tmitchellmusic

During my years of attending classes – high school, undergraduate school, graduate school, etc. – I read a lot of books not because I chose them but because they were chosen by a teacher or professor.  Some were read and then forgotten the moment the exams for a particular class were complete, some were read and added to my personal library for future reference or for loaning to friends and colleagues, some have been read and re-read over the years, and a few – a precious few – have become very good friends – resources that refresh, renew, and restore as the journey of life continues.

One such book is To Know As We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education by Parker J. Palmer* –  a book that was assigned by a professor who is responsible for several volumes in my collection of best friends.  I was re-reading Palmer’s book again in recent days and again encountered a section that had lovingly been highlighted by my yellow highlighter in order to be able to find it with ease.  It reads:

This love is not a soft and sentimental virtue, not a fuzzy feeling of romance.  The love of which spiritual tradition speaks is “tough love,” the connective tissue of reality – and we flee from it because we fear its claims on our lives.  Curiosity and control create a knowledge that distances us from each other and the world, allowing us to use what we know as a plaything and to play the game by our own self-serving rules.  But a knowledge that springs from love will implicate us in the web of life; it will wrap the the knower and the known in compassion, in a bond of awesome responsibility as well as transforming joy; it will call us to involvement, mutuality, accountability.

“Love in action,” said Dostoevski, “is a harsh and dreadful thing,” and so it can be.  A knowledge that springs from love may require us to change, even sacrifice, for the sake of what we know.  It is easy to be curious and controlling.  It is difficult to love.  But if we want a knowledge that will rebind our broken world, we must reach for that deeper passion.  We must recover from our spiritual tradition the models and methods of knowing as an act of love. (9)

*http://www.amazon.com/Know-Are-Known-Spirituality-Education/dp/0060664568/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1335192762&sr=8-1

Yet another day where Father Richard Rohr says exactly what needs saying this very day:

“The great thing about God’s love is that it’s not determined by the object. God does not love us because we are good. God loves us because God is good. It takes our whole lives for that to sink in because that’s not how human love operates.

Human love is largely determined by the attractiveness of the object. When someone is loveable, nice, good, and attractive physically, or has a nice personality, we find it much easier to give ourselves to them. That’s the way humans operate, outside of the economy of grace. Divine love is a love that operates in an unqualified way, without making distinctions between persons and without following our personal preferences. We don’t have the capacity to receive that notion! Divine love is received by surrender instead of performance or perfection.”

I encourage you to become a subscriber to Father Richard’s Daily Meditations – http://cacradicalgrace.org

Grace and peace

At the beginning of his Daily Meditation for today Father Richard Rohr writes the following:

Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change.  In fact, God loves you so that you can change.  What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change, is the experience of love.  It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change. (http://cacradicalgrace.org)

Karl Barth also understood that it is all about God.  Barth observed that many people think that if they ask God their questions that God will provide answers – an order that Barth found to be completely inaccurate.  Barth said that God reveals information which in turn provokes our human questions.  It all begins with God!  It all begins with God!!

Just like in creation – “In the beginning, God!

As a way of introducing Karl Barth to readers of this blog who may not be familiar with him, I turn in this post to a brief little volume Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by Karl Barth*.

The back cover of this delightful read offers the following biographical information about Barth:

Karl Barth (1886-1968).  The Swiss Reformed professor and pastor, was once described by Pope Pius XII as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas.  As the principal author of “The Barmen Declaration,” he was the intellectual leader of the German Confessing Church, the Protestant group that resisted the Third Reich.  Barth’s teaching career spanned all or parts of five decades.  Upon being removed from his post at Bonn by the Nazis in late 1934, Barth moved to Basel, where he taught until 1962.  Among Barth’s many books, sermons and essays are “The Epistle to the Romans,” “Humanity of God,” “Evangelical Theology” and, of course the “Church Dogmatics.”

This little 60 page volume was originally published in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s birth in 1956, and was reissued in English translation in 1986, the 100th anniversary of Barth’s birth.

Barth wrote the following in “A Letter of Thanks to Mozart” in 1955:  Whenever I listen to you, I am transported to the threshold of a world which in sunlight and storm, by day by night, is a good and ordered world.  Then as a human being of the twentieth century, I always find myself blessed with courage (not arrogance), with tempo (not an exaggerated tempo), with purity (not a wearisome purity), with peace (not a slothful peace).  With an ear open to your musical dialectic, one can be young and become old, can work and rest, be content and sad: in short, one can live. (22)

Barth is reported to have remarked that when the angels were in worship that they utilized the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, but when they played they danced to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Barth also wrote:  I have for years and years begun each day with Mozart, and only then (aside from the daily newspaper) turned to my “Dogmatics.”  I even have to confess that if I ever get to heaven, I would first of all seek out Mozart and only then inquire after Augustine, St. Thomas, Luther, Calvin, and Schleiermacher.  How am I to explain this?  In a few words perhaps this way:  our daily bread must also include playing.  I hear Mozart – both younger and older – at play.  But play is something so lofty and demanding that it requires mastery.  And in Mozart I hear an art of playing as I hear it in no one else.  Beautiful playing presupposes an intuitive, childlike awareness of the essence or center – as also the beginning and the end – of all things.  it is from this center, from this beginning and end, that I hear Mozart create his music.  I can hear those boundaries which he imposed upon himself because it was precisely this discipline that gave him joy.  And when I hear him, it gladdens, encourages, and comforts me as well. (16-17)

So let us live and play – enjoying God forever!!!

*http://www.amazon.com/Wolfgang-Amadeus-Mozart-Karl-Barth/dp/1592444369/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334703663&sr=8-1

My last post made reference to Karl Barth and his monumental work Church Dogmatics.  The article by Michael Lindvall that was the focus of that last post also reminded me that it has been a good long while since I have done any writing about Karl Barth.  So this post begins a new series dedicated to Karl Barth.  In the next post I will provide some biographical information about this giant among theologians, but in this post I want to offer and comment on a single paragraph that Barth wrote as the concluding paragraph in Volume IV.2 of the Church Dogmatics which carries the title “The Doctrine of Reconciliation.”

On page 837 Barth offers these words: Love is the indestructible element in the life-act of the Christian.  It is, as we are forced to say, the promise fulfilled already in the present.  Love alone abides.  Everything else which may and must be done, even by Christians and on the basis of a supreme spiritual endowment, abides only to the extent that it is done in love and is thus itself the act of love.*

It seems to me that it really is all about love.  We are told in the Scriptures that the great commandment of all is to love the Lord your God with all your soul, with all you mind, with all your strength, and to love you neighbor as yourself.  If everything that we do is done in love – genuine love – then we certainly should be taking the right path in our journey of living.

I also find it interesting that Barth writes multiple volumes with many many pages, yet on the last page of this volume toward the end of his work he offers this brief summary comment that “love alone abides.”

So love one another as we have been loved.

Grace and peace

*http://www.amazon.com/Church-Dogmatics-Karl-Barth/dp/1598564420/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334586240&sr=8-1

Following a glorious celebration of the Resurrection it is time to begin taking the next steps in the journey.  This post was prompted by an article in the April 18, 2012 edition of The Christian Century – which incidentally carries the sub-title: Thinking Critically, Living Faithfully – excellent words of wisdom for living.

The article is written by Michael L. Lindvall, Pastor of The Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City.  I have had the privilege of hearing or reading Lindvall’s work on numerous occasions and having always been inspired by his words, his theology, and his faithful living.  This article is titled “Truth is proportional: The limits of what we can know” and offers a comparative study of “18th century Swiss-French social theorist” Jean-Jacques Rousseau and theologian, author, teacher Karl Barth.  Following is the text of the two concluding paragraphs of this outstanding and thought provoking article.

The contrast between these two thinkers lies in their utterly distinct understandings of the way in which their attempts to know and articulate truth mattered.  Rousseau’s understanding of the truth of his ideas is in no sense proportional to other truths or to any transcendent truth.  He and his understanding of truth are humble before nothing, not even God.  He dares to imagine that both God and the angels might be illuminated by what he has to say.  It is he and his thinking that are at the center of the cosmos.  In such an intellectual geography, it’s only natural that the angels would cease their praise of God to hear what Jean-Jacques has decided.

Karl Barth knew that his theology mattered profoundly.  He would not have poured his life into his work had he not held the highest estimation of the importance and truth of what he wrote, taught and believed.  But Barth understood that his mortal understanding of the divine truth was proportional.  He fathomed that God’s thoughts were not finally the same thing as Barth’s thoughts.  He understood that his theology and the truth it captured must be set next to his awareness that even the “Church Dogmatics” would end up ‘on some heavenly floor as a pile of waste paper.’ (The Christian Century, April 18, 2012, pp. 12-13)

Do we over estimate the importance of our thinking, our accomplishments, and our human understanding of truth?

Grace and peace

Wonderful thoughts for Holy Saturday from today’s daily meditation by Father Richard Rohr – www.cacradicalgrace.com

To be a Christian means to necessarily be an optimist because we  remember what happened on the third day! We know the final stage of death, Jesus’ leap of faith, was not in vain. He was not put to shame, and “God raised him up” (which is the correct way to say it, and not that he rose himself). Most of human life is Holy Saturday, a few days of life are Good Friday, but there only needs to be one single Easter Sunday for us to know the final and eternal pattern. We now live inside of such cosmic hope. 

Jesus trusted enough to outstare the darkness, to outstare the void, to hold out for the resurrection of the forever-awaited “third day,” and not to try to manufacture His own. That is how God stretches and expands the soul, and makes it big enough to include God.

You see, to love fully is to die! (When you fully unite with the other, the separate self is gone.) What is handed over to God is always returned to us transformed into Christ Consciousness. Easter is the eternal third day that we forever await, but today we are content to live in the belly of the whale, in liminal space, in the “in between” that is most of human life. God is creating a Big Space inside of you. Just wait!

Let us love fully as we have been loved!

Grace and peace

On this Good Friday I offer you a post written by Mary Anne Best (maryanne@third-force.org).  Her thoughts lead us toward prayerful consideration of both this day and the way we are called to live with one another in relationship.

A Reading from the Holy Gospel

 For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.

Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.

Pilate said to Him, ‘What is truth?’

John 18: 37-38

 The Gospel of the Lord

Again, we approach the question: If you truly knew that you had come from God

and were returning to God, is there anything you could not forgive?

Is there anything you would not do for another? Is there not a kind word you would give?

Where would you place your attention?

Would you be concerned about you had achieved, acquired, your possessions, titles?

.

There is a model to follow/enter into Truth,to knowing, to being,

to Life …

to knowing who you are, why you are in world, and what you are.

Is there anything we should not forgive – is there anything we should not do – is there not a kind word that we should have for each other – today, Good Friday, we remember the ultimate sacrifice – so let us remember whose we are and why we are in the world.

Grace and peace

One of the ordination vows for teaching elders, ruling elders, and deacons is “Do you promise to further the peace, unity and purity of the church.” (Book of Order, W-4.4003 g)

I have been amazed at the consternation some people have been able to find in this question in recent months and years.  So I offer some observations that have helped provide me with clarity and calm.

The sequence of these three ways of living is important.  Living in peace makes unity possible.  Living in peaceful unity contributes to the realistic possibility of purity.

Some people openly change the order of these three important aspects of being the church.  Many of those who speak of the need for a group that is “like-minded” seem to reverse the order – some even openly state that in their speaking.  Purity then unity then peace.  If we as human creatures are willing to strive to live in peace and unity then we are more open to let God do God’s work of purity.  Those who feel a need for human judgment of purity standards are attempting to do God’s work.

One more point – unity and uniformity at not synonyms.  Unity implies the presence of diversity while uniformity implies the absence of diversity.  I am convinced that if God wanted us all to be alike then God certainly could have accomplished that – after all would it not be easier to create copies of a single human person rather than the complexity of working to create each of us uniquely in God’s image.

Finally – peace and unity are also more than just tolerance.  I have always loved the wording that has been part of our denomination since 1789 with the meeting of the first General Assembly in Philadelphia:

That, while under the conviction of the above principle we think it necessary to make effectual provision that all who are admitted as teachers be sound in the faith, we also believe that there are truths and forms with respect to which men* of good characters and principle may differ.  And in all these we think it the duty of private Chrsitians and societies to exercise mutual forbearance toward each other. (Book of Order, F-3.0105)

As I understand those words we are called to exercise mutual forbearance together in unity not in separation and schism.  More tomorrow . . .

Grace and peace

*  From a footnote to the text: The words “men” and “man’s” throughout this quotation from the eighteenth century should be understood as apploying to all persons. (Book of Order, page 11, footnote 2)

Last night it was my privilege to join with a group of friends and colleagues who had gathered for the purpose of examining people who had been chosen through the voice of the congregation to provide our congregation with leadership as deacons and ruling elders for the next three years.  I have participated in this process for a number of years, but something was refreshingly different this year.  The gathering had the aroma of celebration from beginning to end and it reminded me of the following statements – the first from The Shorter Catechism and the second from the newly revised Book of Order.

Q. 1.  What is the chief end of man?  A.  Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Standards for ordained service reflect the church’ s desire to submit joyfully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all aspects of life. (G-2.0104 b)

As part of the preparation for this final session our Pastor listed the following five practices in preprating for “Management of Anxieties in Systemic Change”: Keeping a non-anxious presence; Giving clear self-definition; Staying connected; Avoiding sabotage; Being playful.

During the meeting there were lots of smiles, good amounts of laughter, and an infectious spirit of joyful submission.

This truly was the Body of Christ living together in relationship!!