Saving Paradise
Words from Joyce Sasse's Gleanings from a Prairie Pastor, (pub. 2021) as she reflects on Rural networks. UCRMN has arisen from the networks here described, as well as the Alex Sim Symposium (1996 to 2016 in Ontario).
(This EBook can be downloaded at the CIRCLe M website www.circle-m.ca)
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(Thoughts from Joyce on her Lenten study. Found in Gleanings From a Prairie Pastor)
As a study theme for Lent 2018 and 2019, I focused my thoughts around the wise words shared by Rita Brock / Rebecca Parker and Joan Chittister.
“Saving Paradise”, written by Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker, deserves multiple reads … and shall always have a significant place on my book shelf. *
I appreciated the way Brock and Parker, as a result of their research, drew attention to the Hebrew believers who kept looking toward the “Paradise (Eden) Garden” as a Garden of Promise (not a forbidden place).
I appreciated the way the Garden, the God-given garden, was so central on the décor of the 1st Century churches they visited – and was there later, when some of those churches were converted to Mosques.
I so appreciated the recognitions they had for what Jesus meant to the people-of-faith in those 1st thousand years (before emphasis was put on the death and the crucifixion of Jesus, and the way the church permitted and encouraged antagonism and violence among those with whom the officials of the church had disagreement. (Hence the sub-title “How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire”.
Benedictine Abbess Joan Chittister’s prophetic gleanings concerning the church and spirituality thrilled me. Following are remnants of the notes I made for my columns. **
“We have been entrusted with ‘gifts given to us by the Spirit in order to maintain the Spirit of Jesus in the church today’. But the understandings we receive cannot be hoarded for ourselves (either as individuals or in community). ‘They exist only when they are shared and given away.’ Our responsibility as faith-filled communities is to look for fresh and vibrant ways to live out our understandings.”
About change in the church –
“Through one stage of life after another ‘there is an electricity that powers every good in us.’ The dynamism ‘takes the shape of seed, branch, tree, flower and fruit of the spiritual life’. Imagine how it is ‘we ride on a river of grace that is (both) still and deep, raging and new’.
“Chittister offers spiritual guidance to all of us. ‘We are companions on the way and keepers of great spiritual traditions. While we have been ‘born in times of stress and discord’, we have the potential to be ‘healers of spiritual poverty and physical pain, rampant oppression and great human need.’
“Hope becomes reality … as we give love away.”
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*“Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of the World for Crucifixion and Empire” by Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker
**Joan Chittister is a Benedictine abbess, writer and spiritual mentor who spoke on the theme “Let the Call be Heard”, at a worldwide congress of Benedictines.
