Amicus Dei

Lisa Falkenberg wrote in the Houston Chronicle yesterday –

"Teddy bears and crayons are now allowed in children’s rooms at the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility for immigrant families in Taylor, Texas.

It took 10 federal lawsuits and many months of international media scrutiny to accomplish this."  Read the rest of Falkenberg’s article here. 

On June 26, 2007, I wrote a post titled, Why Are We Putting Children In Prison?  ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has been detaining immigrant families who are seeking asylum in the US, by incarcerating them in the Don T. Hutto Detention Facility in Texas.  Hutto was built as a medium security prison, now owned and operated by Correction Corporation of America.  These immigrant families are asylum-seekers, not criminals and yet, they are being treated as though they are.

The ACLU filed a suit in federal court, asking for the release of these detainees and for the improvement of conditions during their detention.  Read my first post Why Are We Putting Children In Prison?&nbsp and follow the links to see the inhumane conditions and treatment being inflicted upon people who presented themselves to ICE because they feared for their own lives in their own countries. 

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

– inscription on the Statue of Liberty

Many are fleeing religious and political persecution thinking that the US, with our history of welcoming those seeking freedom would be sympathetic to their plight.  Instead we imprisoned them, separating children from their mothers, prohibiting outdoor play, denying them educational opportunities, and humiliating them by depriving them of even enough privacy to use the restroom without being watched by guards of the opposite sex. 

Although the federal judge acknowledged that Hutto was a prison, he also noted that it was "available" and that families would continue to be detained there.  But, children will no longer be threatened with separation from their families, will not have to wear prison uniforms, and will be allowed greater access to education, healthcare, and outdoor play.  Parents will also be allowed access to legal advocates who can guide them through the torturous US legal system for immigrants.

Justice is not complete in this case, but conditions have at least improved. 

"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?"  Isaiah 58:6  — Amicus Dei

Dr. Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Rev. Thomas J. Reese, editor of the Catholic magazine, America, wrote from two completely different perspectives on the "doubt" admitted by the late Mother Teresa.

Mohler takes the view that I critiqued in my post "Mother Teresa and the dark night of the soul."  Mohler assumes that Mother Teresa trusted her "feelings" more than her "faith," thus the reason for her spiritual struggle. 

Reese, familiar with the contemplative traditions, recognizes that Mother Teresa was not depressed, or a closet atheist, as Chris Hitchens suggests.  Rather, Mother Teresa was living in the "dark night" — that time when God seems distant, if not altogether, absent. 

But, to our on-demand society, which includes evangelical Christians, we can’t or won’t acknowledge that God is beyond our comprehension and often refuses to fit in our theological box.  Not to mention the bias we have toward all things Catholic.  So, of course, Mother Teresa’s candid and honest confession is her "fault." 

Frankly, I’ll take the God Mother Teresa served.  Apparently she thought God worthy of her service and devotion, even if she was not the beneficiary of  God’s palpable presence.  Sounds like Mother Teresa understood a lot more about Job than we evangelicals do.  — Amicus Dei

With the canonization of Mother Teresa moving forward, the publication of Mother Teresa:  Come Be My Light resulted in a chorus of Chicken Little responses —

"Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith"

"Mother Teresa Doubts God"

This book of Mother Teresa’s journal writings, which she wanted destroyed before her death, seems to have come as a shock to the marginally-religious world.  Lost in all the hub-bub about this soon-to-be saint’s crisis of faith is the long-standing idea of the absence of God — the withdrawal of God — from the contemplative’s life. 

St. John of the Cross called this the "dark night of the soul."  His work by the same name is a mystical treatise on how the light of God actually becomes darkness in the contemplative’s quest for God. 

Meister Eckhart’s famous quote that "man’s last and highest parting takes place when, for God’s sake, he says goodbye to God" has been interpreted by many as loss of faith.  But John MacQuarrie, in his excellent volume on Christian mysticism, Two Worlds Are Ours, says that what Eckhart was really expressing was "a version of God beyond God" — "dialectic theism which seeks to combine the transcendent and immanent aspects of divine Being." 

Our typical evangelical response to someone who says God is absent to them is to encourage them to pray because God is always "right here."  Our notion that God is available to us 24/7, whenever we need God or seek God, betrays our evangelical ignorance of numerous Christian mystics who lamented the absence of God even as they were seeking God.

Gregory of Nyssa contended that the "quest [for God] never comes to an end."  Gregory says,

"This is the true knowledge of what is sought; this is the seeing that consists of not seeing."

Pretty mystical stuff, but that’s the tradition of Mother Teresa, who took her name from Therese of Lisieux, who is best known for "suffering, and her experience of spiritual dereliction and abandonment by God,"  according to The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism by Bernard McGinn. 

Chris Hitchens, in a Newsweek article, seeks to paint Mother Teresa as overwhelmed by the dogma of the Catholic Church, and reeling under its weight, loses her faith in God.  Hitchens, of course, gave us God is Not Great:  How Religion Poisons Everything.  So, his bias is showing. 

Whether Mother Teresa had a crisis of faith or not, the point is her tradition understands the Christian life is not all sweetness-and-light.  As evangelicals, we could learn from the struggles of "dark night" experiences.  Rather than blaming the individual’s estrangement from God on something they did or did not do, what would it do to our theology if we acknowledge, as the psalmist often did, that God leaves us for a time without reason or explanation? Our response to the "dark night" experience should be like Gregory of Nyssa’s who said,

"This truly is the vision of God:  never to be satisfied in the desire to see him.  One must always, by looking at what he can see, rekindle the desire to see more." 

Authentic, missional faith demands that we embrace the "dark nights" as well as the bright days.  Perhaps that is why Therese of Lisieux, famous for her suffering,  was known as "the Little Flower."  – Amicus Dei

Thanks to Zondervan’s To the Point e-newsletter for linking to Leonard Sweet’s interview at George Fox Journal.  Sweet talks about the emerging church, postmodernism, and truth in a brief, but pithy interview. 

Here’s some of what Sweet says about worship in emerging churches–

"Pews are now antiques. Since the focus of emerging churches is on community, their worship space is flexible. Some have tables and chairs. Others have a more living room look and feel. But emerging churches are proving to be very surprising. For example, hymns are now back. And the church’s liturgy and Eucharist are being rediscovered in creative and compelling ways. A lot of emerging churches are very “smells and bells” in their worship. Whatever the diversity of spiritual practices, the key words for emerging churches are incarnational, missional, and relational."

Check out the entire interview here.  — Amicus Dei

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In the Celtic Christian abbey, the compound was open to all who needed food, lodging, or care.   As the monks’ pagan neighbors entered the abbey, they were greeted with many familiar sights — monks or nuns preparing meals in the kitchen, stacking wood for the fire, copying manuscripts, or working in the fields.  But, they also encountered the unfamiliar — strange rituals like making the sign of the cross, breaking bread and sharing a common cup, kneeling, bowing, and prostrating oneself. 

Learning How to Be A Christian

These were the rituals of Christianity, practiced by monks and nuns in the abbey, and taught to their pagan neighbors who wished to become Christians.  Pagans literally learned how Christians acted by seeing, practicing, and repeating these strange behaviors.   These behaviors became so ingrained in the life of the convert that they became part of his or her daily routine.

When an Irish convert needed courage, instead of an incantation from their druid past, they prayed a prayer to Christ.  The famous breastplate of St. Patrick is the most outstanding example of this type of praying.  The Carmina Gaedelica is a collection of everyday prayers from Celtic life — prayers for starting the fire, washing one’s face, sweeping the house, and working at the loom.

Other rituals, such as making the sign of the cross, became automatic responses to the happenstances of primitive life.  Celtic Christians learned through words, patterns, and symbols what made them distinct from their pagan Druid kinsmen in actions and belief.

Loss of Rituals in the Seeker Church

Fast-forward to the 20th century.  The "seeker service" model suggested that people came to Christ most easily if we removed "religious" symbols.  This strategy worked well to attract new people to "seeker sensitive" churches, but unlike the Celtic abbeys, some seeker churches never introduced new Christians to the actions, behaviors and symbols that signify the Christian faith.

Many church buildings were constructed without baptistries or baptismal fonts because baptism was practiced in swimming pools and lakeshores.  Communion was not observed in many seeker churches, or it was relegated to a special service outside the regular pattern of worship.  All of this was done because it was thought that symbols and rituals obscure the gospel message.  But just the opposite is true.

The Importance of Ritual

Rituals, practices, and symbols are important because they give us external behaviors to express internal commitments.  We learn how to "act like a Christian" by doing the things Christians do.  So, new converts participate in baptism, receive communion, and are catechized as part of learning how we act in this strange new community called the church.

Without ritual, patterns, and symbols our practice of the Christian faith is stripped of actions that cause us to remember and draw strength from our interior faith.   Rituals give us behaviors, individually and corporately, that reinforce our common beliefs.  The missional congregation particularly seeks to be distinctly Christian in its behaviors, symbols, and practices — whether ancient or contemporary — because that is part of what we do as a contrast society.  – Amicus Dei 

I picked up the latest issue of Shambhala Sun, the magazine of western Buddhist thought, because Thich Nhat Hanh was on the cover and I wanted to read the articles by and about him.  Nhat Hanh is a wonderful Vietnamese Buddhist monk and teacher, nominated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1967 for the Nobel Peace Prize for his peace work during the Viet Nam war.  If you want to read some great stuff on being peace, read Thich Nhat Hanh.  He knows it because he’s lived it.

Buddhist "churches" face the same problems as our churches!

After scanning the articles about Hanh, I began thumbing through the magazine, and the article, Buddhism’s Young Turks caught my eye.   Does this sound familiar to you?

"A recent survey of 231 Buddhist centers in America found that most of their members are 48 or older.* But a new cadre of Buddhist teachers is on the rise…"

"So what does Buddhism look like with this turning of the wheel? One striking characteristic all three authors share is a deep engagement with popular culture. Forget monastic time-outs; this is high-def Buddhism on city sidewalks. Warner’s book is especially media drenched and marked by cultural references. From the indie band Flaming Lips to Doc Martens shoes, Warner draws on music, movies, TV, celebrities, food and drink, and books."

The article by Marcia Z. Nelson reviews three new books by young, hip Buddhists practitioners.  If you replaced "Buddhism" with "church," this article would sound like a review of three rising emerging church writers!  One of their book covers features a photo of a young Buddhist guy with a shaved head and a tattoo on his neck that reads, "revolutionary."  And, you thought Christians had a corner on cool….

So, what does this tell us?  At least three things, in my opinion:

1. Culture has shifted.  It’s not just Christian churches that need reinventing.  All faith traditions are struggling to find relevance in a postmodern world.
2. Crisis drives change.  Loss of members/adherents is a cause for concern, whether you are a Buddhist sangha (community) or a Christian church.   All organizations inherently want to survive, and crisis precipitates adaptation for survival in a changed environment.
3. New voices articulate new visions.  In the early 1960s, Thich Nhat Hanh founded a Buddhist order that engaged in helping others, transforming Vietnamese villages, and modeling peace.  Sound familiar?  Evangelicals are now turning to doing good as part of our engagement with the culture.

If we listen closely, we might learn something from our Buddhist friends about how they are addressing the same concerns we have.  Seems like we’re all facing the same challenges.  – Amicus Dei   

I am reading David McCarthy’s book, The Good Life:  Genuine Christianity for the Middle Class.  McCarthy is assistant professor of theology at Mount St. Mary’s College in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and has this to say about friendship with God:

"When we are called friends of God, the emphasis is not on our own achievement — not on our own ability to attain the status of God’s friend through the power of our choices.  The emphasis is on common knowledge, on sharing a common vision, on seeing the world from God’s point of view.  God’s invitation of frienship, in Jesus Christ, offers a share in God’s way of knowing the world, of seeing and acting in it, of imagining its present and future in God’s love."

McCarthy continues on the next page:

"The center point of our friendship with God is corporate worship.  Gathered for worship, the church is God’s sign of friendship with the world.  The church is the body of Christ.  Go to a church as it prays and look around.  You will see it, the subversive friendship of God’s hospitality.  You will see Pharisees congratulating themselves for their own righteousness.  You will see tax collectors and those who cheat on their income taxes.  You will see sinners.  You will see many saints, but you will also see adulterers, thieves, liars, petty embezzlers, and colossal hypocrites….However, it is precisely this kind of gathering that represents God’s people.  This is Christ’s body and the sign of God’s offer of friendship with the world." 

   – The Good Life: Genuine Christianity for the Middle Class , pgs 39-40

McCarthy has lots of good, practical stuff to say about the consumer mentality of us middle-class Americans.  Drawing on the stories of Zacchaeus and the rich young ruler, McCarthy argues for a reshaping of our middle class life into a life that reflects Kingdom values of love, friendship, and commitment to following Christ.  Published in 2004, the book is hard to find in stock — I got my copy from a used book service.  But, I encourage you to track it down, read it, and reflect on the middle class life as we know it, and as it can be.  – Amicus Dei