the human condition, to be both challenging and transformative. And "in the meantime" (as we await the better world we all desire), we are called, as the church, to provide an alternative formation -- habits and practices consistent with the notion that God, who is Other, needs to hold our attention and shape our attitudes and behaviours better than we have been managing.

East concludes his review and reflections with:

But whatever strategies we devise, whoever comes our way, the waiting will continue. Smith, with Augustine, is therefore right to hallow patience as the church’s central political virtue; right to remember that Christian hope has no earthly term. There is no living beyond one’s time: perseverance does not mean impatience. Even liberalism can be endured.

Faith has its days and its nights

Just finished reading a great book by Czech Catholic priest, professor of sociology at Charles University in Prague, and winner of the 2014 Templeton Prize, Tomas Halik, entitled: Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing in Us.  The premise of the book is situated around the story of Zacchaeus as a sympathetic observer, perhaps seeker, (but not involved in organized religion) wondering if the voice of Jesus is the real deal, followed by Jesus noticing, calling out to, and entering into Z's space.

Halik wonders, from the context of post-Christian, post-communist, secularized, Eastern Europe if there are many hopeful observers watching for faith communities from which the authentic voice of Jesus might emerge. Perhaps we need to notice, call out to, and enter into the spaces of those who are not coming into "our" spaces.

The notion of "patience with God" in this context is that faith or trust in God is not so much about a certain belief system that one assents to, but faith is really patience with God that God will accomplish what God intends to, and we will hang in with God (persevere) even when there seems to be silence or absence (citing Jesus on the cross).

This passage, written in the voice of Jesus to a struggling, skeptical "believer":

"You yourself insisted that you had to hear my voice in its absolute purity, with no human weaknesses, doubts and searching mixed in. But my voice has never been heard in that way in human history since the day I ascended into heaven. My words, my legacy, and my name are entrusted to the lips of people who are never completely pure, to hearts in which love for me is always mixed with love for the self and for the things of this world. I gave myself to the faith of my church, which is made up of sinners, not angels, and I was also in those who are still far from its visible gates, those who are grimy and sweaty from their seeking and wandering along paths full of questions and doubts. They are the ones you should have listened to above all; it was in them above all that you should have sought me. 

And there's another thing. Faith -- if it's a living faith -- has to breathe; it has its days and its nights. God speaks not only through His words but also through His silence."

2017 reading list complete

On my blog here, (left sidebar) I always post my accumulated reading throughout any given year. Then I archive the list and start new from Jan 1 of the new year. Been doing this for more than a decade. Typically I average between 25-30 books per year;  2017 has only been 20 (had a few disruptions this year, that shifted my priorities for a bit :).

Here's my summary from 2017 (in order read from beginning of the year)  * highlighted books are highly recommended; books that will continue to challenge my thinking and practice.

* Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

Sara Moliner, The Whispering City

Jennell Williams Paris, The End of Sexual Identity: Why Sex is Too Important to Define Who We Are

*David Fitch, Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines that Shape the Church for Mission

N T Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today

Joseph Boyden, The Orenda

Erin Meyers, The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business

Craig Ott, The Mission of the Church: Five Views in Conversation

Carol King, Natural Woman: A Memoir

Mircea Eliade, Autobiography 1907-1937: Journey East, Journey West

Witold Ribczynski, A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century

Shyam Selvadurai, Cinnamon Garden

Michael Frost, Surprise the World: The Five Habits of Highly Missional People

*Eberhard Arnold, Called to Community: The Life Jesus Wants for His People

Bernard Cornwell, The Flame Bearer

James Haley, The Shores of Tripoli

Jane Johnson, Court of Lions

Mark Sayers, Disappearing Church: From Cultural Relevance to Gospel Resilience

Thomas Skinner, Fifty Years in Ceylon: An Autobiography

*Tomas Halik, Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing in Us

Kurelek’s Christmas Visions of the Incarnation

For years, while my children were growing up, I had a tradition of sitting down, sometime over Christmas, and reading to them from William Kurelek’s, A Northern Nativity: Christmas Dreams of a Prairie Boy. I didn’t grow up on the prairies but have lived there and hitch-hiked across Western Canada – when that sort of thing wasn’t frowned upon. So I can imagine myself in his settings, which also include other distinctive Canadian locales.

The book is a collection of Kurelek paintings with accompanying script versions of his dreams, around the theme of the Nativity of Jesus. The colour paintings reproduced in the book are typical of Kurelek’s mature style and are visually attractive, even to kids. The accompanying dream scripts may have meant more to me than my kids, but I read them anyway, often stopping to choke back tears as I read.

William Kurelek (1927-1977) was a Canadian artist, writer and a devout Christian. Of Ukrainian background, from Alberta, Kurelek graduated from the U of Manitoba with a degree in art and did studies at the Ontario College of Art, with further work in Mexico and Europe. Although baptized and raised Ukrainian Orthodox, he became an atheist in young adulthood, before converting to Roman Catholicism at 30. He remained a committed Catholic until his death by cancer at 50.

Kurelek based this book on his own childhood dreams coupled with his adult life experience -- on the theme of the Incarnation, that Christ came to all people, everywhere. What would happen if Joseph and Mary arrived at a prairie farm house? He imagines that the nativity takes place in northern snows. He dreams that the Christ child is born to Eskimos (sic), to Indians, to Blacks, that the Nativity takes place in a fisherman’s hut, a garage, a cowboy’s barn, that the holy family is given refuge in a city mission, a grain barn, and a country school.

Kurelek’s paintings and dream scripts are quintessentially Canadian. Published shortly before his death, Kurelek engages with the diverse cultures present in the Canadian landscape. This would have been a theme much on his mind as an adult living through the 1960s and early 70s in Canada. Of Ukrainian background, it was the question of what to do with the Eastern European immigrants who had flooded into a Western European Canada that helped spark the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1963-69) and the subsequent policies on multiculturalism that continue to inform our public space.

One very poignant image is of Mary and baby Jesus reaching out to a young man sleeping rough and cold under some trees on a riverbank – in the background we see a view of the Parliament buildings in Ottawa from the Quebec side of the river. Kurelek asks, what if the Child reached out to those deliberating on the Hill? Would he be received or rejected?

During the Advent season, we focus on the first coming of God Incarnate, Emmanuel, and reflect on the Second Coming with its promise of the restoration of all things as God intended. In this in-between time of waiting and expecting, we are reminded by David Fitch that God “requires a people tending to his presence to make his presence visible for all to see.”

Kurelek’s images in Northern Nativity give a glimpse into the places, and the people among whom that presence needs to be made visible.

Moltmann on racism and other dysfunctional relationships

In light of ongoing social ferment in 2017 on both sides of the US/Canada border, I offer some insights from Jurgen Moltmann, written 40 years ago. Readers of Volf's Exclusion and Embrace will recognize Moltmann's influence on his thought.

In a social context where often we are only getting perspectives that represent a humanist worldview (i.e., a world with human capacity for self-improvement at the centre) or distorted Christian civil religion (with Christian semantics employed in the service of patriotism), we need to take the time to reflect more deeply on a revealed tradition that for millenia recorded a perspective on the distorted human condition that can only be rectified by outside intervention. We can't fix this of our own accord. History is witness to that reality.

"Birds of a feather flock together." But why? People who are like us, who think the same thoughts, who have the same things, and who want the same things, confirm us. However, people who are different from us, that is, people whose thoughts, feelings and desires are different from ours, make us feel insecure. We therefore love those who are like us and shun those who are different from us. And when these others live in our midst expressing their need for recognition, interest, and humanity, we react with defensiveness, increased self-confirmation, anxiety and disparagement. This anxiety is indeed the root of racism, anti-Semitism, discrimination against people with disabilities, and, not the least, the lack of relationships in the congregation. "Birds of a feather flock together": that is nothing other than the social form of self-justification and the expression of anxiety. This form of self-justification, therefore, never appears without aggressions against that which threatens its security. It has no self-confidence. It has no ego-strength.

"Accept one another." As we have seen this imperative unfortunately has its limitations. The roots of these limitations lie deep within ourselves. They appear in our anxiety about ourselves, and then in the self-justification which is so deeply ingrained in us. 

"Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you" (Romans 15:7). Only this attitude can give us a new orientation and break through our limitations so that we can spring over our narrow shadows. It opens us up for others as they really are so that we gain a longing for and an interest in them. As a result of this we become able actually to forget ourselves and to focus on the way Christ has accepted us. 

... We can mutually accept each other because Christ has accepted us...

(from Jurgen Moltmann, The Open Church: Invitation to a Messianic Lifestyle, SCM Press, 1978.)

 

God hates visionary dreaming

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious.

Whoops. No commentary needed. Read on...

The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it  be realized by God, by others and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with demands, sets up his own laws and judges the brethren and God accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds people together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to pot. So he becomes first an accuser of the brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into the common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for what he has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by his call, by his forgiveness and his promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what he does give us daily. And is what has been given us not enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of his grace? Is the divine gift of Christian fellowship anything less than this, any day, even the most difficult and distressing day? Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ?

Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by the one Word and Deed which really binds us together -- the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Conversations that Change Us

More than a decade ago, Dr Joyce Bellous and I collaborated in writing a book, Conversations That Change Us, as an extension of several years of work together, leading ministry reflection seminars with theological students. We mostly dumped our class teaching notes and exercises into a book format and found a publisher. Although we did a lot of work developing the materials, we didn't spend much time on crafting, editing and formatting a readable book.

For the past decade, however, several seminaries have used our book as a text because it touches on issues not necessarily addressed elsewhere (and probably because we were Canadian authors for seminaries who pay attention to CanCon). As time went by, students would regularly comment: "great content, very hard to read." So we decided to completely reorganize, edit, craft, update diagrams and reformat the book. I think Joyce and I are both happier to have our names on this version of the book :)

Comments from back of book:

Theological reflection is conversation that’s personal as well as collaborative. It’s not a monologue. Thinking itself is dialogical. In order to learn the arts of theological reflection, we must first understand that when theological reflection is working, it’s effective because the conversation is dialogical. We may begin by engaging in conversation, but it only becomes a theological dialogue under certain conditions.

Bellous and Sheffield introduce the notion of theological reflection as a conversation with God, with oneself, and with the Christian community. It’s a conversation in which we encounter the humanizing gaze of God breaking into our alienation. As we converse, we stop and listen to ourselves and our own assumptions and allow others to listen and serve as witnesses to the story we are telling. That story is a personal narrative each one of us has been gathering since childhood that shapes how we understand ourselves, God and the world.

In the book you hear us engage with Piaget & Vygotsky, with Freud, with Freire, with Gendlin, with Eastern Orthodox monks, with the Prodigal Son. We talk about Lectio Divina, focusing, generative themes, etc.

Part One

• Theological Reflection as Dialogue
• Practicing Healthy Theological Reflection
• Speaking the Truth in Love

Part Two

• Generative Themes and Personal Inquiry
• Narrative Inquiry and Theological Reflection
• Spiritual Types that Influence Theological Reflection

Part Three

• Collaborative Inquiry
• Theological Reflection and Representing Meaning
• An Approach to Collaborative Theological Reflection

For those who choose to order/read the book, feel free to put a review on Amazon or Good Reads!

 

grace-radiating life at Smokey Mountain

In January 1998 I spent a week in Manila, The Philippines. This was in the midst of the time that Kathy and I were living in South Africa planting a church and developing community-based missional responses. For us that included developing an affordable housing company (managing 50 units) and an emergency shelter for domestic violence victims. The visit to Manila was to participate in a round table learning encounter with other urban ministry practitioners from around the world (Africa, Asia, Caribbean, England, USA) sponsored by Food for the Hungry, World Vision and the Fieldstead Institute. One of the products of that work was a book published by MARC, entitled Serving with the Urban Poor, edited by Ted Yamamori, Bryant Myers and Ken Luscombe. Kathy and I contributed a chapter on the work we were connected with in South Africa.

Among the many other learnings from that rich time was the opportunity to learn from Fr Ben Beltran, a Divine Word missionary working at Smokey Mountain, at the time the largest garbage dump in The Philippines. In the sessions, Father Ben shared his own experience of living and ministering on/in Smokey Mountain as an incarnational activity. He described the life of the church community (in a building built from scavenged garbage) as grace-radiating substance. That is, a faith community celebrating the Eucharist and reading & applying Scripture, in that setting, was both a physical and spiritual manifestation of the presence of God. That was a new thought for me at the time. That just to live, minister and "be" the presence of Christ in that space was witness. That God would give the resources to live that kind of life was, in fact, "good news." Interestingly, Ben also helped us reflect on a theology of holistic ministry by employing a motif from Philipino worldview -- the notion of human being as defined by relationship to others; "to be" is "to be in relation." Rejecting a dualistic western understanding of sacred and profane. Relationship with God, with others and the created earth is, "of a kind," not separate things. 

[recent writings on the idea of "place" in Christian ministry: Where Mortals Dwell, No Home Like Place, The Space Between, The New Parish. Good thoughts here from the late Richard Twiss, on an indigenous theology of place.]

As I returned to our ministry in South Africa, this led me to work toward deepening our practice regarding our location as a city centre, multicultural faith community that was expressing itself in the provision of affordable safe housing and care for those impacted by domestic oppression and violence. Those were issues "of" our place. This amplified insights from my study with Alan Roxburgh a few years earlier, who asked us, "what are the themes that emerge from your social context? what does the gospel/good news look like in relation to those themes?"

In the midst of our affordable housing development we received a major grant from the South African government's Dept of Housing. We decided to have a "thanksgiving service" (a very African thing to do) right on the building site, on a major traffic route through the city. So amidst the building rubble of demolished older buildings with new sections going up, we had an open-air worship service with full band and sound system, we had some traditional dancing and choirs, obligatory speeches and we celebrated the Lord's Supper as servers tried not to stumble over bricks and puddles of water. Grace seemed very tangible that day.

Today, in Canada, I am convinced more than ever that issues of place and context need to impact our practice and our communication. The incarnation of Jesus (local communities of the Body of Christ) in place and time must reflect good news to those who see and hear us.

Faithful presence -- church as living embodiment of Jesus

David Fitch's new book, Faithful Presence: 7 Disciplines that Shape the Church for Mission, finally got off the press and available in Canada, but not before I digested Kreider's Patient Ferment of the Early Church, which I commented on a while back. These two books are very complementary -- Kreider lays the historic groundwork for Fitch's application to our current context. 

Fitch has been talking about these ideas for some time -- to anybody who would listen -- and then, "but don't really run with these ideas, cause I need to get them published." And I've been waiting, patiently, cuz I think there are some very helpful thoughts and images that he uses to convey his points.

To summarize briefly, Fitch talks about 3 circles in our lives as Christians -- Christian community, home & neighbourhood, and "the world." We are called to acknowledge the presence of Jesus in our midst as Christian community (the embodiment of Jesus' continuing presence) and then to extend his presence into the increasingly outward dimension of our lives, home & neighbourhood and the world. He uses a very helpful construct of "host & guest." In the gathered community Jesus is host and we are guests; in home & neighbourhood, we are host and friends are guests; in the world, others are hosts and we are guests. These notions should help shape our posture in each space -- humility, hospitality and respect.

Then throughout the rest of the book, Fitch helps us re-imagine what we should be doing in those 3 spaces -- his 7 disciplines.

• The Lord's Table
• Reconciliation
• Proclaiming the Gospel
• Being with the least of these
• Being with children
• Fivefold gifting
• Kingdom prayer

So, I thought Fitch's ideas had such a graphic, imaginable feel to them, that I did up this animated illustration. [please let me be clear, this is my take and some of my phrasing of Fitch's stuff -- he may disagree with a point here or there, as I have represented things; so, unauthorized, but I clearly acknowledge him at the end]

Fitch helps us think through what it looks like to practice these disciplines in each of the 3 spaces. To those of us in the Wesleyan tradition 5 of these seem like no-brainers, cuz we recognize these as inner and outer disciplines of "the means of grace" -- acts of piety, acts of mercy. "Fivefold gifting" is a bit unique as a discipline, but if you have been following this whole discussion over the last decade or so, around polycentric leadership, and the recovery of apostle & evangelist etc., you can see that where he is coming from is helpful.

What really grabbed my attention, however, was "being with children" as a discipline that shapes us and our communities. YES! Something our churches are not doing well, if at all. I think that if we paid more attention to the children in our midst this would lead us to reshaping our corporate gatherings in a profound way -- more gentle, more playful, more willing to listen -- all things that "the world" is saying we have a problem with. And if we talked about the life of faith in Jesus in a way that kids can make sense of it, a lot of adults would do a lot better as well.

Fitch's disciplines can be acted upon anywhere -- they aren't culture-specific, although each of them, by being acted upon, become particular and embodied expressions in specific places and times. As we engage in mission/extension there is the potential for colonization in our particular forms -- he starts with how we act out these disciplines in our faith communities. There is something about "sentness" or apostolicity, that in mission practice, allows the receptor community - the world -- to have a feedback role in shaping what those disciplines might look like in practice, as Jesus continually becomes incarnate in new spaces. Fitch is a declared Anabaptist, and functions in the "missional" paradigm, (as do I essentially) which Bevans wants to describe as "counter-cultural" (which Goheen and others want to disagree with). Are we willing to let Galatia help us rethink the received traditions/expressions of the essential disciplines?

My thoughts. You need to read this book.