I started the book today and Richard Rohr was mentioned in the first paragraph of the preface, so I was hooked from that moment. I quickly discover the main character, Chase Falson, is a evangelical pastor who is having a faith crisis. I could easily relate to that as I went through one several years ago. After Chase was asked to take a long walk off a short pier.... well, not really, just stay out of the church he built from scratch until he started believing and preaching exactly like he believed when he started the church. He heads to Italy to visit with the family's black sheep, a Baptist cousin he calls Uncle Kenny who became a Roman Catholic Franciscan.
Aaah, sounds like a similarity of moving from right wing religion to left wing.
I'll put a few quotes that landed in a spot that makes me want to mentally play with them and hopefully that will help me sort out my journey into becoming a Franciscan.
p. 8: “... the way I live my life falls sadly short of the way Francis lived
his. While writing this book I spent a lot of sleepless nights wondering what
it would mean to live the gospel as beautifully and radically as he did. I can
only pray that one day I will have the courage and madcap desire to follow Jesus
with such impractical abandon.”
They'd probably put me on anti-psychotic medications if I followed Jesus like Francis did. But I'd like to have the dedication, the joy, the boldness and courage that he showed in "Brother Sun, Sister Moon." Watching that last year sums up what I know about him - except for the cement garden statues which I presume he isn't.
p. 16: “Following Jesus use to be so tidy. Every question had a logical answer. Every mystery had a rational explanation. The day I walked across the stage to pick up my seminary degree, I thought I had God pretty well figured out. Everything I believed was boxed, filed and housed on a shelf.”
That is what I went through. I desperately needed a tidy God who had a tidy system and no loose ends. Maybe because my childhood was untidy - not knowing when I'd wake up and discover they'd taken Dad to the hospital and Ms. Gudd would be babysitting me. I so much needed and wanted a predictable God; and God acted predictable for decades until He got me hooked on His magnificent love. Then I can say God tricked me; He made me fall in love with Him and then when my heart was captured if I don't love Him back it is like fire shut up in my bones (my paraphrase of Jeremiah 20:7-10). I couldn't stop loving God back any more then I could grow 5 inches taller. Clear down into my bones - loving Him is tied into who I am. If this was a different century, I'd probably be burned as a heretic when I say the following that is my truth, "The more I know God, the more I know me; the more I know me, the more I know God." I don't know how or why it works that way - or how long it will work that way but it amazes me and puts a different focus on my quest to know God more. Yet, it doesn't seem to be coming from the egocentric part of me, but from something deeper and more primitive - that same place I am blessed to sometimes touch in contemplation. Words can't describe it; but my heart knows where home is and that's my spiritual home. Maybe the dark night is the homing device functioning and not, as I once presumed, my spirituality malfunctioning?
p. 16: “Why do I have this sneaking suspicion I’ve been reading from a theological script someone else wrote? Is this my faith or one I bought into as a kid without really thinking about it? Why do I feel ashamed that I have doubts and questions about stuff?”
When I read that, I could relate. It also sounded like a prelude to what Richard Rohr would call the 2nd half of life. From the little I know about the mystical tradition, maybe this is a definition of the dark night of the soul? When reality and faith crash into each other and God doesn't pop out of the magic bottle like a genie with three answers - but trusted me to keep trusting Him even through the confusion and doubt were raging. When I started the faith crisis and I thought I needed answers and God was silent, I was mad. I was fearful. I was questioning. I wanted to quit but couldn't give up on God even though it felt like He'd given up on me. For me, there was a lot of shame because I felt God turned His back on me and I probably had unconfessed sin or life would have continued working according to what I had grown to expect. The old methodology no longer worked. God was doing a new thing and as far as I knew, He didn't give any warning that He was changing the rules. I can giggle about that now; but it was very real and very traumatic at the time.
Through that ordeal, I discovered the need and the method to release the "shame" of not knowing. I remembered a quote Rev. Marti Powell use to say, "If God wanted me perfect, He would have created me Diety; He chose to create me humanity." I don't have to have the answers. I don't even have to understand things enough to have questions. I don't HAVE to know. I don't HAVE to figure it out. When I accepted being human, all I want to do is the Great Commandment: "Love God and Love others." That made life so free and open. I don't have to decipher who is "worthy" of receiving God's love through me, I'm just called to love. I threw away the inner script of "How to be a Successful Christian" and started taking tottering, toddling baby steps toward love. Ah, heck, I don't even do that very good - but I'm not Deity so I'm okay with being a lousy lover.... but I'm headed in the right direction of wanting to love like Jesus loves. I can rejoice in the dissonance of knowing I'm a lousy lover and wanting to become a proficient lover - who doesn't judge but loves wholly, holy and with egalitarian generosity. As I take baby steps in that direction - life seems so much more spacious and free... spacious enough there is more room for others to grow in my heart without me feeling pressure to be other than who I am. My life is so full of joy and peace. I can't begin to put THAT miracle into words. Egocentric me having room in her heart for others? Hummm. Sounds fishy..... ;-) And the fish is a symbol of Christianity! Bring on the fishy-ness. ;-)
p. 40, (Uncle Kenny talking and part of the conversation not included) "... a priest in the middle ages could have come to one of his superiors and shared... his disillusionment. ..... The Middle Ages were an age of transition, and people were fed up with the old way of following Jesus.
One of the things I love about being Anglican is having a spiritual director. I go to Father Gerald a few times a year and I feel loved, accepted, valued and heard - even when I spent my hour talking about all the spiritual things that are confusing and don't make sense. When I discuss my doubts. When I cry over what I feel God was unjust in allowing to happen. As he gives unconditional acceptance and gentle guidance, it helps me accept myself - doubts and all. The past two times my spiritual direction has centered more around how to get where I want to go and if he perceives that is a direction that I should be going and what pitfalls I might watch out for. I have a feeling that spiritual direction is becoming more of a "how do I go deeper in God" now that I've accepted that the spiritual walk includes a crust of dissonance layered over a symphony of joy layered over the utter stillness and quietude of God's peace.
p. 43 "Who said God's always rational?"
That quote caught me by surprise. My initial response was "Of course he's rational; he has to be systematically rational to hold all the electrons from flying off the protron/neutrons that hold everything together - to keep the planets in their solar systems and their galaxies. God has to be very rational to keep everything running smoothly. (Col 1.17)
But is there one thing rational about sending your son to become Incarnate and dying for humanity? That may have been the most expedient way, but rational? I'm not philosophically trained, but it plum don't make any common sense to me. It would seem the rational way would have been something magnificent that couldn't be doubted so all could believe. But a baby born in a cow's manger by a virgin mommy? A baby who grows into a man crucified between a good thief and an unrepentant thief? Yet it did show those who had ears to hear about the Incarnation: God in man, and man in God. God in me, and me in God. Yet, even many Christians don't believe that; at least about themselves - and the Incarnation is the main difference between Christianity and other world religions (at least that's what my learned friends teach and I trust them). As I start to unpack the Incarnation, it has erased the little fear I still harboured about death. It is starting to encourage me to more abundant life and to accept life on life's terms. It has given me joy. I wonder what other nuggets will appear as I unwrap that beautiful gift from my loving Abba YHWH.
If God was rational, then He'd keep giving us answers so people didn't have to go through the painful dark night of the soul; yet that irrational traumatic time is the precursor to such blessings that it should be a sacrament.... but becoming a sacrament would put it on our scheduled time frame rather then being the big surprise party from God.
p. 44-47 "Francis lived in the gap between two historical periods -- the Middle Ages and the pre-Renaissance (the opening days of modernity). We're living in the synapse between two moments in history as well -- modernity and post-modernity.".....In Francis's day the church was seen as hypocritical, untrustworthy and irrelevant. Some even wondered if it would survive. Clergy were at the center of all kinds of sexual scandals. It had commercialized Jesus, selling pardons, ecclesiastical offices, and relics. The laity felt used by the professional clergy as if they were there to serve the institution and not the other way around. The church had also become dangerously entangled in the world of power politics and war. Disillusionment with the church inspired many people to turn to astrologers and many other spiritualities. Greed ran riot in the culture. To top it all off, Christians were at war with Muslims. ..... (Francis did) the best way to overhaul something was to keep your mouth shut and simply do it better."
Being history naive, this was fascinating to me. It was like sitting around listening to Christians talk about the problems with the church or the occasional newscast I read.
Reading on the author says Francis eventually had 30,000 followers who chose the simple life of acting like Christ and may have single-handedly kept Christianity from becoming extinct. I'm not ambitious, I have no desire to start a new way of doing Christianity that will change the world - I'll leave that to young men like Shaine Claybourne. But it encourages me that Christianity, like the world at large, is on the bring of a new dawn. How exciting to live in these times.
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I did 4 of the daily office prayers and one Eucharist. I feel so well-fed by my Lord today. I find the BAS and BCP confusing for the office, so used www.divineoffice.org I found listening and reading plus the music helped me stay focused; I also liked the built-in times for contemplation.
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