The Science And Spirituality Of Addiction

 What drew me in was the collocation of science and spirituality in the title. I'm also a little interested in addiction through having played a small part in the pastoral support of people with addiction and not feeling that I had much of a handle on it to be of much help.

What I appreciate about this book is the breadth of interest and the humane approach of the author. I suspect I'm going to be re-reading the introduction to the neuroscience relating to addiction which was helpful and put into perspective things that I (like many others) had been somewhat aware of without knowing the context or further details. 

I also appreciated the cross-referencing from time to time with scriptural illustrations. This becomes more prominent when discussing matters to do with wealth where the dialogue between science and scripture becomes a bit more concentrated.

And that drawing in of wealth to consideration was also one of the things that drew me to read the book, and I wasn't disappointed. There is a chapter explicitly on the topic and then the discussion of it is followed up in subsequent pages. I think that this is a helpful thing when it comes to thinking about the current world situation where we have more wealth concentrating with fewer individuals and companies. Understanding the neuropsychology of individuals is a really helpful thing to consider.

What I also appreciated was the humane approach of the author and particularly the reprised invitation to self reflection on the main points raised in each chapter. I think the author does us, the readers, a favour with the quality of the self-reflection he offers through these pages. And it is helpful self reflection: it models what he invites us to do at the end of each chapter and it helps to bring together the objective accounts offered by the biology and chemistry he leads us through with a careful (mindful, I think would be fair) attention to inner subjective correlates of that bio-chemistry. I also appreciated this account because by it we are shown how individuals' biology and personal histories can mean that neurochemical effects can vary -there is no 'one size fits all' when it comes to drug effects.

Some of what the exploration makes clear too is the social components of addiction: from the way that drug use can be a kind of attempt to repair social deficits as experienced by individuals to the way that treatment if pursued humanely can be successful if it can help repair connection and social wellbeing for those who get drawn into addiction.

I would say, based on my reading of this book so far, that it gives a really helpful resource to anyone who is seeking to support people in addiction and to understand our own addictive responses where they exist. I think that there are parts of this book that I will be returning to in future to help deepen and consolidate understanding that may help in pastoral support.

The blurb that drew me said the following, and I have found the book does live up to this.

Perfect for readers who: Recognize themselves in the compulsive scrolling, the overworking, the numbing — and want to understand why Are drawn to Gabor Maté, Bessel van der Kolk, or Johann Hari's work on addiction as disconnection Want neuroscience and Christian theology in genuine, non-forced dialogue Find Ken Wilber, Spiral Dynamics, and integral approaches compelling Work in counseling, recovery coaching, chaplaincy, or pastoral care Are curious why Jesus had so much to say about money, power, and the dangers of wealth Believe that healing the self and healing the world are inseparable projects

In disclosure, I received an e-copy of this book for review purposes. I was asked to offer an honest review within a month but there was no pressure or suggestion that I should be favourable (or otherwise!). The opinions above are my own straightforward first responses to the book.

Link The Science and Spirituality of Addiction on Bookshop Stuart Morse’s Website

#TheScienceAndSpiritualityOfAddiction

Ultimate Rest -a review.

 A number of years ago I had a sea-change in my way of receiving communion and recently one of my colleagues in ministry confided that they had undergone a similar change. It was a move to recognising that it was all about the gift, about God's grace and allowing God in Christ to bless us. Previously he and I had been schooled in a free church sort of tradition that had the effect of making it all about our remembrance and somehow we'd imbibed the notion that we had to make it effective by having the right sorts of holy thoughts as we chewed and sipped. 

It seems to me that this approach is very consonant with what David Hewitt is exploring in this book: the change in posture from striving to receiving and resting.

The subtitle is 'The Essence of the Beautiful Gospel" and that is a helpful description. The beautiful gospel is that in Christ God as done everything to bring us into the divine life and so we rest in what God has done. As I read, the old song  'Do not strive' kept coming into my head. This book is an extended meditation and exploration of entering into God's Rest. It was good to be reminded latterly in the book that "if the version of the gospel you have heard doesn't sound to you like good news, then you've not heard the gospel". And I also found it helpful to be reminded that "the gospel has often been presented as a proposition, when in fact it is an announcement." I think that definitely bears reflecting on further.

The exploration and reflection takes us through various biblical passages and this is a strength of the book -that it is scripturally based but in a way that is not picking at minutiae but pulling out a major theme. I felt the approach to the early chapters of Genesis was helpful by focusing on the spiritual dynamics as they relate to contemporary readers which must surely be the right sort of approach.

I was intrigued by a reflection on the word 'insouciance'. David takes it positively as a state of mind of being unperterbed. This challenged me as my associations for the term are drawn from Peter Pan where the insouciance of youth is more focused on a sense of not caring about others.

I found the contemporising of Philippians 4:7 quite helpful too. 'Talk through everything at the beginning of the day or before things happen. And (if you cannot understand it all) be thankful for what you can see God is doing. God's peace becomes the hallmark of the day.' (Though I think that some of the meaning of the preceding verses is carried over into that rendering. The single verse goes like this: "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."). I felt that this was a useful peace of advice.

I think that this is a book to be read a chapter at a time and reflected on rather than read all the way through. As a reviewer I was asked to turn around the review in a month. I think I'd have liked to be able to take longer in order to really let some of the thoughts sink in before feeling I had to move one

I have to confess that I enjoyed too that this is a book written from a British context (Scottish to be more precise though he was brought up not far from where I was brought up in the English midlands) rather than north American. Not that I have anything against the latter but it was just nice to see something by a fellow Brit. I enjoyed too that the theological underpinnings of this mentioned names like the Torrance brothers and Karl Barth. Welcome too was the inclusion of insights by Julian of Norwich. There are a lot of quotes also from John Crowder.

I liked too that there are appendices with a practical slant and that these have been written by other people. I commend the collegiate approach especially in a book that has clearly been written from a community base.

I've also got some homework to do following on from reading this. David uses a couple of English language Bibles which I'd not come across before and I felt that their renderings of the passages discussed were helpful in putting things across and opening out layers of meaning. These weren't the only versons; David seems happy to use a variety (ESV, The Message ...) choosing according to which seems best to convey the meanings that he's wanting to emphasise. One of them I need to look up is The Mirror the other is the Passion translation.

I think whan I wanted more of was ways to help me/us to rest in God in practical terms. Now the appendices do this and there are nuggets of this in the text. It probably says more about where I'm at with it, but I did have a sense of 'yes, I know this' but what I am looking for is things that will help me to interrupt those times when I move away from acting out of peace or rest, to recall me. I recognise there are no easy ways in this respect; knowing the truth and picking oneself up to start all over again is the most likely rhythm of learning in this.

One of the strangenesses in the e-text as I received it, was the occasional changing colour of the typeface. I read white on black text most of the time because I tend to be reading these in the evening and I'm resting my eyes somewhat. So the fact that paragraphs, seemingly randomly (sometimes a sentence or two in) became grey or blue was disconcerting and sometimes required me to alter the light levels to see clearly. I imagine this as an artefact of the preparation of the text for publication which probably didn't show up to a proofreader who would have been simply reading in a more conventional way dark type on a pale background.

 

Links related to this review:

Ultimate Rest on Bookshop

Ultimate Rest on the Rethinking God with Tacos Podcast

Ultimate Rest on the Eat Me, Drink Me Podcast

David Hewitt’s Website

#UltimateRest

 

Futuring formation in a climate of turbulence

Intro

This is a paper I wrote for a recent gathering of people involved in thinking about spiritual accompaniment in our region.

Reading Jane Shaw's volume, I was struck what a different world it addresses. Not only is my class background not really represented (it's all seems quite middle/upper class). I was largely left feeling that this is spiritual practice that seems quite detached from much of the lived reality of the nation that I read recently about in The People [The Rise and Fall ofthe Working Class 1910-2010]. The exception is to some extent is Percy Dearmer. These are people also who lived and worked in a world also where CO2 was below 350ppm (it’s now 420+) and the climate was still the relatively stable holocene we came to know and mostly love (yes, even in Britain!)

My fear is that to continue to think along the same trajectory as these mid-20th century pioneers would be to isolate Christian spirituality from the most important and momentous features of what is now underway. Gaia Vince puts that into perspective as she asks:

"Where are you at with your five stages of grief for the Holocene? That’s the geological epoch we were living in for the past 11,700 years – the period of time when humans invented agriculture, built cities, invented writing, became “modern”, essentially. All of history took place in this epoch, marked by its congenial, relatively predictable climate, in which ice sheets retreated from Europe and North America, and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were high enough to enable the flourishing of grains, like rice and wheat." Now we’ve left those Holocene conditions for the uncharted Anthropocene, an age brought about by human activities and characterised by global climate chaos and ecological degradation...  find myself experiencing all stages simultaneously. Anger that my children won’t get to snorkel the wondrous coral reefs of my Australian childhood; pain and guilt over the millions of Indian villagers displaced by floodwaters, losing their homes, livelihoods, even their lives. Depression over the scale of loss: of wildlife, of glaciers, of verdant landscapes, of safe, reliable weather. It is the last two stages we need to reach – acceptance and reconstruction – if we are to build a livable Anthropocene."  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/18/heatwave-floods-save-planet-children

 So it does seem important to me to parallel the recent COP28 Global Stocktake with a  taking stock of what lies ahead and what it will mean for churches and Christians to respond well in order to understand, coram Deo, the kinds of communities and people we need to be; with our glocal neighbours and recognising we are [part of] the ecosystems that we rely on for sustenance.

“We must try to understand the meaning of the age in which we are called to bear witness. We must accept the fact that this is an age in which the cloth is being unwoven. It is therefore no good trying to patch. We must, rather, set up the loom on which coming generations may weave new cloth according to the pattern God provides.” (Mother Mary Clare SLG)

Where the climate crisis is causing distress and eco-anxiety, we have the opportunity to ground ourselves in a theology of a God intimately involved in creation – the God who created us, dwells in us (‘us’ including the natural world), and will meet us at our end. -JR Hollins: https://joannahollins.wordpress.com/2023/07/18/the-vicar-or-the-ground-source-heater/

What lies ahead?

It now seems we cannot avoid a minimum of 1.5°C for several decades. This will shift ecological zones, expand deserts, melt large amounts of polar ice, raise sea levels by metres not just the few centimeters we’ve seen so far. It will result in fiercer rain and storms. In turn this will imperil food security. These things will increase tensions in human society, promote migration, there will be wars and rumours of war. The darker angels of our nature will find greater opportunity to ride forth.

We are already seeing the emergence of the conditions of and for a neo-feudalism and a rentier basis for economies being laid down by TNCs and their billionaire owners.

We are already seeing the rise of the political reflexes of that economic shift.

While not inevitable, this path is likely. What we do now in the next 5-10 years is of deadly importance -I use that adverb with forethought!

………………………………………………………………………………

 

TAKE A BREATH -notice our own reactions, hold them before God …

 

This is a vital part of the work of God right now.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The time for declaring emergency and working for sustainability was 40 years ago. Now our sector [conservation] must focus on being collapse-aware, to aim for ruggedisation and to build a regenerative culture. …. This means anticipating, facing and responding to the linked crises of ecological and climate breakdown, pandemics, rising inequalities, displacement, famines & conflict. … Earth crisis, for short. … Where society is competitive, where there is a lack of shared responsibility, and where heritage isn’t cherished as a commons, collapse is more likely to lead to conflict and displacement. … From <https://bridgetmckenzie.uk/sustainability-is-in-the-past>

Meeting what lies ahead

I suggest that Christians and churches will need to consider upping our game and preparing for action in these missional responses.

Churches *should* have a vital role in the short to medium terms:

·       helping to build community resilience;

·       offering help  for people to learn new skills;

·        providing pastoral care to the anguished, shocked and regretful;

·       truth seeking and telling in the face of disinformation and denial;

·       offering spiritual accompaniment as people re-orient lives around sustainable practices;

·       making known and exemplifying the riches of spiritual practice to support simple lifestyles and neighbourliness. (And be learning and re-learning all of that ourselves)^[i].

These feel somehow monastic. It is also vital and necessary. There are movements afoot already to promote and foment these things. Christians should surely be among them.

What spiritual perspectives support these 'missions'?

Grounding in natural world: we know that there are strands of Christian spirituality that value and rejoice in creation; we need to lean into them but in a way that doesn’t denigrate the urban per se. We should also widen our thinking about incarnation to more thoroughly incorporate (!) understanding that the flesh is matter, imbricated in ecosystems. (We might note and theologise about the way being in nature supports good mental health.)

Preferential option for the poor. Hopefully I don’t need to say more about this?!

Joy in enough, simplification (new Franciscanism?) and rejoining our lives and life-systems to the circular economies of nature. Yes, let’s consider the lilies and the birds how they are supported and support life around them.

Learning the insights of protest movements especially: undoing hierarchy; valuing each; self and other care; listening; (cf Quaker decision making);

It is important that we help the development of a Missio Dei perspective -implied spiritual disciplines of (corporate) attention, discernment and reflection; together and individually. We can use the Five marks of mission to help draw our attention to where to look for God at work.

We have been seeing the way that money buys social perception filters and narrative hegemony. Ctr "You shall know the truth and it will set you free" -rediscovering intellectual humility and valuing truth-seeking -disciplines of study, valuing not bearing false witness, courage in challenging untruths, half-truths and evasions, telling truth to power.

 One of the tests of actual faith, as opposed to bad religion, is whether it stops you ignoring things. Faith is most fully itself and most fully life-giving when it opens your eyes and uncovers for you a world larger than you thought - and of course, therefore, a world that's a bit more alarming than you ever thought. The test of true faith is how much it lets you see, and how much it stops you denying, resisting, ignoring aspects of what is real.     -Rowan Williams quoted in A Splash of Words" by Mark Oakley

 Humility in mission: it is God’s mission, God’s agenda we seek. Too often in the past the churches have tried to own and badge efforts for justice and reform. Too often we have been rivalrous with others. But it is God’s work, we can be content with doing right and good things even if it doesn't have ‘Brought to you by the CofE’ in the corner. Too often we have been arrogant and failed to listen and so we’ve missed the Spirit blowing gently and unexpectedly in the lives and circumstances of others -the sheep not of this fold.

 Courage:

 "In a time of overlapping global crises, it’s clear that radical courage will be required of us as individuals and as a society - in our communities and institutions at local and national levels, and not least among those in public life - if we are to make decisive progress on our interconnected economic, environmental and social challenges, and create truly just and flourishing futures ... That will require at least two things: the willingness to step out of our comfort zones and into the storms and waves, to protect the poor, the vulnerable and nature itself, and a clear sense of where to find the resources beyond ourselves to discover that courage." -Justin Welby

 Re-learning hope: not as optimism or wishful thinking or escapist eschatology. We can no longer work for a better world, only a less-worse one (accompanying people in bereavement from modernist progressive optimism). Hope as a humble sustaining of work with God in the world and among God’s people, simply knowing /trusting that “our work in the Lord is not in vain”

Finding spiritual perspectives that help us to deal with complicity. BLM and the current climate/enviro crises remind us how we are deeply formed and held in life-patterns and attitudes that do not serve wider human flourishing. Understanding corporate sin and our participation in it in ways that help us to live wisely ourselves and to minister to others, is vitally important. I personally believe that this is where conversations about sin and atonement ought to be circling. Not to mention liturgy and theological formation.

What does "holy and righteous life" look like in these conditions?

As well as regular attentive reflection on the world around us -human and more-than-human; as well as discernment of God’s mission and our own vocations within it; as well as meeting together for mutual encouragement and upbuilding … we will need to consider some marks of a holy and righteous life that we have not paid so much attention to over the last century (or maybe I’m wrong?)

·       Resilience through facing despair, complicity and world-view bereavement with gentleness, truthfulness and Godly neighbour love.

·       Peacemaking

·       Community building /Mutual aid to try to nurture resilience against the threats of divisive rhetoric and selfish responding to crisis. It will also enable the kind of working together that will actually save lives and enable human and ecological flourishing

·       Casting down the mighty and lifting up the lowly

·       Bearing witness to truth

·       Dealing wisely with complicity

·       NVDA, Civil disobedience

·       21^st century alms-giving that recognises structural dimensions of alleviating want.

As I mention these things, I’m so often aware that there are precursors. Christians in past times of civilisational change and collapse have done many of these things in various ways. Often it has been monastic and mendicant orders who have been at the forefront….

Over to you....

^[i]From < https://www.facebook.com/groups/2349278635285005/?multi_permalinks=3536698376543019&notif_id=1691680506613098&notif_t=group_activity&ref=notif

Poor talkative Christianity and its discontenteds

 I found this informal survey being reported and the result seemed to me to be something really significant. Something that those of us interested in the future of Christian faith probably need to pay attention to.

We recently asked our Upworthy audience on Facebook, "What's something that you really enjoy that other people can't seem to understand?" and over 1,700 people weighed in. ... one answer dominated the list of responses. It came in various wordings, but by far the most common answer to the question was "silent solitude." Here are a few examples:

"Feeling perfectly content, when I’m all alone."

"Being home. Alone. In silence."

"That I enjoy being alone and my soul is at peace in the silence. I don't need to be around others to feel content, and it takes me days to recharge from being overstimulated after having an eventful day surrounded by others."

"Enjoying your own company. Being alone isn’t isolating oneself. It’s intentional peace and healthy… especially for deep feelers/thinkers."

I think this is significant because it sounds like it ought to be something that religious groups and organisations can offer, encourage and nurture. Yet I suspect that this is not how it's perceived. I suspect that Christians and our churches are perceived as rather talkative, noisy and not having much to offer the more contemplative or any real understanding of silence. 

This despite a history replete with silent, hermit-inclined figures and much teaching about the use of silence and the ways of meditation and self-understanding. What we appear to have managed to project to the wider world is rather more 'busy' and social. 

And it is fine to have that, but I can't help feeling that we could do with expressions of church that lead with the contemplative offer and give support to the intentionally solitary or the solitude and quietness that many people clearly crave.

There's a pitfall to this in terms of strategy. Of necessity a huge amount of what this would look like would not make it to the spreadsheets of church statisticians. It probably wouldn't show up directly in church attendance figures or similar measures of 'engagement' in church life. These might well be people, in the main, who would find many of the main services offered by churches to be too distracting and fast-paced, and find the sermons insufficiently reflective or supportive of meditative spirituality. They may well find the over-certain, and over-defined talkative kataphatic style of worship too hard to bear.

Maybe I'm projecting. But if I am, it's from a background of loving that noisy and social Christianity and now finding it doesn't nourish the deepest parts of my soul. I now find relative quiet and dwelling in the slow reflective sort of spiritual practice to be important. I suspect that this informal survey opens a window onto what we should be sharing from the churches in addition to the other offer.

I'd always felt some pull towards the more contemplative, even in my noisier days. And I do still find I can worship among the noisier and more content-driven. However, it seems like the balance has shifted. I do think we need both celebratory and quiet dimensions to our spiritual practice and we each need to find our own balance and be prepared for that balance to shift and its contents to change over time. There's a definite change in the relation to words in worship and reflection. At one point for me the language was important, it pointed me and helped me to home in on God (at least at its best). Now less so, and I'm more aware of how inadequate the words are; that they cannot contain God or the experience of God and God's world. Again, it's a shift of balance not a total dichotomy.

The other thing in that survey that I find interesting is the appearance of ordinary things (and the assumption that others will not understand the attraction). This is another element of contemplative spirituality:paying attention to 'little' and 'ordinary' things, discovering the joy or at least contentment in the mundane and appreciating it. Again, it's not unknown to Christian traditions, just not presented so much or signposted or even valued, it seems. But if we could simply help it to be known that there are Christ-following ways to integrate these appreciations of the ordinary into spiritual practice and awareness, we'd be a lot more use, I suspect.

Ephesians and All that Jazz -A review

Lately, I've been finding myself appreciating poetic writing more, and that's what drew me to the description of this book: I really delight in fresh expressions of thought and feeling that connect those concepts with different areas of our experience and throw light on them. That was the hope I began reading this book with as some of the blurb said "A fresh, new meaning must be created within the heart of a believer before these words can be understood and lived out. Objective truth must be internalized. The Word must become flesh once again. This is the essence of transliteration and what the Holy Spirit yearns to do in each heart, regardless one’s tradition. Jazz can begin to open up the possibility of God to a hungry heart." 

What struck me as I read the first pages is that it seemed to be a kind of midrash -especially in the way it offers a verse-by-verse 'commentary' but a commentary that is playful, sometimes poetic, always trying to connect with contemporary language, idioms and thought-forms. I guess that's why the word 'jazz' is in the title -it points well to the approach to the text. It comments not by looking into history or etymology or even intertextuality but rather by expanding, rephrasing and re-framing -riffing, you might say. That all makes for a lively, stimulating and sometimes intriguing and insightful read.

I think I'd classify it as devotional literature. It might be useful to refer to in sermon preparation because it might help shake loose an insight or a way to say something. It could also be helpful if  you're preparing to lead prayers referring back to Ephesians.

Links for this Review Ephesians and All that Jazz on Amazon Tom Anderson’s Website Tom Anderson Podcast Interview Tom Anderson Text Interview #EphesiansAndAllThatJazz Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this e-book free through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own

Screens change how we read scripture

I considered putting a question mark at the end of the title of this post. It's substantially the title of the CT article I'm about to comment on. However, I don't want to question the proposition of the title. I do want to question an implication and a supposed remedy of the article.

The suggested remedy seems to be to encourage Christian readers to return to using paper Bibles. The implication of the article is that Christians have always read the written word on paper and so we should return to that. I'm more interested in the matter of returning to supposedly ancient practice and so would then go on to question the reading on paper issue.

What concerned me was the unnoticed and materially poor consumer of God's word before rag-paper and moveable type kicked in to make a bible in every home or hand a possibility. You see, the remedy mentioned above elides most Christian interaction with the bible before then. I think we need to properly reckon with the preliterate experience before assessing the effects of the digital revolution. But before I say more about that, let me interject another concern.

There's a concern I have about the research that this is all based on. Basically, I'm unsure how much stock we should place in it at the moment. We are in a process of cultural reception and there are a number of variables that we don't yet know how to assess, so are we testing the right things, the right people and in any case what will things look like in 20 or 30 years (assuming that civilisation still supports such things) when/if people have evolved strategies of reading around screen use? I'm not sure how far this is an issue for digiborigines and how far for non-native digital tech-users. Which kinds of users have we been testing and how does a long background in different ways of reading affect the particular experimental packages of the studies? I'm not doubting that effects have been found, I'm just not sure whether other factors have been properly controlled for and whether what we are seeing are, in a sense, transitional effects of cultural change on particular groups as they adjust. It's not just about cognitive processing as the article seems to imply, it's also about cultural reception. We should also bring to the table the actual reading practices of recent and contemporary Christians with access to printed bibles. I think that the writer may be comparing the actual digital experience with an idealised analogue experience; not comparing like with like in significant parameters. I worry that this is a kind of sophisticated, low-key, moral panic.

So what about the longer-historical point? It's not new, but the writer of the referenced article hasn't weighed it heavily enough, I think. I was, frankly, a bit surprised that it wasn't considered more when the mention of icons was made. There, we were told, many icons have figures with open books and their fingers rest on open pages pointing to particular scriptures. (I found intriguing the link with Thomas with the resurrected Christ, btw, but that's another matter). That should have been the cue, in my opinion, to consider the reception of scripture within those kinds of cultural milieus (indeed, why icons and not written texts?), but instead the writer switches in short order to the post-Caxton era situations.

So, what I think we need to recall in this is the experience of an ordinary non-literate or barely-literate Christian in late antiquity or early medieval Mediterranean society or similar societies beyond and after. 'Similar', I mean, in the sense of the technologies relating to reading and their cultural embedding. In such societies, books and scrolls are expensive both in the materials they are made of and in the time that it takes to produce them. Partly as a result literacy levels are low. Most Christians and Jews would experience Scripture as oral/aural, not as something legible; ie not as something that they read themselves. They wouldn't be able to afford to have written copies of scriptures in their own possession. So, for them, interacting with scripture involved hearing someone else reading it, probably at a local house where they would meet for worship and fellowship. That might be once a week, perhaps more often in some situations. It probably wouldn't involve access to the whole of what we think of as the Bible but only whatever books their community had managed to save for and collect. In such a situation, what you do is hear passages read -probably a whole book at a time. You might also request to hear some parts again and you would commit to memory some passages. There would be likely some discussion, question and answer which would help recall as well as living out the message.

That's in many respects very different to how we experience scriptures nowadays. We read passages on our own, silently. We might journal about them. On our own. We rarely hear the words spoken except in church and even there often in paragraph-sized chunks but with a pew bible to hand if we want to check things out. And if we are honest, so many contemporary western Christians read small, decontextualised, chunks with a 'devotional' gloss which often does not really expound the passage or put it in context but rather reinforces popular spiritual tropes giving the impression of biblical engagement without it actually happening. So, I wonder whether some of what the digital research is picking up is in fact mirroring that and therefore it's not the digital reading that's the problem but a cultural habitus reinforced by certain bible reading artefacts which is also reflected in popular Christian culture. To be clear, Every Day with Jesus has long offered paper-readers decontextualised devotional nuggets and I think that what may be being tested is this way of using scripture transferred to screen. But it may not be inherent to screen reading.

All of which makes me wonder whether the suggested remedy is right. If earlier Christians 'fed' on God's word by aural means and oral exploration, is it so concerning that contemporary Christians may be retrieving some characteristics of pre-pan-literate culture? Does not the history encourage us to think that the new technologies may open up new opportunities (and re-open up old ones) as well as new dangers in bible-encounter? In spirituality? I'm concerned that the apparent remedy is about doubling down on what we have just been doing and not engaging with the new situation. This reminds me of the 600 year old laments about the printing press changing the way people read, think and write, implicitly calling people to eschew the mass printed book and retain the habits of listening and memorising.

Surely our task should be to understand well what is happening and to begin to craft spiritual habits that work with and through the emerging screen cultures? -Not simply resisting and damning them? The question of the article's title remains, "How will we process the Bible differently?" -and we need to discover the opportunities as well as name a few concerns.

I do think also we should not let the idea that reading the Bible should always be "deep reading" become too fixed in view. To be sure sometimes it should. But what I think the history of Christian interaction with the Bible tells us is that often the kind of deep reading seemingly in mind in the article has not been the main strategy. Rather, reflective reading, Christological reading, communal reading, prayerful reading has been predominant but I'm not sure that these add up to or compose the deep reading in view in the article. And I'm not sure that any of the research or interpretations of it make those sorts of reading less possible or intrinsically harder. In fact, I wonder whether they may be helped by screen presentation of texts.

The article tells us,

that the habit of superficial comprehension developed in digital reading transfers to all reading such that “the more you read on screens, the more your mind shifts towards ‘non-linear’ reading—a practice that involves things like skimming a screen or having your eyes dart around a web page" 

I think we should consider things behind and around that. I think I want to see more longitudinal studies on that assertion. I think I would want to see that correlated with the difficulties of many readers of conventional paper-based texts not least various forms of dyslexia. I would also note that many speed-reading courses attempt to wrestle with and train the phenomena mentioned in that quote. Would it be too much to ask for us to go back to Walter Ong's seminal book 'Orality and Literacy' before we try to discuss this more?

The article also reinforces the assertion that,

the physical layout of the biblical text is important for comprehension, memory, and “correct interpretation.”

That is my experience, but then I should remind us that this is not something necessarily to panic about. Recall, again, the experience of most Christians for over a thousand years. They would not have built a visual memory of the text or relied on printed text for comprehension or correct interpretation. Let's learn from them some tricks for the post-paper culture we may be heading into.

Screens Are Changing the Way We Read Scripture | CT Pastors | Christianity Today: As digital reading habits rewire our brains, how will we process the Bible differently?

Time to ditch ‘We pray for . . .’

I really read this article because I am having a bit of a bugbear at the moment about the use of the word 'pray' and 'prayer' in worship and, in fact, prayer meetings. I'm starting to find the ubiquity of it feels like overuse: I no longer know what I'm supposed to be doing when some says 'we pray for ....'  And this seems to be part of the concern of Geoffrey Wilkinson who wrote the referenced article in the Church Times. Towards the end of the article, the author suggests,

“We pray for” is not prayer. At best, it is an invitation to the gathered assembly to pray for a particular concern" 

And I think that this may touch on part of my frustration with the phrase. It does depend, though, on what else is said. I agree that if a bare 'We pray for xyz' is used with no other qualification or elucidation, then the best we can do is bring a brief frisson of concern before God. Perhaps more than brief if the prayer leader gives pause and has signalled it. But often we will hear 'We pray for xyz and pqr and efg ...' without much gap to engage inwardly. I think this is what Mr Wilkinson is concerned about, at root.

However, I'm not sure how fully I agree with other points in the article.

By using the phrase “We pray for”, the Intercessor ceases to be a mediator between the people of God and God, and becomes instead a prayer leader. The proper meaning of “intercession” is thereby immediately lost.

I'm really not that worried about the distinction being made there, personally. And if I did, I think I might just come down on the other side of the issue. You see, I'm not really sure that the CofE means 'intercessions' in this part of the service: I think that the word was used because it has a certain gravitas but that what was really meant -and what is meant in practice- is 'petitions', 'requests', 'concerns', 'desires' and if we were honest to what a lot of people do, 'hopes' and 'wishes'. I'm not sure that 'intercession', as I understand it, is actually really suitable for regular public worship. The 'standing in the gap' stuff which involves the hard work of emotional engagement, empathy, patience, identification with others and so forth is really not something the average Sunday congregation is equipped to do corporately and most would probably find the intensity of it hard to be part of.

And, in fact, I'm not really sure I want to conceive of my role when I lead 'intercessions' at communion -or would want others taking that role- as mediating "between the people of God and God". I think I'm trying for "expressing requests and concerns" as a kind of spokesperson-in-congregation. I actually think that the kind of role described at that point feels uncomfortably close to usurping the role of Christ. I think that intercession is more like standing between God and the situation/people concerned -and we do that as a response to a vocation and as part of our ministry (lay or ordained) and, crucially, it's something we do in Christ -we take a share of the mission of God in the ministry of Christ. This is not what those Sunday morning prayers are largely attempting. Though I think that there is room for a conversation about how we situate our corporate petitions in the mission of God and our apprehension of it.

I'm also not fully with the assumption behind one of the remedies offered in the final paragraph:

THERE are two main ways of extracting ourselves from the “We pray for” mire in which we now find ourselves. The most obvious is to address God throughout the prayers, without faltering.

My main quibble with this is the assumption that it is not what is being done. I agree that the literal grammar of the phrasing suggests that we are, in a sense, describing what we are doing. However, I do actually think that most people who say this actually conceive of the phrase performatively, that is in saying 'we pray...' they are actually doing what they describe and bringing the matter to God, they do not conceive of themselves as merely inviting others to 'think their own thoughts prayerfully'. I guess that I am taking issue with that first quote I repeated: for a number of people it actually *is* prayer and the words are performative in intention. Now you might, as I do, wonder whether we can't do better, but I don't think quibbling about grammar is the right way to go to address that.

So, I guess the question then devolves to what I think could be done, going forward.

The article I'm reacting to is found here: Time to ditch ‘We pray for . . . It is possible that it may be behind subscription /limited sign up barrier.

I'm thinking that we actually need to encourage people to think more about what could be meant we the/we say 'we pray...'. One way to get a sense of that would be to ban using the phrases 'we pray...' or the word 'prayer' in our corporate petitions. This would make clear that what is often going on is a truncation of petitionary activity; we are coming to think that the word 'pray' is sufficient to say something. But what something?

So, take a phrase like "We pray for our government." Now, sometimes that may be followed up with some concerns which would be actual prayers in Wilkinson's terms: things like 'that they might have wisdom in their deliberations" for example. And if we followed up the ban on 'pray' we might just come up with an alternative like, "We ask for our government to have wisdom ..." or "We request you to send your Holy Spirit to work through the deliberations ..." The use of words like 'request' or 'ask' more strongly require a transitive construction than 'pray' now seems so. I suspect that once upon a time, when 'pray' was only just taking over from 'bede' or 'bid', it would have been nigh on impossible to say 'we pray for the queen.' Full stop. Without feeling it necessary to complete the sentence which was so obviously felt to be unfinished.

To refuse to use 'pray' might also encourage or even force us to consider what we are doing in terms of specifically asking for something or mainly giving expression to our concern. Those are not opposed matters; the latter can run into the former. Our concerns should be expressed before God: 'We are worried about ...'; "We fear for ...."; "We hold N in high regard"; "We hope ....". With those latter examples, we start to shade into naming our requests.

But there is one other component needed in leading public petitioning of God. That is the 'according to your will' or 'in the name of Jesus' dimension. This involves making requests that we truly believe are part of what God desires and is working for by the Spirit. This is no light or mean thing. In many, perhaps most cases, therefore, we will want to be restrained and perhaps a little imprecise. Perhaps we will want only to name our concern and encourage ourselves to hold it before God with a degree of unknowing about what the right thing to ask for us, seeking God's further wisdom and enlightenment. Perhaps sometimes that is what we need to say in public rather than being quite so bold before we understand better what we might be asking and best to ask.

Perhaps we should give up 'praying' for Lent! -Instead let's be 'asking', 'requesting', 'petitioning', even 'imploring' or just 'bringing our concern'. In taking up the challenge to 'say what we mean', we might just also discover that we say less and enquire more: that we learn more fully to 'wait on the Lord'.

Naming the Unnameable by Dr. Matthew Fox | Homebound Publications

I got hold of this book because I often find Matthew Fox's writings intriguing and stimulating. I read them not expecting to agree with everything but because I think he points his finger on things that we need to pay attention to. The challenge for me is to work out, sometimes, why I'm not at ease with some of the things he says and to work out how to deal with the issue he raises in a way that I find consistent with my own starting points.

This book is no exception.

I love the project of thinking about our namings of God. Not least because I think it is something that the Lord's prayer implicitly calls us to do -'hallowing the name' implies identifying what kinds of ways we might find to attempt to name God. That point also brings us to the matter of the difficulties with the project of naming God anyway -which the start of the book helpfully outlines, so at that level it is a useful and brief primer in the spiritual help and danger of naming God, noting the limits of language and human imagination faced with an infinite and very different being.

This book has a similar effect on me. I want to affirm some things but one thing bugs me. What I find I can't quite embrace is where some of the namings seem to equate God to creation in some way. The first point I ran into this was in the naming of God as the "planetary mind field". I find this difficult because of my own work on corporisations (principalities, powers, angels, dominions etc): these I identify as emergent 'properties' ("entities" might be better) of human and other communities under certain conditions. What Fox seems to be naming, in this case, is actually potentially a corporisation. This is very much a being of creation. It may be a being which could be a residing place for God's nearer presence (much like an angel in the Hebrew scriptures) but it is not itself God.

I have similar issues with naming God as evolution and the mind of the universe. I sense that there is potential in this to honour the panentheistic intent and also the transcendent dimension, but that work seems not to have been done and leaves open the potential for evolution to be deified with the kind of difficulties CS Lewis dramatises in that conceptualisation in That Hideous Strength -where identifying evolution with deity ends up justifying eugenics. I think some kind of wrestling with issues of providence needs to be undertaken in this respect to give an account of immanence which doesn't drift into eugenics, in effect. While I agree that so much of evolution needs to be understood with a symbiotic and synergistic content, yet there are theodicy issues. This bit of the book tends to come over a bit too simplistic-'new-age' in feel.

It is one of the difficulties for me that I keep bumping into when I read Fox. I applaud the desire to honour and recognise the immanent God, I warm to a panentheistic perspective but I do wish that he could find a way to conceptualise these things that doesn't keep falling over into identifying God with created things. Or at least that's how it keeps coming over to me: panentheism tips over into pantheism which is a very different thing and has a set of problematics all of its own.

I hope this comes over as 'friendly' criticism. I really do warm to much of Fox's project, but I also quite understand why some people have a real problem with it, and because they don't 'get' the heart of the project, they bluster off at it. For the record I think Fox is right in affirming the joyous, loving, justice-making delight in creation and Spirit and the life-affirming fundamental stance which resonates with the best of the early Charismatic movement and of, for example, Hasidic Jewish spirituality. I think he is right in wanting to strengthen spirituality to support us in struggle against ecocidal trajectories, policies and lifestyles.

I was interested to note that Deepak Chopra is quoted several times, in a way that seems to take him as authoritative. I guess I'm not necessarily convinced of that. I think I'd have liked to have seen some of these namings argued rather than having Chopra and medieval Christians quoted as if beyond questioning. Don't get me wrong; I'm happy to learn from Aquinas, Eckhart and others and I will be happy to find that Deepak Chopra may have a way of saying something that is helpful and productive of insight -but I don't take their word for it; particularly when the conceptualising of the relationship between God and creation seems hazy and perhaps even unhelpfully blurred.

So I'd say that there were some bits of this that I found helpful and inspiringly put. There were other bits that didn't work so well and might even be cause for concern.


I should say, I got an e-copy of this book as part of a review package which asked that I read the book and post a review on my blog in exchange for a free copy. There is no obligation or pressure for me to publish a review which is anything other than my own response and evaluation.

Naming the Unnameable on Amazon
Naming the Unnameable Website
Matthew Fox Website
Fox Institute of Creation Spirituality Website

Please tag your posts for this book as #NamingTheUnnameable

Naming the Unnameable by Dr. Matthew Fox | Homebound Publications

Smartphones and the art of conversation: we only have a Bible because there wasn't sound recording technology...?

I just thought that this was a really intriguing thing. I hadn't come across it before and I'll be on the look out for it among the students I work with.

using the voice memo function on WhatsApp as a sort of dictaphone to “talk in turns” rather than hold “a live conversation” is now a thing

The title of the article that introduces this seems to be adding to the moral panic reaction. The actual article is actually better than that. But I did read this because I was wondering in what way I was going to disagree. And in relation to the sentence quoted above, I felt I could see how, in fact, this development might be viewed as a positive by users. Now, I'm not sure in what I'm about to write, whether I'm interpreting rightly in terms that users would recognise. What I'm offering is an interpretation of why I could imagine myself doing that.
Perhaps you might sympathise if I tell it this way: have you ever found that you wished that your conversation partner would stop interrupting and just let you say the whole thing in one go? Have you ever found that the data-bandwidth of your phone connection keeps meaning that you lose chunks of what the other person says because of your own interruption, cough, or background noise at your end forcing the connection to switch and choose between send and receive to the detriment of the conversation? (Because at that point you can't listen and speak at the same time). If you have then you have possibly come across the situation that this clever little trick may have been designed to overcome. Add to that the possibility that you are holding the conversation in conditions where interruptions are taking place (having to give change, get on the bus, etc) and it becomes a way to optimise communication. It also gives a way to listen again to parts to make sure you have got it right before you compose your own response. In fact it could helpfully slow down a conversation to proper thinking speed. It also gives the speaker the chance for a 'do-over' when something is not well expressed.
Far from an indicator of the end of civilisation, it may actually be the harbinger of better listening and speaking.
As Neil Postman and Andrew Crouch would remind us, though, we might do well also to consider the downsides: what is disabled or made harder by this. And I guess for some people it is easier to spot these. Probably it means that some of the joyous spontaneity of a lively conversation is deadened: that sense of mounting excitement as ideas and perspectives are shared and well received and a synchrony of thinking and feeling develops. What is also lost is the feedback of visual clues and verbal cues that as a speaker you have tried the patience of your listener(s) or that you have failed to convey your meaning and are puzzling your hearer(s) -or are angering them. Those feedback clues that enable us to adjust our speaking and self-presentation in order to communicate better and to rebalance rapport in the present moment.
If we think about what it is like to hear an answer-phone message, we get a clue also to how it might go. There is a slightly greater degree of 'objectivity' in the listening because we are less directly involved. For the speaker it is just a little bit harder to order our thoughts, but we do have to think a bit more about how what we are saying will be received because we don't have the visual and verbal cues to give us in-the-moment feedback. These factors will prove to have their plusses and minusses and we will have to evolve our practice to take account of them as they become apparent.
But the thing to remember is that it is the trying these things out that shows what is and isn't possible. If the things that it enables are useful -and more useful than the downsides are difficult, then the thing will develop and pick up its own etiquettes which will also affect the perceptions and notions of 'good practice', respect etc. So try it, wait and see if and how it is useful. It won't kill the art of conversation: there are too many pleasures in synchronous conversation for it to die. But it might be supplemented by this less synchronous form.
In Christian terms, I think I welcome the possibility of having a slow form of conversation where people can think about things less immediately. Being able to listen more fully and to meditate on what is being said and shared chimes well with a big stream of Christian thought over a long time. It can be a positive expression of loving neighbour by giving them space and consideration to express themselves and to give us a chance to respond better in loving attention and reply. It could be a school of re-ordering our responsiveness by giving us a chance to practice good replies and self-awareness at a speed we can think by initially -until our neural pathways have built a highway for charitable responding.
Perhaps too, it helps us to ponder what communication is and in doing so to think more about divine-human communication. While we are only too used to thinking about the word of God as something written, we have tended to forget that originally it was/is spoken, indeed performed. The Bible is a record of that (an inspired record and interpretation, but still somewhat second hand). So re-learning through a slightly strange medium what is involved in 'live' oral communication may benefit us in considering human-divine communication afresh. It may be worth considering that perhaps we only have a written Bible because there wasn't sound-recording technology ... ! ... ?

Have smartphones killed the art of conversation? | Technology | The Guardian:
And PS -see whether this article from four months later picks up the same thoughts.

Light of the World | some more words

I few years ago I wrote some words.  Now I have some further words to the same tune and using some of the same lines.

Light  of  the  world,  of  glory  born,
Focusing  radiance  in  earthlife
pinpoint  Divinity's  form,

Light  of  the  world  in  darkness  shine,
Word  of  God  fleshed  out  in  spacetime,  
love  of  God  tested  in  pain.

For  it's  the  Mystery  of  the  universe
The  Uncreated  makes  a  home  in  created  time  and  space
Saviour,  shine  your  life  in  us
enliven  us  in  bearing  light,  as  wells  of  grace.

Andii  Bowsher  cc2014   8.8.7.8.8.7   10.12.7.12  (cf  Matt  Redman,  O  Sacred  King)

For comparison here's the 'original from 2000, posted in 2004.

Light of the World 
of glory poured 
Word of God fleshed out in spacetime 
Love of God tested in pain 

O gladdening light 
enlightening all 
we embrace love you've made human 
light of truth that sets us free 

For it's the mystery of the universe 
the uncreated makes a home 
in created time and space. 
And now you share your self with us 
pouring Godlife into death 
breaking open life in us. 

Jesus, Splice eternity in us 
encode in us your Godwardness 
and centre us. 

Putting them together, I would recommend.

Light of the World of glory poured Word of God fleshed out in spacetime Love of God tested in pain  

O gladdening light enlightening all we embrace love you've made human light of truth that sets us free 

 
For it's the mystery of the universe the uncreated makes a home in created time and space. And now you share your self with us pouring Godlife into death breaking open life in us.  

Light of the worldof glory bornFocusing radiance in earthlifepinpoint Divinity's form, 

Light of the worldin darkness shine,Word of God fleshed out in spacetimeLove of God tested in pain. 

For it's the mystery of the universe the uncreated makes a home in created time and space. And now you share your self with us pouring Godlife into death breaking open life in us. 

Jesus, Splice eternity in us encode in us your Godwardness and centre us.


Light  of  the  world,  of  glory  born,
Focusing  radiance  in  earthlife
pinpoint  Divinity's  form, 

Light  of  the  world  in  darkness  shine,
Word  of  God  fleshed  out  in  spacetime,  
love  of  God  tested  in  pain. 

For  it's  the  Mystery  of  the  universe
The  Uncreated  makes  a  home  in  created  time  and  space
Saviour,  shine  your  life  in  us
enliven  us  in  bearing  light,  as  wells  of  grace.

Andii  Bowsher  cc2014

8.8.7.8.8.7   10.12.7.12  

(cf  Matt  Redman,  O  Sacred  King)