On Resurrection Pastoring: Vintage St Eugene Peterson

I just found this in my journal from a few years ago; from an interview with St Eugene in Leadership magazine:

A student was telling me he saw a video on Michael Jordan. He said, “Michael Jordan looks so lazy. He looks like he’s not doing anything. Then suddenly, he’s through three people, and he’s slam-dunking the ball.” 

As a pastor, how do you slip through the opposition and make your point? You do it by being lazy—or what looks like being lazy—sitting in your study for half a day reading a book that doesn’t have anything to do with your sermon. 

Listening, paying attention to people is the most inefficient way to do anything. It’s tedious, and it’s boring, and when you do it, it feels like you’re wasting time and not getting anything done. So when the pressures start to mount, when there are committees to run to and budgets to fix, what’s got to go? Listening to people. Seeing them in their uniqueness, without expecting anything of them. 

You quit paying attention… 

Sometimes I’m with pastors who don’t wander around. They don’t waste time. Their time is too valuable. They run to the tomb, and it’s empty, so they run back. They never see resurrection. Meanwhile, Mary’s wasting time; she’s wandering around. 

Lord, have mercy.


Sorry I don't know what issue of the magazine.

McGrath, "Christianity's Dangerous Idea" and the Future of Protestant Denominations (like Anglican)

More Alister McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: the Protestant Revolution—a history from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first (HarperOne, 2007)…from page 404 on the future of the Protestant denomination (which includes us Anglicans):

This often strong sense of belonging and commitment to the local congregation is rarely extended to the denomination as a whole, which is likely to be viewed as an inefficient and redundant bureaucracy that makes serious financial demands of local congregations while giving little in return.

A fourth factor that has been identified as of significance by sociologists with a particular interest in Protestant denominations is the rise of “lay liberalism,” which erases the clear boundaries separating believers from unbelievers. Where evangelicalism emphasizes the distinctiveness of Christianity, this pragmatic, laid-back lay liberalism feels able to renegotiate Christian moral and theological principles in the light of prevailing social norms. This has led to an erosion of the boundary between “church” and “world”—but also between Protestant denominations. Without clear “faith boundaries,” identification with any particular form of Protestantism—indeed, even with Christianity itself—becomes socially meaningless.

What Do Driveling Little Doodles Have To Do With Christianity's Dangerous Idea?

Reading Alister McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: the Protestant Revolution—a history from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first (HarperOne, 2007)…from the public library, yet! Very good. Some bits that caught my eye:

Other nations might have been tempted to experiment with atheism or agnosticism in response to the religious intolerance and bigotry of the Puritan era. The English, however, decided to reinstate the Church of England instead, presumably believing that, for all intents and purposes, this amounted to more or less the same thing.

The same thing as atheism or agnosticism, that is. Hmmm. Does history repeat itself? He goes on:

Under Charles II, who reigned from 1660 to 1685, a decidedly docile form of Anglicanism emerged as the religion of the English establishment. The Church of England would be expected to be submissive to the expectations of the people and to keep its religious beliefs to itself rather than impose them on others. 142

Is there still the tendency to docile submissiveness to the spirit of the age and to keeping its beliefs to itself? I think so, alas. I do it myself.

On early protestantism in America

Whereas Massachusetts became a hotbed of Protestant religious experimentation, with generally secondary interests in commerce, southern colonies from Delaware to Georgia were primarily concerned with trade and saw religion as peripheral to this enterprise. It was an ideal context for Anglicanism to take root and flourish, primarily as the religion of the planting class. Long used to issues of social class and distinction, Anglicanism proved an ideal provider of a veneer of religious dignity to the social structures of the plantations that continued to the dawn of the nineteenth century. 154

Allowing our religion to be peripheral to our lives is still a hazard for Christians. So it devising a form of Anglicanism which merely provides a veneer of religious dignity to living and consuming like everyone else.

The problem with nineteenth century pastors

Who were seen by some as little more than “thin, vapid, affected, driveling little doodles.” 369

Ahem. I AM not thin.

A Lovely Description of the Bible

I'm reading Adam Nicolson, God's Secretaries: the making of the King James Bible. I love this sentence on the Bible:

It was the word of God, an enormous, direct, vastly complicated, infinitely interpretable account of what God meant by and for his creation. 122

Sums it up pretty well.

And to think those secretaries were essentially Anglican. Hadn't thought of that before.

Suffering and Christmastide

From Charles de Foucauld Meditations of a Hermit, part of one of the Readings for Reflection for this week in my A Guide to Prayer:

May these days of Christmas festival bring you, in your suffering, I do not say consolation, but the blessing that God intends for you. The Child Jesus will perhaps not give you any sweetness,—he reserves that for the weak ones,—but his hands will none the less be spread to bless you in these days of Christmastide, and whether you feel it or no, he will pour abundant grace into your soul. (p 34)

Amen. And as the carol goes:

Yet in the dark streets shineth the everlasting light. 

A reminder of the reality of Christmas for many. Our Longest Night service this Sunday at 6pm acknowledges that reality and provides a place for people to express it in worship. 

St Eugene On the Challenges of Living in Community; Belonging to a Church, in Other Words

He just gets it so right every now and then:

Getting saved is easy; becoming a community is difficult—damnably difficult.

Vintage Eugene Peterson in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, (Eerdman's, 2005), p250. To which I would add joining a community can be difficult, along with staying in it when you become disillusioned with it—which really is still becoming, I suppose.

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: Vintage St Eugene on Jesus

I'm reading (and enjoying) Eugene Peterson's, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. A lovely few pages on Jesus in "Clearing the Playing Field," the first chapter. For example:

If the usefulness of the term "spirituality" is in its vague but comprehensive suggestiveness of everything Beyond and More and Deep, the term "Jesus" is useful as it gathers all the diffused varueness into a tight, cear, light-filled focus. p31

Jesus is the name that keeps us attentive to the God-defined, God-revealed life. The amorphous limpness so often associated with "spirituality" is given skeleton, sinews, definition, shape, and energy by the term "Jesus." p31

Jesus keeps our feet on the ground, attentive to children, in conversation with ordinary people, sharing meals with friends and strangers, listening to the wind, observing the wildflowers, touching the sick and wounded, praying simply and unselfconsciously. Jesus insists that we deal with God right here and now, in the place we find ourselves and with the people we are with. Jesus is God here and now. p33-34

You would think that believing that Jesus is God among us would be the hardest thing. It is not. It turns out that the hardest thing is to believe that God's work—this dazzling creation, this astonishing salvation, this cascade of blessings—is all being worked out in and under the conditions of our humanity: at picnics and around dinner tables, in conversations and while walking along roads, in puzzled questions and homely stories, with blind beggars and suppurating lepers, at weddings and funerals. Everything that Jesus does and says takes place within the limits and conditions of our humanity. p34

Jesus, all for Jesus. Vintage St Eugene.

The Easter Timer is Running

Professor John Stackhouse on The Subversiveness of Easter. I love the way he describes the present Good Friday/Holy Saturday situation.

Then he is buried. Gone. Out of sight, out of mind.

Like a ticking bomb.

Heh, heh.

All here. 

Reading and Listening: Goodies from Stephen Carter, Dallas Willard and Wayne Grudem

I have discovered a new writer! Stephen L Carter, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale, no less. I'm reading The Emperor of Ocean Park. His first novel, a "complex and smart mystery," they say, and a first-class read. One of his characters makes this observation in passing about the Episcopal Church:

You know us Episcopalians, ... We love to feel compassion for people. We're never happy unless we're ignoring somebody's sins to show how tolerant we are. (p135)

This is not what the book is about. I just noticed it because of all the hoo-ha we Anglicans are experiencing these days and because some Canadian Anglicans, especially of the Member-of-General-Synod variety, seem to have caught the same bug.

Thank God for MP3. I listened to Dallas Willard speaking at a Church Staff Retreat as I treadmilled recently. Some things he said which I had to write down as I trod:

When anger comes up in our standing for truth, then it's about winning not truth.

Disciplines are about cultivating grace.

God never gives anyone too much to do.

Paradise is already in session. We're already in eternity.

Work a modest day, step back and rest and you will be close to God.

He also spoke of life being a proper balance of family, rest, prayer, meditation and flower-sniffing. He said the disciplines to which he feels particularly called are fasting and memorizing Scripture. Also, on enough stuff:

We will trust Jesus for forgiveness of sins but not for the next sandwich.

Last but not least, from his Scottsdale Bible Church teachings, Wayne Grudem on inerrancy:

What the Bible says about any subject is true.

Inerrancy is to do with truthfulness not precision concerning events and when they happened.

He says each of us need to be reading the Bible, praying and walking with the LORD, otherwise we're starving ourselves spiritually.

Mario Bergner and Dennis Prager on Homosexuality

There's bit of reading involved, but if you want a couple of comprehensive, thoughtful pieces on homosexuality:

Canadian born Episcopal priest, Mario Bergner, has written a submission to the Anglican Communion's "Listening Process" which is being posted in parts over at Stand Firm:

Part one is here.

Part two is here.

Part three will be posted on Stand Firm shortly. Watch for it.

Then (thanks, Pat) there's Judaism's Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism (and then Christianity) Rejected Homosexuality by Dennis Prager, a Jewish writer and theologian, over at the Catholic Education Resource Center here.

More Enough, Already

I preached on this out of Luke 12.32-34 this morning and with reference to my previous post here. I also quoted Randy Alcorn's excellent and challenging book, Money, Possessions and Eternity.

He writes of a PBS television special called "Affluenza," which addressed what it called the "modern-day plague of materialism" (p31). Also,

God created us to love people and use things, but materialists love things and use people. 33

Then there's this which addresses both last week's gospel warning against covetousness and today's warning about possessions,

Greed surfaces in possessiveness and covetousness. Possessiveness relates to what we have, covetousness to what we want. Possessiveness is being selfish to what we own, not quick to share. To covet is to long for and to be preoccupied with having what God hasn't given us. It' s the passion to possess what is not ours. (p34)

Should I mention (confess) that God doesn't seem to have given me a sleek, shiny white MacBook? Sigh.

My morning St James Devotional Guide gospel this morning was from Mark 14. These two verses came at me with a wee twist:

51 And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, 52 but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.

"Ran away naked" was the phrase that lit up. You know how they do. Now that linen cloth was a fairly important possession from which to run away, I'd say. Why is the fact that it was linen recorded?

Perhaps we should be doing a little more of that, running away from our stuff, linen and otherwise; not naked necessarily, but more lightly clothed perhaps?

And, by the way, one final off-the-topic (wierdish) thought...Run Away Naked would be a good name for a band, I thought. I suggested it to my son the musician, but he was strangely unexcited. You heard it first here.

More than enough, already.

5 comments:

rbenhase said...

Interesting thoughts.

Sun Aug 12, 10:09:00 AM MDT 

Ronda said...

Hi Gene

A book I would recommend on a similar theme, is Sister Mary Jo Leddy's "Radical Gratitude" which examines how consumerism taps into and co-ops our natural yearning for God, leading to perpetual dissatisfaction with not having enough, which then becomes internalized so that we are "not good enough" and lose sight of God's creative power in our lives and a sense of awe and wonder that helps sustain the soul. It's written for a specifically North-American audience. Mary Jo Leddy is a professor of Regis College, TST (Jesuit) and this simple but profound piece of work is wonderful for self study or use in a group where discussion and reflection can be employed with others. Interspersed with her thesis are several meditations. This is one I thought I would like to share:

It is the ingratitude that binds us.
Our failure to see what we have,
on the way to getting more.
Our disregard for what we may step over,
on the way to somewhere else.
Our lack of attention to the person by our side,
on the way to someone else.
Our dismissal of the good that we do,
on the way to something greater.

Al that we take for granted,
falls through our hands and dissapears from sight.
And we too fall away from ourselves and from You. (God)
We walk by ourselves,
by the wayside,
and do not recognize you,
on the way to something better.

Peace.

Sun Aug 12, 02:03:00 PM MDT 

Gene said...

...something better than God, we think. Lord, have mercy.

Sun Aug 12, 02:05:00 PM MDT 

Peter said...

Yup, I've read that book - very challenging, indeed. Something for all of us in the West to read, I think!

Mon Aug 13, 02:06:00 AM MDT 

100 Thing Challenge UpDate « GENEralities: said...

[...] 15th, 2007 by Gene Our downwardly mobile StuckinStuff friend to which I referred in More Enough, Already is getting down to some nitty-gritty and has gathered his 100 Thing Challenge eggs into a single [...]

Wed Aug 15, 10:27:00 AM MDT 

Enough already!

Some things have aligned in an interesting way this week. Last Sunday's Gospel was Luke 12.13-21. The section heading in my ESV is "The Parable of the Rich Fool." In it, Jesus says,

Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. (v15)

He then goes on to describe how the rich fool decides that he has accumulated enough stuff ("ample goods" v19) to last him for many years, so he can relax, eat, drink and be merry (retire?). Whereupon God himself calls the rich man a fool (v20) because his soul was to be required of him that very night. Jesus finishes the story with

So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. (v21)

Oof! That hits this post-modern, boomer-consumer where it hurts.

And guess what the Benedict's Way (see previous post here) chapter we looked at yesterday was? Possessions. Cyprian, third-century bishop of Carthage is quoted:

Their property held them in chains...which shackled their courage and choked their faith...and throttled their souls...They think of themselves as owners, whereas it is they rather who are owned; enslaved as they are to their own property. (p99)

Being rich toward God is shackled, choked and throttled by the things we allow to own us. Benedict's Way commentator, Lonni Collins Pratt points out that

We have lost a sense of enough. (p100)

...and,

...the unspoken statement of success we are taught all our lives: "I own; therefore I am." (p100)

...we shouldn't attach ourselves to things. That's not what things are for. (p101)

How then shall we overcome our disordered attachments? How do we get rich toward God? George MacDonald, also quoted in Benedict's Way, writes of the rich man who

held his things lightly and who did not let them nestle in his heart, who was a channel and not a cistern, who was ever and always forsaking his money. (p99)

What follows are some ways of not letting our stuff nestle in our hearts, of being channels for God's generosity rather than merely collectors. Lonni Collins Pratt in the "Going Inward" section of the chapter:

When you bring something new into your home, give something away. (p102)

Spend a day alone considering ways you can pare down the amount of stuff you possess. (p103)

Enough, already.

5 comments:

Dave Baker said...

Hmmmmm..... I have a lot of stuff too. I liked the past post, Living Small. Perhaps we live larger than we need to because we have so much stuff. I could certainly pare down - a lot. I'd need a big disposal bin to hold all the excess! But wait, that's what church rummage sales are for.

Dave

Fri Aug 10, 04:03:00 AM MDT 

Dave Baker said...

Hmmmmmmmmm..... I have a lot of stuff too. I was thinking pack to you post on Living Small. Maybe we all live so large because we have so much stuff. I coulds certainly use a good paring down - I'd need a huge garbage bin! But wait, that's what rummage sales are for.

Dave

Fri Aug 10, 04:06:00 AM MDT 

Gene said...

I have a friend who reduced stuff with three boxes: keep, give-away, trash. This same friend is wondering about he and his wife picking 100 things a day for 7 days of which to get rid...1,400 things!

Fri Aug 10, 04:34:00 AM MDT 

Garth said...

Gene,
Some excellent ponderings here! Well done! It reminds me of two or three things. First, a bumper sticker I encounter on several occasions while living in Calgary: "More is never enough." Sad, and makes a virtue out of the deadly sin of greed. (By the way, this summer I preached a series on the seven deadlies). Second, you can check out on the web Canadian singer Jane Siberry (not sure of spelling), who said she sold her comfie house, downsized radically, and has no fixed address--or last time I checked her site that was the case, although it's been some time now. Third, I'm reminded of our former Alberta Synod bishop, Bob Jacobson, who now is an RC. He lived for years in the Donelda area very frugally and simply as a prophetic witness against the materialistic sickness of our times.
The Lord bless you & yours (congrats by the way on the birth of your new grandson!)
Garth

Fri Aug 10, 12:31:00 PM MDT 

More Enough, Already « GENEralities: said...

[...] Gene I preached on this out of Luke 12.32-34 this morning and with reference to my previous post here. I also quoted Randy Alcorn’s excellent and challenging book, Money, Possessions and [...]

Sun Aug 12, 09:27:00 AM MDT 

Harry Potter and Suburban Christianity

I found some neat stuff over at The Suburban Christian...for example, this on the Harry Potter hoopla...

I wonder if there have been times in church history when the gospel narrative was this gripping a cultural phenomenon. People probably wouldn't be this crazy about Harry Potter if they had all grown up in a context where they had heard the Harry Potter stories so much that they no longer seemed fresh. The challenge for us in a post-Christendom era is that people have become anesthetized to the Christian story. They've heard it already, or they think they've heard it already. And it doesn't capture their imagination the way today's imaginative narratives have. In a world of Harry Potter, Star Wars, 24, and Heroes, it's hard for the Christian story to compete.

Read the whole piece here...and this on being community in the suburbs...

And the best way for suburban Christians to build community is to recover the practice of hospitality. Charity notes, "Hospitality can be as traditional as inviting neighbors over for a meal, or as radical as creating new neighbors by inviting missionaries or a struggling family to temporarily share your home. Hsu also suggests things like sharing lawn equipment or transforming personal space, like garages, into community space for neighborhood gatherings. Mostly, I've heard that hospitality is creating space in my life to share with other people. When my home, my hands, and my heart are available, I can help build community."

...more of this here.

Al Hsu, author of The Suburban Christian, is an editor at Intervarsity Press and AN ANGLICAN, God bless him!

Seinfeld and Philosophy

Reading Seinfeld and Philosophy: a Book About Everything and Nothing, (ed. William Irwin, Open Court, 2000). I'm not much of a philosopher, but I enjoy Seinfeld.

William Irwin, the editor, contributes an essay entitled, "Kramer and Kierkegaard: Stages on Life's Way." Now there's a juxtaposition of names and world-views! Irwin writes about the passion and "the absurdity and difficulty involved in making the leap of faith" into Kierkegaard's "religious stage" of life (a leap Kramer never makes, by the way). This sentence caught my eye:

The early Church Father Tertullian said, "I believe because it is absurd." p56

There's a fair amount of that kind of absurdity rattling around the Anglican world just now, only it's not particularly funny.

Yadda, yadda.

A Message for Mothers

Jude was asked to speak at a church ladies group breakfast yesterday. I really like what she had to say, so here it is...

It is easy to be cynical and dismissive about Mother’s Day. Isn’t it just an opportunity for retailers to make some money, not to mention flower shops and restaurants? Sometimes it seems as if the day is for easing the guilt we can feel over not relating much to our mothers over the rest of the year. If I spend some time, some money on my mother today, then it is all right not to include her much in my life for the rest of the year. 

In my family of origin, the tradition was always to give mum breakfast in bed. She tells of burnt toast with lumps of butter and jam on it, and luke-warm tea being presented to her with great pride by me and my siblings and of her having to eat it with enjoyment as we watched. She is a great lady. She will be 89 on May 28. I remember my own children presenting me with freshly-picked and already wilting bouquets of dandelions and wonderful handmade cards. 

These days it is always about e-cards, phone calls and being remembered. No presents. Mothers, especially many young mothers, need encouraging these days, don’t they? Some women are not only wives and mothers, they are breadwinners too. The fact is that there are many women who are having to do far more than I think the Lord ever intended mothers to do. Proverbs 31, the description of the wife of noble character, is a little daunting, to say the least. Our society has changed and the role of a mother has too. 

When I was growing up, my mother, besides being a wife, had one job – that of raising 6 children. Things were changing when I was a young mum. Gene and I chose for me to not work outside the home and I was blessed to be able to do that without financial hardship. We made some sacrifices, sure, but on the whole it was great for us and our children. 

I guess that what it comes down to, doesn’t it – the choices we make. We choose our husband, we choose our careers. Sometimes our choices lead us to have to work outside the home. Most often we can even choose how many children to have. And usually we can choose to be a mother, or choose not to be. 

I would like to acknowledge here those women who are mothers and didn’t choose to be and women who long to be mothers, but are unable to be, and those mothers who have had a child die. I think mother’s day must be a painful time for all those women. When we thank the Lord for our own mothers and for our children, we must remember to pray for those women, our hurting sisters. 

But whatever choices we make and wherever that leads us as mothers, we have the most important choice always before us. To choose to follow our Lord Jesus and be in God’s will as we parent, work, manage our homes, be wives to our husbands, or go it alone as a single parent. And as we are children to our own mother – remember the 5th commandment. No matter where we are, we can still choose the Lord’s way – loving our God with our heart mind soul and strength and our neighbour as ourselves. That is what will make us good mothers, and good daughters to our own mothers. This mothering business is about loving and being loved. It is about choosing to imitate our Lord in our words, our work, our mothering, and our treatment of those who mother differently from us. I pray that we all, with God’s help, will be the mothers that he has created us to be.

On Leadership

I've just started Robert Harris', Pompeii (after having read his Fatherland and Enigma...both good) and this gem:

What was leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretence that the decision was based on reason? (page 5)

What, indeed?

Run, Run! David Warren's Easter bit.

Do you know how beautiful it is to run? You old, you lame, you fools, run! And tell it to the ends of the earth: He is risen!

He is risen, indeed, David. A very good bit, here.

Canada Anglican leaders promote same-sex blessings

This really upsets me, especially when these and other Canadian Anglican leaders have bad-mouthed and inhibited the Anglican Essentials folks, calling us schismatic. "Don't act precipitously," they cry, "wait for due process, we must dialogue and listen." Meanwhile, they wield the Canons (church constitution and by-laws) like a weapon and push their agenda of "tolerance"(for those who tow their line) aggressively. These are sad days.

See the article over at The National Post, here.

Dallas Willard, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God...some quotes and comments

Dallas Willard is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. He also wrote The Divine Conspiracy, among many other books. He is one of my favourite writers...juicy and rich.

Hearing God was first published in 1984 by InterVarsity Press. It is a thoughtful, non-wild-eyed-charismatic exploration of how we humans can actually hear God and act on our hearing responsibly.

Here are some bits that caught my attention. First, this comment on Jesus and our human need (italics are Willard's):

While l was teaching at a ministers' conference, one minister asked me what was the human issue, irrespective of church life or religion, that Jesus came to address. This is the question facing the Christian church today. My answer was this: Jesus came to respond to the universal human need to know how to live well. He came to show us how thorough reliance on him we can best live in the universe as it really is. 212

How to live well: I like that. That is what I'd like StB to be about...living well transcends mere happiness or prosperity. Living well is about deep joy, faithfulness in suffering and the abundant life of which Jesus spoke.

I also like the way Willard views the Bible, its inerrancy and the need to according to its teachings :

The Bible is one of the results of God's speaking. It is the unique written Word of God. It is inerrant in its original form and infallible in all of its forms for the purpose of guiding us into a life-saving relationship with God in his kingdom. It is infallible in this way precisely because God never leaves it alone . 141

The inerrancy of the original texts is rendered effective for the purposes of redemption only as that text, through its present-day derivatives, is constantly held within the eternal living Word. Inerrancy by itself is not a sufficient theory of biblical inspiration because as everyone knows, the Bible in our hand is not the original text. Inerrancy of the originals also does not guarantee sane and sound, much less error-free, interpretations. Our dependence as we read the Bible today must be on God, who now speaks to us in conjunction with it and with our best efforts to understand it. 142

In light of our discussions so far it is clear that while the Bible is the written Wond of God, the word of God is not simply the Bible. The way we know that this is so is, above all, by paying attention to what the Bible says. 142

That we lack the desire to receive God's word merely for what it is, just because we believe it is the best way to live, is also shown by a disregard of the plain directives in the Scriptures. Sanctification from sexual uncleanness (1Thess 4:3) and a continuously thankful heart (1 Thess 5:18) are among the many specific things clearly set forth in God's general instructions to all people. It is not wise to disregard these plain directives and then expect to hear a special message from God when we want it. 198

The book has good, practical, down-to-earth instructions on actual listening and what to do if we don't (or think we don't) hear anything from God:

James Dobson has given some of the best practical advice I have ever heard on how someone who really wants the will of God and who has a basically correct understanding of it should proceed. Describing how he does it himself, he says, "I get down on my knees and say, 'Lord, I need to know what you want me to do, and I am listening. Please spaak to me through my friends, books, magazines I pick up and read, and through circumstances'" 199

But suppose that no such specific word has come to us on some matter of great importance to our lives. For example, should we enter this school or that? Should we live here or there? Should we change employment?) Does this mean that in the matter at hand we cannot be in God's perfect will or that we can be so only by chance, following some anxiety-ridden guessing game about what God wants us to do? 206

Most assuredly it does not. We must resolutely resist the tendency to blame the absence of a word from God automatically on our own wrongness. And we must equally resist the idea that it means we must be somewhat off the track and living in something less than God's perfect will. lf we are living in sincere devotion to the fulfillment of God's purposes in us, we can be sure that the God who came to as in Jesus Chsist will not mumble and tease and trick us regarding any specific matter he wants done. 206

In those cases where God does not speak to you on the matter concerned, take the following steps:
a. Ask God to inform you, in whatever way he chooses, if some hindrance is within you. Be quiet and listen in the inner forum of your mind for any indication that you are blocking his word. But do not endlessly pursue this. In prayer set a specific length of time for the inquiry about hindrances: normally no more than three days. Believe that if a problem exists, God will make it clear to you...
b. Take counsel from at least two people whose relationship with God you respect, preferably those who are not your buddies...
c. If you find a cause for why God's word could not come, correct it. Mercilessly. Whatever it is. Just do it.
d. If you cannot find such a cause, then act on what seems best to you after considering the itemized details of each alternative. If certain alternatives seem equally desirable, then select one as you wish. This will rarely be necessary, but your confidence, remember, is in the Lord who goes with you, who is with his trusting children even if they blunder and flounder...214-215

Good stuff.

Look for it in the StB library in the new year.

Father Ron Rolheiser on Sabbath

First class, as usual...

Biblically, this is the pattern: We're meant to work for six days, then have a one-day sabbatical; work for seven years and have a one year sabbatical; work for seven times seven years (forty-nine years) and have a Jubilee year; and finally work for a lifetime and have an eternity of sabbatical. The idea is that our pressured, hurried, working days should be regularly punctured by times of rest, celebration, enjoyment, non- work, non-pressure, and that ultimately all work will cease and we will have nothing to do except to luxuriate in life itself.And what's supposed to happen on a sabbath? What constitutes sabbath time?