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| 0989302113
| 9780989302111
| B00COUMEWG
| 4.08
| 123
| 2013
| May 06, 2013
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really liked it
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None
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Notes are private!
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2
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not set
not set
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Jul 2013
not set
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Sep 27, 2024
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ebook
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| 1506446094
| 9781506446097
| 1506446094
| 3.91
| 94
| unknown
| Nov 01, 2018
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liked it
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I feel like this had the makings to be an exceptional 5-star journal article or chapter in an essay collection, but as its own book it felt a bit thin
I feel like this had the makings to be an exceptional 5-star journal article or chapter in an essay collection, but as its own book it felt a bit thin. The premise is strong, useful, and engaging –– Kim and Shaw introduce the concept of intersectionality and invite readers to apply it as a lens for theology and biblical studies. They write:"It is kaleidoscopic, constantly rendering shifting patterns of power visible. It is confluent, a juncture point where identities, locations, institutions, and power flow together to create something new. It is a praxis--an ongoing loop of action-reflection-action--that integrates social justice-oriented theory with activism toward social justice on the ground so that theory informs practice and practice informs theory."When applied to theological work, intersectionality displaces (allegedly) objective, universal centers of interpretation in favor of a polyphonic sense of shared voices and a posture of curiosity, receptivity, and openness to the unique and particular experiences of all people. This demands a spaciousness for incoherence, disharmony, and difference across perspectives reorients that as something to celebrate rather than eradicate. They attempt to curtail a total collapse into subjectivity by emphasizing that intersectionality is in favor of justice, though there is an ironic presumption that justice has an inherent definition. To be honest, I like or am at least open to all of that. It doesn't read quite as new as they suggest, however. Although Kim and Shaw are intentional to credit founding scholars of intersectionality and various theologians who have theorized explicitly from their vantage point, I couldn't always tell how what they were proposing necessarily diverged or evolved their examples. Black liberation theology, for example, has always taken the illusion of objectivity to task and argued from and for a particularized vantage point of theology. Womanists took it a step further by emphasizing their multiplicity of identity as Black women. I suppose intersectionality elicits attentiveness to our many, many interwoven identities all at once. My main critique here is just its repetitiveness; there's a few clumsy mouthfulls of jargon that kept looping back which definitely got old. Like I said, the kernel here is great, especially as an introduction, but it seemed to spread itself thin and lose steam as it went on. ...more |
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1
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Jun 29, 2024
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Jul 14, 2024
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Aug 09, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1506454771
| 9781506454771
| 1506454771
| 3.88
| 148
| May 07, 1997
| Feb 01, 2019
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really liked it
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I read this as a part of my CPE residency and I can't imagine a context where it would be better suited. Wimberly invites readers to thoroughly examin
I read this as a part of my CPE residency and I can't imagine a context where it would be better suited. Wimberly invites readers to thoroughly examine and excavate the mythologies woven across our personal and familial histories in hopes of catalyzing a re-authoring process that aligns the narratives we live by with the life we've been called to. Such a rich, engaging, worthwhile endeavor! He spends time exploring a number of personal myths (e.g. "I am unlovable," "I must be a good girl," "I must be self-sufficient" ), marital and familial myths, and ministerial myths with lots of different examples that help bring the concepts to life. The personal myths felt the most rich to me and had a lot of overlap with the core fears of each Enneagram type; engaging this book with that in mind was especially meaningful. I was surprised that he connected so much to perfectionism, but as someone with that inclination (Ennea1), I personally appreciated the consistent emphasis there. As is often the case, I would'vet liked more clarity and direction on how to move from identifying these myths and their influence on one's life to reclaiming one's authorial authority and writing a healthier, more whole story. I also felt like the writing was a bit clunky and repetitive at times, though that's hard to avoid in this type of work. I'd love to participate in the kind of retreat that Wimberly describes leading around this subject, and am glad for the book as the next best thing.
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1
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Mar 09, 2024
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Mar 30, 2024
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Apr 07, 2024
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Paperback
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| 0827216246
| 9780827216242
| 0827216246
| 3.96
| 175
| Jun 01, 2005
| Jun 01, 2005
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really liked it
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A tremendously rich resource that I'm excited to add to my personal library and confident I'll revisit numerous times over in the coming years. The pr
A tremendously rich resource that I'm excited to add to my personal library and confident I'll revisit numerous times over in the coming years. The premise is extremely up my ally: I love diving into models and metaphors and it was especially helpful to see them utilized here to flesh out the somewhat amorphous, nebulous praxis of "Pastoral Care." I'd easily give the premise here 5 stars, but I have to admit a few entries were less intriguing and some suffered from redundancy and/or shallow exploration of their chosen image which slowed down my reading a bit. Rather than each author write their contribution specifically for the collection, Dykstra featured previously published excerpts, and I wonder if the weaker chapters would have been bolstered had they been written specifically with the book's purpose in mind. One plus of this approach, of course, is the breadth of time here, from Boisen's chapter in 1936 to Gill-Austern's in 1999. It was fascinating to watch the pendulum swing back and forth across these essays from an embrace and assimilation of secular, psychologically-driven application to more differentiated theological, spiritualized care –– especially given how that tension persists in the field today. Those quibbles aside, this was really terrific. Though I enjoyed the chapters on the Living Human Document (especially reclaiming of Boisen's original, much more autobiographical articulation), I thought it really found its footing in part 2 exploring the paradoxical images. I'd already read Nouwen'sThe Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society,so was unsurprised by how phenomenal that chapter was, only to be floored by how compelling Faber's image of the Circus Clown proved to be. Throughout the first unit of my CPE residency, I've been wrestling with the chaplain's insecurity among the IDT that he names so astutely and found so much resonance and freedom in his vision of the role. However, Dykstra's own immensely rich and layered chapter on the Intimate Stranger may be the stand-out of the whole book for me, and has similarly given crucial language to dynamics I've been encountering again and again. Dittes' model of the Ascetic Witness was memorable as well, though a bit extreme in its binary oppositions. I do think the third section fell a bit flat, but thankfully finished strong with its final three entries: Hanson's Midwife, Kornfield's Gardner (though I wish it had been less specific to congregational ministry, I still found this ripe for reflection), and Gill-Austern's Midwife 2.0 / Storyteller / Reticient Outlaw hodgepodge. I would LOVE to see a new iteration of this published! I suppose the closest comparison isSheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook's work, but I think the commitment to exploring images and metaphors here is especially engaging. I know that it's already been pivotal to my own work as a chaplain to begin to more intentionally build out images for myself to work within, and I'd love for that to be in conversation with others engaging that process in a more contemporary context. ...more |
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1
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Jul 16, 2023
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Sep 02, 2023
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Sep 02, 2023
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Paperback
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| 1666740756
| 9781666740752
| 1666740756
| 4.00
| 2
| unknown
| Jan 04, 2023
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liked it
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It was really cool to read this as a new Columbus resident (in fact, my house is a block away from Church for All People) and an employee of Nationwid
It was really cool to read this as a new Columbus resident (in fact, my house is a block away from Church for All People) and an employee of Nationwide Children's Hospital. This was actually assigned as a part of our curriculum for the chaplaincy residency I'm doing there, as a means of learning about the hospital's context through the "neighborhood as patient" model. Reading through the history of the church and nonprofit's work in the South Side was genuinely so inspiring, and I found myself pretty awed by the ongoing heights of their success. They really live into the concepts of asset based community development and the kingdom of abundance, and with pretty amazing results. I will confess that, especially without seeing the behind-the-scenes strategizing, the daily grind, or the temporary failures and set-backs, I found myself occasionally thinking this was all too good to be true, but that may say more about me than the book or the vision it reflects. If I'd encountered this earlier in life, I'm guessing I would have rated it higher, but at this point a lot of its concepts and ideas feel familiar and well-tread for me. For that reason, there were times when I felt like it could get a bit repetitive, so the highlight was definitely the many examples that help to enflesh the ideas being described.
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Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 17, 2023
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Jul 30, 2023
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Jul 31, 2023
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Paperback
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| 0664238408
| 9780664238407
| 0664238408
| 3.87
| 361
| Feb 16, 2006
| Jan 02, 2015
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really liked it
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To its merit, much of the writing I've come across in the field of pastoral care reads as incredibly accessible and approachable. However, this can of
To its merit, much of the writing I've come across in the field of pastoral care reads as incredibly accessible and approachable. However, this can often leave me feeling as a reader feeling underwhelmed, sorta like we're always only just scratching the surface and ignoring the reality that beyond some crucial rudimentary basics, there is a lot more nuance and finesse to skilled pastoral care. So what I most appreciated about Doehring's text here is, perhaps strangely, that it is -not- especially approachable or basic; it demanded to be read a bit slower, even re-read at times, and does not shy away from some jargon and more academic and theoretical references. In other words, I like that this brought some real big-brain, genius-mode energy to the table and made me work a little to get beyond yet another example of Pastoral Care 101. As I read, I kept a pile of Post-Its nearby because I could see ways that this could really enrich my practice as a healthcare chaplain. I loved Doehring's sense of pastoral care as distinct from other helping roles in its capacity to attend to people's lived theologies and explore the psycho-spiritual religious worlds that they inhabit. Some questions in particular that struck me were: 1. How do you see God? 2. How do you think God sees you? 3. What are you hoping for? 4. What values do you hold closely? 5. Do you have practices that help connect you with the goodness of God and/or life? 6. What would be a keystone habit that could be generatively incorporated into your routine. 7. How can we kindle self-compassion? The last one is at the forefront of Doehring's concern, and the text returns again and again to the notion of compassion as a core fruit of healthy spirituality. I found myself wanting a little more elaboration there, maybe a foundational chapter early on where she establishes why this feels so singularly significant, but it's easy enough to connect the dots and to see how one's spirituality can be especially tied to that capacity. One thing I especially loved here was Doehring's incorporation of process theology into her model of pastoral caregiving, as I have long seen them overlapping but had yet to encounter such a cogent articulation. She emphasizes the elements of agential and receptive power that are innate to a process framework, and in particular encourages caregivers to develop their ability to expand the latter. Some helpful examples of that were to imagine oneself as a listener rather than an interviewer in a care-giving conversation and to resist our "righting reflex" that seeks to fix or save the other (often by shifting to agential power that offers a practical solution or imposes our own redemptive meaning onto what's being described). I also loved the chapter on theological themes and reflexivity which builds on Robert Neville's theology of "broken symbols" that gives a lens to look for ossified religious symbols that are now life-limiting alongside Susan Nelson's paradigms for understanding suffering and evil (Moral Theologies; Redemptive Theologies; Theologies of Lament & Protest; Theologies of Ambiguous Suffering). Her sense that theologies (and especially theodicies) that are flexible enough to tolerate complexity and ambiguity in relation to suffering and God's presence was especially helpful (and especially process). In the end, I couldn't give it 5 stars because it did get a bit dry and repetitive at times (the risk of going more academic), and I felt like some of the chapters were covering much more basic content, seemingly just for the sake of doing so because she valued their ideas. For example, the chapter on intercultural care or systemic assessment has definitely been done better and more comprehensively elsewhere, but I can see why it felt relevant to a "postmodern" approach. Speaking of, I found that to be a sort of funny subtitle, as I wouldn't say that postmodern theory feels especially ripe throughout the book, unless it was so subtle and ingrained that I just took for granted where it appeared. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 10, 2023
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Jul 07, 2023
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Jul 12, 2023
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Paperback
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| 4.54
| 8,608
| Jul 01, 1964
| Jan 2000
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really liked it
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"Letter from Birmingham Jail" is simply an astounding piece of prophetic literature that easily reads just as divinely inspired as the ancient prophet
"Letter from Birmingham Jail" is simply an astounding piece of prophetic literature that easily reads just as divinely inspired as the ancient prophets of the Old Testament. For the reason alone of having a hard copy of it in my home library, this book was worth purchasing and reading. The other chapters here, while still shimmering with King's trademark preacherly poeticism and theological brilliance, don't (perhaps logically can't!) match the caliber of that piece. Instead, they reveal a more grounded, localized, and immediate series of deliberations and strategies that anyone involved in movement work should regard as a goldmine. However, the only reason this wasn't five stars* was because my reading sometimes felt bogged down by those specificities. The throughline here, as the title suggests, is why a moderate approach to racial justice that called for patience and longsuffering was unjust, immoral, and illogical –– and how to move forward in ways that actually got results, built momentum, gained allies, and maintained a moral high ground. *I still feel like a doofus giving this 4 stars instead of 5 but it just reflects my reading experience and I'm trying to be consistent with my ratings lol ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 27, 2023
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Jul 02, 2023
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Jul 06, 2023
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
| 0800696611
| 9780800696610
| 0800696611
| 4.23
| 110
| Apr 01, 2010
| Mar 12, 2010
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really liked it
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A really great foundation for understanding concepts and theories regarding grief over time and in our contemporary context. Kelley addresses disenfra
A really great foundation for understanding concepts and theories regarding grief over time and in our contemporary context. Kelley addresses disenfranchised grief, chronic sorrow, grief born of injustice, continuing bonds, vicarious trauma, narrative theory and meaning-making after loss, and the relational dynamics of grief, both towards God through an attachment theory lens and with others in supportive community. That's a lot of ground to cover in a relatively slim book, so you don't necessarily get a deep dive but I felt mostly satisfied with the insight. The attachment theory chapter was intriguing, but lacked impact given that it seems to conclude with two contradictory hypotheses that sorta render the premise moot. The chapter focused on exploring and then debunking historical perceptions of grief as being normative, individualistic, and in a sequential process in favor of individualized, relational, and messy processes was especially great. I also really appreciated the mosaic motif ("As each mosaic is particular, fashioned by many individual elements configured in unique ways, so each person's experience of grief is particular. It is formed by the unique interplay of all aspects of one's life –– one's past, one's relationships, one's way of making meaning, one's experience of the Divine, one's history of losses, one's sense of community, one's cultural perspectives, and so on.") And I really love the accompanying cover just as much.
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Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 06, 2023
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Feb 28, 2023
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Jun 08, 2023
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Paperback
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| 0800637941
| 9780800637941
| 0800637941
| 4.00
| 9
| Aug 01, 2006
| Jul 01, 2006
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really liked it
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Theology That Matters: Ecology, Economy, and God,the title of the multi-authored essay collection edited by Darby Kathleen Ray, is playfully imbued w
Theology That Matters: Ecology, Economy, and God,the title of the multi-authored essay collection edited by Darby Kathleen Ray, is playfully imbued with a double dose of meaning. At one level, it insists that its theological insights are relevant and significant, not to be dismissed as purely theoretical abstractions relegated to ivory towers. And at another, it alludes to the materiality of its contents, which engage the tactile stuff of human bodies, plants, oceans, islands, creeks, cash, and coins. These intertwined implications surge through the chapters, hoping to reinvigorate theology’s role within the most crucial ecological and economic crises of its moment, most of which loom even larger in 2023 than they did when it was published in 2006. The other throughline of the collection is the authors’ engagement with the work of Sallie McFague, a scholar who devoted much of her career to theologizing in creative and expansive ways around these same concepts and concerns. As tends to be the case with multi-authored compilations, some of the essays here arguably stray the course, veering into esoteric territory that it sought to avoid, but there are a number of compelling entries that make it more than worthwhile. One of these is the prologue, penned by Darby Kathleen Ray, which presents a clear and compelling vision for the endeavor of the book and the theology it seeks to represent. She grounds its premise in the insistence that “Theology that matters is theology that informs daily living, nurtures life-giving habits, and breeds courage and hope in relation to life’s inevitable struggles and disappointments” (7). In other words, theology should never be severed from our ordinary lives, but should all the time seek to direct, enliven, and sustain our immensely varied experiences within the world. This is an energizing approach that is intentional about optimizing the inherently formational impetus of one’s theological outlook, recognizing that how we think about God shapes how we navigate the world. It certainly follows the path set by Sallie McFague, whose explicitly metaphorical theology often sought to construct timely new models for God with the purpose of disrupting harmful inherited postures and practices and inspiring generative new ones. The most dynamic essays that follow embrace this perspective by offering their own creative considerations of how we might seek to see, hear, and know God anew –– and what transformative possibilities emerge if we do. Taking after McFague, a number of entries operate under panentheistic presumptions that understand God to be immanently and intimately present within all facets of creation, though not limited or exhausted by these incarnations, and see this as fertile ground for nonanthropomorphic models of God. For example, Jay McDaniel’s essay presents God as “Deep Listening,” which he defines as “listening that is guided, not by the aim of conquering or controlling, but by the aim of being with another in a sensitive way and or responding with wisdom and compassion” (29). He orients this within a Whiteheadian process framework to depict a vision of God that is eternally responsive to humanity (and beyond) and argues that this understanding enriches capacities for attentive listening, careful discernment, and cooperative attunement with the divine leading that arises out of God’s listening. Just as God as Deep Listening remains open to being affected by creation, McDaniel writes that “this is what it means to listen to God: it is to accept our own calling to listen, to walk through life with a willingness to be touched––even if it causes us sometimes to fall down in despair or sadness, after which, with God’s help, we get up and begin again, committed to a life of listening” (36). Critically, McDaniel insists that such listening extends to the natural world that is often so easily ignored, especially in iterations of religion that have not cultivated such depths of attentiveness and receptivity. Other essays center the ecological implications more explicitly. Mark Wallace’s, for example, develops a panentheistic pneumatology that directly correlates the Spirit with the world. Drawing from a variety of biblical passages that depict the Holy Spirit in elemental manifestations (e.g. an earthen dove, ruach and pneuma, living water, and purifying fire), Wallace argues that the Spirit is not just symbolized but enfleshed and embodied by the natural world (126). He writes that “The Spirit is an earthen reality––God’s power in the land and sky that makes all things live and grow toward their natural ends. God is living in the ground, swimming through the oceans, circulating in the atmosphere; God is always afoot and underfoot as the quickening life force who yearns to bring all denizens of this sacred earth into fruition and well-being” (126). Wallace draws extensively from McFague’s thesis in The Body of God, affirming the universally sacramental implications of her work while also stressing the viability of the Spirit’s life as co-determined with that of the earth. In doing so, he accentuates the divine vulnerability inherent to such a model, arguing that an earthen Spirit is necessarily a wounded Spirit. Therefore, the damage the Spirit incurs through the ravaging of the earth can and does harm, limit, and scar God in ways that cannot always be repaired (136). Catherine Keller’s essay largely parallels Wallace’s trajectory, and she finds reinvigorated potential in its ramifications. Keller writes: “But I think before the ethical responsibility of a mature sense of ‘stewardship’ or of what enlightened evangelicals are calling ‘creation care’ is likely to kick in, we will need Christians to feel and practice the elemental love of the universe as the very love of God. No environmental moralism or apocalyptic threat will motivate the transformation. Love might” (105). Her point encapsulates the guiding notion of the collection that as embodied humans, what is material tends to matters most to us. And both Keller’s and Wallace’s pneumatology attempt to reclaim the immersive, tangible, tactile ways that the world cares for us as real expressions of God’s immanent love. In turn, they hope to summon within us a reciprocal love for that of God embodied in the earth that counteracts our ecocidal inclinations. However, this raises unaddressed concerns regarding how to interpret the planet’s (escalating!) capacity to inflict harm upon humanity, particularly as neither theologian is interested in rescinding God’s persistent grace for a vindictive devolution. McFague addresses this in The Body of God, insisting upon the need for a “willful wager” that chooses to regard Jesus as the most vivid vision of God’s character, but the underveloped Christology in Keller and Wallace’s chapters is somewhat jeopardized in this regard. Nonetheless, their efforts to push McFague’s thinking towards a heightened ethical edge that meets embodied humans in their materialist biases brings further clarity to the generative potential of love at the core of the panentheistic model. Turning to the chapters focused on economics more so than ecology, Eleazar Fernandez’s essay offers the most comprehensive consideration of neoliberalism’s malformative impact across the globe and openings for the church to respond. He presents an ecclesiology that reimagines the church as “household of life abundant” –– the global community of Christ’s Body called to inhabit worldviews that promote the abundant life for all (172). After demonstrating the ways that capitalist rhetoric and logic has infiltrated the church (e.g. “church shopping,” the church’s identity as a service vendor, the disintegration of Christian distinctiveness in favor of therapeutic spirituality or acquiescence to mainstream culture), he raises a demand for the church to reclaim its necessary compass, “an orientation towards God’sbasileia”(176). The brunt of his criticism is directed at the mainline churches, whose leaders he believes have abandoned the particularities of the Christian faith and therein relinquished their prophetic capacity. He writes: “Without a powerful narrative to define its life, there is no doubt that the church will be swallowed up by consumer capitalism’s ferocious appetite. Instructions regarding our relationship to money and spirituality must be complemented with the formation of a counternarrative” (185). This rediscovery and reclamation of the Christian counternarrative is central to Fernandez’s strategy for responding to the pervasive, all-encompassing influence of capitalism, accurately recognizing religion’s crucial and distinctive capability to foster formation in alignment with thebasileiaof God. Fittingly, Sallie McFague’s chapter serves as an epilogue forTheology That Matters.Here she advocates for the preservation and cultivation of the “wild space” within each of us, defined as “the memory of where we came from and the hope of where we are going: from paradise to the kingdom of God” (207). This, she suggests, is where we can find the seed of belief that, against all odds, a different world is possible. In the remainder of her brief essay, she encourages readers to pursue this conviction by imagining and praying for a different world, attending to the material well-being of all creation around us, and persevering in the face of despair through a commitment to seemingly small, repeatable steps towards seeing and behaving differently (208-211). As is always the case, this is certainly easier advocated for than achieved, and the compounding persistence of these very same struggles almost twenty years later cast a shadow over the hopeful fervor of the varied authors. But the message of the text continues to ring out, perhaps stubbornly so, that theology does matter, that how we understand and engage God can make a desperately needed difference in our material lives, and that the different world envisioned across its chapters is still possible. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 27, 2023
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May 04, 2023
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May 05, 2023
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Paperback
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| 1009012584
| 9781009012584
| 1009012584
| 4.37
| 52
| unknown
| Oct 14, 2021
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it was amazing
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InThis Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World,Norman Wirzba addresses the harrowing challenges of the Anthropocene by inviting readers to
InThis Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World,Norman Wirzba addresses the harrowing challenges of the Anthropocene by inviting readers to return to their creaturely roots. In an approach that is profoundly formational, he suggests that the devastating causes and doomed pseudo-solutions to our ecological crisis share in a willful forgetfulness of our identity as creatures created by God and inextricably entangled within a sacred world. Until we can reclaim these fundamental realities, we will not be able to live accordingly. After exposing the grim past and grimmer prospective future held captive by our reigning neoliberal logic, Wirzba offers a set of generative alternative frameworks for understanding the world and humanity’s place intimately intertwined within it. This ultimately gives rise to a theological anthropology that emphasizes our creaturely nature and a hope that rediscovering this innate truth about ourselves can propel us towards an overflowing love for our fellow creatures of the world. Wirzba beginsThis Sacred Lifewith two chapters that speak to a past, present, and future that operate in contradiction to the vision he will go on to articulate, helping readers to appreciate its relevance within our wounded world. The first is a bracing articulation of the Anthropocene, our current geological era in which “the effects of human power, formerly limited to specific regions and particular communities of people, have now become planetary in their reach, unequal in their distribution, and impossible to hide or ignore” (18). Per his assessment, it could just as fittingly be referred to as the “Capitolocene,” as evidenced by the catastrophic compounding impact that the relentlessly exploitative and extractive logic of capitalism has had on the earth and humanity’s relationship to it (10). Further, given neoliberalism’s idolatrous regard for the illusion of individual freedom, we have been enculturated to disregard the notion of global solidarity and collective action that the escalating crisis demands (22). In the following chapter, Wirzba considers ways that people have attempted to respond to the looming threat of climate change –– as well as the inherent frailty of embodied existence more generally–– through fantasies of cyborg-transhumanism or the colonization of other planets (44). However he argues that these strategies, along with capitalist myths of individualism and limitlessness, are bound to fail because they are grounded in denials of reality’s most fundamental truths that the world is sacred and that we are creatures whose lives are unavoidably vulnerable and entangled within it. From there, Wirzba turns his focus to expanding on these corrective fundamentals, beginning with his argument that “humanity is soil-birthed and soil-bound” (65). Though this begins as a reference to the Genesis creation narrative, he also means it quite literally. Not only do we draw our necessary nutrients from the soil and return to it after dying, but researchers of microbiomes have found that each of us is partially made up of millions of the same microbes that are found in soil, suggesting a depth of entanglement that contradicts all notions of atomistic existence (73). Rather than a Darwinian framework of competition, this implies a reality of “symbiogenesis” that places cooperation and “co-becoming” at the heart of organic life (73). Wirzba writes: “Human life is always life together with other creatures, large and small,” continuing on to say that “To live a symbiotic life is to understand that our being is always a becoming characterized by receiving and giving, touching and being touched, eating and being eaten, and influencing and being influenced” (76). He suggests that plants are perhaps our best teachers of this, modeling the “fruit-bearing and flowering” benefits of an existence that embraces rootedness over mobility and leans into the essential communal dimensions of interrelated life (76). Having established the profound entanglement of organic existence, Wirzba next introduces the idea of harmonia mundi, the symphonic “song of life itself” that arises when creation acts in accordance with its unitive purpose (95). He accompanies this with Timothy Ingold’s concept of “meshwork,” an alternative to the network framework that instead insists that “things are their relations. They have no existence, no life, and no meaning apart from the relations that entangle them in a bewildering array of lines of codevelopment” (119). How, then, do these overlapping ideas of symbiogenesis, rootedness, harmonia mundi, and meshwork relate to the crises of the Anthropocene? Wirzba implies that they illuminate the underpinnings of life itself, countering the siren songs of rugged individualism, self-serving competition, and escapism into new planets or inorganic, atomistic techno-bodies that are peddled as the reigning solutions to the dire challenges we face. He writes: “Life alone is a contradiction in terms. Every life moves within a dynamic meshwork world in which an unfathomable number and variety of other lives constantly intersect. To be alive is to be engaged in processes of social and ecological becoming that entangle us within the becoming of others” (177). In the final section ofThis Sacred Life,Wirzba arrives at his central premise of articulating the world as God’s sacred creation occupied by creatures like ourselves who are called to contribute to its collective flourishing. He cedes that if this were not true, and we in fact did live within the immanent frame with no transcendent intention in our creation, then all his previous points could be considered happenstance at best and easily ignored in favor of any other individualized perspective of purpose, with the reigning view belonging to capitalism’s mechanistic, utilitarian evaluation (126-127). Wirzba characterizes this as modernity’s worldview, “marked by disenchantment and desacralization, such that things are experienced as fragments and as without lasting value, meaning, or purpose apart from the mastering subject that controls them” (94). To hold to an ethical alternative that affirms a generative intention is, he argues, only possible via a transcendent source who has created the world and imbued it with its sanctity and purpose (158). Wirzba is cognizant of monotheistic religion’s damning history in regards to matters of ecology and embodiment, citing inclinations towards anti-materialism, dominating postures of subjugation, and otherworldly escapism –– but he asks readers to consider those as aberrations that he hopes to amend (156). He connects the concept ofcreatio ex nihilto“creatio ex amore,”suggesting that God created the cosmos out of nothing and therefore was motivated not by need but by gracious, creative love (165). The implication, then, is that “Every creature, simply by being the creature that it is, is a material embodiment of a divine intention and energy that rejoices in its flourishing” (166). Ultimately, this is what gives rise to the conviction of life as sacred and the myriad of ethical implications that that carries. Wirzba writes: “If one affirms God as the creator of life, one must also affirm the created beings that God daily nurtures and sustains. One cannot claim to love God if one does not also love what God loves” (154). In other words, God tends to every created being that they graciously manifest, and in doing so grants it the dignity and worth of sanctity through their loving investment. In this way, we might also think of each experience of life as an expression of divine gifting. This, of course, renders humanity as creatures reliant upon the gifts of God and the nurturing sustenance of the world we belong to, which is a more precarious identity than we often like to claim. Wirzba affirms that “Limit remains at the core of a human being’s existence, and communicates that people are constituted as finite and needy, and will remain so throughout their living. They do not create their own life, nor can they sustain it from out of themselves. Instead, they must constantly look beyond themselves to fellow creatures, the garden itself, and ultimately to [God]” (191). However, he also attests to a generative quality to this life of entangled receptivity, inspiring gratitude, generosity, and hospitality amongst those who can appreciate the gift of their sacred existence. This, ultimately, is the kenotic model of living granted to us by Jesus. Wirzba writes that “Jesus is asking people to reconceive themselves as open vessels that gratefully receive God’s gifts and generously share them with others. They are to reorient themselves in the world as embodied sites through which God’s hospitality with creatures takes place” (206). Some readers may find fault withThis Sacred Life’shyper-local proposed solutions of to the challenges of the Anthropocene, but Wirzba’s formational emphasis is just as easily considered an asset. He correctly acknowledges that the vast majority of harm is perpetuated by a small number of capitalists, but rather than seeing this as cause for resignation he recognizes the need for a formational overhaul. The logic of neoliberalism has distorted much of our public imagination about who we are, the world we live in and how we are to live within it, to the point where we feel inclined to turn to the same worldviews that caused the problem in hopes that they can help us fix them. Wirzba argues against this, urging the importance of re-enchantment that attends to the sanctity of the world and its interconnected inhabitants as creatures created and continually sustained by God’s loving care. This, he argues, is the counternarrative we need to (re)claim in order to connect with the intended purposes of life that have been woven into the fabric of our entangled existence. The invitation is, quite simply, to begin to live responsively to the gracious gift of life with generative postures of self-giving generosity, tenderness, interrelatedness, and care that are so lacking within our increasingly isolated, individualistic, and competitive contexts. Despite the lingering fear that this may be insufficient,This Sacred Lifestill reads as a wellspring of hope, compelling readers to remember the sanctity of existence. ...more |
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This has me wondering if I maybe just don't enjoy the way that ethicists write? It feels like there is often so much posturing, framing, denoting, and
This has me wondering if I maybe just don't enjoy the way that ethicists write? It feels like there is often so much posturing, framing, denoting, and distinguishing the point one is making that the bulk of the content ends up being about that rather than the point. It made for a truly frustrating start-stop-start-stop reading experience where I felt like I was just constantly struggling to follow the argument in stride. But, by and large, I still found the arguments compelling. This was written in 2006 (honestly a surprise given that the subtitle reads like a nod to the Black Lives Matter movement) and some aspects read a bit dated in the 2020s. As a womanist scholar, West consistently weaves the lived testimonies and even voices of various Black women (pastors, activists, assault survivors) into her essays. Notably, she often lets them "speak for themselves" rather than provide her own reflection and analysis on the content (this is especially the case in the final chapter on Leadership featuring interviews with faith leaders advocating for LGBTQ inclusion) and I do wish she'd woven things together a bit more. Honestly, that's probably the biggest downside of the book at large –– it very much reads as a series of disconnected essays rather than following an ongoing thesis or umbrella-argument (other than the very broad one that racism and women's lives matter, I suppose). I felt like the strongest chapter was on Liturgy, exploring the covert and subtle ways that many Protestant rituals and faith practices reinscribe racist narratives and reinforce white supremacy.
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InShalom and the Community of Creation,Randy Woodley draws from Native American wisdom and tradition to offer a fresh articulation of the all-encomp
InShalom and the Community of Creation,Randy Woodley draws from Native American wisdom and tradition to offer a fresh articulation of the all-encompassing impact of the gospel. Woodley finds striking parallels between the vision of shalom depicted in the Bible and the synthesized teachings of many Indigenous nations, which he broadly refers to as “the Harmony Way.” Recognizing the many ways that American Christianity has conformed to western cultural and philosophical norms, Woodley considers the Harmony Way as a corrective against these distortions. Most notably, this involves expanding the scope of God’s mission in the world to incorporate restoration for all of creation, invited to live together in a community of reciprocity and mutuality grounded in gratitude to our Creator. When considering the arc of the biblical narrative, Woodley sees the concept of shalom as the core expression of God’s big dream for the world they have created. He writes “I don’t think it is an understatement to say that the ancient Semitic shalom construct, or what we can broadly refer to as the Harmony Way, is the Creator’s original instruction for the way in which all societies should be ordered, and for how all life on this planet should be lived” (19). While the most straightforward translation of shalom interprets it to mean peace, Woodley argues that it functions more so as a process and a way of being than an isolated concept, and that it involves dimensions of restoration, wholeness, and harmony at both the interpersonal and structural levels of society (14). “Shalom is communal, holistic, and tangible. There is no private or partial shalom,” he writes, continuing on to say that “The whole community must have shalom or no one has shalom” (21). Hollow assessments of false shalom are protected against by locating those at the margins as its arbiters (15). Lastly, Woodley affirms that shalom is “not a utopian destination” but rather a “constant journey,” and one that we are called to actively participate in with God (21). Having established a framework for the biblical concept of shalom, Woodley then puts it in conversation with what he refers to as “the Harmony Way.” The Harmony Way emerged for him as a composite of the myriad of Native American wisdom traditions he had studied, which he found to have significant overlaps despite their distinctions. Listing off some of their common features, he writes that “group cohesion, sharing of knowledge and resources, respect for those with more experience, respect for the community, respect for diversity, a fundamental sense of relatedness, and a sense of humility” were all prevalent alongside an overarching emphasis on cooperation over competition or individualism (98-99). Per Woodley’s reading, these are qualities that are also present in expressions of shalom, granting an epistemological privilege to the Harmony Way that can be used as a corrective against some of the detrimental ways Christianity in America has been malformed by western values contradictory to shalom. Examining the landscape of the western worldview, Woodley considers Cartesian dualism to be one of the most pervasively influential philosophies amongst Europeans and their American descendants (100-101). This has given rise to a form of Christianity fixated on the hierarchical dualisms that privilege spirit over flesh and mind over body (101). He elaborates: “In a holistic worldview, all of creation (the material world) is considered both good and spiritual. In a dualistic worldview, only the spirit is considered to be good; creation (the material world, including our own body) is considered to be either evil or less spiritual” (102). Woodley links this degradation of the body with a disregard for what bodies do in real time and space in accordance with Christianity, which become less important than the mind’s ability to think rationally about the faith. This results not only in a divide between doctrinal orthodoxy and ethical orthopraxy, but a favoring of the former over the latter, as evidenced by Euro-American Christianity’s prioritization of beliefs that are often “separate and inconsistent with, and unrelated to, worldview, values and practices” (107). Woodley asks us to consider Native American spirituality as an alternative that is more aligned with the embodied, enacted praxis of shalom: “Harmony Way, like shalom, is tangible. Living out the Harmony Way requires not only a belief, but also action, which aligns itself in participation with the whole of the universe.” (88) Ultimately, Woodley argues that the Harmony Way is more holistic than Euro-American Christianity, which often limits its concerns to the individual and private matters of personal holiness. He writes, “Among traditional Native Americans, restoring broken harmony is less individualistic, being more about restoring the community –– less guilt ridden, not inherent, more tangibly rectifiable, and much more oriented toward restoring harmonious relationships in all of creation, rather than simply obtaining forgiveness” (69). This orientation necessarily broadens the scope of Jesus’s salvific mission, expanding it beyond the spiritual salvation of an individual’s soul out to the restoration and redemption of the entire earth (60). This attention to the ecological dimensions of God’s mission is a key facet of the Harmony Way, demonstrated by the emphasis on reciprocity, mutuality, and interdependence with the natural world that is widespread across traditional Native American communities and cultures. Woodley urges that the notion that all of creation is related is good news for all, because it “opens us up to the possibility of once again becoming the family we already are. By realizing the connectedness of humankind to all [natural] life, we become aware of new possibilities for learning and maintaining a concern for the preservation of all living things” (81). This expansive inclusion of concern for all of creation is reflected in Woodley’s in his suggestion to reimagine the kingdom of God as “the community of creation” (39). Although he cedes that the kingdom construct had a subversive impact in the context of its original use, Woodley finds that in contemporary times the emphasis on Christ as a monarchical ruler and his reign as a governmental institution not only reinforces Christianity’s colonialist history but also restricts our imaginations about Christ. He writes: “Christ is not just King, but Creator. Kings come and go, but the Creator is eternal. When we begin to recognize the cosmic implications of Christ as Creator, temporal concepts like governments, kingdoms, and rulers fade in comparison” (39). Emphasizing God’s involvement entirety of creation prompts Woodley to reconsider the kingdom as a community in which all of creation belongs and participates, and this moves us towards a posture of harmony and interrelatedness with the natural world that a strictly anthropocentric perspective lacks (40). Given Woodley’s appreciation for the tangible, action-oriented focus of the Harmony Way as a means of pursuing God’s shalom, it is somewhat ironic that the text is notably lacking in concrete applications. It is clear that Woodley’s intention is to place Euro-American and traditional Native American worldviews in conversation, and in doing so to spotlight the compelling parallels he has observed between Indigenous customs and teachings and those prescribed by biblical models of shalom. Shalom and the Community of Creation, then, largely operates at a more conceptual and abstract level, considering the contrasting values of these two cultures as they relate to Christian theology. In light of how marginalized and displaced Native American wisdom is for white American readers like myself, this alone proved to be an immensely rich and informative overview of Indigenous principles and their confluence with biblical teachings. However, by its completion readers may feel that they have gained a newfound respect and appreciation for these values ––such as interrelatedness and reciprocity, community and cooperation, and generosity and abundance–– without a clear sense of how to begin to implement them accordingly. This is especially true given Woodley’s astute examination of how pervasively a number of contradictory values have shaped Euro-American Christianity. Therefore,Shalom and the Community of Creationis likely to awaken many readers to what they are missing and cast a broad-scale vision for what is to be gained by a spirituality more aligned with the Harmony Way, but it is less inclined or interested in prescribing concrete steps towards doing so. Nonetheless, the vision it casts of a Christianity that values right action in the pursuit of God’s shalom as members of a cosmic community intimately interrelated with all of creation is certainly beautiful enough to inspire an enduring curiosity and desire to see it come to life, should we commit to the call of the Creator. ...more |
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"We are connected to other people and to the whole of creation through a common root system. Our roots run down into the eternal life of God. That con
"We are connected to other people and to the whole of creation through a common root system. Our roots run down into the eternal life of God. That connectedness to God makes creativity in the midst of destruction possible. It makes relationship in the midst of division possible. It makes faithfulness in the midst of fear possible. The challenge is to live out that story or connectedness in contexts that defy it, ridicule it, trivialize it, and trash it. In those very contexts, we must create the space for God to dwell among us, to be manifest in our actions, words, and ways of being together." I wish Marshall hadn't reserved her creative flourish for the final chapter, because if the whole book included passages like the one above I would've enjoyed it a lot more! As it stands, it reads as a pretty run-of-the-mill introductory academic text on Christian ethics, which is to say it was informative and good but often dry and, most of all, frustratingly repetitive. There were ways to stay anchored in the driving question of how to live a good life amidst conflict without writing it out verbatim sixty times a chapter. The chapters on deontological ethics (e.g. theimago Deias a universal rule that sets the parameters for engagement), teleological ethics (e.g. interrogating thetelosof reconciliation and whether or not it can be independent from justice) were the strongest, and the ones on virtue and responsibility/care ethics would have benefited from a similar format that centered around a key example. Her commitment to holding oneself accountable to victims and her simultaneous appreciation for the generative potential (and simple inevitability) of conflict made for interesting throughlines as well. ...more |
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Karen Baker-Fletcher’sSisters of Dust, Sisters of Spirit: Womanist Wordings on God and Creationis a collection of theological musings, poems, and re
Karen Baker-Fletcher’sSisters of Dust, Sisters of Spirit: Womanist Wordings on God and Creationis a collection of theological musings, poems, and reflective essays attending to the intersections of womanist theology and ecological justice. As the title suggests, her anchoring image and argument is that humanity is made up of both dust and spirit, and this guides her towards conclusions that center our relationship with creation as something to be enjoyed, cared for, and protected. Throughout the book, Baker-Fletcher draws on narratives from her own life as well as African American women more generally to explore the places where ecological and social justice overlap for Black communities, while also acknowledging tension points between those parallel struggles. By emphasizing the immanent qualities of divine presence, she offers a vision of hope for humanity to embrace our call towards stewardship motivated by love above all else. The comingled motifs of dust and spirit sit at the center of Baker-Fletcher’s theological anthropology and Christology. Humankind is at once made up of dust ––elemental, earthy, created and therefore connected to all of creation–– and strengthening, sustaining spirit. However, while humans are totally made from dust and only breathed on by the Spirit per the Genesis narrative, the paradox of Jesus is that in being human he was fully dust, but in being God he was simultaneously fully spirit (18). Baker-Fletcher elaborates on this implication of the incarnation: “I have come to see God, embodied in Jesus, as significant not just because God is embodied in a human but because God is embodied in a creature, and by extension, in all creation” (19). In other words, God’s incarnation as Jesus endorses not only the value of humanity, but of all creation. Furthermore, she does not believe God’s immanence amidst creation is limited to the embodied life of Jesus, but rather that his incarnation is a paradigmatic revelation of the Spirit’s consistent permeating presence. She writes that “If [Spirit and creation] are truly within each other, then to return to the dust, to the waters, to the winds is also to return to Spirit because Spirit is present in life. We humans belong to heaven and earth. Spirit and the land do not belong to us.… Rather than envision heaven and earth as oppositional realities, one might reenvision heaven and earth as within each other” (125). This is consistent with womanist theology’s resistance against what Baker-Fletcher deems “by-and-by” theology that emphasizes a hoped-for afterlife at the expense of the here and now (119). While womanists hold a diverse set of views on what follows death, their understanding of salvation is inextricably bound up in the sustenance and flourishing of life. In light of this, she attests that “the reign of the Spirit is an everpresent reality” rather than one solely to be anticipated, which draws us into the daily work of joining with the “healing, creating presence” of the Spirit in pursuit of an apocalyptic hope of justice for all of creation (120). Another throughline ofSisters of Dust, Sisters of Spiritis Baker-Fletcher’s recognition of the inextricable links between ecological and social justice, especially for African American communities. However, she also acknowledges that this connection has no always been embraced, especially given the legacy of environmental activism in America. She describes how the eco-justice movements of the 1960s and 70s gave way to NIMBY-ism amongst predominantly white middle class communities by the 80s whose efforts did not dismantle environmental injustice so much as displace it out of their “backyards” and into those of poorer communities of color (61). This is just one iteration of environmental racism that is rampant around the globe, which has consequently left many African Americans feeling disenfranchised and forgotten by traditional ecological activism while simultaneously bearing the greatest burdens of environmental injustice, particularly with the harm its caused their health. Baker-Fletcher also echoes bell hooks’ argument that, in the movement away from brutal sharecropping in the South during the Great Migration, African Americans felt compelled to embrace the urbanism of the North at the expense of their connection to the land (52). However, she also complicates hooks’ somewhat romantic encouragement to “return to the land” by acknowledging that, at this point, “Too many of us need to fight for the health of the land we live on or near before we can get back to the land in a way that is truly healthy” (52). In light of this, she endorses starting small, praising the value of an herb garden on a windowsill or even a contemplative walk outdoors with the purpose of appreciating nature as the beginning of “re-membering” one’s connection to their own body, to the earth, to the community, and to God (57). After one has begun to remember their membership within this global collective, she believes more formal individual efforts can begin, like consistently recycling and planting native trees and plans, which then lead to organizing within communities for larger, systemic change (78). And while Baker-Fletcher is cognizant of the immense challenges inherent to such a process, particularly the latter stage, she finds an energizing hope granted to those who do this work while grounded in God. To believe in the Spirit is to believe in “something greater than ourselves that surrounds us, embraces us, encompasses us, gives us life, and interconnects us within a web of creation and creative activity that is beyond our understanding. It precedes us and survives us” (111). And for womanists and those who join in their struggles, knowing that the God who is on the side of life, healing, and liberation came before us and will long outlast us is hope enough to carry on against all odds (110). In considering the text as a whole, its methodology is both an asset and a limitation. In the prelude, Baker-Fletcher distinguishes her “wordings” here from more systematic theological writing, noting that she strived to write from the heart as well as the mind in the fashion of “straight talk –– honest, earnest, life-connected” in order to meet the needs of the lay people (8). The book is testimony to this approach, evidenced by her frequent weaving together of poetry, personal anecdotes and storytelling, and theological reflection. However, the ambling, conversational tone also renders some of its arguments underdeveloped and disorganized in exchange for its immensely engaging, accessible style. Rather than operate out of a central guiding thesis, the ideas feel loosely connected within a general web; some chapters focus heavily on memoir-style retrospection on a trip to the sea or the Million Man March without a particularly clear correlation to the anchoring focus of creation. Furthermore, some of the books most engaging theological concepts ––particularly the process of “re-membering” –– are limited to just a paragraph or two, leaving them underdeveloped and vulnerable to being lost in the shuffle of stories and ideas. And yet, one of the strengths of the book is its personal nature, modeling womanist theology’s appreciation for the lives of Black women as a crucial source of theological reflection and insight. Through attention to these lived experiences, Baker-Fletcher highlights the complicated history of environmental racism and offers a nuanced, applicable path forward towards ecological justice for African Americans in particular, but one that all readers can find wisdom and direction from. ...more |
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In The Body of God: An Ecological Theology, Sallie McFague offers a theological model that invites Christians to regard the manifold bodies of the phy
In The Body of God: An Ecological Theology, Sallie McFague offers a theological model that invites Christians to regard the manifold bodies of the physical world as an embodiment of the divine. As a metaphorical theologian, McFague finds freedom in the fundamental inability to discuss God with perfect accuracy as license to develop fresh ways of describing God that serve functional aims. Here, her concern is with the ecological crisis ––already so pressing 30 years ago when she was writing–– and she is motivated to “change consciousness, to develop a new sensibility about who we are in the scheme of things so that when we deal with concrete issues we can do so differently than in the past” (202). McFague insists that our theological models and religious narratives are deeply formational, even if at a subconscious level, and in regard to (primarily white, middle-class) American Christians, this has operated mostly malformatively. In response, she presents reimagined and “remythologized” articulations of anthropology, theology, and Christology which aim to restore and revitalize humanity’s ecological engagement with the hope of planetary sustainability, if not flourishing. After a somewhat convoluted and repetitive trio of introductory chapters that set the stage, McFague begins in earnest with a reconsideration of anthropology in light of what she deems the “common creation story” –– a broad term for the myriad of postmodern scientific theories that relay a universal origin of creation beginning with a colloquial “Big Bang.” Christians who are more committed to the Genesis narrative of creation, even at a metaphorical level, are likely to be disappointed here by her near-total abandonment of its significance in favor of this new story, but McFague is frank about her commitment to some semblance of scientific viability. Instead, she reflects on the anthropological implications this common creation story has for humanity. Foundationally, it affirms that in some crucial way, the earth is the home of humanity; our very existence is the result of millennia of evolutionary processes that could have only occurred here in interdependent relationship with all the other concurrent unfoldings (102). For McFague, this deep sense of belonging to the earth and its countless other bodies rectifies more otherworldly inclinations of spiritualty that emphasize our bodily ephemerality, which she suggests fosters a detachment and apathy towards what happens here and now as secondary, if not ultimately irrelevant. Importantly, the common creation story serves an even more crucial purpose of “decentering and recentering of human beings” in our relationship to the world (108). Unlike the Genesis narrative, which suggests humanity existed within the first “week” of creation and that we functioned as its climax or point, the scientific consensus finds that “on the universe’s clock, human existence appears a few seconds before midnight” (108). Unless we imagine God twiddling their thumbs for almost the entirety of time thus far, McFague argues, this necessarily decenters us as the stars of the cosmological show, but our uniqueness in turn recenters us as distinct members of the ensemble cast. The purpose of creation, within this view, “is not human beings (or any other species), but the fecundity, richness, and diversity of all that is bodied forth from God and sustained in life by the breath of God” (148). So, even if other parts of creation are much more adept at living into the interdependence and relationality suggested by our shared origin, humanity is likely the only part that is conscious of this story and its ramifications. And while much of history demonstrates how some people have seen this as a superiority that has given license to commodify and corrupt the rest of the natural world for their (short-term) benefit, it actually thrusts upon all of us the responsibility of stewardship. Having articulated a new understanding of humanity, McFague turns her attention to a fresh model for God. Building off of Christian affirmations of embodiment via the divine incarnation in Jesus and ongoing sacramentality, McFague takes a creative leap from these particularized instances of physicality towards a vision of the entire cosmos as the body of God. It bears repeating that her methodology is explicitly metaphorical; McFague clarifies that this is not a literal description, but rather an attempt to infuse our theological imagination with new aesthetic and ethical functions. She associates the former with immanent transcendence and the latter with transcendent immanence (133-134). Rather than relying on metaphors of transcendence that render God distant or otherwise abstracted from the human experience, a more immanent sense of the cosmos as God’s embodiment elicits an intuitive overwhelm at the expansiveness (temporarily, spatially, and across the manifold diversity of bodies) and awe at the complexity and grandeur on display. And by affirming God’s embodiment across all bodies, rather than solely that of Jesus, divine immanence takes on a transcendent multiplicity while remaining as available and near to us as our own body and breath. The final major move of The Body of God is to consider how Christology might shape these reconfigurations of Christian anthropology and theology. McFague diverges from advocates of creation spirituality and natural theology in her reluctance to ascribe a teleogical aim apparent in our scientific sensibilities of the evolutionary process. Though she agrees that God is embodied by and enlivens every part of creation, she sees evidence of confirmation bias that ignores the chaos, contingency, and immense suffering inherent to natural selection amongst those who see nature as evidence of God’s redemptive plan for the world. Instead, she argues that Christians must commit to a willful wager of faith in trusting that it is Christ who offers a salvific vision of the direction of creation (160). For Christians, Jesus serves as either the singular or most distinctive incarnation of God, and therefore his life, ministry, and teachings provide the most paradigmatic model for God’s character, purpose, and desires. McFague looks to Christ and sees a trajectory towards liberation and justice exemplified in his ministry of parables which destabilize hierarchies, healings which bring about embodied restoration, and table fellowship that promotes radical inclusion of all. Further, the primary benefactor across these practices is always the oppressed, marginalized, vulnerable, and needy (167-169). Building off of her previous refusal to prioritize humanity over the rest of creation, she then argues that in the Anthropocene, the natural world has emerged as a new category of the oppressed, and in line with her view of Christ, this elevates her concern for the world from a sentimental plea for stewardship to a righteous mandate for solidarity (166). This is manifest through the active work of resisting eco-injustice and the passive work of suffering with the planet in instances when this fails. She associates the former with Christ’s aforementioned ministerial practices and the latter with his death on the cross, evidence of God’s commitment to suffer with creation which is understood at new depths when we consider God to be embodied by all bodies, including those enduring excruciating pain and destruction (176-178). More tenuously, however, she also looks to Christ’s resurrection as the basis for “hope against hope” in the “basic trustworthiness at the heart of existence; that life, not death, is the last word; that against all evidence to the contrary (and most evidence is to the contrary), all our efforts…will not be defeated. It is the belief that the source and power of the universe is on the side of life and its fulfillment” (191). Though it is almost certainly bound to alienate Christians more committed to theological orthodoxy early on, The Body of God offers a vivid, creative, and potentially generative model of God with multiple strengths. Most centrally, it carries an ethical core that reorients Christians to attend to and care for the earth as both a mandated extension of Jesus’s ministry and a means of loving God’s embodied presence. Guided by a driving sense that what we believe shapes what we do, her hope is that when the earth is believed to be sacred, its desecration becomes a more serious sin, and its protection an act of fidelity and worship. More tangentially, it also features a compelling pastoral and theodical dimensions emphasizing God’s immanent nearness coupled with a more accessible means of relating to God’s transcendence. Further, its focus on the fundamental interdependence and relationality of all creation and the “welcome home” it offers to demographics of humanity who have felt alienated from the planet for centuries invite new postures towards the environment that are simultaneously intuitive and revelatory. When considering the Wesleyan quadrilateral, it is apparent that McFague relies heavily on experience and reason (understood as consultation with scientific communities) at the expense of rigorous or even considered engagement with Scripture and tradition. Yet she acknowledges these shortcomings and links them with her perceived need for Christianity to incorporate adaptive, corrective perspectives in response to the crises of the moment. Her work here depicts one impassioned, thorough, imaginative, and alluring attempt to do so. ...more |
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| Sep 28, 2021
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liked it
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I think I would have enjoyed this more if I hadn't already read Bowler's first book,Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved,which
I think I would have enjoyed this more if I hadn't already read Bowler's first book,Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved,which felt extremely similar to this and a bit better. I began to realize that this is essentially the same book but more as a memoir than the first one, but it still left me wondering if there was really enough material to fill out an entire second book reflecting on the same experience (though, of course, the experience of facing one's seemingly imminent death is likely inexhaustible). Bowler is a talented writer and there are numerous turns of phrase and lines here that gave me pause to let them sink in, and I sort of wish I'd not been listening to the audiobook so I could enjoy it at a slower pace. But ultimately I don't see this remaining with me as viscerally as "Everything Happens for a Reason," though I am glad to have read it. Also...reading through some of the critical reviews here is making me cringe. I can't fathom how you could make it through this and STILL critique Bowler for being too bitter, negative, and lacking in hope...did they not read the multiple occasions when she wrote about how painful it was to be tone-policed in the midst of her grief?! C'mon y'all. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 23, 2022
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Dec 31, 2022
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Dec 31, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 0800637216
| 9780800637217
| 0800637216
| 3.96
| 24
| Mar 31, 2005
| Apr 04, 2005
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really liked it
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This is a really terrific collection of essays exploring the Book of Revelation from a wide variety of identity perspectives and lenses (e..g African,
This is a really terrific collection of essays exploring the Book of Revelation from a wide variety of identity perspectives and lenses (e..g African, African American, Cuban American, Chinese, Central American, postcolonial, feminist, ecological). Though some are a bit more technically written and I personally felt that a few were slightly less engaging to read, I'd say that this is an extremely consistent group of essays in terms of quality and value. My main critique is that it seemed as though each writer felt the need to orient readers towards a culturally conscious approach to exegesis, which works well in the individual chapter but when read as a cohesive book becomes redundant very fast. Similarly, so many of them are rectifying misconceptions about Revelation being a totally apolitical, hyper-spiritualized text that those messages come to be repetitive despite their relevance. Regardless, when you consider each essay on its own merit, and the wider collection as the sum of its parts, this is an exceptional book on Revelation that I'm glad to have on my shelves.
...more
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Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 21, 2022
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Dec 30, 2022
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Dec 31, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0060643617
| 9780060643614
| 0060643617
| 4.26
| 1,457
| 1941
| Aug 02, 1996
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it was amazing
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(Formal review to follow, but my quick take is that this was amazing!! It is short and not even especially dense, but I felt a real need to take my ti
(Formal review to follow, but my quick take is that this was amazing!! It is short and not even especially dense, but I felt a real need to take my time reading slowly through it –– it is brimming with a holy wisdom that I just wanted to savor and allow to sink in. Definitely see myself revisiting this.) For many, the modern experience is often marked by an ever-escalating sense of urgency at an individual and global level. We feel frenzied in our efforts, scattered in our attention, and depleted in our capacities –– or, perhaps, haunted by a sheepish guilt in moments of otherwise contentment. We are left with a pervasive question: How to engage with the world without being consumed by it? Voices throughout time have offered varied responses, and Thomas Kelley’s is one whose message rises compellingly above the chorus. At the center of his argument in A Testament of Devotion is a Quaker-shaped call towards a singular devotion to the present and active God. While at first glance this does not register as a particularly unique or applicable direction, Kelly excels at disarming expectations to offer a vital vision for a life of integration, peace, action, and love that arises out of one’s wholehearted devotion. From a distance, this may sound like an exhortation only applicable to a select few –– those who can adopt the lifestyle of monks and desert mystics whose days are consumed with spiritual practices. Alternatively, maybe it registers as yet another example of religious programming expected to be crammed into one’s daily schedule. Perhaps in hopes of dispelling these suspicions, Kelly’s first essay clarifies that he is concerned with“ways of conducting our inward life so that we are perpetually bowed in worship, while we are also very busy in the world of daily affairs."This intertwining of the seeming polarities of spiritual worship and earthly action is fundamental to Kelly’s theological imagination, and he urges readers to pursue“not alternation, but simultaneity, worship undergirding every moment."While Kelly endorses the value of spiritual practices and participation in religious fellowship, his sense of devotion is crucially not a retreat from or rejection of the world; he seeks integration rather than separation, and an awareness of the concurrence of the Divine Life’s presence overlapping with the unfolding everyday. One’s thoughts become interwoven with a steady stream of prayer, and the day is imbued with an ongoing awareness of the permeating reality of God. In Kelly’s fourth essay, “The Eternal Now and Social Concerns,” he most clearly articulates both his sense of the presumed tension between worship and action and how his vision of devotion climaxes in the coexistence of the two. He begins with a brief overview and careful critique of religion’s (and especially Quakerism’s) slide towards “This-sidedness,” which is to say its emphasis on the pressing needs of the present world over and against the heavenly world to come. For Kelly, the central Quaker teaching that“The possibility of the experience of Divine Presence, as a repeatedly realized and present fact, and its transforming and transfiguring effect upon all life”disrupts the binary of This-side and the Other-side, allowing for experiences of the Eternal Now. The Eternal Now is when God is present, rendering it the inbreaking of God’s agency and action in the world and the moment in which God’s reality is actually and accessibly possible –– and it is made possible often through the yielding of humanity. In other words, the Eternal Now is when those seeking God are found by God, when“We sing, but not yet we, but the Eternal sings within us." We are wise to ask: What distinguishes our independent action from God’s within us? It is within the Eternal Now that we are freed to act unencumbered by the tyranny of past failures or future anxieties which so often hinder and limit us. Likewise, we remember, as Kelly writes in “Eternal Presence and Temporal Guidance” that“The world’s work is to be done. But it doesn’t have to be finished by us. We have taken ourselves too seriously. The life of God overarches all lifetimes."In the Eternal Now, the heavy burdens of overwhelming urgency and singular responsibility are replaced with a liberating trust in God’s everlasting commitment to the world and its immense needs. Kelly describes this as“contemptus mundi”–– a healthy, stable detachment from the frequent ebbs and flows of a world in the throes of injustice and sin. However, crucially, this is always balanced by an equal sense of“amor mundi”as we share in God’s cosmic love for the world. This, ultimately, is the mark of an encounter with the Divine Presence in the Eternal Now:“There is a tendering of the soul toward everything in creation, from the sparrow’s fall to the slave under the lash."The tendered soul is, of course, known not only by its empathy for the suffering of the world but also its action within it. In “Eternal Presence and Temporal Guidance,” Kelly writes that“the root experience of divine Presence contains within it not only a sense of being energized from a heavenly Beyond; it contains also a sense of being energized toward an earthly world. For the Eternal Life and Love are not pocketed in us; they are flooding through us into the world of time and men." Kelly’s appreciation for the Quakerly notion of a “concern” is essential for understanding how one’s soul can be tendered and commissioned into a suffering world without being utterly consumed by its seemingly infinite needs. Although one develops a sensitivity towards all earthly plights, our task is not to attend to them all, but rather to discern which ones specifically demand our active engagement. He writes that“concern particularizes this cosmic tenderness. It brings to a definite focus in some concrete task all that experience of love and responsibility which might evaporate, in its broad generality, into vague yearnings for a golden paradise."In this way, discerning concerns protects us from being overburdened and underutilized, ensuring that we are not consumed by either the endlessness of work to be done nor the enormity of our overwhelming feelings about it. We can regard the concerns set before us as distilled expressions of God’s care for the world, and our action as a conduit for God’s responsive action. Many of us are simultaneously hounded by the heavy burden of responsibility to the world around us and haunted by our inability to do more. At first glance, Kelly’s exhortation to listen for God’s knock at the door of our life and devote ourselves wholly to the one who finds us when we open it can feel like retreating from these realities, but he rejects such binary reductions. Indeed, such devotion reorders our lives in a way that relativizes these matters, but does not replace them. Steeped in awareness of God’s eternal faithfulness to the troubles of this world, we even begin to share in such tenderness more and more, but from the steady ground of God’s Eternal Now rather than the shaky territory of the ever-changing present. Instead of being drowned in the endless waves of the world’s infinite demands, we are gifted the clarity of concerns set distinctly before us as a means of participating in God’s response to the world. Ultimately, this imbues us with a share in the “Cosmic Patience” which frees us to find hope beyond the immediate outcomes of our efforts, trusting they are part of a much larger whole that can only be finished by God. And so it is from this place of deep peace, rather than frenzied desperation, that we meet the world each day, as well as the God who devotedly loves it. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 10, 2022
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Dec 03, 2022
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Dec 04, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0310363799
| 9780310363798
| 0310363799
| 4.42
| 807
| unknown
| Feb 22, 2022
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really liked it
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I'm really grateful for this wise, tender, and thoughtful book from Mayfield and honestly wish I had found it sooner. One unexpected realization it pr
I'm really grateful for this wise, tender, and thoughtful book from Mayfield and honestly wish I had found it sooner. One unexpected realization it prompted for me is how secure my relationship with God has become over the past decade, but I knew that past versions of myself would have resonated intensely, especially with the shame-based attachment style. Given that this is essentially my introduction to attachment science, I think I would have appreciated a bit more technical language to accompany the practical approach, but I'd imagine I'm in the minority there. The book is exceptionally structured, with two chapters devoted to each attachment style alongside an introduction, conclusion, and a sort of bridge chapter hitting home its core idea that God really is good and desires connection with us. I was also impressed with Mayfield's writing throughout, which is easy to read without feeling overly simplistic or canned. Ultimately, this was probably closer to a 3-star reading experience for me (feeling a bit repetitive by the end), but I appreciate what it's doing so much and can already think of multiple people I want to gift it to, which bumps it up one.
...more
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Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 11, 2022
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Nov 23, 2022
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Nov 23, 2022
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Paperback
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| 1611647991
| 9781611647990
| B071GZ84JL
| 4.12
| 41
| unknown
| Mar 17, 2017
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liked it
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I read this for my, you guessed it, Old Testament Exegesis class in seminary. It was a perfectly decent resource, a bit dry and technical at times but
I read this for my, you guessed it, Old Testament Exegesis class in seminary. It was a perfectly decent resource, a bit dry and technical at times but less so than I anticipated to be honest. I think the decision to return to Genesis 1-3 as a way of demonstrating each chapter's strategy or focal lens was clever, though it did make for redundant reading at times. I really appreciated this resource's inclusion of a third section focusing on contemporary exegetical approaches, with chapters on hermeneutics informed by ecology, science, gender, race, and empire.
...more
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Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 2022
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Nov 21, 2022
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Nov 21, 2022
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Kindle Edition
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| 4.08
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really liked it
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Jul 2013
not set
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Sep 27, 2024
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| 3.91
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liked it
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Jul 14, 2024
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Aug 09, 2024
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| 3.88
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really liked it
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Mar 30, 2024
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Apr 07, 2024
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| 3.96
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really liked it
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Sep 02, 2023
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Sep 02, 2023
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| 4.00
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liked it
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Jul 30, 2023
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Jul 31, 2023
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| 3.87
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really liked it
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Jul 07, 2023
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Jul 12, 2023
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| 4.54
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really liked it
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Jul 02, 2023
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Jul 06, 2023
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| 4.23
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really liked it
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Feb 28, 2023
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Jun 08, 2023
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| 4.00
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really liked it
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May 04, 2023
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May 05, 2023
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| 4.37
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it was amazing
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Apr 17, 2023
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Apr 18, 2023
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| 4.03
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liked it
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Apr 12, 2023
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Apr 14, 2023
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| 4.37
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really liked it
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Mar 26, 2023
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Apr 09, 2023
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| 4.00
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liked it
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Feb 28, 2023
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Mar 01, 2023
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| 3.91
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liked it
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Feb 27, 2023
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Feb 27, 2023
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| 4.06
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really liked it
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Feb 15, 2023
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Feb 16, 2023
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| 4.13
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liked it
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Dec 31, 2022
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Dec 31, 2022
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| 3.96
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really liked it
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Dec 30, 2022
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Dec 31, 2022
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| 4.26
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it was amazing
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Dec 03, 2022
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Dec 04, 2022
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| 4.42
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really liked it
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Nov 23, 2022
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Nov 23, 2022
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| 4.12
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liked it
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Nov 21, 2022
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Nov 21, 2022
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