Gorra Research

Curating Knowledge & Wisdom in the Interest of Flourishing Well.

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The most important thing is that art is poetic, and not a news broadcast. If it is not done with beauty you shouldn’t do it. For me, art is an alternative to propaganda. Finally, someone is not trying to convince you of something, but to lead you to really subtle truths that are much more interesting than anything we have space for in our current political system.

Peter Sellars (theater and opera director), cited in The Telegraph.

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Pope Francis and John Michael Talbot on "Excessive Clericalism"

Pope Francis, writing in his papal exhortation, "The Joy of the Gospel," has this interesting paragraph, which should be of interest to anyone earnest for training and pastoring laity for their actual life in the world (my emphasis in bold):

102. Lay people are, put simply, the vast majority of the people of God. The minority – ordained ministers – are at their service. There has been a growing awareness of the identity and mission of the laity in the Church. We can count on many lay persons, although still not nearly enough, who have a deeply-rooted sense of community and great fidelity to the tasks of charity, catechesis and the celebration of the faith. At the same time, a clear awareness of this responsibility of the laity, grounded in their baptism and confirmation, does not appear in the same way in all places. In some cases, it is because lay persons have not been given the formation needed to take on important responsibilities. In others, it is because in their particular Churches room has not been made for them to speak and to act, due to an excessive clericalism which keeps them away from decision-making. Even if many are now involved in the lay ministries, this involvement is not reflected in a greater penetration of Christian values in the social, political and economic sectors. It often remains tied to tasks within the Church, without a real commitment to applying the Gospel to the transformation of society. The formation of the laity and the evangelization of professional and intellectual life represent a significant pastoral challenge.

John Michael Talbot, whose Catholic parish-to-parish itinerant preaching/teaching and Christian music pioneering, has this interesting 'riff' off of Francis:

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John Stott on Vision and Leadership

In his "Call for Christian Leadership," theologian John Stott considers various features of what is involved in a Christian form of leadership in the world (e.g., vision, perseverance, service, discipline). 

What is vision?

... It is an act of seeing, of course, an imaginative perception of things, combining insight and foresight. But more particularly, in the sense in which I am using the word, it is compounded by a deep dissatisfaction with what is and a clear grasp of what could be. It begins with indignation over the status quo, and it grows into the earnest quest for an alternative. Both are quite clear in the public ministry of Jesus. He was indignant over disease and death and the hunger of the people, for he perceived these things as alien to the purpose of God. Hence his compassion for their victims. Indignation and compassion form a powerful combination. They are indispensable to vision, and therefore to leadership (see, e.g., John 11:32-37).

... Apathy is the acceptance of the unacceptable; leadership begins with a decisive refusal of such acceptance.

But anger is sterile if it does not provoke us to positive action to remedy what has aroused our anger.

[John Stott, "A Call for Christian Leadership," in Issues Facing Christians Today, 4th edition, 487].

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Shrunken view of the gospel empowers an impotent discipleship resulting in failed 'strategies' of cultural engagement

Pastors, seminaries, and parachurch movement leaders should seriously consider the words of Mark Greene, a former advertisement executive who 'gets' the need for the public life of laity to be pastored and nurtured holistically.

Greene's advocacy of a 'whole-life gospel' for a 'whole-life discipleship' that engages God in Christ through the Spirit's work of whole-world reconciling mission is the exact kind of 'cosmology' most needed today. (One sometimes wonder whether Christians still think cosmological thoughts in the way that Augustine, Calvin and Wesley thought).

One major consequence of shrinking gospel-power - to 'just' evangelism, or being compassionate or exercising social action outreach - is a failed strategy of cultural engagement; ultimately, a failure to envision how all of life is God's.

Mark Greene notes the resulting, default posture for too many pastors: "to recruit the people of God to use some of their leisure time to join the missionary initiatives of church paid workers." But is God merely interested in redeeming leisure time in order for his people to do 'ministry'?! To settle for that would be, as Pastor Tom Nelson has said, an act of pastoral and theological "malpractice."

Instead, the moral-spiritual-social-political 'claim' of the gospel on all of life is grandeur and entails a more adventurous living of life as it is meant to be lived: the claim of the gospel correlates with the power and presence of the Kingdom at work in the world through the Spirit of the living God. If so, then such a claim of the gospel is unto whole-life transformation through people's own vocations enacted and stewarded with and before their life and community with others. A great pastoral need: pastoring people for the gospel-transformation of their life, and not merely for some 'generic life' so-called, 'the Christian life.' But they don't teach you that in seminary, now do they?

In Pope Francis' latest papal exhortation, "The Joy of the Gospel," he identifies the challenges that face pastors and laity alike:

102. Lay people are, put simply, the vast majority of the people of God. The minority – ordained ministers – are at their service. There has been a growing awareness of the identity and mission of the laity in the Church. We can count on many lay persons, although still not nearly enough, who have a deeply-rooted sense of community and great fidelity to the tasks of charity, catechesis and the celebration of the faith. At the same time, a clear awareness of this responsibility of the laity, grounded in their baptism and confirmation, does not appear in the same way in all places. In some cases, it is because lay persons have not been given the formation needed to take on important responsibilities. In others, it is because in their particular Churches room has not been made for them to speak and to act, due to an excessive clericalism which keeps them away from decision-making. Even if many are now involved in the lay ministries, this involvement is not reflected in a greater penetration of Christian values in the social, political and economic sectors. It often remains tied to tasks within the Church, without a real commitment to applying the Gospel to the transformation of society. The formation of the laity and the evangelization of professional and intellectual life represent a significant pastoral challenge.

The Pope actually expects the gospel to transform society. In an age of diminished hope and with the disappearing of authentically good authority, the Pope's faith can sound like a great 'shock-and-awe' kind of chutzpah! :) On the other hand, in times of old, such courage to believe, hope and long for the good reign of God in our midst used to be known, properly speaking, as being a Christian.

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... Great leaders ask the right questions because they recognize that no single person knows the answers and that a team is much better at figuring out the answers. And once you ask the right questions, the answer just jumps out. It’s amazing. You put a team of people in a room, you ask the right questions, and the right people will offer up ideas. You are not going to succeed if you are not open, if you are not respectful and if you are not modest. Modesty, for me, is about knowing the limits of your own knowledge. It’s not about being humble; it’s about having the confidence to ask questions, and the confidence to understand that you don’t know everything. At the end of the day, I think that a big part of leadership is about showing respect. And respect creates a kind of feedback loop. There is a formula for creating respect, and it depends on you. If you respect other people, they’ll respect you. If you are aware of this, then you can basically manage innovation. Why? Because innovation is created with people who you respect. It will never happen in a group of people who hate each other. If you want to have innovation within your company, you need to have a culture of respect. And a culture of respect will come in part from asking the right questions.

Avinoam Nowogrodski (the chief executive of Clarizen, a work management software company) interviews in The New York Times (March 14, 2014) about leadership and the value of fostering environments and teams for asking and answering questions together. There are nuggets of insights in this interview to be studied by epistemologists, pastors and other organizational leaders, collaborative-minded scholars, teachers, parents, employers and other 'human capital' nurturers ...

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Christian's Library Press has published one of the best praxis-oriented theology of work, economics and vocation books.

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"Love Your Enemies": Jesus' ideas were formed on what's real

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Post by Vineyard Church of Anaheim.

The full audio is available for download by clicking here.

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Pastor Tom Nelson talks about confessing to his congregation regarding his theological and pastoral "malpractice"; for failing to adequately envision and lead people for their life with Christ through their vocations in God's world. 

The interview with Mel Lawrence is full of theological and pastoral insights that should be mined by pastors and laity alike.

From Genesis to Revelation, work is integral to the image of God and is defined as “contribution” both to God and to others, Nelson notes. Our vocation, he says, forms us in Christ’s likeness and is an act of worship. Nelson discusses how he gets to know the work circumstances of his congregants and how he incorporates the theology of vocation into the liturgy itself. He also discusses what faith looks like in the workplace.

For more of Nelson's practical theology of work, see his Work Matters, which can be handsomely complimented by Bill Heatley's Gift of Work.

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Pastor it: "The primary action of the church in the world is the action of its members in their daily work” Leslie Newbigin

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The invention of “religion” as something inherently otherworldly and separate from mundane “secular” affairs like politics was an important part of the state-making process. If ecclesiastical authorities could be seen as presiding over an area of life that is essentially otherworldly and distinct from mundane political affairs, then the ecclesiastical court system could be shut down, church lands and their attendant revenues could be confiscated, and all kinds of ecclesiastical checks on civil rulers’ power could be eliminated. This is, in historical fact, what happened. The modern religious/secular divide was invented along with the invention of the modern state as the final act in the struggle between civil and ecclesiastical powers in Europe that had been going on at least since the Investiture Controversy in the eleventh century, and arguably since the conversion of Constantine. Although the ecclesiastical/civil divide goes back to Constantine, the religious/political divide does not. In the medieval period, the civil authority was “the police department of the Church,” in John Neville Figgis’s phrase. Church authorities did not think that their authority was purely otherworldly, nor that Christianity was essentially about otherworldly concerns. The goal of Christendom was to build a society in which the Gospel permeated every aspect of life, from law-making to barrel-making.

Best of 2012: The ‘Wars of Religion’ and other fairy tales – Opinion – ABC Religion & Ethics (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

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Which Cultural Powers? Whose Politics?

In the January 2013 issue of First Things, David B Hart underscores crucial distinctions between the relevancy - indeed, we might say 'longevity' - of the achievements of electoral politics and cultural-shaping forces in society:

In the end, politics is the servant of cultural forces, not their master. I often wonder if it is much more than a comforting fiction that, by choosing between two parties that frequently operate like large marketing conglomerates, selling much the same product in different packaging, we thereby take charge of the future. It may make us feel free and powerful, in the same way that shopping does, but the one great lesson to be learned from the social history of America over the past several decades is that culture evolves as it will, and it is not the electoral success of a political party, but the verdict of the culture at large, that ultimately determines the shape of civic reality. A political party can basten or delay the inevitable, volens nolens, but politics is merely an expression of cultural forces far deeper than ideology or public policy can ever reach.

Hart offers the following as an example:

It has often been noted, for instance, that over the past few decades the political "right" has won the argument on economic issues while the "left" has won the argument on social issues. In either case, naturally, things may now and then dash forward a mite too precipitously, which leads to a predictable but only partial retreat--three steps forward, two steps back--but the general drift of culture is quite inexorable.

Hart then goes on to make this interesting point about what may be described as the morality of consumerism and how it shapes a libertarian society:

... Ours is a libertarian society that rests upon an economic foundation of consumerism. Late modernity is the triumph of a kind of polymorphous voluntarism, with regard to both material and immaterial goods. Such a culture must necessarily gravitate towards an ever more indeterminate and minimalist view of civic and private morality; its morality is primarily one of toleration rather than prescription.

Not surprising - and, perhaps, consequentially - there is a paradox to be noted; a paradox that relates to the so-called 'political right' and 'political left' in light of how "politics is the servant of cultural forces":

It may therefore be no more than a poignant paradox that, on account of the vagaries and historical incidentals of political affiliation, many of those who argue most passionately for the unhindered free market are also those who most keenly lament the decay of the moral and social consensus of the past, the rise of an ever coarser and more permissive popular culture, and the disintegration of the nuclear family. But the modern market is sustained by consumerism, and a consumerist culture thrives on the fabrication of an ever greater diversity of desires that may be guiltlessly pursued; such a culture irresistibly demands that the province of inhibition, prohibition, shame, and local loyalties become ever smaller. Not to sound too Marxist (or, perhaps, too "incarnational") about this, but the ideological shape of a society cannot be divorced from its material basis. The same paradox is present on the other side as well, needless to say, particularly among those who long for the redistribution of wealth, or laws that would seriously inconvenience the investment class, of a withdrawal from free trade agreements, or the abolition of inequities in the global labor market, and so on--all the while casually expecting that society will always continue to generate the kind of prosperity that makes them free consumers wandering at large through a universe of morally neutral goods. Last year's Occupy Wall Street movement, with its "revolution" against the corporate oligarchy (or whatever it was they were protesting), provides a perfect example of the problem. I think it safe to say that a "revolution" against the investment system that was spread by way of social media, communicated through a variety of affordable but sophisticated handheld devices owned by cosseted dependents of the middle class, was really probably no more than an ironic commentary on its own internal contradictions.

So, according to Hart, how is the course of cultural-political life oriented for the near future? I bullet-point his final paragraph in this column. Our future will likely look like this ...

"a comfortable combination of authoritarianism and libertarianism;

a provident, intrusive, and imperious state allied to a corporate culture that encourages, gratifies, and endlessly amplifies an amoral appetite for the trivial and ephemeral;

extraordinary governmental power wielded peremptorily in the name of endless warfare abroad and of ever more perfect civil order and social justice at home;

culture replaced by advertising, shared custom by private impulse, community by television;

public life reduced to the bare dialectic of state power and individual rights."

Is Hart hopeful? Maybe. His last sentence ends like this:

There may be a path open that leads beyond that state of things--a path not primarily political, but rather cultural and spiritual--but it will not be easy to find, and it will be a very long march indeed.

SOURCE: David B. Hart, "The long march ahead." First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life 229 (January 2013): 72.

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"Christmas Materialism" and Veblen Roots

Writing in The New Republic, historian Jackson Lears offers some context to the social-cultural interrelationships of Western 'consumerist' celebrations of Christmas. In some significant sense Veblenian assumptions are relevant here:

For decades, Christmas has at best inspired benign neglect among critics and historians of American culture. The relentless secularism of academic culture is partly to blame, but so is the utilitarian cast of American social thought and the ascetic criticism of “materialism” at the heart of our moral philosophy. These tendencies all came together in the enormously influential Thorstein Veblen, who did more than any other American thinker to shape educated Americans’ understanding of their encounter with material things. Veblen lumped “conspicuous consumption” with sports and games, “devout observances” and aesthetic display. They were all reducible, he insisted, to “pecuniary emulation,” his characteristically inflated term for status striving. Veblen fancied himself a socialist and disdained superstition as a survival of primitive animism; and he looked forward to the day when “the discipline of the machine” would promote rationality among the entire population. One can only imagine his howls of derision at the modern American Christmas.

A 'loss of transcendence' emerges regarding the festivity and celebration of Christmas. Solutions include a recapturing of Christmas with sentimental "childlike faith," making Christmas meaningful by making it family-oriented, being anti-bourgeois. These become inadequate cultural means for 'recapturing the spirit of Christmas,' which was a loss of enchantment.

The Protestant reclamation of Christmas was a sacralization of what had been (at least in the United States) a bawdy and secular holiday. It was, if not an invention of tradition, a pastiche of existing ones in the light of new romantic sensibilities that sanctified Jesus, childhood and family. These sensibilities affected Catholics as well as Protestants. For all, Christmas—like the idealized domestic circle—posed a redemptive counterpoint to a self-seeking market society. Yet the institutions of that society provided the agents of redemption, the gifts. Commerce served Christianity as well as vice versa ...

... many Americans continue to search for the elusive “spirit of Christmas.” It is a quest likely to continue for a long time, and for all its occasional sentimentality it can yet command respect. Still, as these books remind us, there is an alternative way of seeing Christmas, one that is rooted in both incarnational and carnivalesque traditions. Toys-R-Us is not the best place to recall it, but the American Protestant appropriation of Christmas may have been a revolt against the dualism of spirit and matter, an attempt to recover a more sacramental conception of the world. From such a perspective, the mystery of faith may not always be hidden by the mountains of things; it may also live, however infrequently and ineffably, in the things themselves.

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Joy's Embers Are Contentment's Light

Joy was the theme at the wedding of Cana where Jesus performed his grand miracle of turning water into wine.

For Jesus viewed the work of God not as some stingy, withdrawn, utilitarianly calculable affair as some Central Planners aspire: "I'll do this miracle, if this maximal result will happen."

The miracle of turning water into wine danced with the glad tidings of overabundant, delightful play in joy; a freely festive enactment of charity fit for celebration in the presence of the Greatest Conceivable Joyous Being that ever was, is and will be. Amen.

Here now the wise words of Dietrich von Hildebrand:

Many pious persons mistakenly believe that piety requires that they limit their interest in the welfare of their neighbor either to those goods which are pertinent to their eternal welfare or which are indispensable earthly goods. Their charity is cool, calculated, and marked by utilitarian dryness….[At Cana] we find this divine extravagance, this unlimitedness of charity which reaches to the smallest detail. It is this divine tenderness which excludes no gift from its intention as long as it is a beneficial good to the person…. At Cana, joy was the theme.

SOURCE: The Heart: An Analysis of Human and Divine Affectivity (Helicon, 1965), page 125f.

Joy gushes forth from the resplendent abundance of a life contented by what is good, true and beautiful.

Yet, joy is not identical to merriment & cheer. It can involve that, but joy is more pervasive than fleeting hilarity & happiness. It is animated by contentment.

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January 3 - John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Bio: Born on January 3, 1892, J. R. R. Tolkien was an English writer, poet, philologist, and professor. More than almost anyone else, his cycle of works—including The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion—have left an indelible influence on high fantasy to this day. Tolkien fought in WWI, and taught at the University of Leeds and the University of Oxford. In addition to his fantasy work, he translated numerous works of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. In 1972, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He passed away on 29 November 1971, at the age of 82.

Anecdotes:

The tombstone of Tolkien and his wife bears the names Beren and Lúthien, two characters from his legendarium.

Tolkien constructed the grammar and vocabulary of at least fifteen Elvish languages and dialects.

At times, he began classes by appearing in chain mail, bellowing the opening lines of Beowulf. “According to one of his students, ‘He could turn a lecture room into a mead hall.’”

Tolkien was also very involved in reconstructing ‘extinct’ languages, such as Medieval Welsh and Lombardic. The poem “BagmÄ“ Blomā” (“Flower of the Trees”) might be the first original work written in the Gothic language in over a millennium.

He has been published almost as prolifically after his death as he was when he was alive.

Tolkien began work on The Hobbit early in the 1930s while marking School Certificate papers. He found a blank page and, with sudden inspiration, wrote the words, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

Final Sentences:

The sun went down, and Morwen sighed and clasped his hand and was still; and Húrin knew that she had died.

From The Children of Húrin

[…“You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!”] “Thanks goodness!” said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.

From The Hobbit

Then shouldering their burdens, they set off, seeking a path that would bring them over the grey hills of the Emyn Muil, and into the Land of Shadow.

From The Fellowship of the Ring

Frodo was alive but taken by the Enemy.

From The Two Towers

“Well, I’m back,” he said.

From The Return of the King

[Here ends the SILMARILLION.] If it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin, that was of old the fate of Arda Marred; and if any change shall come and the Marring be amended, Manwë and Varda may know; but they have not revealed it, and it is not declared in the dooms of Mandos.

From The Silmarillion

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

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After centuries of secularization, the West has exhausted the moral and spiritual culture of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The moral anarchy of our consumerist society cries out for vision. As fundamentalists barricade themselves into their fortresses and liberal believers hasten to baptize every passing secular trend, the need for Christian humanism is greater than ever.

Gregory Wolfe, Beauty Will Save the World, p. 46 (via invisibleforeigner)

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Every historical period has its own presiding powers and principalities on high. Ours, for what it is worth, seem to want to make us happy, even if only in an inert sort of way. Every age passes away in time, moreover, and late modernity is only an epoch. This being so, one should never doubt the uncanny force of what Freud called die Wiederkehr des Verdrängten—“the return of the repressed.” Dominant ideologies wither away, metaphysical myths exhaust their power to hold sway over cultural imaginations, material and spiritual conditions change inexorably and irreversibly. The human longing for God, however, persists from age to age. A particular cultural dispensation may succeed for a time in lulling the soul into a forgetful sleep, but the soul will still continue to hear that timeless call that comes at once from within and from beyond all things, even if for now it seems like only a voice heard in a dream. And, sooner or later, the sleeper will awaken.

David Bentley Hart. Thoughts to meditate on, often and long. (via ayjay)