Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Love it to death! by Richard Rohr

Jesus is our guarantee of God's promise.  What happened in his body is the pattern of what must happen in all of the cosmos. We are making up in time, in our body, what happened in thirty-three years in the body of Jesus. We are optimistic because we look at him to see the final pattern.

 

To be a Christian means to be an optimist because we know what happened on the third day. We know that it worked, that Jesus' leap of faith was not in vain. His trust was not in vain, and the Father raised him up. He trusted enough to outstare the darkness, to outstare the void, to wait upon the resurrection of the third day, not to try to create his own but to wait uon the resurrection of God. The Scriptures and early Church seldom said Jesus "rose" from the dead. They always said, "God raised him up!"

Thomas Merton and the Mountains: Contemplative Cartographer

         Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
                                                                        William Blake

         He has not learned to think like a mountain
                                                                         Aldo Leopold
                                                              A Sand County Almanac 

         Can Aldo Leopold’s ecological conscience become
         effective in America today?
                                                                        Thomas Merton
                                                                      ‘The Wild Places’

There is a long line and lineage of contemplatives in the West and East that have turned to the mountains, white peaks and ancient spires as places to slake a deeper thirst and find a site for the soul to know a more meaningful quies. This reality has been well tracked and traced in evocative and visual mountaineering classics such as The Mountaineering Spirit (1979) and Sacred Mountains of the World (1990). Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the North Cascades (2002) makes these connections, also, and we know Merton had an affinity with the Beats. My missive, Thomas Merton and the Beats of the North Cascades (2005), connects the dots between Merton, the Beats and mountains. Even the most casual read through these books make it most clear that there is a connection between mountains and the contemplative quest for meaning and depth.

Thomas Merton: the Contemplative Dilemma by Ron Dart

The time will come when the pursuit of contemplation will be a subversive activity. Daniel Berrigan - America is Hard to Find

1 Merton and the Contemplative Quest    

Thomas Merton turned to the Roman Catholic Tradition, and to the monastic and Cistercian way within such a Tradition, in search of an older and forgotten contemplative path. The vita activa had come to dominate the modern world, and the vita contemplativa had been banished or subordinated to the active life. In short, Martha had trumped Mary, and there were serious consequences to be faced in both soul and society as a result of this inversion of the ancient and time tried way.

JURIDICAL VENGEANCE OR CO-SUFFERING LOVE by Metropolitan Antony

JURIDICAL VENGEANCE OR CO-SUFFERING LOVE
A More Positive Exposition for the Moral Content
of the Dogma Of Redemption^[i]

In order to provide a completely Orthodox interpretation of the dogma of redemption for people interested in theological questions, it is necessary to produce a feasible work in which the interpretation of this dogma is the central thesis. Therefore, we will present our treatise in the same order as we have presented it in public lectures and class discussions, that is, by observing what constantly occurs before our eyes in life.

Hearing God's Voice: Unwrapping the Four Packages by Brad Huebert

What does God’s voice sound like? 

That’s a great question, and I’m going to answer it fairly clearly throughout the next twelve pages. I wish I could just say, “You’ll know it when you hear it,” but I can’t, because people hear God speaking all the time and don’t clue in. If I could show you a computer log that recorded how many times God spoke to you – and how – and when – I’m absolutely positive that your jaw would hit the floor. 

Methinks he budged: An evening with J.I. Packer by Brad Jersak

We don’t often get to meet our heroes in the faith. But after twenty-five years, I did have the privilege of a face-to-face encounter with one of mine: Dr. J.I. Packer. He is much taller than I’d imagined, more energetic than I’d expected and every bit as charitable as I had hoped. And even knowing that I am on “the other side” (his phrase) of the atonement debates,1 he generously signed the presentation page of my new ESV Bible and later acknowledged me as a brother.

Thus began an evening of revelations (hosted by House of James2) that started with the topic of Christian unity and climaxed in a discussion of evangelicalism’s current hot button topic: penal substitutionary atonement. As he shared, Dr. Packer made it clear that on the core points of classic Reformed Puritan tradition, he has not budged. Yet when he tenderly presented his sense of the Father’s heart towards Jesus during the crucifixion, I think we all felt God’s presence in the moment. On this point, I believe that the good doctor moved beyond the Reformers so as to carry the discussion forward in important ways. As I take up Dr. Packer’s exhortation to test the truth of his words, I hope to suggest how this is so.3

THOMAS MERTON: The Contemplative Dilemma by Ron Dart

The time will come when the pursuit of contemplation will be a subversive activity.     Daniel Berrigan,

America is Hard to Find 

1. Merton and the Contemplative Quest

Thomas Merton turned to the Roman Catholic Tradition, and to the monastic and Cistercian way within such a Tradition, in search of an older and forgotten contemplative path. The vita activa had come to dominate the modern world, and the vita contemplativa had been banished or subordinated to the active life. In short, Martha had trumped Mary, and there were serious consequences to be faced in both soul and society as a result of this inversion of the ancient and time tried way.

On the Cure for Self-Loathing by Michelle Elrick

When in a lowly state, a state of craving, melancholy and internal disappointment, there is a thing to do other than indulge.

Follow Moses up the mountain.

And in the first steps you will remember that Christ is the new Moses and the new mountain is not Sinai and the new law is the law of transfiguration, and the new stone tablets are the chambers of the heart. And this time, again, the Father speaks the law aloud and this time he speaks of the new Moses saying, “This is my Son, with him I am well pleased.”

CHRISTIANITY AND THE SYMPHONY OF LIVING FAITHS by Ron Dart

1.  Religious Pluralism: The New Orthodoxy

Our contemporary social context is one in which many religions mix and intermingle. A casual walk down a street in a large or growing city reveals to the interested a synagogue, church, mosque, gudwara, temple and many other sacred sites. The choices can be bewildering, but there is no doubt there are plenty of choices for those on the spiritual path.

We have, gratefully so, left behind a rather stunted period in western intellectual history in which a one-dimensional and single vision form of science excluded, in the guise of objectivity and empiricism, the important reality and role of spirituality and religion. Science is now much more open to the larger religious questions, and, in many ways, the secular wing of the Enlightenment has been replaced, as a cultural model, by the humanist branch of the Enlightenment. This means that mysticism and religion are now seen as valid and vital ways of knowing and being human, but no religious tradition has the final and ultimate word. In short, all the grand metanarratives and truth telling visions of the world religions have been relativized. The new liberal Orthodoxy is Enlightenment humanism with its commitment to religious pluralism and, often, some form of religious syncretism.

Isolation and Belonging by Heidi Greiner-Miller

A good two years ago, when God was walking me through a lot of my healing and restoring me back into his church, I always had a longing to be known and valued in a community. But I continually fought feelings of not being worthy or good enough. I had a ton of internal strife, wanting so much to be a part, an important part, but I felt so far from that and it left me thinking most of the time, why bother?

I know that my church has really stressed the "no hierarchy" thing and has been void of labels and the whole pedestal idea, inviting everyone to the table. But in truth I don't think you can avoid the fact that church leaders are seen as the ones who belong and who set the guage for belonging (especially through the eyes of a broken soul), even while they stress that all belong.