My ideas are always changing, always moving around one centre, and I am always seeing that centre from somewhere else. 

Hence I will always be accused of inconsistency. But I will no longer be there to hear the accusation…”

Thomas Merton, A Vow of Conversation: Journals 1964-1965, p.19.

Via Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog: Not “Clinging to What is No Longer There”..

(Christine Valters Paintner, The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom, 2001, 173 pages.)

“… how you do anything is probably how you do everything.” – Richard Rohr

Raimundo Panikkar in his book Blessed Simplicity: The Monk as Universal Archetype, describes the monk (be it male or female, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist et cetera) as that “person who aspire to reach the ultimate goal in life with all his [sic] being by renouncing all that is not necessary to it.” While not contradictory to it, but better yet complementary to Panikar’s definition, Valters Paintner’s book is about the monk (be it male or female) embracing all that which in necessary to reach that ultimate goal, in a way that is wholesome, harmonious, life-giving and creative. The Artist Rule: Nurturing your creative soul with Monastic Wisdom is a catapathic book about life affirmation and celebration.

This book came to my hands at perfect timing. As I am on summer break from my studies and I like to always take my breaks for some unhurried creative expressions.

The book is a 12-week journey in which the author will be a companion in the artistic creative process sharing wisdom and practices from the Benedictine Monastic tradition. As I am working my way through the book, I realized that what I am finding meaningful at this moment, is not what the author has written but somehow the vibes of how it is written. The book is engaging in a roomy way. Coming from a monastic perspective in which time is a gift, it is not a surprise that the spirit of the book is calm and open. I find myself pondering quite a bit, writing on its margins and grabbing my journal to delve deep in those provoked thoughts. Yet because it comes from a monastic approach, the author emphasizes the words from St. Benedict, “ora et labora” (pray and work), making this a book of practices, not just warm thoughts. Done in a generous way the author aspire to move the reader from the passive consumption of words into the incarnational act of being creative.

The gem of this book, in my opinion, is that the approach to the creative life is not done from a fragmented perspective, but it accentuates that the “primary creative act is the living of our daily lives, making it a work of art.” (p.16) It seeks to ground the creative process in the overall life experience of the person, the monk, the artist.

(This book review is part of a Roundtable on The Artist’s Rule at the Patheos Book Club.)

The “we” is because Ricci and I will make the pilgrimage together to the Wild Goose Festival, June 23-26.  We have decided that this pilgrimage will be our 11th wedding anniversary gift to each other.

We are very aware that it will not be the perfect gathering of people that will solve the entire cadre world’s problems and bring ultimate cosmic transformation, where candy cotton flowers will bloom and angels will be putting us to sleep with holy lullabies. But because we know the Sacred have this way of seeping through the crevices of our broken humanity and ill treated nature, we’ll be wide-eyed looking for bright manifestations of joy and hope.

We are going because for us it would be a practice in sacramental living. What do I mean by that?  I mean that we in our specific places live in a dialectical relationship with the immanent and the transcendent presence of God. God’s grace allows our finite embodiment, in the particularity of place, to enter into the unfathomable reality of God’s life in this world.  God’s intervention, the Incarnation, evokes a historical reality. It testifies to a concrete expression of some new way of living in the world. Therefore, gatherings in place and space, like Wild Goose Festival, are holy places where the Sacred is present and can be encountered.

Because of the reality of Creation and Incarnation humans are able to bring a sense of transformation that honors “placeness” in the world. In the light of such reality human response must not be a private one, but one that intervenes and makes public God’s presence in the world.  With this understanding, human activities and relationships in particular localities have the blessed opportunity to be sacraments pointing to God’s loving relationship and activity in the world. Therefore, for Ricci and I, the Festival can be a humble and fragile but vibrant sacrament of God-space (a.k.a. God’s Kingdom).

At the Wild Goose we will join others in dreaming up and cracking open new neuro-pathways that will help us imagine “what if…” Aware of own limitations and brokenness, we would take serious the sacramentality of presence and space; and dare for sometime break the ground, plant seeds and humbly cultivate a liberate space. To cultivate is an intentional act:  the seeds are not just thrown around, and the gardener live in hope that choreography between action (ploughing, planting, watering, feeding with compost, pruning, etc) and hope would bring delicious fruit. And then back to cultivating again. I believe our time at Wild Goose in less than 2 months will be a large apprenticeship gathering, not that we have already arrived, but a sacramental space to learn crafts and experience new movements to keep cultivating the soul, nature and communities.

The Gospels tell of Jesus’ bitter denunciation of the Father’s abandonment. This was the moment when Jesus lost everything– his followers, his kingdom, his God. The death of Jesus made evident that in the incarnation God took upon Godself the totality of human experience.

Here we encounter what Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek refers to as the perverse core of Christianity in which “ when Christ dies, what dies with him is the secret hope discernible in ‘Father, why hast thou forsaken me?’: the hope that there is a father who has abandoned me.”[1] This is the event horizon that precedes the life-giving death of Jesus. Jesus’ experience of forsakenness by God, ushered in the moment of death when all of human structures of existence were grasped within the experience of God. Our human experience, including death, at that moment was made part of God’s own life.

Reposting from Homebrewed Theology:

Brian Ammons’ got his chapter banned from the Baptimergent book & here it is for you and your friends for FREE!! Here’s the story….

Smyth & Helwys, the press whose primary market is the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, published the first book of a hyphenated emergent collection - Baptimergent.  It was an excellent book with all types of Baptists collected together including Southern, American, Alliance, Cooperative, Liberal, Conservative, Dudes, Ladies, Black, White, Democrats, Republicans, and even Hauerwasians!!! For some reason Smyth & Helwys thought it would be ok for them to have a chapter calling out most Baptist churches as having an idolatrous love of our country or economic blinders to the message of justice in scripture and other such seemingly controversial issues BUT should an ordained gay baptist minister tell his story without obligating the reader to agree with him it gets cut for being ‘Too Gay.’

That banned chapter was written by Brian Ammons whose Big Tent legend continues to grow!  When those of us who also contributed chapters found out his chapter wasn’t going to be published we were very disappointed and considered dropping the project all together.  That said I guess we weren’t surprised.  Being a very proud Baptist, one of the things that continuously embarrasses me is NOT our fundamentalist cousins in the SBC but the uber-wussy “moderate” Baptists who basically pretend to be radically different than their SBC friends because they ordain women (and hire very few of them).  I have long hoped for a Baptist community that is a big enough fellowship to permit every disciple of Jesus to be present, honest, and then encouraged to take the next step in their faith.  When issues intimately connected to the heart of faith for us more progressive baptists comes up we are usually told by leaders two things….1)we agree with you! 2)don’t speak so loud…  I get how this is pragmatic if you want to keep a bunch of people in your churches, denominational fellowship, giving money, supporting ministries, and such.  I just find this pragmatic muzzle burdensome and only an expectation of us more progressive types.  I don’t see Jesus using a muzzle to get a bigger audience, John the BAPTIST (lol) didn’t, Clarence Jordan sure didn’t, Walter Rauschenbusch didn’t…..any way.

I hope you download THIS ARTICLE, read it, enjoy it, discuss it, and share it!  Of course it would be awesome if you got the Baptimergent book too but I can’t say I wouldn’t be thrilled to think even more people got the banned article and enjoyed it.

Previous Brian Ammons posts…. Big Tent Sexuality with Richard Rohr & Reframing Sexuality

Last year I tried to read mostly fiction – that beside school assigned books. I was somewhat successful, but there was some non-fiction that made it way to my reading pile.

This year I would like to get into poetry. I read quite a bit of Latin American poetry in the 90′s. Finding then a soul companion in Fr. Ernesto Cardenal.

So what are your recommendations?

Travis is an awesome mad artist who is behind The Work of the People video productions and resources. After a long night cigars, good beer and conversations, the next day he entrapped me into a crazy quick interview.

Eliacin Rosario-Cruz from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

I’m excited to be part of the upcoming Big Tent Christianity gathering.

Big Tent Christianity (BTX) is the convergence of new and old ways of being and becoming the Church:

Progressive and Emergent
Denominational and Non-denominational
Large and Small Faith Communities
Describable and Undescribable

BTX brings people together from across the country to proclaim what unites us as followers of Jesus in this modern world. More than a dozen leading Christian voices will break through boundaries to share new and innovative forms of ministry and renewal. You will be inspired by their visions of how we can speak even more powerfully in and to the world of the 21st century.
The gathering will include presentations, responses and discussion with speakers and with each other. There will be a Big Tent of music with creative versions of traditional music along with contemporary music–myriad ways that reflect our common ground.

Marcus Borg
Carol Howard Merritt
Brian McLaren
Richard Rohr

in conversation with

Philip Clayton
David Felten
Shane Hipps
Brian Ammons
Nadia Bolz-Weber
Rachel Held Evans
Tripp Fuller
Gary Kinnaman
Eliacin Rosario-Cruz
Mark Scandrette
Anthony Smith
Spencer Burke
Derek Webb