End of year buzz for Spirituality
Here’s a shameless plug… I’ve just learned that Brittian Bullock of the Sensual Jesus blog has named my recently reissued first book, Spirituality, to his “best of 2008″ book list.
I am humbled and honored to be included on a list that also features the likes of Peter Rollins, Douglas Coupland, and Alan Jones. Here’s what Brittian had to say about my lowly offering:
I met Carl McColman this summer and had no clue who he was outside of a mutual friend’s recommendation. After our dinner together I realized that I wanted to spend copious amounts of time with this brother in Christ. His history is rich and varied. His path of conversion is one of the most intriguing I’ve ever heard. And his generosity of spirit is intoxicating without being purely a free for all. More than anything though, he brings all of this to a book he wrote over a decade ago. This is a book for all spiritual seekers. It helps to articulate a path that neither negates nor excludes faith traditions, but rather affirms and invites people to recognize our great need for honest exploration of that which is beyond the here and now. I have Christian and non-Christian friends alike I would love to loan this book to, provided I get it back.
Click here to read Brittian’s entire list, or, click here to buy your very own copy of Spirituality from Amazon (you know you want to).
Quote for the Day
The great mystics are the paradigms and the amplifiers of a life of deep faith, hope, and love. They help us to hear the interior whispers and to see the faint flickers of truth and love in ourselves and others. By looking at their lives, we can frequently discover the obstacle in us to fully authentic human life. Looking into the lives of the great mystics will help to locate the compass of our hearts, to see what authentic human living is, and what our final purification, illumination, and transformation entail.
— Harvey D. Egan, S.J., What Are They Saying About Mysticism?
Phyllis and Peter
The ever-vigilant Mike Morrell sent me this link to a page of videos featuring Phyllis Tickle and Peter Rollins chatting about various concerns regarding the present and future church, the emergent/emergence church, and so forth. Well worth watching to see two creative and visionary minds at play with each other.
Just to whet your appetite, here’s the first video:
The rest can be found here.
Quote for the Day
If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy.
If you write for men — you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while.
If you write only for yourself you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted you will wish that you were dead.
— Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
Quote for the Day
But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
— I Corinthians 6:17 NIV
Quote for the Day
If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never write anything that can be read. If you want to help other people you have got to make up your mind to write things that some men will condemn.
— Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
The Fidelity of Betrayal
The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief
By Peter Rollins
Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2008
Review by Carl McColman
In this book, Peter Rollins expands and deepens the apophatic/postmodern re-visioning of Christian theology/mystery that he first introduced in his first book, How (Not) to Speak of God. Rollins is a philosopher/theologian whose work appears to be all about dismantling unhelpful boundaries: between philosophy and theology, between church and culture, between liturgy and theater or liturgy and life. In The Fidelity of Betrayal he begins with a reflection on the story of Judas, and without falling into the trap of dancing with old gnostic heresies, he asks an explosive question: could it be that Judas’ betrayal of Christ was actually an act of faith and fidelity? He takes the question further by comparing the relationship of Judas and Jesus to that of Abraham and Isaac — when Abraham “betrayed” Isaac by taking him up the mountain to sacrifice him, a surprise ending to the story deposited a ram into Abraham’s hand (worse luck for the ram, I suppose, but at least it left Abraham and Isaac to work out how they could take their father-son relationship forward after that). No ram or lamb appears in the gospel narrative to spare Jesus the cross, and so Judas ends up taking the bullet that Abraham dodged. But Rollins isn’t satisfied with traditional readings of these narratives, and keeps pushing at his question: what if betrayal is really what it’s all about? (more…)
Bulletproof Faith
Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians
By Candace Chellew-Hodge
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008
Review by Carl McColman
There’s a book called UnChristian, by David Kinnaman & Gabe Lyons, which provides an eye-opening look at how young people who are non-Christian perceive Christianity. The single most common descriptor that the outsiders used to describe their perception of Christianity was that it is anti-homosexual. Not just that most Christians think homosexuality is wrong, but that “Christians are bigoted and show disdain for gays and lesbians… Christians are fixated on curing homosexuals and on leveraging political solutions against them.”
With this in mind, I am writing this review of Bulletproof Faith as a heterosexually-married Christian, and I am speaking to the majority of Christians who do not identify as gay (for those gay and lesbian Christians who happen to read this review, I trust you do not need my encouragement to buy and read this book). I think every Christian needs to read this book. I say this because I believe most “straight” Christians have no idea how much suffering their gay and lesbian friends and relatives experience as they try to make their way in a faith that all too often is explicitly hostile to their very being. (more…)
Why Should Evangelicals Read the Mystics?
My co-worker and fellow Lay-Cistercian Jacquie alerted me to the following essay (and blogger’s commentary thereof):
Why Should Thoughtful Evangelicals Read the Medieval Mystics?
Christian History Blog: Prominent Reformed Evangelical Promotes Medieval Mystics
Since I’m not an evangelical (in the sectarian sense of the word), I’ll refrain from commenting on these essays, other than to note that I since I don’t share the perspective from which these writers come from, naturally I don’t share all their values or even all their conclusions. Even so, to their overall message I can only say a hearty “Amen!” — which is why I am now commending their words to you, my readers, of whatever persuasion you might be.
Quote for the Day
I am certainly no judge of television, since I have never watched it. All I know is that there is a sufficiently general agreement, among men whose judgment I respect, that commercial television is degraded, meretricious and absurd. Certainly it would seem that TV could become a kind of unnatural surrogate for contemplation: a completely inert subjection to vulgar images, a descent to a sub-natural passivity rather than an ascent to a supremely active passivity in understanding and love. It would seem that television should be used with extreme care and discrimination by anyone who might hope to take interior life seriously.
— Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
Going Up?
Going Up?
By Zehnder
Monster Palm Entertainment, 2008
Review by Carl McColman
A generation ago, Christian rock pioneer Larry Norman plaintively wondered, “Why should the devil have all the good music?” Those of us who were around when Norman was in his prime — and who have watched Christian music evolve from the naivetë of the early “Jesus Music” years (think 2nd Chapter of Acts and early Phil Keaggy), through the awkward adolescent years (Stryper!!!) to the perfectly enjoyable if more predictable than exciting adult-oriented-rock sound of today’s bands like Kutless, Third Day and Switchfoot — might paraphrase that question today as, “Why do the conservatives have all the good Christian music?” You know, I like artists like Amy Grant, Rebecca St. James, and Sara Groves just fine — but beneath their conspicuously apolitical music is a genre that, at least by its consumer demographics, seems pretty much a Republican bastion. If guys like Norman and Keaggy and Randy Stonehill and Keith Green managed thirty years ago to wrestle the good music away from ol’ Mr. Scratch, then who is going to snatch today’s faith-based music from its right-wing ghetto?
The answer, I believe, is Tim and Tom Zehnder.
These brothers are in the music ministry business — you can find them most Sunday mornings leading the worship at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles. But they’re also the leaders of a band that bears their last name, which just released a CD called Going Up? featuring 45 minutes of joyously infectious — and unapologetically progressive — faith-based music. (more…)
Cool!
WordPress (the engine that drives this blog) has a cool new interface that makes it easier for me to post Twitter-like status updates: just like this one. I think I’ll be having fun with this…
I need a Hebrew scholar to help me with a passage in Isaiah
If you are reading this blog and you are a scholar of Hebrew — or know someone who is — please get in touch (or have your friend get in touch) with me. I’m interested in the following passage, which I am going to present in three different English versions: first, a Jewish translation, then two Christian renderings. The passage in question is Isaiah 45:4-5.
For the sake of My servant Jacob,
Israel My chosen one,
I call you by name, I hail you by title,
though you have not known Me.
I am the LORD and there is none else;
Beside Me, there is no god.
I engird you, though you have not known Me…
— Jewish Publication Society Translation
For the sake of my servant Jacob,
and Israel my chosen,
I call you by your name,
I surname you, though you do not know me.
I am the LORD, and there is no other;
besides me there is no god.
I arm you, though you do not know me…
— New Revised Standard Version
For the sake of Jacob my servant,
of Israel my chosen,
I summon you by name
and bestow on you a title of honor,
though you do not acknowledge me.
I am the LORD, and there is no other;
apart from me there is no God.
I will strengthen you,
though you have not acknowledged me…
— New International Version
Here is my question: These three translations all suggest slightly different connotations of the breakdown of human knowledge of the Divine. Is God “not known,” “not knowable,” or “not acknowledged”? The implications for apophatic mysticism are fairly evident: does Isaiah’s prophecy point to God’s essential hiddenness, or merely to humanity’s stubborn failure to “acknowledge” God? What would the sense of the original Hebrew text suggest? Or is it sufficiently rich enough that each of these translations is “correct,” implying that Isaiah brilliantly zeroes in on the relationship between God’s hiddenness and humanity’s incapacity (or unwillingness) to know God?
Any insight that any Hebrew scholar could provide would be most appreciated. If you’d rather not leave a comment on the blog, please email me at mccolman <at> anamchara <dot> com. Thank you!
Addendum: My friend Linda, who has a Jewish studies degree, points out that in this passage, God is not addressing Israel, but rather Cyrus, king of the Persians. I came across the passage this morning because Isaiah 45:5-8 is the reading for morning prayer on the first Thursday of Advent in the Catholic Liturgy of the Hours. Talk about a classic example of lifting a passage out of context.
My friend asked me, “I’m assuming you are saying that this verse is lifted out of context and used in Christian mysticism as a text relating to the relationship between God and humanity?” I can’t speak to its usage through the tradition as a whole, but certainly this “out of context” usage is what appears in the Liturgy for today. Mysticism, heaven knows, has a long history of using scriptural passages out of context. Be that as it may, I’m still curious to hear what other folks might have to say about Biblical ideas about the knowability/unknowability of God — in this passage, or elsewhere.
Given my interest in the relationship between the particularity of the community of believers, and the universality of God’s love and grace for all beings, I suppose even out of context this question remains interesting. What does God have to say to the “outsider”? The passage suggests that God can complete God’s purposes even through those who do not “know/acknowledge” God. But what causes that failure of knowing? Is it our sinfulness, or God’s hiddenness? Always seems to go back to that question.
