Shame is a nefarious enemy of grace that thrives on the backward glance. Shame keeps craning our necks to look at our past with downcast eyes, as a life to regret. There are highly spiritualized forms of this fixation that parade themselves as holiness. But in fact this is the antithesis to grace. Shame lives off the lie of spiritual self-improvement, which is why my past is viewed as a failure. Grace lives off the truth of God’s wonder-working mercy—my past, my story, is taken up into God and God’s story. God is writing a new chapter of my life, not starting a new book after throwing out the first draft of my prior existence. Shame denies that our very being is possibility, whereas grace, by nature, is futural. Grace is the good news of unfathomable possibility.
The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (1586) by El Greco:
What is going on in these strange paintings where saints and sinners separated by centuries inhabit the same scene? Is this a feature of ignorance, a quaint relic of a primitive humanity for whom historical consciousness had not yet dawned? Could these painters not tell time? Or is it, rather, a signal of the peculiar nature of sacred time? In these paintings, all created for liturgical contexts, Christian spirituality is the original quantum theory. The burghers of a fourteenth-century Spanish town and the bishop of a fifth-century African city are part of the same worship service. Mendicant friars from the early Renaissance encounter the resurrected Jesus alongside desert fathers. In a chapel, at prayer, the cosmos folds in such a way that Christ and Cecilia are contemporaries.
(from How to Inhabit Time by James K. A. Smith)
An interesting meditation from Ellen Charry on the vexed relationship between church and synagogue (personified as two women in these 13th c. sculptures). Charry points out how the church, in its reception of texts like Luke 18:9-14 (the parable of the proud Pharisee and the penitent tax collector), came to embody the opposite spirit of the text. The church learned to pride itself on its humility (on being the humble tax collector) and learned to look down with contempt on the self-righteous Jews (identified with the Pharisee).
It seems the church forgot Paul’s warning in Romans 11 to Gentiles who had been grafted in: “But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches…. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear.” (vv. 17-18, 20)
Peacemakers (1997) by Paul Hobbs:
Gentle Breeze (2009) by Paul Hobbs:
David Ford’s recent commentary on the Gospel of John features the artwork of Paul Hobbs on the cover, which led me to investigate his other work…
Firewater:
Finished reading: A Spirituality of Fundraising (Henri Nouwen Spirituality) by Henri J.M. Nouwen 📚
Henri J. M. Nouwen , on how spiritual fundraising is driven more by the goal of communion than by the hope of a return on investment:
In the world, those who raise funds must show potential donors a strategic plan that convinces donors their money will help to increase the productivity and success of the organization. In the new communion, productivity and success may also grow as a result of fundraising. But they are only by-products of a deeper creative energy, the energy of love planted and nurtured in the lives of people in and through our relationship with Jesus. With the right environment and patient care, these seeds can yield a great harvest, “thirty and sixty and a hundredfold” (Mark 4:20). Every time we approach people for money, we must be sure that we are inviting them into this vision of fruitfulness and into a vision that is fruitful. We want them to join us so that together we begin to see what God means when God says, “Be fruitful” (Gen. 1:28).
Dinos bearing gifts
Brad East, commenting on how surprising it is (or ought to be) that American evangelicals so passionately embrace C. S. Lewis, given many of his beliefs and practices (a phenomenon I’ve pondered and drawn attention to from time to time):
Lewis was not much of an American evangelical—that is, not a primitivist, not a teetotaler, not a literal reader of Genesis 1–11, not a strict inerrantist, not a Young Earth Creationist, not a Zwinglian on the Supper, not hesitant about sacred tradition, not anti-creedal, not anti-paedobaptism, not anti-establishmentarian, not anti-sacramental, not congregationalist, not anti-evolution, not squeamish about pagan or secular culture, not allergic to “catholic” language about the saints or sacraments or liturgy. […]
If there were a similar author today, would American evangelicals feel about him the way they feel (now) about Lewis? Would they blurb his books and invite him to conferences? Would they push him into pulpits and put his works in the hands of young people? Would they move heaven and earth to publish him in their flagship journals and magazines? Would they feel that he represented them, giving eloquent voice to their life and faith as believers?
What I don’t mean is: Could someone like this get a hearing today? Clearly there are plenty of Anglican (and not a few old-school Presbyterian) authors and speakers who fit the bill and don’t seem to have trouble getting published or finding venues. I would argue that many of them code “moderate” or occasionally “left of center” to normie evangelicals, but even still: they exist.
No, what I mean is: No one that I can think of who meets most/all of these descriptions would be received across the board—by charismatics, by non-denom-ers, by Baptists, by Reformed, by conservatives, by hardliners, by squishy nonpartisan types—as “our guy,” as “one of us,” as fundamentally non-threatening and unqualifiedly lauded. I just can’t see it. Whether it’s the “catholic” language and doctrine, or the personal life, or the evolution stuff, or the scriptural issues, or the elite status—one or another item would prove one too many.