Thursday, September 30, 2004
Mark Noll: "None of the Above"
Renowned Evangelical historian explains why he's not voting in November's presidential election. Excellent article. Food for thought. Read it here. I pulled this from Jesus Politics, who pilfered it from Philocrites. I guess the internet is working just as it should!
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Christianity Today on Bush and Kerry
Christianity Today ran a profile on each major presidential candidate, George Bush and John Kerry, with a clear prefence for Bush. They've even interviewed Bush (but not Kerry), asking no difficult questions.
I still don't get the evangelical love-affair with George W Bush. He turned Christianity into a swaggering smirk of a faith, as if character assassination and pre-emptive war were basic Christian values.
I still don't get the evangelical love-affair with George W Bush. He turned Christianity into a swaggering smirk of a faith, as if character assassination and pre-emptive war were basic Christian values.
Monday, September 27, 2004
"Is it Vietnam, yet?"
Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School. This is one of Marty's usual asute analyses.
Sightings 9/27/04
When Is Now?
-- Martin E. Marty
If my reading is accurate, last week was the turning-time. Major politicians of both parties, pundits of neither, and clergy-beyond-parties asked, with brash Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg: "Is it Vietnam yet?"
The current conflict, according to Steinberg, is not about "the 1,000 troops who have died in Iraq," but "about not losing 10,000 more by the time the campaign of 2008 comes around." He adds, "I never met a person who cared about whether the Iraqis enjoy the fruits of democracy or not." That's a low blow. Who could not care, deeply.
But one can cite many sources across the spectrum who say that the main reason for our fighting in Iraq now is because we do not know how to stop, with some measure of integrity. Columnist Robert Novak, in his September 20 syndicated column, conjectured that, from here on in, it's a matter of when and how it ends, not "whether." Neither party has a clue about the "how."
While the Wall Street Journal editors (September 24) said they accepted the rosy portrayal given by Ayad Allawi before Congress, others will dismiss it. Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation" (September 19), said: "I don't think we're winning," the U.S. is "in deep trouble in Iraq," and that some "recalibration of policy" was urgent. On the same day ("Fox News Sunday"), Arizona Senator John McCain said, "the situation has obviously been somewhat deteriorating, to say the least." Both of these war-supporters based their assessment not on Allawi's sales talk, but on a president-authorized and classified National Intelligence Estimate. It foresaw an unstable Iraq or, worse, a civil war, from which we would finally have to turn.
Suppose these bipartisan analysts and foreseers are, in the main, right. At what point may, and must, some moral and religious voices be raised to call the continuing venture immoral? Many clerics of many persuasions would say, or whisper, or hint: "now." Chicago Tribune's Tim Jones, on the divided mind of Missourians (September 24), quoted pastor Robert Hill of Kansas City's Community Christian Church. Hill, speaking on behalf of many preachers, complained of the "absolutely despicable" "tactics of fear-mongering" that condemn questioners as being unpatriotic.
Not ready to whisper or be silent is Father Andrew Greeley. He says that, when he points out that Pope John Paul II questions and condemns preemptive "just war" and the conduct of the Iraq war, he gets much favorable correspondence, but also much "obscene" hate mail (Chicago Sun-Times, September 24). Typically, "You are even worse than the priests who abuse little boys." According to Greeley (who does not always defend the pope), many conservative fellow-Catholics shun the pope and attack his defenders on this issue.
"Yet I am curious," he writes, "that the writers think that a priest does not have the right -- and indeed the obligation -- to express a moral teaching." Greeley and the pope may both be wrong, but neither seems ready to succumb to what Pastor Hill calls "the politics of fear."
Are religious defenders of the war, as prosecuted, also subjected to that kind of restriction on religious _expression?
Sightings 9/27/04
When Is Now?
-- Martin E. Marty
If my reading is accurate, last week was the turning-time. Major politicians of both parties, pundits of neither, and clergy-beyond-parties asked, with brash Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg: "Is it Vietnam yet?"
The current conflict, according to Steinberg, is not about "the 1,000 troops who have died in Iraq," but "about not losing 10,000 more by the time the campaign of 2008 comes around." He adds, "I never met a person who cared about whether the Iraqis enjoy the fruits of democracy or not." That's a low blow. Who could not care, deeply.
But one can cite many sources across the spectrum who say that the main reason for our fighting in Iraq now is because we do not know how to stop, with some measure of integrity. Columnist Robert Novak, in his September 20 syndicated column, conjectured that, from here on in, it's a matter of when and how it ends, not "whether." Neither party has a clue about the "how."
While the Wall Street Journal editors (September 24) said they accepted the rosy portrayal given by Ayad Allawi before Congress, others will dismiss it. Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation" (September 19), said: "I don't think we're winning," the U.S. is "in deep trouble in Iraq," and that some "recalibration of policy" was urgent. On the same day ("Fox News Sunday"), Arizona Senator John McCain said, "the situation has obviously been somewhat deteriorating, to say the least." Both of these war-supporters based their assessment not on Allawi's sales talk, but on a president-authorized and classified National Intelligence Estimate. It foresaw an unstable Iraq or, worse, a civil war, from which we would finally have to turn.
Suppose these bipartisan analysts and foreseers are, in the main, right. At what point may, and must, some moral and religious voices be raised to call the continuing venture immoral? Many clerics of many persuasions would say, or whisper, or hint: "now." Chicago Tribune's Tim Jones, on the divided mind of Missourians (September 24), quoted pastor Robert Hill of Kansas City's Community Christian Church. Hill, speaking on behalf of many preachers, complained of the "absolutely despicable" "tactics of fear-mongering" that condemn questioners as being unpatriotic.
Not ready to whisper or be silent is Father Andrew Greeley. He says that, when he points out that Pope John Paul II questions and condemns preemptive "just war" and the conduct of the Iraq war, he gets much favorable correspondence, but also much "obscene" hate mail (Chicago Sun-Times, September 24). Typically, "You are even worse than the priests who abuse little boys." According to Greeley (who does not always defend the pope), many conservative fellow-Catholics shun the pope and attack his defenders on this issue.
"Yet I am curious," he writes, "that the writers think that a priest does not have the right -- and indeed the obligation -- to express a moral teaching." Greeley and the pope may both be wrong, but neither seems ready to succumb to what Pastor Hill calls "the politics of fear."
Are religious defenders of the war, as prosecuted, also subjected to that kind of restriction on religious _expression?
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Sermon: Pentecost 17 - Year C
Kevin Powell
Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd
Pentecost 17 – Year C
September 26, 2004
In an Associated Press article the writer interviewed a man named Randy Baines. As it turns out, Baines lived in the same long-term hotel in Boyton Beach, Florida, in the summer of 2000 with one of the 9/11 highjackers, a man who called himself Waleed Alsheri. The two talked frequently and chatted about football and baseball, particularly the Florida Marlins. Alsheri seemed to be a real Marlins fan. “He was a really nice guy, very hospitable,” reports Baines, a 48-year-old carpenter. “But if he was involved in one of those plane crashes, I hope he goes to hell.” (From Why Not Send Lazarus? By Frank Honneycutt)
Who do you hope goes to hell? Who is on your short list? Osama Bin Laden? Child abusers? Murderers? The neighbour next door that lets his dog bark all night? Hell has taken a centre stage in our religious imaginations and has dominated much of our theological discourse.
But it may surprise you to learn that the bible doesn’t talk a whole lot about Hell. The OT is virtually silent on the issue. Much of the OT talks about Sheol, which means a shadowy place below. No torment or bliss, just a place where people go rest. Both good and evil. Hell is introduced in the NT and the word that Jesus often used for it is “gehenna” referring to a place just outside the city where people burned their trash.
But here Jesus was clearly talking about a place. And a rich man goes there because he a tripped over the poor man named Lazarus everyday sitting just outside his house, ignoring the obvious pain Lazarus was in.
I don’t know about you but this story haunts me every time I’m downtown and I see a drunken person passed out in a doorway. Should I step in and get involved? Should I wake him and find him some food? Should I call the police so they can deal with him? I guess this story doesn’t trouble me as much as it should because, like the rich man, I step over the anonymous drunk on the sidewalk, and hustle down the street on my merry little way, trying to think of something spiritual to say for Sunday’s sermon.
But Jesus seems to be telling us that if we ignore this person, we do so at our own peril. Because if we keep our ears perked, we will hear nothing from him about Hell as a consequence of lack in belief in Jesus, nor do we hear anything about the sins we tend to think about most often, namely sins of the flesh, as the most condemning. The rich man didn’t go to Hell because he was lax in his moral hygiene, slack in his daily devotions, or even because he didn’t have a relationship with Jesus. This story, the only story we have where Jesus actually talks openly about Hell and who goes there, he talks about the rich man ending up in Hell because he was indifferent to poor people.
But if we listen even more closely, we will hear that this isn’t even a story about Hell or the afterlife at all. This story is about this life. Jesus wasn’t threatening his listeners with eternal damnation for having too much money. This wasn’t about the personal perils of riches. This story is about how we treat one other with regards to money. And I think, speaks clearly to how we relate to money in our lives. Although such a story might be easier if Jesus were talking about personal morality.
Barbara Brown Taylor puts a clarifying mirror to many of our faces when she says,
“On the whole it is easier for me to dodge charges of personal immorality than to dodge charges of social injustice. As long as I can manage to stay in a monogamous, heterosexual marriage I can enter into discussions about adultery, homosexuality, and divorce with all the sound and fury that I want because it’s not likely that the discussion will require me to change anything. But switch the subject to money, as Jesus himself did, over and over again, and I may become quiet. Because I have a lot of money. If we’re going to talk about wealth, how we get it, how we spend it, and what it tells us about the gods we really worship, than I’m probably not going to get out of the room without hearing a call to repentance. Could we change the subject back to sex, please.” (BBT, Bible Lecture)
But, of course, Jesus, ignoring our middle-class discomfort with conflict, keeps turning the discussion away from sex back to money, whether we want it to or not.
But we might protest and say, “Jesus, we know you’re strong on spiritual matters, but you’ve obviously never studied economics. Making the poor dependant on charity only ruins whatever hope they have of getting up on their own two feet. By helping the poor, we’re hurting the poor. Sometimes some tough-love is needed with these people.”
But Jesus, unmoved by our justifications, may point to the single mom who lost her welfare cheque because her teenage daughter got a part-time job after school at Burger King. How is that helping her? Jesus may point to the 30 000 children under five who die each day from malnutrition and hunger-related diseases. Is that what you call ‘tough love’? He may point to developing countries being crushed under a debt load that’s been paid off many times over but the interest keeps compounding, offering no hope of relief. How can they get back on their own two feet?
On the other hand he may point out how multi-million dollar hockey players protest salary caps while 20 percent of Canadian children go to school hungry. Jesus may open the newspaper and point out, that genocide and atrocities are happening in Sudan but there were more reports of Britney Spears wedding then of the bloodshed in Darfur. Jesus then may lower his eyes and speak of the widening gulf between the richest and the poorest people in the world. “This is not about politics,” he would say. “This is not even about economics. I don’t care how money is distributed because the kingdom of God has nothing to do with money. But this is about right and wrong, this is about loving your neighbour, this is about how we treat one another. And I would remind you that, “where your treasure is, there your heart is also.”
Jesus may then point out to us that we don’t lack the resources, tools, talent, or brain-power to deal with the problems crushing humanity, we lack the will.
My friend Kevin Little, the minister at Mackay United Church in Ottawa tells of when he was a university student at Dalhousie and he I had a professor named George Grant, whom many of you who’ve studied philosophy might have heard of. “[Grant] asked us to read the four gospels and give our impressions. I thought this odd, given that the course was a philosophy credit. What struck me then as a 17 year old was how the people that didn't matter in the Roman Empire, to the Religious authorities, to us today, were the ones who mattered most to Jesus.
“Grant asked us a bold question. He asked us, who were the campus do-gooders, to account for our actions, why did we care so much about others? Some offered up the possibility that it was an innate human quality. Grant quickly dismissed this. Clearly, unlike animal life, our passions to sacrifice often took us to lengths well beyond a mother and her young. "How do you account for that" he would ask. Some thought self-interest. After all if you look after others, they'll be inclined to look after you. "Pretty cold" said Grant. He reminded us that Nietzsche had pretty much refuted that argument, that the strong would eventually resent the weak and how they sap resources that could be used to further their great visions.
“In the end the only convincing answer was that something, someone, had willed a reality for us as humans that could not be reasoned or debated, it just was. That we are all equal cannot be proved. It just is. And we know this from our baptism. We know this from the one who gives our chaotic world a purpose. We know this because when we look in the eyes of our neighbour we glimpse a reflection of what the experience of God is.”
I think he’s right.
We may lack the will to tackle the world’s greatest problems, but God doesn’t. I often wonder if looking for political solutions to resolve the terrors of poverty, hunger, war, and whatever else is causing chaos in the world is really the answer. While I have a more than a passing interest in politics and the bible talks about Christians supporting their leaders because doing so leads to peaceable living, the bible is also not naïve to the dangers of power. Even if we elect the right people and enact the correct policies, the kingdom of God will not arrive. The kingdom cannot be legislated. Governments change. Policies evolve. But the kingdom of God remains the same. The Kingdom of justice, the kingdom of peace, the kingdom where the poor, the sick, the suffering, and the neglected, take their place at the head of the table.
Can we build this kingdom? No, but God asks us to keep it in our vision, to remember that our baptismal calling is always to keeping learning how to follow Jesus. We learn by living, sharing, daring, tearing down fences, challenging our pre-conceived notions about how the world works, and being transformed by the power of God’s compassion, we then discover the kingdom that Jesus was talking about and our lives begin to reflect the kind of love that God has for the world – a love that suffers, a love that liberates.
May this be so among us. Amen.
Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd
Pentecost 17 – Year C
September 26, 2004
In an Associated Press article the writer interviewed a man named Randy Baines. As it turns out, Baines lived in the same long-term hotel in Boyton Beach, Florida, in the summer of 2000 with one of the 9/11 highjackers, a man who called himself Waleed Alsheri. The two talked frequently and chatted about football and baseball, particularly the Florida Marlins. Alsheri seemed to be a real Marlins fan. “He was a really nice guy, very hospitable,” reports Baines, a 48-year-old carpenter. “But if he was involved in one of those plane crashes, I hope he goes to hell.” (From Why Not Send Lazarus? By Frank Honneycutt)
Who do you hope goes to hell? Who is on your short list? Osama Bin Laden? Child abusers? Murderers? The neighbour next door that lets his dog bark all night? Hell has taken a centre stage in our religious imaginations and has dominated much of our theological discourse.
But it may surprise you to learn that the bible doesn’t talk a whole lot about Hell. The OT is virtually silent on the issue. Much of the OT talks about Sheol, which means a shadowy place below. No torment or bliss, just a place where people go rest. Both good and evil. Hell is introduced in the NT and the word that Jesus often used for it is “gehenna” referring to a place just outside the city where people burned their trash.
But here Jesus was clearly talking about a place. And a rich man goes there because he a tripped over the poor man named Lazarus everyday sitting just outside his house, ignoring the obvious pain Lazarus was in.
I don’t know about you but this story haunts me every time I’m downtown and I see a drunken person passed out in a doorway. Should I step in and get involved? Should I wake him and find him some food? Should I call the police so they can deal with him? I guess this story doesn’t trouble me as much as it should because, like the rich man, I step over the anonymous drunk on the sidewalk, and hustle down the street on my merry little way, trying to think of something spiritual to say for Sunday’s sermon.
But Jesus seems to be telling us that if we ignore this person, we do so at our own peril. Because if we keep our ears perked, we will hear nothing from him about Hell as a consequence of lack in belief in Jesus, nor do we hear anything about the sins we tend to think about most often, namely sins of the flesh, as the most condemning. The rich man didn’t go to Hell because he was lax in his moral hygiene, slack in his daily devotions, or even because he didn’t have a relationship with Jesus. This story, the only story we have where Jesus actually talks openly about Hell and who goes there, he talks about the rich man ending up in Hell because he was indifferent to poor people.
But if we listen even more closely, we will hear that this isn’t even a story about Hell or the afterlife at all. This story is about this life. Jesus wasn’t threatening his listeners with eternal damnation for having too much money. This wasn’t about the personal perils of riches. This story is about how we treat one other with regards to money. And I think, speaks clearly to how we relate to money in our lives. Although such a story might be easier if Jesus were talking about personal morality.
Barbara Brown Taylor puts a clarifying mirror to many of our faces when she says,
“On the whole it is easier for me to dodge charges of personal immorality than to dodge charges of social injustice. As long as I can manage to stay in a monogamous, heterosexual marriage I can enter into discussions about adultery, homosexuality, and divorce with all the sound and fury that I want because it’s not likely that the discussion will require me to change anything. But switch the subject to money, as Jesus himself did, over and over again, and I may become quiet. Because I have a lot of money. If we’re going to talk about wealth, how we get it, how we spend it, and what it tells us about the gods we really worship, than I’m probably not going to get out of the room without hearing a call to repentance. Could we change the subject back to sex, please.” (BBT, Bible Lecture)
But, of course, Jesus, ignoring our middle-class discomfort with conflict, keeps turning the discussion away from sex back to money, whether we want it to or not.
But we might protest and say, “Jesus, we know you’re strong on spiritual matters, but you’ve obviously never studied economics. Making the poor dependant on charity only ruins whatever hope they have of getting up on their own two feet. By helping the poor, we’re hurting the poor. Sometimes some tough-love is needed with these people.”
But Jesus, unmoved by our justifications, may point to the single mom who lost her welfare cheque because her teenage daughter got a part-time job after school at Burger King. How is that helping her? Jesus may point to the 30 000 children under five who die each day from malnutrition and hunger-related diseases. Is that what you call ‘tough love’? He may point to developing countries being crushed under a debt load that’s been paid off many times over but the interest keeps compounding, offering no hope of relief. How can they get back on their own two feet?
On the other hand he may point out how multi-million dollar hockey players protest salary caps while 20 percent of Canadian children go to school hungry. Jesus may open the newspaper and point out, that genocide and atrocities are happening in Sudan but there were more reports of Britney Spears wedding then of the bloodshed in Darfur. Jesus then may lower his eyes and speak of the widening gulf between the richest and the poorest people in the world. “This is not about politics,” he would say. “This is not even about economics. I don’t care how money is distributed because the kingdom of God has nothing to do with money. But this is about right and wrong, this is about loving your neighbour, this is about how we treat one another. And I would remind you that, “where your treasure is, there your heart is also.”
Jesus may then point out to us that we don’t lack the resources, tools, talent, or brain-power to deal with the problems crushing humanity, we lack the will.
My friend Kevin Little, the minister at Mackay United Church in Ottawa tells of when he was a university student at Dalhousie and he I had a professor named George Grant, whom many of you who’ve studied philosophy might have heard of. “[Grant] asked us to read the four gospels and give our impressions. I thought this odd, given that the course was a philosophy credit. What struck me then as a 17 year old was how the people that didn't matter in the Roman Empire, to the Religious authorities, to us today, were the ones who mattered most to Jesus.
“Grant asked us a bold question. He asked us, who were the campus do-gooders, to account for our actions, why did we care so much about others? Some offered up the possibility that it was an innate human quality. Grant quickly dismissed this. Clearly, unlike animal life, our passions to sacrifice often took us to lengths well beyond a mother and her young. "How do you account for that" he would ask. Some thought self-interest. After all if you look after others, they'll be inclined to look after you. "Pretty cold" said Grant. He reminded us that Nietzsche had pretty much refuted that argument, that the strong would eventually resent the weak and how they sap resources that could be used to further their great visions.
“In the end the only convincing answer was that something, someone, had willed a reality for us as humans that could not be reasoned or debated, it just was. That we are all equal cannot be proved. It just is. And we know this from our baptism. We know this from the one who gives our chaotic world a purpose. We know this because when we look in the eyes of our neighbour we glimpse a reflection of what the experience of God is.”
I think he’s right.
We may lack the will to tackle the world’s greatest problems, but God doesn’t. I often wonder if looking for political solutions to resolve the terrors of poverty, hunger, war, and whatever else is causing chaos in the world is really the answer. While I have a more than a passing interest in politics and the bible talks about Christians supporting their leaders because doing so leads to peaceable living, the bible is also not naïve to the dangers of power. Even if we elect the right people and enact the correct policies, the kingdom of God will not arrive. The kingdom cannot be legislated. Governments change. Policies evolve. But the kingdom of God remains the same. The Kingdom of justice, the kingdom of peace, the kingdom where the poor, the sick, the suffering, and the neglected, take their place at the head of the table.
Can we build this kingdom? No, but God asks us to keep it in our vision, to remember that our baptismal calling is always to keeping learning how to follow Jesus. We learn by living, sharing, daring, tearing down fences, challenging our pre-conceived notions about how the world works, and being transformed by the power of God’s compassion, we then discover the kingdom that Jesus was talking about and our lives begin to reflect the kind of love that God has for the world – a love that suffers, a love that liberates.
May this be so among us. Amen.
Friday, September 24, 2004
Some Clarifications from yesterday's post.
After a conversation with my wife last night I think I need to clarify some things. Spong was talking about Archbishop Rowan Williams' decision to ask Jeffrey John to remove himself from consideration of Bishop of Reading in the Church of England before he was ordained to his seat, even though Johns is a celibate gay male. I couldn't disagree more with Williams' decision because it violates every statute within the Church of England relating to homosexual behaviour and same-sex relationships. Gays and lesbians can serve in ordained postions as long as they remain celibate. Jeffrey John certainly meets this criteria.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with this position (The Issue itself is another debate, right now I'm concerned with church governance), this is where it stands and it was wrong for Williams to remove John from consideration to such an important post.
But perhaps most troubling, Williams has opened up a big can of theological worms surrounding the ontological foundation of the human person. In other words, he was saying that not just the behaviour or relationships contradict church teaching, but the very act of being homosexual is contrary to revelation (scripture, reason, and tradition - the three-legged stool in the C of E.). So just being homosexual, according to this astonishing precedent, is grounds for being passed over to important church posts.
Within the Anglican Communion this theology is found only within the radical wing of the conservative side, the loudest group that speaks on this issue and unfortunately the part of the Church of England to which Williams capitulated. To suggest that one is lacking some fundamental and personal characteristic for high office simply because of homosexual orientation is a modernist heresy and needs to be exposed as such. No one is more (or less) ontologically sinful than another. We all cling to the same cross for our salvation. Williams knows all of this, which is why it is so regrettable that he made the decision he did.
But I still think that Spong's Ad Hominem remarks do not help the debate one iota.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with this position (The Issue itself is another debate, right now I'm concerned with church governance), this is where it stands and it was wrong for Williams to remove John from consideration to such an important post.
But perhaps most troubling, Williams has opened up a big can of theological worms surrounding the ontological foundation of the human person. In other words, he was saying that not just the behaviour or relationships contradict church teaching, but the very act of being homosexual is contrary to revelation (scripture, reason, and tradition - the three-legged stool in the C of E.). So just being homosexual, according to this astonishing precedent, is grounds for being passed over to important church posts.
Within the Anglican Communion this theology is found only within the radical wing of the conservative side, the loudest group that speaks on this issue and unfortunately the part of the Church of England to which Williams capitulated. To suggest that one is lacking some fundamental and personal characteristic for high office simply because of homosexual orientation is a modernist heresy and needs to be exposed as such. No one is more (or less) ontologically sinful than another. We all cling to the same cross for our salvation. Williams knows all of this, which is why it is so regrettable that he made the decision he did.
But I still think that Spong's Ad Hominem remarks do not help the debate one iota.
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Rowan Williams has failed says bishop
John Shelby Spong, in an article in yesterday's Guardian regarding Archbishop Rowan Williams' leadership around the issue of homosexuality (hereafter referred to as The Issue) and the Anglican Communion, is quoted as saying.
"[Archbishop Williams'] actions have revealed a fatal character flaw. He has no courage, no backbone and no ability to lead. Seldom have I watched a quicker collapse of potential. It was an abdication of leadership so dramatic as to be breathtaking.
"He is now destined to be a long-serving but ineffective and empty man who has been revealed to be incapable of carrying the responsibility placed upon him. Leaders have only one opportunity to make a first impression. Rowan Williams has failed that test miserably."
Wow. Quite a condemnation, especially from a colleague. I guess the Archbishop missed the memo that he was to check with Spong before making any important decisions to make sure that they fell within the exclusive range of liberal fundamentalism.
Maybe it's just me, but I find such remarks such as Spong's, unhelpful to the debate. While it is no mystery as to where Spong stands on The Issue, his black and white, us-against-them, attitude is just as troubling when it comes from a fire-breathing liberal as when it spews from the mouth of a frothing fundamentalist. Too many people are stuck in the middle in The Issue and are being polarized by divisive statements, such as the ones that Spong makes.
In my congregation, like most in the ELCIC, there is a strong diversity of opinion regarding The Issue. While I may vehemently disagree with many folks here at Good Shepherd, I still recognize that they are part of my family of faith, and I am called to love and minister to them as well to one one with whom I agree.
I hear much polarizing rhetoric in my denomination as we struggle to find our way through this controversy. The Issue has been a litmus test for faithfulness for some folks on both sides of the debate. "Where do you stand on The Issue" is not merely a query as to what a person thinks, it now represents a whole host of theological questions most central being Biblical Authority. It grieves me that the conversation we are having is a heated argument between two rival factions rather than a prayerfully discerning dialogue or debate that searches for the heart of God.
I've also heard it said that The Issue is more than homosexuality, but that to become more welcoming to gays and lesbians will put us on a slippery slope toward a liberal theological agenda that will end in our demise as a national church body. I'm not convinced. While many pro-gay advocates certainly are of the liberal persuasion, many that I've talked to are not. In fact, some "pro-gay" advocates believe that the gospel compells them to welcome all people.
As our church struggles with this issue, I'd like to hear more compassion for those caught in the middle and who are honestly searching and discerning where they believe God is leading us. It is my prayer that God will lead us through this difficult time of discernment and at the end make us stronger and more united as a family of faith.
"[Archbishop Williams'] actions have revealed a fatal character flaw. He has no courage, no backbone and no ability to lead. Seldom have I watched a quicker collapse of potential. It was an abdication of leadership so dramatic as to be breathtaking.
"He is now destined to be a long-serving but ineffective and empty man who has been revealed to be incapable of carrying the responsibility placed upon him. Leaders have only one opportunity to make a first impression. Rowan Williams has failed that test miserably."
Wow. Quite a condemnation, especially from a colleague. I guess the Archbishop missed the memo that he was to check with Spong before making any important decisions to make sure that they fell within the exclusive range of liberal fundamentalism.
Maybe it's just me, but I find such remarks such as Spong's, unhelpful to the debate. While it is no mystery as to where Spong stands on The Issue, his black and white, us-against-them, attitude is just as troubling when it comes from a fire-breathing liberal as when it spews from the mouth of a frothing fundamentalist. Too many people are stuck in the middle in The Issue and are being polarized by divisive statements, such as the ones that Spong makes.
In my congregation, like most in the ELCIC, there is a strong diversity of opinion regarding The Issue. While I may vehemently disagree with many folks here at Good Shepherd, I still recognize that they are part of my family of faith, and I am called to love and minister to them as well to one one with whom I agree.
I hear much polarizing rhetoric in my denomination as we struggle to find our way through this controversy. The Issue has been a litmus test for faithfulness for some folks on both sides of the debate. "Where do you stand on The Issue" is not merely a query as to what a person thinks, it now represents a whole host of theological questions most central being Biblical Authority. It grieves me that the conversation we are having is a heated argument between two rival factions rather than a prayerfully discerning dialogue or debate that searches for the heart of God.
I've also heard it said that The Issue is more than homosexuality, but that to become more welcoming to gays and lesbians will put us on a slippery slope toward a liberal theological agenda that will end in our demise as a national church body. I'm not convinced. While many pro-gay advocates certainly are of the liberal persuasion, many that I've talked to are not. In fact, some "pro-gay" advocates believe that the gospel compells them to welcome all people.
As our church struggles with this issue, I'd like to hear more compassion for those caught in the middle and who are honestly searching and discerning where they believe God is leading us. It is my prayer that God will lead us through this difficult time of discernment and at the end make us stronger and more united as a family of faith.
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Elie Wiesel On the Atrocities in Sudan
I found this on the BlogsCanada site. Wiesel's message speaks for itself.
On the Atrocities in Sudan
by Elie Wiesel
Remarks delivered at the Darfur Emergency Summit, convened at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York on July 14, 2004, by the American Jewish World Service and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Sudan has become today’s world capital of human pain, suffering and agony. There, one part of the population has been , and still is , subjected by another part, the dominating part, to humiliation, hunger and death. For a while, the so-called civilized world knew about it and preferred to look away. Now people know. And so they have no excuse for their passivity bordering on indifference. Those who, like you my friends, try to break the walls of their apathy deserve everyone’s support and everyone’s solidarity. (read the full text here)
On the Atrocities in Sudan
by Elie Wiesel
Remarks delivered at the Darfur Emergency Summit, convened at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York on July 14, 2004, by the American Jewish World Service and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Sudan has become today’s world capital of human pain, suffering and agony. There, one part of the population has been , and still is , subjected by another part, the dominating part, to humiliation, hunger and death. For a while, the so-called civilized world knew about it and preferred to look away. Now people know. And so they have no excuse for their passivity bordering on indifference. Those who, like you my friends, try to break the walls of their apathy deserve everyone’s support and everyone’s solidarity. (read the full text here)
From October's Church Newsletter
I picked up a book last week called The Resurrection of the Son of God by Anglican Bishop and New Testament scholar, NT Wright. I’ve always appreciated Wright’s work because he makes what could easily be a dry and boring field of study (Biblical Theology), drains it of its dogma, and reintroduces traditional Christianity for a new world hungry for a word from God.
Also last week, I finally got around to seeing The Passion of the Christ on DVD. As I watched it I kept in mind all the commentaries, reviews, conversations and arguments that I heard, read, or participated in. Many of my more conservative friends said they were moved by the film because they felt they witnessed the sacrifice that Jesus made for them. Others, suggested that the film was excessively violent and portrayed Jesus as some divine macho-man who endured horrific torture and met death without so much as a muffled scream. Yet others complained of the films supposed anti-Semitism (a criticism, for which I have some sympathy).
But I saw the film differently. I was surprised by how deeply I was moved by it. I saw it almost as a mirror into myself and the world we inherited. The glee with which the Roman soldiers whipped and tortured Jesus (while not historically accurate, they provided the film with strong theological content, making the movie less a historical re-enactment as much as it is a devotional and theological expression of the mystery of Jesus the Son of God dying the death of sinful humanity – our death. The Roman army may have been brutal, but they were also disciplined and would not have enjoyed scourging someone with the cruel abandon with which the soldiers were portrayed in the film) echoed the glee with which many kill innocent victims and claim a victory for themselves, for their god, or for their country (or all three).
Both the film and the book made me question the ease with which we speak of “Christ crucified and risen” as if his death was little more than a theological construct and his resurrection was scarcely other than a pithy postscript added on to an otherwise dark and difficult story.
As I read the book and watched the movie, I was struck by how well the two experiences worked together. The film (with all its flaws) brought to life the world that Wright described. The strength of our faith story lies deep in its historical roots, a particular history of the God of Israel made flesh in the human being named Jesus.
When we reflect upon who we are as a people of God, and as we plan for the future, it is important for us to remember who this particular God is when we ask ourselves, “What does it mean to follow the poor man from Nazareth, who was tortured and executed, and who rose from the dead three days later?” This is a question that challenges me in my work. This is a question that I hope challenges all of us as we look ahead in great anticipation to where God is leading us.
Also last week, I finally got around to seeing The Passion of the Christ on DVD. As I watched it I kept in mind all the commentaries, reviews, conversations and arguments that I heard, read, or participated in. Many of my more conservative friends said they were moved by the film because they felt they witnessed the sacrifice that Jesus made for them. Others, suggested that the film was excessively violent and portrayed Jesus as some divine macho-man who endured horrific torture and met death without so much as a muffled scream. Yet others complained of the films supposed anti-Semitism (a criticism, for which I have some sympathy).
But I saw the film differently. I was surprised by how deeply I was moved by it. I saw it almost as a mirror into myself and the world we inherited. The glee with which the Roman soldiers whipped and tortured Jesus (while not historically accurate, they provided the film with strong theological content, making the movie less a historical re-enactment as much as it is a devotional and theological expression of the mystery of Jesus the Son of God dying the death of sinful humanity – our death. The Roman army may have been brutal, but they were also disciplined and would not have enjoyed scourging someone with the cruel abandon with which the soldiers were portrayed in the film) echoed the glee with which many kill innocent victims and claim a victory for themselves, for their god, or for their country (or all three).
Both the film and the book made me question the ease with which we speak of “Christ crucified and risen” as if his death was little more than a theological construct and his resurrection was scarcely other than a pithy postscript added on to an otherwise dark and difficult story.
As I read the book and watched the movie, I was struck by how well the two experiences worked together. The film (with all its flaws) brought to life the world that Wright described. The strength of our faith story lies deep in its historical roots, a particular history of the God of Israel made flesh in the human being named Jesus.
When we reflect upon who we are as a people of God, and as we plan for the future, it is important for us to remember who this particular God is when we ask ourselves, “What does it mean to follow the poor man from Nazareth, who was tortured and executed, and who rose from the dead three days later?” This is a question that challenges me in my work. This is a question that I hope challenges all of us as we look ahead in great anticipation to where God is leading us.
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Too much to do on Tuesday
Today is one of those days that I just want to vegetate and read some good books, but I have too much on my desk this afternoon (I took the morning off to look at after Naomi while my wife could work around the house. Sophie was at pre-school).
So here’s my prayer for today, which is meant to be read and prayed s-l-o-w-l-y:
Lord, kindle our hearts within
A flame of love to our neighbours,
To our foes, to our friends, to our loved ones all,
From the lowliest thing that lives
To the name that is highest of all.
(Gaelic traditional)
So here’s my prayer for today, which is meant to be read and prayed s-l-o-w-l-y:
Lord, kindle our hearts within
A flame of love to our neighbours,
To our foes, to our friends, to our loved ones all,
From the lowliest thing that lives
To the name that is highest of all.
(Gaelic traditional)
Monday, September 20, 2004
Sermon: Pentecost 16 - Year C
Luke 16:1-13
Let me just say right off the bat that NO ONE knows what this story is about. I must have read at least 25 sermons on this reading this week, countless commentaries, and consulted some colleagues, and no two people can agree on what this passage from Luke is all about. So then I consulted the fountain of all wisdom and the source of all knowledge - my wife Rebekah. She pointed me to a brilliant sermon she published on this text, but despite her creatively ingenious unpacking of the story, she didn’t solve the problem as much as she skillfully and imaginatively deepens the tension we have with it. I had my nose stuck in a book most of this week hoping that some of the big name scholars might be able to help me out, but all of them seemed just as lost as I was.
The problem is this: This parable makes absolutely no sense. As Willimon points out: “We teach our children to be honest, and then Jesus praises dishonesty? We teach our children to be thrifty and hard-working, and then Jesus celebrates laziness and waste? Maybe Luke dozed off while writing this one down. Maybe something is lost in the translation. Maybe, Jesus, or Luke, or the Holy Spirit put this story in the bible because it was incomprehensible, to keep us humble, lest we believe ourselves masters of scripture.”
Whatever the reason, this story is in the bible and it is the reading for the 16th Sunday of Pentecost – Year C. There is no getting around that.
But it’s clear that Jesus was warning his listeners about the perils of riches. I know what you’re thinking, I can tell by how some of your eyes are glazing over: “Yes, we get it.” You might be thinking to yourself, “Money isn’t everything. Materialism and consumerism is killing us, blah, blah, blah…” I know you’re thinking that because that’s what I was thinking last Monday when I looked up the readings for today. “Here we go again,” I thought to myself. I’m probably just as tired of talking about the dangers of money and wealth as you are probably of hearing about it.
Some of us might take Jesus’ message seriously enough to want to make radical lifestyle changes. We muse about selling off the boat, living more simply, giving more money to charity. Methodist preacher Will Willimon makes fun of our brief willingness to change our lives, “You may hear a sermon and think, ‘I’ll go home and be Mother Teresa. I won’t be materialistic anymore. I’ll pray five times daily for an hour. I’ll be a saint.’ But it won’t last past lunch time….admit it. You won’t be Mother Teresa. You’ll still be materialistic; it’s the air we breathe.”
So what do we do then? Admit defeat then move on? Maybe you’re going to brutally honest and simply say, “I’m not likely to sell all I have and give it to the poor, becoming a modern-day Francis of Assisi.” But maybe I can do what I can. Maybe I can drop some food in the food bank bin, maybe I can kick in a little more cash to Canadian Lutheran World Relief, maybe I can donate some old clothes to the Salvation Army. Is this what God wants from us? Perhaps.
But I’m not entirely sure that Jesus knows what he’s saying. In the parable, the connection isn’t totally clear between honest and dishonest wealth, and which kind of wealth Jesus was praising and which he was condemning. Why was the master happy that he just got cheated out of half what he was supposed to get back? Maybe he thought that getting half was better than getting nothing. But what then is Jesus praising? Jesus seems to be saying that scheming is a good thing, that people should be just as shrewd in sacred things as the steward was with his business dealings. But then Jesus gets angry with them for being able to effectively work the system. Then Jesus, almost out of nowhere launches into a diatribe about serving two masters. So which is it Jesus, is it a good thing to be manipulative and scheming? Or should we shun the system altogether because our loyalties might get confused? Jesus, a little more clarity would be helpful here.
But Jesus says what he says, and leaves it with that. You can almost see the puzzled looks on the peoples’ faces. Was Jesus being intentionally obtuse or did he mis-speak? What exactly is Jesus trying to say?
But we do know that this parable is about money, but he has a funny way of getting there. Jesus speaks here, and throughout Luke’s gospel about something other than the unfettered acquisition of wealth, and warns of the perils of riches. Tucked away in Luke’s gospel is some vision that life is more than money. But that, of course, is something we already know, we don’t need the Son of God to tell us that life is about more than what we possess and what we gain.
So, again, what is this story about?
This steward was manipulative; there is no getting around that, but the violation of what seems to be the right thing to do can be used in astonishing new ways by God. Jesus never spent too much time with the squeaky clean. He seemed to prefer the company of those whose lives coloured outside the lines, those who never really quite fit in inside the houses of official religion or even inside the halls of economic prosperity. But this motley crew, this gaggle of misfits, this group of nobodies became his followers and changed the world. But if we know our bible at we know we shouldn’t be surprised that God never chooses saints to do God’s work. What about Jacob the liar and the thief. Noah never saw the inside of a bottle that he couldn’t cozy up to. Moses was a murderer. What about Dorothy Day? Divorced, having had both an abortion and a child out of wedlock, sneaking back into the church, serving the poor and beginning a religious movement that remains as vibrant today as when she gathered people together in Harlem back in the 30’s. Consider Martin Luther King Jr, an adulterer and a plagiarist. Just consider you and consider me. I’ve been here long enough and I know myself well enough that none of us can claim total righteousness. None of us is wholly pure and none of us is completely saintly. The most charitable among us would say that we are, at best, a jumble of mixed motivations, a concoction of sweet wine and sour vinegar, a mishmash of both the good and the evil that stalks the world.
So maybe Jesus is telling us in a round about way that there is no clear division between clean and unclean, between good and evil, between comedy and tragedy. Maybe Jesus is saying that just as there is no such thing as clean money there is also no such things as a pure person, and that God can use us small, sinful, dishonest selves to accomplish God's work. We are mixed both with the blood of Jesus which declares us clean, and the blood of Adam and Eve which announces us broken and sinful. We are, as one writer puts, “citizens of heaven and tax-payers of earth. It’s no excuse for the trouble we get into, but it does explain our spotty record.”
So what does this story mean? I still don’t know. But what I do know is this: the world will behave shrewdly and with calculation. Perhaps Jesus is asking us to make the best of a bad situation by being shrewd and calculating ourselves, not worrying about following every rule, but daring to colour outside the lines, knowing we aren’t saints, but forgiven stewards trying to figure out how to live authentically and faithfully, serving one master who is merciful and loving and in who’s name we are saved while living with another master who asks us to be shrewd and calculating. Maybe Jesus saw just how impossible such an arrangement is. Maybe that’s why Jesus offered us a way out through his cross. Amen.
Let me just say right off the bat that NO ONE knows what this story is about. I must have read at least 25 sermons on this reading this week, countless commentaries, and consulted some colleagues, and no two people can agree on what this passage from Luke is all about. So then I consulted the fountain of all wisdom and the source of all knowledge - my wife Rebekah. She pointed me to a brilliant sermon she published on this text, but despite her creatively ingenious unpacking of the story, she didn’t solve the problem as much as she skillfully and imaginatively deepens the tension we have with it. I had my nose stuck in a book most of this week hoping that some of the big name scholars might be able to help me out, but all of them seemed just as lost as I was.
The problem is this: This parable makes absolutely no sense. As Willimon points out: “We teach our children to be honest, and then Jesus praises dishonesty? We teach our children to be thrifty and hard-working, and then Jesus celebrates laziness and waste? Maybe Luke dozed off while writing this one down. Maybe something is lost in the translation. Maybe, Jesus, or Luke, or the Holy Spirit put this story in the bible because it was incomprehensible, to keep us humble, lest we believe ourselves masters of scripture.”
Whatever the reason, this story is in the bible and it is the reading for the 16th Sunday of Pentecost – Year C. There is no getting around that.
But it’s clear that Jesus was warning his listeners about the perils of riches. I know what you’re thinking, I can tell by how some of your eyes are glazing over: “Yes, we get it.” You might be thinking to yourself, “Money isn’t everything. Materialism and consumerism is killing us, blah, blah, blah…” I know you’re thinking that because that’s what I was thinking last Monday when I looked up the readings for today. “Here we go again,” I thought to myself. I’m probably just as tired of talking about the dangers of money and wealth as you are probably of hearing about it.
Some of us might take Jesus’ message seriously enough to want to make radical lifestyle changes. We muse about selling off the boat, living more simply, giving more money to charity. Methodist preacher Will Willimon makes fun of our brief willingness to change our lives, “You may hear a sermon and think, ‘I’ll go home and be Mother Teresa. I won’t be materialistic anymore. I’ll pray five times daily for an hour. I’ll be a saint.’ But it won’t last past lunch time….admit it. You won’t be Mother Teresa. You’ll still be materialistic; it’s the air we breathe.”
So what do we do then? Admit defeat then move on? Maybe you’re going to brutally honest and simply say, “I’m not likely to sell all I have and give it to the poor, becoming a modern-day Francis of Assisi.” But maybe I can do what I can. Maybe I can drop some food in the food bank bin, maybe I can kick in a little more cash to Canadian Lutheran World Relief, maybe I can donate some old clothes to the Salvation Army. Is this what God wants from us? Perhaps.
But I’m not entirely sure that Jesus knows what he’s saying. In the parable, the connection isn’t totally clear between honest and dishonest wealth, and which kind of wealth Jesus was praising and which he was condemning. Why was the master happy that he just got cheated out of half what he was supposed to get back? Maybe he thought that getting half was better than getting nothing. But what then is Jesus praising? Jesus seems to be saying that scheming is a good thing, that people should be just as shrewd in sacred things as the steward was with his business dealings. But then Jesus gets angry with them for being able to effectively work the system. Then Jesus, almost out of nowhere launches into a diatribe about serving two masters. So which is it Jesus, is it a good thing to be manipulative and scheming? Or should we shun the system altogether because our loyalties might get confused? Jesus, a little more clarity would be helpful here.
But Jesus says what he says, and leaves it with that. You can almost see the puzzled looks on the peoples’ faces. Was Jesus being intentionally obtuse or did he mis-speak? What exactly is Jesus trying to say?
But we do know that this parable is about money, but he has a funny way of getting there. Jesus speaks here, and throughout Luke’s gospel about something other than the unfettered acquisition of wealth, and warns of the perils of riches. Tucked away in Luke’s gospel is some vision that life is more than money. But that, of course, is something we already know, we don’t need the Son of God to tell us that life is about more than what we possess and what we gain.
So, again, what is this story about?
This steward was manipulative; there is no getting around that, but the violation of what seems to be the right thing to do can be used in astonishing new ways by God. Jesus never spent too much time with the squeaky clean. He seemed to prefer the company of those whose lives coloured outside the lines, those who never really quite fit in inside the houses of official religion or even inside the halls of economic prosperity. But this motley crew, this gaggle of misfits, this group of nobodies became his followers and changed the world. But if we know our bible at we know we shouldn’t be surprised that God never chooses saints to do God’s work. What about Jacob the liar and the thief. Noah never saw the inside of a bottle that he couldn’t cozy up to. Moses was a murderer. What about Dorothy Day? Divorced, having had both an abortion and a child out of wedlock, sneaking back into the church, serving the poor and beginning a religious movement that remains as vibrant today as when she gathered people together in Harlem back in the 30’s. Consider Martin Luther King Jr, an adulterer and a plagiarist. Just consider you and consider me. I’ve been here long enough and I know myself well enough that none of us can claim total righteousness. None of us is wholly pure and none of us is completely saintly. The most charitable among us would say that we are, at best, a jumble of mixed motivations, a concoction of sweet wine and sour vinegar, a mishmash of both the good and the evil that stalks the world.
So maybe Jesus is telling us in a round about way that there is no clear division between clean and unclean, between good and evil, between comedy and tragedy. Maybe Jesus is saying that just as there is no such thing as clean money there is also no such things as a pure person, and that God can use us small, sinful, dishonest selves to accomplish God's work. We are mixed both with the blood of Jesus which declares us clean, and the blood of Adam and Eve which announces us broken and sinful. We are, as one writer puts, “citizens of heaven and tax-payers of earth. It’s no excuse for the trouble we get into, but it does explain our spotty record.”
So what does this story mean? I still don’t know. But what I do know is this: the world will behave shrewdly and with calculation. Perhaps Jesus is asking us to make the best of a bad situation by being shrewd and calculating ourselves, not worrying about following every rule, but daring to colour outside the lines, knowing we aren’t saints, but forgiven stewards trying to figure out how to live authentically and faithfully, serving one master who is merciful and loving and in who’s name we are saved while living with another master who asks us to be shrewd and calculating. Maybe Jesus saw just how impossible such an arrangement is. Maybe that’s why Jesus offered us a way out through his cross. Amen.
Friday, September 17, 2004
Peace: A Prayer
Christ is the light
which illuminates our existence
Before this light
the darkness of evil and war and sin
will not prevail
Even death is defeated
for God’s love is eternal
God desires communion with us
and makes us enter beyond death
into his eternal life
from Parkminster Abbey
"The world will never be the dwelling place of peace till peace has found a home in the heart of each and every person, till every person preserves in himself [or herself] the order ordained by God to be preserved." (Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris)
which illuminates our existence
Before this light
the darkness of evil and war and sin
will not prevail
Even death is defeated
for God’s love is eternal
God desires communion with us
and makes us enter beyond death
into his eternal life
from Parkminster Abbey
"The world will never be the dwelling place of peace till peace has found a home in the heart of each and every person, till every person preserves in himself [or herself] the order ordained by God to be preserved." (Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris)
Thomas Merton on Peace
"I have learned that an age in which politicians talk about peace is an age in which everybody expects war: the great men of the earth would not talk of peace so much if they did not secretly believe it possible, with one more war, to annihilate their enemies forever. Always, "after just one more war" it will dawn, the new era of love: but first everybody who is hated must be eliminated. For hate, you see, is the mother of their kind of love.
Unfortunately the love that is to be born out of hate will never be born. Hatred is sterile; it breeds nothing but the image of its own empty fury, its own nothingness. Love cannot come of emptiness. It is full of reality. Hatred destroys the real being of man in fighting the fiction which it calls "the enemy." For man is concrete and alive, but "the enemy" is a subjective abstraction. A society that kills real men in order to deliver itself from the phantasm of a paranoid delusion is already possessed by the demon of destructiveness because it has made itself incapable of love. It refuses, a priori, to love. It is dedicated not to concrete relations of man with man, but only to abstractions about politics, economics, psychology, and even, sometimes, religion.." Originally published in The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton, (New York: New Directions, 1977, page 374-75)
Unfortunately the love that is to be born out of hate will never be born. Hatred is sterile; it breeds nothing but the image of its own empty fury, its own nothingness. Love cannot come of emptiness. It is full of reality. Hatred destroys the real being of man in fighting the fiction which it calls "the enemy." For man is concrete and alive, but "the enemy" is a subjective abstraction. A society that kills real men in order to deliver itself from the phantasm of a paranoid delusion is already possessed by the demon of destructiveness because it has made itself incapable of love. It refuses, a priori, to love. It is dedicated not to concrete relations of man with man, but only to abstractions about politics, economics, psychology, and even, sometimes, religion.." Originally published in The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton, (New York: New Directions, 1977, page 374-75)
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