Friendship - both gift and task

I keep returning to the motif of 'gift and task' (or, more accurately, as the Germans would: giftask) as a way to understand vocation and discipleship generally, and my own particular calling as a chaplain. 

But lately I've been putting a real effort into keeping in contact with my friends and realise that friendship, too, is both gift and task. Arguably, the friendships one develops are as formative as one's development of a sense of vocation, and contribute just as much to one's sense of identity. Electronic tools like Facebook, email and this blog (if any of my friends are reading – hello!) make this easier, but that ease also keeps friendship superficial and inhibits the cultivation of deeper ties. There is little, if any shared experience; it's much harder to have 'our thing' with 900 friends and in such a public forum. 

So, as I think I've mentioned before, I've been handwriting letters – the theme of a spate of recent books. I also threw an open party at a local pub (Facebook invites only, but anyone was free to attend or not without RSVP), set up a Skype date and am deliberately inviting more people to meet up or visit, and also just ensuring I make time for friends travelling from out of town. I've got to say, it's not been easy. It took me literally months to write the letter, weeks to get myself organised for the Skype chat (even then I was late), and days simply to write emails that are worthy responses to the ones I've received  But, of course, it's been worth it. Friendship takes effort: it is not an automatic entitlement, which is why it is so valuable. But more than that, friendship is a gift: it can only be given and not taken, and despite any effort put into the cultivation of a friendship, it cannot be earned. 

Because there is a certain gratuity – even graciousness – to friendship it is worth more rather than less, and I dare not waste it. 

The accusation of time

It's now been over two years since my trip: since my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and my stay in Taizé. I had hoped to have returned to Europe by now, but more than that I had hoped to be more... different by now.

Those experiences changed me; changed my way of being in this world. And for quite some time I found it difficult to readjust to 'normal' life. For a while I had hopes of setting a new normal, but now it's almost like some parts of me had never been where I went, seen what I did, or did what I have done. I thought it took resilience to walk 980kms, but it seems that some default settings – in my life, in our culture – are more resilient still.

So now, as I contemplate (if you can call such desperate hope contemplation) returning to Europe, it's both as a pilgrim and not. When I first went, I wanted to be changed and was open, it was my first visit to that continent and I knew (almost) no one; this time round I want to be changed and am very fixed on what I think I need, I long to see my friends both from Australia and the ones I made in Europe.

As I walked the camino, I saw people who seemed to be addicted to it, unable to return 'home' or settle anywhere. Perhaps this is how such pathology starts? Yes, some are called to be holy vagrants with – just as was true for Jesus – no place to lay their head. But the real challenge (for me at least) is not in escaping into the pilgrim life, but rather in subverting our anti-pilgrim culture by colonising it with the pilgrim mindset. I often despair that such a thing is even possible, but even with such great cost, I cannot simply give up trying.

The inconsistency of ANZAC Day

I had the privilege of leading two ANZAC Day commemoration services this year, at a large Australian Tax Office event in Brisbane and also at my regiment.

The language of ANZAC Day is well established, and except in the military environment, feels close to becoming clichéd. In our society it's easy to despair that talk of sacrifice, camaraderie, duty and putting the country before one's self-interest is just that -- all talk and nothing more. This was most apparent to me in conducting the commemoration service at the ATO, not because of that organization itself and certainly not because of the individual members of the ATO that I had contact with. Rather it's because of the role that that organization plays in our national life and economy.

Currently it's anathema to call for anyone (but especially those most able to) to make economic sacrifices and carry a larger portion of the tax burden than anyone else. To suggest that the rich have a duty to support the poor is scoffed at as class warfare, even as we honour those who because of their moral courage saw that they had a duty to defend those who didn't have the same physical strength as them. It's unquestioned orthodoxy that competition brings more benefits to groups and individuals than camaraderie and cooperation.

Increasingly it seems that ANZAC Day is tokenistic- a facile attempt for one day to balance out 364 driven by the insatiable appetite for economic growth and the greedy individualism that fuels it.

On reading the Bible as story – perspective counts

As my church spends most of the year looking at the Old Testament – through sermons, in home groups and in individual readings – I've been reminded many times of the benefits of the approach of more liturgical churches. It's like for this time we have a year-long scripture-shaped liturgy that follows the shape of the Christian canon and looks not just at individual parts. Of course we can't be entirely comprehensive, so there's always picking and choosing – that's inevitable – and the issue for me isn't avoiding such selectivity, but being still remaining consistent while also trying to be balanced. Scot McKnight covers this issue wonderfully in his delightful book, The Blue Parakeet and has also blogged about it.

So yesterday when the sermon was on the huge topic of the exodus, I wasn't surprised when significant parts of the story didn't get mentioned: all of the familiar threads were woven together to fashion a  redemption story that had parallels to the gospel.

But here's what I was left wondering about: in both the exodus and the gospel, the salvation story realises both hope for the oppressed and judgement for the oppressor. If we only ever spiritualise the exodus (reducing it to a prologue for the gospel), we will always only ever identify with the oppression of the Israelites (because that stands for our universal oppression under sin). But for many people, as for the Israelites, oppression isn't an abstract spiritual concept but rather a concrete economic reality. In our picking and choosing we have maintained consistency with (part of) the gospel, but have forfeited balance by only ever reading the scripture from one perspective.

For those of us who live privileged and prosperous lives in the West (i.e. most of those with the technology, resources and liesure time to blog and read blogs - me included) it's not enough to read the story of the exodus and find hope in the ways that we are like Israel. No, it's also necessary to realise that our perspective shares much in common with the Egyptian oppressors. The text of the scripture hints at a contemptuous disregard for the sanctity of creation culminating in a blasphemous disregard for the sacredness of humanity as bearers of the image of God. It explicitly condemns the Egyptians for their economic exploitation of foreign workers. In our globalised economy we must pause to examine whether our own consumer choices, and indeed our system of economics also oppresses foreign workers and despoils creation, placing us under the same damning judgement. 

Counter-culture v. gospel culture

In the introduction to his Western Culture in Gospel Context, David J. Kettle surveys a variety of models for Christian witness:

1. The witness of traditional religious conformity, which at its best seeks for all aspects of culture to resonate with a Christian worldview, and at its worst leads to nominalism or (worse -) Christian imperialism. 
2. The witness of traditional religious symbolism and art, which though it can often preserve a sense of the transcendent and sacred can also become opaque and tokenistic. 
3. The witness of an appeal to cultural identity, which takes seriously the influence Christianity has had on Western cultures but can all too easily lead to a tribalism which excludes non-Western Christians and non-Christian people and influences in the West.
4. The witness of a parallel Christian culture, that avoids many of the pitfalls of closing the gap between church and culture by seeking to maintain this distinction, but can tend towards a kind of gnosticism that in attempting to keep the world out of the church (perhaps inadvertently) keeps the church out of the world.
5. The witness of consumer religion, which has uncritically adopted the dominant spiritual paradigms (business shamanism, individualist consumerism) of Western culture and adapted Christianity and the church to reflect it.

While this typology is new (and I'd suggest, provisional and not exhaustive), none of the particular models is. I've heard many faithful and thoughtful Christians advocate the best (and some of the worst) of each of these models at some point, but the third seems to be increasingly popular in conservative Christianity in the simplistic formulation "Australia is (or was founded as) a Christian country," usually implying that other Christians are more Australian and should have more power than people of other faiths or none. 

However, it was how Kettle presented the fourth model that especially caught my attention. He says that those whose agenda it is to oppose or resist culture (that is, be counter-cultural) are no less captivated by culture; it remains the host culture and not the gospel that determines how Christians witness. This is seen most clearly in the peculiarly modern form of fundamentalism that arose as a response to modern liberalism. The fundamentalists thought they had avoided the cultural compromises of liberalism, but were no less shaped by their modern context. But the same possibility awaits me: as I seek to engage the individualism and consumerism of Western culture my priority needs to be not responding to greed and selfishness in its current cultural manifestations, but rather the generosity and hospitality of God in the gospel. 

New books

Recently two more books arrived from Wipf and Stock on the topic for my masters thesis: spirituality for mission.

I've started reading the first of these: David J. Kettle 2012 Western culture in gospel context: theological bearings for mission and spirituality.

Sadly, Kettle who was the coordinator of the Gospel and Our Culture Network in Great Britain died last year. Already this book is a rare find: lucidly written, theologically astute and with profound insight. It is a masterful piece of missiology.

Cape Town Commitment

While other bloggers have already had more detailed discussions of this document, it still doesn't seem to be getting the attention it deserves. Neither critical or polemical, it is a current exposition of much of what is good and right about contemporary evangelicalism. This is no accident - it draws from the best of a century of mission work and marks the beginning of its maturation: the breadth of world Christianity represented is unprecedented.

So rather than simply rehashing what's already available, I thought I'd point out that a short précis is available here. This because I've not yet read and pondered another chapter of Bonhoeffer's Discipleship, but that's what I'm off to do now.

The full text of the Cape Town Commitment is also available online.

Cheap grace, liberalism and folk evangelicalism

“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
– H. Richard Niebuhr criticising the social gospel, particularly Paul Tillich’s theology of it in his 1937 book, The Kingdom of God in America.

Yet, Niebuhr should have gone further, because there is at least another theological oxymoron that leads to such cheap grace, one that is favoured by theological conservatives as much as theological liberals. It is this: salvation that does not demand discipleship. Even with theology that posits a God who is wrathful (if not positively hateful), humanity that is sinful (if not completely unlovable), the kingdom that is about judgement at least as much – if not more – as it is about hope, and a Christ that is perpetually preached as the one crucified rather than risen, it’s still possible to preach salvation without transformation.

Witness this example from a young, successful pastor of inner suburban congregations:

Speaking at [NAME] CHURCH this morning on how we don't need to try and maintain our relationship with God by our faithfulness, our commitment and our effort. Rather our relationship with God rests solely on the finished work of Jesus on the cross. // So pumped by what God is doing here. They have grown by 30% in the last 12 months. // Please pray that many respond today...

In fairness, I’m confident that this Christian leader experiences and even expresses a grace that is greater than the one presented here. (However, when I asked whether he'd like to clarify this I got no response.) But here we can see two ‘liberal’ tendencies in contemporary folk-evangelicalism as grave as those Niebuhr ridicules. First – as already mentioned – salvation without transformation. There is no room here for the gospel language of discipleship, nor of the Pauline language of striving, or images of the farmer, athlete and soldier because salvation is bestowed freely, it is assumed it must be received passively. Or, as we heard from Bonhoeffer's Discipleship yesterday: "Because grace alone does everything, everything can stay in its old ways. 'Our action is in vain.'" Secondly, that the cross is not just the central act of salvation, but the final act. Now, there is no room for the resurrection, for Pentecost, and (to reiterate) for the collaboration of the believer in their sanctification.

Of course, these two oversights are related: when the gospel is reduced to Christ having died in our place for our sins, then salvation is also more easily reduced to merely reparation usually expressed in legal or economic terms. It’s essentially a problem-solving exercise. But when the gospel also includes the resurrection, then a greater breadth and depth of images and languages is needed – reconciliation (not just of accounts, but of persons), victory, recreation and others. And a bigger gospel has bigger implications – including demands. To follow the one crucified on our behalf is to take up our own cross, to sacrifice for others and (perhaps most forgotten for contemporary folk-evangelicalism) to be at odds with the ones who crucify. To follow the one risen as the first fruits of the new creation is belong to a new humanity (in which racial and class barriers have no place) and to practice a new ethic. If we are in the new humanity (ie: in Christ, the second Adam) we resume the task of keeping the earth, tending to its fullness and diversity, but more than that we anticipate carrying that task further towards its goal. When Christ is crucified for as well as risen for us, then salvation is not just a solution for a problem but a demanding ethical vocation.

The problem with contemporary evangelicalism is not that is old-fashioned and orthodox. Rather, that it still has too much in common with the old liberalism, even while it overlooks this. The logical end for the old liberalism and folk-evangelicalism is the same: a tamed gospel with cheap grace that poses no challenges.

October – focus on Discipleship

After my visit to Taizé, I've been attempting - with varied success - to reform my prayer life. As part of this project I purchased Common Prayer, and though I've found it helpful I still struggle with regular prayer, along with all other routines.

The book has come out of the New Monastic movement, and each of the twelve marks of neomonasticism is featured each month. Perhaps fitting the commemoration of Francis of Assisi tomorrow is this month's focus on radical discipleship. The prayers and readings emphasise the common root of both 'discipleship' and 'discipline' and of taking the teaching of Jesus seriously. I've taken up their recommended reading of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's classic Discipleship, which makes this link even clearer. The book opens with a stinging rebuke of cheap grace, so brilliant and compelling it's hard to not quote here more fully, to illustrate clearly what is the antithesis of discipleship. But for now, this will do:

Cheap grace means grace as doctrine, as principal, as system. It means forgiveness of sins as a general truth; it means God's love is merely a Christian idea of God...
Cheap grace means justification of sin but not of the sinner. Because grace alone does everything, everything can stay in its old ways...
So the Christian need not follow Christ, since the Christian is comforted by grace!
[Emphasis added]

My aim is not only to get through the book this month (not as easy as it sounds with two weeks plus on the road), but to more fully realize my original intent of having a more stable and intentional prayer life, a framework to more effectively fit my work into.

Finally - find me on Facebook

Well, I'm now looking at opening the blog and other thoughts to a wider audience. Which means using social media more selectively. Of course this is quite new to me, but it's still clear that there's really only one place to start – Facebook. So I'm setting up a personal page on Facebook and hope you'll join me there. I'm hoping that's just the start, so if you;ve got ideas, please let me know... perhaps through the page.

New record

At least for me: checked baggage of 62kg! I was looking at 30kg of paid extra allowance (at $15 per kg) except that my booking sheet, unlike the airline's, showed my increased allowance to be 64kg. So much for 'soldiers travel light'! I still have two more uniforms being custom made to join me down here...

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Back on the road

I'm posting this at 2:30am.

Because sometimes being ready to move, and hopefully in the right place at the right time is more important than more than three hours' sleep.

That is all. Goodnight.


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New boots

I still have the pack and boots that I took with me (or should that be "that took me") along the camino. Unsurprisingly, I grew more than a little attached to them after the thousand-odd kilometres we were together. Up hill and down dale, in all kinds of weather and across the entire length of Spain these were constant and faithful companions, and unlike me the suffered their depredations silently.

But the value of boots is in the walking, and mine are all worn out. (Thankfully the same isn't true of my large pack.) Boots that can't be walked in aren't really boots, and therefore are more of a hindrance than a help. To keep walking I need to ditch the old boots – however well the served me – and get new ones.

It's terribly unsubtle, I realise. But let me be even more obvious. If life – or some aspect of it, say spirituality – is a journey, then moving forward requires leaving behind some of the things that brought us to where we are.

Pilgrimage and Peace

Contrasting with Tom Waits' dystopic song, a recent TEDTalk shares an amazing and unlikely journey on the road to peace.

William Ury explores the inherent hospitality of sharing a road with fellow travellers, and the importance of 'walking out' a story, retracing the journey of Abraham from Urfa to Hebron.
Abraham's Path is about shifting from hostility to hospitality, terrorism to tourism. Yes, it sound clichéd, but the idea is (unfortunately) not well-worn.

Walking in the Middle East is something I'd really love to do – perhaps it will have to wait, though.

Absence of Mind by Marilynne Robinson

A central question in Robinson's new book is the utility, or even ethics of objectivity.
She is unsatisfied with the "closed ontologies" of "scientific monisms"; that is, claiming that everything can be understood in terms of (for example), perversion (Freud), class (Marx) or genes (Darwin). A flaw in these reductionisms is "the absence of an acknowledgement of ... subjectivity."

A similar question about the difference between understanding and experiencing love came up in a conversation on the camino. For instance: does knowing about the neurology or chemistry of attraction and attachment make one a better friend or lover or father? [I remember, but cannot find the source of a characteristically bold Salavador Dalí quote, "love is deoxyrybonucleic acid."]  Robinson states the case more acutely:

Does knowing 'how the machinery of the brain works' – and, in fact, we still do not know how it works – have any implication for the effective use of the mind? (p52)

Time to settle down

Now that I've been back, I've almost given up hope of settling back into 'life as normal': it's just not possible. Travel has changed me – hopefully more for better than worse. and while I can't keep traveling, I can keep reflecting; understanding the change that I've experienced and assimilating the transformation.

To that end, I've got a few post-travel tasks:

• the 6000 word independent study project that was the pretext for my travel, including
• the 1000 pages of reading on the theology of spirituality, theology of mission and mission in the context of the Australian Defence Force,
• emails, postcards and gifts for the friends I made along the way
• 10 and 30 minute presentations on spirituality for soldiers, and 
• 30 and 60 minute presentations on missional spirituality for chaplains, pastors and Christian leaders.

But, even before I started to look seriously at these tasks, I'd already started on something else: pre-travel tasks for the next (anticipated) trip!

Leaving Spain

This is my last night in Spain. Now that I've found a café with jazz & wifi, it's too soon, but then again, after speaking with Anita on the phone earlier today, perhaps it's not soon enough!






Tomorrow, the train: what took me 30 days to walk will take me 13 hours to sit through. Then, the overnight train to Paris.

Spain is gorgeous, and Santiago has its treats, but the last two nights were the first time in over four weeks that I've stayed in one place for so long, so yes I'm getting restless. Oh, and I can't wait to emerge from the traib in Paris wearing my zip-offs, hiking boots and bandana and make the French choke on their morning coffees as they murmur 'trés vulgar!'


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Loving your enemies

I used to think that I didn't have any enemies, but now on the camino I see that's not true. Not only have I met some great people on the camino and made a few friends, I've also had to deal with some quite antisocial behaviour from others and myself - snoring.

There is a basic injustice about snoring: this sign that someone else is sleeping soundly is the same thing that robs everyone else of a good night's sleep.

In the daytime snorer's are normal people, but at night they are transformed into something altogether else as they insist on demanding one's full attention as they perform their best imitation of a jet engine or Harley Davidson. After a long day of walking, a shower and a sleep are the two things that not only allow one to relax but get ready for the next long day of walking. So, imagine how hard it is to love those who seem so intent on depriving me of the sleep I need. I don't enjoy being grumpy, but as one snorer replied when told of his behaviour, "what can I do?"


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Someone commented that there aren't all that many 'spiritual' posts on my blog. In fact the blogging isn't going as I'd liked: I already mentioned the difficulty connecting, and add to that short amount of time I have when I do connect. Walking at about 5km an hour for (on average) 30km a day means - among other things - moving slowly, but also moving often. So time for extended reflecting and writing usually comes at the expense of sleep. But still, I have been writing, and when I can intend to transform journal entries to blog posts.


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Getting closer

Well, it seems that all of the extra walking has paid off: I'm making good time and should be in Santiago before too long, just over a week now. It's exciting to look at a map of Spain and to trace the route. Initially it felt daunting. Each day brought new blisters, but now each day is 20-30km closer to my destination.

It's so nice to have afternoons off and be walking only 4-6 hours a day, rather than 8 or more, as now the longest days are behind me. There's surprisingly a lot to be done in the evenings: mostly it's just washing (I only brought two sets of clothes) and also some shopping so I don't have to eat out every meal. Life on the road has it's own rhythms, but still each day on the road creates work for that night.