Is Faith a Place?

A friend from the Leap suggested that we find a way to keep this blog going. At first I wasn't sure how this would work without the shared content of our sessions in the Village, but I was recently in a discussion with some people from my church and a subject came up that I thought might be worth discussing, especially with folks from Holden and/or the Leap program.

We were talking about faith and how usually we think of faith as an individual possession or experience, something we hold in our hearts or our heads, something between us and God. But as we were talking I realized that one of the most profound gifts of living at Holden is the sense that faith is something that you can feel, almost tangibly, in the community. Something about the place and about the community seemed to make my own faith more concrete, more joyful, more peace-granting, more of a real possibility. Maybe, I thought out loud, it was because so many Holden people have taken a kind of risk or staked something or given something up to be there, and that recklessness gave me the license or inspiration to allow my own faith to come out of the box I usually keep it in. As I was struggling to articulate this, there were some looks of recognition on other faces in our group, and as the conversation continued it turned out that many of these young Christians had similar experiences in places they had been--at a youth camp or a monastary or in a particular faith community. Since then, I've thought a little more about my grandparent's experience as missionaries in prison camp and how that may have related to how they thought about Holden while they were directors there. All of this makes me wonder whether there are others who have felt that faith is more connected to places and communities than we often think. If we start to define faith as something other than mere rational assent to a creed--if we, like many of the thinkers we studied in the Leap, start to connect faith more closely to action and the moral courage to live out a truth--can we start to see faith as something that moves, and grows, and maybe only really exists in and through groups and communities? If that's true, does it become our responsibility as sharers of the good news to transform our home communities, rather than merely preach to them? Part of me gets very nervous about this kind of question, because I still believe each of us has to face the God of law and grace on our own, as individuals. And maybe all our church group was really talking about and yearning for was a more fulfilling experience of the "Church" or "the Spirit" or something else. Still, I am left wondering whether it's a coincidence that so many of us seem to have found our faith powerfully manifested in places like Holden Village, places that seem so different from where we are destined to live out most of our lives. I'd be really interested to hear what others think and feel about these questions--does your faith have a home base?

“We had to wait a long time, didn’t we?”

Sometimes our prayers take a long time to answer because we don’t know what to ask for. At the conclusion of Gilead, the narrator finds his peace only when he is able to let go of a nurtured grudge he could barely admit to holding. Strangely, only the troublesome Jack Boughton can release him from the snare he set for himself; he does so in a surpriseing revelation that manages to tie up many of the loose ends in Reverend Ames’ life, even as it leaves many of the people he loves in a wilderness with only the God of Hagar and Ishmael to provide for them. By the novel's close we are left wondering what it means to trust in God, and whether the gospel message of personal salvation and liberation from fear might also be linked to America's ability to be a braver country. Has this quiet novel about a small town--where Lithuanian Lutherans count as diversity—told us something important about racial injustice in America? Can our Christian callings give us the strength to seek out and proclaim a grace that transcends our comfort zones and to participate in a church that must sometimes stand in opposition to conventional morality? What would we want to include in our life stories, our letters to the next generation? And what does God will for us in the brief span of time before we also get to "sleep"?

Suggested Readings:
Gilead, pp. 209-247

“. . . .what you must see here is just an old man struggling with the difficulty of understanding what it is he’s struggling with."

John Ames is not at peace. For all his wise observations about himself and the world, we find in the middle of the novel that somewhere deep inside there are truths he would rather not convey to his son, wounds and sins and resentments he does not yet know how to name. If a wise elder can at death’s very door discover conflicts in himself that he has hidden from himself, what might the rest of us be suppressing? How much courage would it take for us to unearth the sins and hurts buried within our personal histories? Or is it a matter best directed by an agent from outside--an angel unawares who can surprise or provoke us to actions that might save us from ourselves?

Suggested Readings:Gilead, pp. 126-173

“Sometimes the visionary aspect of any particular day comes to you in the memory of it, or it opens to you over time.”

The visions in Gilead come in many forms—from the abolitionist grandfather’s witness to the Lord's touch to the youngest Reverend Ames’ witness to a life of beauty and grace that continues to surprise him even after nearly eighty years of living. But there are also visions here that unveil themselves only gradually, gathering strength over time, until in memory they take on the sheen of the sacred. As he digs further into his past, and as that past’s relation to the present continues to intrude on his reflections, John Ames’ letter to his son pushes us to wonder whether holy wisdom can emerge from within our own personal histories. Might the act of writing the truth about our lives open bring wisdom to the writer as well as the reader? Could each of our lives provide opportunities to witness to the presence of the sacred in the world? And how can we tell or know the truth about ourselves at all without travelling to the places where we are weak and wounded?

Suggested Reading:
Gilead, pp. 85-125

Gilead: "A Rich Book"

Marilynne Robinson's novel, Gilead, was a long time coming, and at first it may be hard to see why. The story of a terminally ill pastor in rural Iowa unravels in the form of a long letter to his young son. Reverend John Ames's remarks at first seem an unremarkable attempt by a dying man to convey a family history, his "begats" as he calls them, to a boy he will never know as an adult. Yet as we read we begin to be struck by just how extraordinary an ordinary life can be. Moments of clarity and wonder appear in the text like drops of rain catching sun; plodding along quietly, readers will suddenly find themselves face to face with a sentence or a paragraph that unapologetically confronts them with the full richness of life. This is a novel of hidden treasures, a love song to a planet "that deserves all the attention we can give it." In religious terms, it is a baptism and a blessing that acknowledges the sacredness of the everyday in a way that may make readers want to rediscover it for themselves. Is this kind of story, then, this kind of life, the best kind of theology?

Suggested Reading:
Gilead, 3-85 (". . . Bible.")

“Setting the stage for Armageddon is not a defensible foreign policy. Peace is.”

Madeleine Albright seems to believe that a “historic opportunity” now exists to use common religious beliefs to build bridges between political parties in the United States and political factions elsewhere. Is this pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking, especially in an era characterized by rancorous and often religiously infused partisanship at home and spiraling civil conflicts in Africa and the Middle East? Does the fact that politically conservative Christians are finding new reasons to care about AIDS in Africa provide a sign that international humanitarian concerns might become more politically significant in Washington? Can religion become a reason for Americans to find their suffering neighbors in foreign lands? How might religion, so often a contributing cause in the world’s violent conflicts, become a conduit for new beginnings and possibilities for peace? And if, as Albright suggests, the United States now has no choice but to talk about God in our foreign policy discussions, how can we prevent our god-talk from inflaming dangerous religious hatreds?

Suggested Readings:
Madeleine Albright, The Mighty and the Almighty, Chapters 7, 9 and 11
The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)

“The United States doesn’t have friends. The United States has interests.” ~ Ghosts of Rwanda

Reading Madeleine Albright’s book The Mighty and the Almighty allows us to look behind closed doors of political power into the moral considerations and compromises of someone whose decisions have had a massive impact on the world. Her example prompts us to wonder how compatible moral obligations are with national interests and how they factor into policy decisions that can spell life or death for millions. How do we balance political “realism” with religious duties and callings? Is is it always a dangerous road to connect religious beliefs to policy? Could a little more moral courage, compassion, or faith in high places have helped America and the world respond more humanely to the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur? Why is human suffering and injustice abroad seen by many as outside the national interest of what is so often described as a “Christian nation”? Especially during election week, should we be trying to reconcile our religious callings and moral convictions with our status as voting members of the most powerful nation in the world?

Suggested Readings:
Madeleine Albright, The Mighty and the Almighty, Chapters 4 and 5

Is Forgiveness For Real?

Everyone seems to be in favor of forgiveness as an abstract religious value, but this week we're exploring how it might be realized in practical ways for individuals, communities, and even nations. As we read Desmond Tutu's book, No Future Without Forgiveness, we may marvel at how South Africans involved in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission were able to forgive the agents of great suffering, but are we really ready to let the guilty go free in our own lives? How do we balance justice with forgiveness? Do we who have accepted the divine gift of grace have an added responsibility (or incentive) to further the cause of forgiveness in the world? Can the TRC model of resotrative, rather than retributive justice work in America?

Suggested readings:
Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness, Chapter 2 and 4

How do we face our prodigal fathers?

All through Old School and the Gospel of John, we saw glimpses of the truth, love, and strength that seem only to emerge through weakness, a weakness that finds its ultimate expression in western culture in the idea of a God on the cross. Perhaps this theme of weakness helps explain why a secular novel is so thoroughly seeded with Christian references, and why in the end it is an echo of the parable of the prodigal son that helps bring the novel to its graceful conclusion. Still, the conclusion leaves us with questions. Why must we so often come to ourselves only by waking up far from home, among the swine? Why do we insist on earning the many graces in life that we know we cannot merit--including life itself? How do our desires to avoid both grace and judgment lead to lives of quiet desperation, bereft of the sorts of leaps and risks to which the writers in these sessions seem to be calling us? Can we make peace with God, when that god so foolishly--so infuriatingly--rewards us, and worse, our erring brothers and sisters, without considering our respective merits? What would it mean to join in the feast of the prodigal father, and whom might we invite to join in that celebration?

Suggested Readings:
Old School, Finish the Novel
Gospel of John, 18:33--19:7
Gospel of Luke, Chapter 15

Stronger than Human Strength

Both the Gospel of John and Old School are texts that ultimately hinge on the revelation of weakness, but both seem to suggest that weakness once revealed can also be a source of strength. What makes revealing intimate truths dangerous? Why does the revelation of even divine truths--perhaps especially divine truths--in the Gospel of John lead so quickly to the cross and Golgotha? What prevents the narrator in Old School from revealing truths about himself to his classmates and even the readers of the novel, for whom he remains nameless? How do Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway affect his definition of personal truth? What leads us to shrink from the possibility of personal revelation, and what might be gained were we to overcome our fears?

Suggested Readings:
Gospel of John, 5-13 (Special Focus on 12:20-26, 13:1-17)
Old School, 63-127

"What is Truth?" "Who was he, really?"

Starting today, Living the Leap is undertaking a parallel study of the Gospel of John and Tobias Wolff's novel, "Old School." While it might seem that such different texts provide little common ground, each in its own way tries to answer profound questions of truth and identity. While the writer of John has Pilate ask Jesus "What is Truth?," "Old School" asks of nearly everyone in the novel--from the nameless schoolboy narrator to the Holocaust survivor who cleans up after him--"Who was he, really?" Putting the books together prompts us to ponder how our own personal truths, and our true persons, relate to the Christ who says "I am the way, the truth and the life." It makes us wonder whether "secular literature" can convey a "gospel truth" and whether sacred stories can touch the profane elements of human experience. Both make us question why "we shrink from revelation," as Kierkegaard puts it, and encourage us to examine why it is often hard to tell the truth about ourselves. Finally each might lead us to ask, audaciously, whether our true stories, when we tell them truly, can become part of the improbable revelation of the Word.

Suggested Readings:
Gospel of John, Chapters 1-4 (Special Focus on 1:1-18, 3-21)
Old School, pp. 3-60

"What is Christianity, and who is Christ, for us today?"

Bonhoeffer's last letters from prison contain some radical and controversial ideas about the future of Christianity and the church, which he based on his growing conviction that Christians must follow Christ by being in the world for others--even when it required them to suffer hardship and death. From his cell in Tegel he wrote that "it is only by living completely in the world that one learns to have faith" and that "the church is the church only when it exists for others." Bonhoeffer also had some radical suggestions for renewing the church to serve in the modern world: "To make a start, it should give away all its property to those in need. . . . The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating but helping and serving." Are these the wild thoughts of homesick prisoner, or is there something we can learn from Bonhoeffer's descriptions of a "religionless Christianity"? What would this kind of Christianity look like and what would it be good for? How are our churches serving as Christ's body in the world, and when are they merely self-serving? What would our home congregations look like if they woke up "religionless" next Sunday?

Suggested Readings:
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison
18-23 November 1943 (128-138); 26-29 November 1943 (144-150); 15 December 1943 (160-164); 21 February 1944 (216-218); 30 April 1944 (279-283); 5 May 1944 (285-287); 29 May 1944 (310-312); 27 June 1944 (335-337); 16 July 1944 (357-361) 28 July 1944 (374-375); “Outline for a Book” (380-383); 21 August 1944 (391-394); 23 August 1944 (392-394). Poem: “Stations on the Road to Freedom” (370-371)

"What is God's Will?"

If Dietrich Bonhoeffer has become one of the best known twentieth-century theologians, that celebrity is certainly based as much on what he did as on what he wrote. As a pastor influenced by pacifism, he eventually became the moral backbone of a conspiracy to overthrow the Nazi regime in Germany and assassinate Adolf Hitler. In doing so he went against the grain of Lutheran ethical teachings and practices that had been dominant for hundreds of years, but did he also violate some of his most dearly held Christian principles? How does one make (or refuse to make) this kind of choice as a Christian? How do we locate our ethical responsibilities when all the choices seem to be wrong? Can honoring an abstract moral principle sometimes lead to a concrete moral failure? Is it possible that sometimes "sinning boldly" is preferable to doing nothing at all?

Suggested Readings
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison
“After Ten Years: A Reckoning made at New Year 1943” (3-17)
Letter to Eberhard Bethge, 21 July, 1944 (369-370)
Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations
96. Witness (p.401-406)

"Are we still of any use?"

"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds. . . . We have been drenched by many storms. . . . We have learned the art of equivocation and pretense. . . . Experience has made us suspicious of others, and kept us from being truthful and open . . . . Are we still of any use?"
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In a world where mass media has made every atrocity accessible as superficial "knowledge," how can a knowledgable individual act concretely and morally? Are we passively drawing lines between true neighbors and expendable statistics every day when we turn on CNN? Do we have a moral responsibility not only to speak truth to power in a moral crisis, but to "live truth" to power? What is Holden Village's place in the moral landscape of a networked world?

Recomended Viewing:
"Bonhoeffer" a film by Martin Doblmeier

"Everybody knew."

Several of our group just watched the powerful Frontline documentary on the Rwandan genocide, "Ghosts of Rwanda." Even though it's not officially part of our program, I thought it would be worthwhile to make a space available for posting thoughts and comments, especially since tomorrow we will be viewing a documentary on Bonhoeffer's relationship to the evils of Nazism and the Holocaust. We are perhaps a little too comfortable discussing the WWII era, which for many of us is a comfortably distant past. Rwanda brings up the uncomfortable fact that anyone who lived through the 1990s lived through a genocide. I wonder what I was doing for those 100 days in which nearly a million human beings were being slaughtered. I wonder (perhaps with Kierkegaard) about the value of knowing a truth--in this case the truth that a genocide is taking place--when I am not prepared to live up to the implications of that truth. Isn't this something that I, not just America or the UN, need to be forgiven for? What do we do with our culpability and where we go from here?

Highly Recommended:
"Ghosts of Rwanda"

"Who do you say that I am?"

Kierkegaard had a difficult life and has been described as unbalanced or even insane, yet some of the craziest things he says are quotations and expansions of the New Testament. Reading Matthew 6:24, or Mark 8:27-38, or Luke 6:20-30, or John 1:1-5, or I Corinthians 1:18-2:5, we find "good news" from a God that seems determined to upset our applecarts, a God who might be accused of theological, cultural, social, economic, and religious insanity--in short, we find the incarnate-eternal impossibility of Jesus Christ, the God Kierkegaard insists on calling the God-man. How do we face that kind of radical incarnation? What does it mean for you to follow a God like that? What is so offensive about a God on a cross, a god who brings human limbs into the heart of the divine trinity? Are we really finding such a God in our churches, or are we becoming the sort of "Christendom" that only plays at being Christian? These are hard questions Kierkegaard poses. How can we answer them in and with our lives today?

Suggested Readings in Kierkegaard:
Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations, Charles E. Moore, ed. (New York: Orbis, 2003)
45. The Offense (171-172)
52. How God Relates Inversely (187-89)
61. Christ (222-24)
62. Christendom and Counterfeit Christianity (226-35)
63. The Cross (236-238)

Recommended Fiction and Poetry:
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor" from The Brothers Karamasov
Dante, The Divine Commedy, first and final eight stanzas.

"Whom Shall I Fear?"

One of Kierkegaard's most cutting psychological insights is that fear obstructs true Christian life in a way few sins can. Cowardice, rather than some more glamorous sin, often leads to our greatest moral failures--the greatest of which is perhaps our failure to live fully and deliberately. What is it that holds us back from a fuller engagement with the promises and directives of Christian life? What prevents us from taking risks? Are we finally most frightened of each other and especially of that Kierkegaardian bugaboo, "The Crowd"? How have you been helped or hindered in a leap by the experience and opinions of others?

Suggested Readings in Kierkegaard:
Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations, Charles E. Moore, ed. (New York: Orbis, 2003)
78. The Individual (315-19)
64. The Crowd (239-44)
5. The Task (19-22)
6. Against the Crowd (23-24)
9. Purity of Heart (34-38)
13. Truth is the Way (51-54)

Recommended Fiction and Poetry:
Robert Frost, "Mending Wall" and "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening"
Ernest Hemingway, "Indian Camp"

Leaping into Kierkegaard

Holden's winter program on Living the Leap began on Monday, October 9th with a vespers service and an introductory session on the existential outlook of the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. One of the central concerns in Kierkegaard's work is the conviction that Christian truth is something which must be lived, and he encourages each of us to join the search for "truth that is true FOR me." This blog is an attempt to facilitate that search by allowing a forum for reflecting on and sharing those ideas that strike us most personally as we make our way through texts and conversations these coming weeks. We also want to encourage those who are not phsyically present at Holden to join in the conversation virtually on this site, so please keep an eye out for future postings with suggested readings and opportunities for response.
The suggested readings for the first two sessions were:
Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations, Charles E. Moore, ed. (New York: Orbis Books, 2003)
Introduction
69. Existence and the Existential (263-267)
95. Venturing and Risk (396-400)
1. Dare to Decide (3-8)
59. Becoming a Christian (214-218)

Recommended fiction and poetry:
Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken" and "After Apple-Picking"
Ernest Hemingway, "The Killers"

Welcome to Living the Leap

This is the online space dedicated to the Living the Leap program at Holden Village. It's a chance to interact with voices that encourage us to live life deliberately and faithfully to our callings. Some of those voices are fictional. Some are from characters that have passed from the scene. Some are from our present time. And some of them are our own as we converse in real and virtual communities. All of them--the narrators of Old School and Gilead, Soren Kierkegaard and Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Desmond Tutu and Madeleine Albright, the members of the Holden community here in the Cascades and out in cyberspace--can help us understand more about living and leaping. And so we invite you to be a part of the experience whether you are near or far. We welcome you to read along and comment any time. Tell us about the truths that are true for you. If you need to contact us directly, simply click on "View my complete profile" at the top right of the blog page, and then click on the Contact "Email" link.