n.b.

a commonplace book

[nbcommonplace]

How the hipster can save the monk (and vice versa)

By a bizarre twist of fate, the taste of the age, “hipster taste,” runs parallel to monastic notions of work, prayer and what we might call the monastic aesthetic.

Via @ayjay on twitter.

A surprisingly thoughtful take on what Christianity can take from as well as offer to ‘hipster’ culture. And a reversal of the ‘Benedict option’ that seems to be gaining steam. Perhaps a ‘Franciscan’ or ‘Dominican’ option instead?

[locusimperium]

When I teach theology classes, I often start with an exercise about various levels of theological disagreement. 1). “This theological view is not mine, but I’m glad it’s on the landscape to add variety and to challenge me.” - For me this includes process theology, narrative/postliberal theologies, etc. 2). “This theological view is not mine, but it’s harmless enough that I’m willing to let it slide without challenge.” - Non-Chalcedonian Orthodoxy fits this slot for me. 3). “This theological view is not mine, and it’s problematic enough to where I’m going to devote my efforts to providing a better alternative in my own work.” - Denials of the Trinity are here for me, as is biblical literalism. 4). “This theological view is so problematic that I think that it’s bad for humanity that anyone holds it, and adherents should be actively discouraged from believing it.” - Theologies that view the earth as ultimately disposable to God’s plan of redemption are here for me, and of course any hate-based theology such as Westboro Baptist. I then ask them to provide an example of a theological statement (not a school or formal notion, unless they know some already) that fits into each category for them. It’s a helpful exercise.

Robert Saler (via locusimperium)

[nbcommonplace]

Apparently, Boney M now counts as sacred music? A new low in Christmas Eve services.

[nbcommonplace]

It just got so much worse … A video telling the gospel story in emoji’s. I’m not even kidding.

[nbcommonplace]

I forgot to mention... The service was officiated by a 50 year old white dude in jorts and a hoodie.

[nbcommonplace]

Apparently, Boney M now counts as sacred music? A new low in Christmas Eve services.

[nbcommonplace]

It just got so much worse ... A video telling the gospel story in emoji's. I'm not even kidding.

[nbcommonplace]

Apparently, Boney M now counts as sacred music? A new low in Christmas Eve services.

[nbcommonplace]

Three lessons emerge from the Canadian experience with tolerance and intolerance. First, intolerance – the marginalization of difference – doesn’t work. It may seem to provide a solution in the short term. But in the long run it is bound to fail. Second, intolerance imposes inhumane and unacceptable costs in terms of human suffering and lost human and economic potential. Third, the way forward is not to use intolerance to eliminate difference, but embrace tolerance in the spirit of reconciliation.

Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin, “Unity, diversity and cultural genocide”, the Globe and Mail, May 29, 2015.

[gospelofthekingdom]

It is tragic to see how the religious sentiment of the West has become so individualized that concepts such as “a contrite heart,” have come to refer only to the personal experiences of guilt and willingness to do penance for it. The awareness of our impurity in thoughts, words and deeds can indeed put us in a remorseful mood and create in us the hope for a forgiving gesture. But if the catastrophical events of our days, the wars, mass murders, unbridled violence, crowded prisons, torture chambers, the hunger and the illness of millions of people and the unnamable misery of a major part of the human race is safely kept outside the solitude of our hearts, our contrition remains no more than a pious emotion.

Henri Nouwen (via gospelofthekingdom)

[the-communion-of-saints]

The people who know God well—mystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God—always meet a lover, not a dictator.

Richard Rohr (via the-communion-of-saints)

[nbcommonplace]

But because of his telling, many who did not believe have come to believe, and some who did not care have come to care. He tells the story, out of infinite pain, partly to honor the dead, but also to warn the living - to warn the living that it could happen again and that it must never happen again. Better than one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.

Elie Wiesel, Night. 

[nbcommonplace]

She and two more whom I have seen in my life - who were saints in their own opinions - have terrified me more than all the sinners I ever saw.

Saint Teresa of Avila, from "A Life of Prayer"

[nbcommonplace]

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being a what God means it to be it is obeying him. It 'consents,' so to speak, in his creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree. The more a tree is like itself, the more it is like him. If it tried to be like something else which it was never intended to be, it would be less like God, and therefore it would give him less glory.

Thomas Merton, in "New Seeds of Contemplation"

[nbcommonplace]

My friend, the real truth is almost always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so.

Dostoevsky, in "The Possessed"

[nbcommonplace]

To be silent is a great talent.

Dostoevsky, in "The Possessed"

[nbcommonplace]

Most human beings, of course, are not able to stand the message of the shaking of the foundations. They reject and attack the prophetic minds, not because they really disagree with them, but because they sense the truth of their words and cannot receive it

Paul Tillich, in "The Shaking of the Foundations"

[locusimperium]

Inscription of Walter Brueggeman’s The Prophetic Imagination. Amen.

[nbcommonplace]

In prison, I feel at home among sinners. In the churches there are sinners too. But they think they are saints, and I do not feel at home.

Karl Barth, 1962

[nbcommonplace]

Barth objects to all attempts at ‘proof’—St Anselm’s, or St Aquinas’s—as misunderstandings (more precisely; he argues that subsequent thinkers have mistaken the grounds and purposes of these ‘proofs’) of the nature of the way that lies between God and man. In The Word of God and the Word of Man he insists: ‘there is no way from us to God—not even a via negativa—not even a via dialectica nor paradoxica. The God who stood at the end of some human way would not be God.’ If that looks as though Barth’s beef is with a human arrogance and superbus in thinking we can define, or determine, or in some sense fix God, that’s actually only part of it. For Barth, the point is as much that positive assertion as to the existence of God is replaced, theologically speaking, with a mystic negation of the human. In crude terms, the road does not run from man to God; it runs from God to man. This is also the thrust of that splendid though rather under-appreciated piece of creative theology, The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The babel-fish knows the truth. Once we accept that proof denies faith, we find ourselves in the situation where any absolute certainty as to the existence of God would be precisely the grounds on which God ceases to exist. ‘Proof denies faith’, here, means something more than ‘proof would tend to degrade or corrode faith’. It means, more starkly: proof and faith together constitute a zero-sum game. The NT lapel-badge says: The fool hath said in his heart, I am certain of God.

Adam Roberts, ‘On Faith and Doubt’, December 24th, 2015.

It’s refreshing to see an atheist with a better grasp of Barth than most Christian theologians. To be sure, I don’t think it’s quite accurate to describe Barth’s position as a “mystic negation of the human”, but there has been a tendency to minimize the radical reversal of the theological path that Barth argues.