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February 12, 2008

Amish Grace--Kraybill, Nolt, and Weaver-Zeicher

Let's dispense with the review--we would all do well if everyone would get this book, read it, and think about it. Even if some come to reject its propositions, it is worth facing them and thinking about them, particularly in Lenten time. The book is short, well-written, and a superb study and analysis of the Amish response to the Nickel Mine massacre that resulted in the death of 5 Amish schoolgirls and the wounding of an additional five. On the contents of the book, I have little more to say than that it moved me and really got me to thinking. It is the result of that thought, meager though it may be that I want to spend a little time and space sharing.

The book is primarily about the primacy of forgiveness in Amish theology (if the word theology can be used for something as diffuse as the traditions and practices of the Amish--from the book, I get the feeling that the Amish themselves would repudiate any such high-flown name for the thought behind the practice). One of the first points that occurred to me is that we all would do well to put a little more literalism into our reading of the Bible. The authors point out that THE central prayer of the Amish faith is the "Our Father" in its traditional protestant form (forgive us our debts. . ., for thine is the Kingdom and the Power. . . ). And they regard as a clause of chief importance in this prayer, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." As Catholics we pray this prayer everyday at Mass, and every morning and evening in the Liturgy of the Hours. And yet I don't know very many Catholics who realize that the prayer is also a contract of sorts. The contract is reinforced by the verses that come immediately after it in the Gospel of St. Matthew.

Matthew 6:14-15

For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

The two verses that follow immediately upon the prayer emphasize one aspect of this all-encompassing prayer. When we pray, "Forgive us our debts (trespasses) as we forgive our debtors (those who trespass against us)," we are uttering the words of a contract, the essential word of which is "as." In the measure that we are willing to forgive, so we shall be forgiven. In some sense our forgiveness is contingent upon our willingness to forgive others.

For most people most of the time forgiveness doesn't seem to be much of a problem. Often it is easier to forgive trespasses against ourselves that it is to forgive trespasses against our loved ones. Put yourself in the place of the Amish parents in Nickel Mines. Would you have been able to forgive the perpetrator after only two days? Would you have been able to welcome his family into your house "forgive" them (read the book to understand this concept) and continue to do business with them? Would you have set aside part of the money flowing into the community to help rebuild your lives for the widow and children of the person who killed your child?

One of the points here is that no individual Amish person was called upon to do this. The forgiveness tendered was tendered from the entire community and as such was part of the mutual aid that the Amish offer each other and their neighbors in times of distress and disaster. The Amish community was able to forgive and thus the individual members of this community were able to express this forgiveness substantively. They were able to forgive because they understood that forgiveness is imperative and our own forgiveness is, in some mysterious way, contingent upon the forgiveness we are willing to offer.

The book also touched upon the difference between forgiveness, pardon, and reconciliation. And these differences are critically important--because the Amish could neither pardon nor have reconciliation with the culprit. They opted instead for reconciliation with the family. If this does not seem remarkable, I point to the long history the human race has of blood feuds and other "blood debts."

I have nothing profound to say about this matter. It is all said, very clearly, in the Scriptures. There are those who argue that the only one who can forgive an offense is the one who has been offended--in this case the girls who were killed. And yet, there is a sense in which forgiveness is communal, particularly when the community self-identifies as community.

The Amish are not one of the "once saved always saved" group of Christians. Rather, they seem to see their own forgiveness as contingent upon the forgiveness they offer. This makes them willing to try. One of the points of the book is that forgiveness is not easy--in fact, at times, "it takes a village." The forgiveness in the Nickel Mines community came because the community was committed to forgiving the offense, but that did not mean that it was easy for any inidividual or family. Over and over again, they pointed out that they had to forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive. This seems to be part of the meaning Jesus spoke when He said we must forgive our enemies seventy times seven times. In difficult situations, you forgive and still the bitterness and the desire for restitution arises. You forgive again, and still the human part of you hurts and desires some surcease from the pain--surcease we bring ourselves to believe that comes from revenge.

Forgiveness and community--community and forgiveness. There is so much depth here and so many parallels to our own faith and life. When you read about the Amish, you realize that their voluntary adult baptism and oath to the community very much parallels the entry into orders of our own religious. It is not for nothing that the Amish are the "Old Order." The promises made to renounce self and to serve God and others first are very reminiscent of the aspirations each of us would like to live.

So, these are some of the thoughts spawned by the book. It makes for good Lenten reading--thought-provoking, to some probably aggravating--but very much worthwhile and very much reinforcing what a real community is--both for good and for ill.


Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:05 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 13, 2008

Light on Obama

I make no claim to be a political pundit. I am not. I have no insider knowledge and, frankly, I don't have a horse running in this race. Seems to be the truth from the time I could vote. I also don't pretend to deep knowledge, deep reading, or a profound ability to identify the symbols and read the semiotics of ordinary life. All I will record here is a reaction--a reaction that came to me as I was reading Faulkner's superb novel Light in August. One of the many passages of interest is below.

from Light in August
William Faulkner

He now lived as man and wife with a woman who resembled an ebony carving. At night he would lie in bed beside her, sleepless, beginning to breathe deep and hard. He would do it deliberately, feeling, even watching, his white chest arch deeper and deeper within his ribcage, trying to breathe into himself the dark odor, the dark and inscrutable thinking and being of negroes, with each suspiration trying to expel from himself the white blood and the white thinking and being. And all the while his nostrils at the odor which he was trying to make his own would whiten and tauten, his whole being writhe and strain with physical outrage and spiritual denial.

Unfortunately, that's how I read Obama's entire campaign--a desire to become "black enough," whatever that might mean, while, in some ways, denying his actual heritage. He seeks to play the race card when he is in an absolutely perfect place NOT to do so. He need not make a big play for a small minority, but he would make a big play for the majority and drop the whole racial pretension thing.

I don't dogbird politics, but I've seen enough to know that I don't like the tones of the campaigns--any of them. Of all of them, this is the one I like the least because it depends heavily upon a polarization that is not healthy nor is it helpful. Obama is and can be and can claim legitimately black heritage. Heritage is not something either to be proud of or to be ashamed of--we have no control over where we came from or who we are at the start. But we do have some measure of control over what we do with the cards we have been dealt--what we make of our heritage. In Light in August Joe Christmas makes of his a trail of tragedy, unhappiness, and longing to understand himself. I don't think Obama will end up there, but sometimes his rhetoric and his positioning reminds me of Joe Christmas's struggle with identity and it saddens and appals me because that is not the way to move forward. Not at all.

Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 14, 2008

The Real World

from Death on a Friday Afternoon
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus

Really? The real world? What then is that other world of worship, prayer and contemplative exploration into the mystery of Christ's presence, a presence ever elusive and disturbingly near? On the part of the bishop it was perhaps a slip of the tongue, but behind slips of the tongue are slips of the mind and sometimes slips of the soul. It happens among all Christians today, of whatever denomination or persuasion, that there is a great slippage of the soul. It is by this world, this world at the cross, that reality is measured and judged. That other world, the world we call real, is a distant country until we with Christ bring it home to the waiting Father.

We are bringing it home, dragging it all behind us: the deadlines and the duties, the fears of failure and hopes for advancement, the loves unreturned, the plans disappointed, the children we lose, the marriage we cannot mend. And so we come loping along with reality's baggage, returning to the real--the real that we left behind when we left for what we mistook as the real world.

I do not read this book for its magnificent prose--indeed sometimes I get the tug of the motivational speaker as I read some of the passages. This book is important because it offers in language more suitable to someone of my llimited capacity than that of Fr. von Balthasar an explication of why we may indeed hope that all might be saved. Why indeed that this very hope is a foundational Christian hope and why we pray this all the time in our liturgy. That is the hope that most speaks now in a world where seemingly none are saved--where in one way or another every one around us wonders about that ultimate end and what it might mean for them. Or if they do not, then probably they should invest a bit more time thinking about it.

Forgiveness--we receive it as we give it, in the same measure, in the same way. And yet this is not the action of a tit-for-tat score-keeping God (note St. Paul's observation--"God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entursting to us the message of reconciliation"), but rather the effect of a spiritual law that makes us disposed to receive forgiveness as we give it. That is, the offering of forgiveness opens us to the reception of forgiveness. For most of us in our individualistic American consciousness, it is far more difficult to receive a gift freely given than it is to give one. So it is true of the great spiritual gifts. As we give, we are disposed to receive the grace that strengthens the gift. As we give forgiveness, we come to understand what it is, what its nature is and how exactly we are to receive it. Through grace we loose the bonds that hold us apart, isolated, and alone. For in forgiveness there is the recognition of our interrelatedness and the necessity of family with one Father at the head of the table. While we may not pardon nor be reconciled, in forgiveness we do not judge nor hold bound the person who offended us to start. When we forgive we are freed from the harsh judgment that would otherwise bind us. We become free to love again, even if at a cautious distance.

What has that to do with the passage quoted above? Probably nothing at all. But the two thoughts converge and intertwine and support one another and make life both miserable (as I realize how horrendously I fail at what I must be about) and glorious (as I realize that I will always fail when I do not rely upon God's strength to bring me home).

Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:37 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

"Not Counting Our Trespasses Against Us. . ."

Here is the fundamental ground of hope. God is not a scorekeeper. He is not out measuring every doctrinal deviation or venial infraction. His concern is not with evening things out and making the playing field level. Indeed, His concern is lifting each person, every one of us to Him. He has no interest in finding reasons to keep us out of heaven--indeed His chief interest is to clear the obstacles that prevent us from choosing heaven.

The vast majority of humanity are little children--easily distracted, easily led astray, easily returned to a momentary interest in what is important, and then distracted again. He knows that. So time and again His message of love comes to each one person and encourages a return to Him.

He does not count our trespasses against us any more than we would count a todler's transgressions. And, if we, being evil, know how to give what is good, then how much more so Our Heavenly Father who is good.

Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 15, 2008

We Count Because He Loves Us

One of the things we most need to remember as we wander the paths of Lenten mortifications is that while we may be dust, we are, in the eyes of God, gold, platinum, or diamond dust.

from Death on a Friday Afternoon
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus

Again, St. Paul says God was in Christ "not counting their trespasses against them." Atonement is not an accountant's trick. It is not a kindly overlooking; it is not a not counting of what must count if anything in heaven or on earth is to matter. God could not simply decide not to count without declaring that we do not count.

But someone might say that, if God is God, he could do anything. Very well, then, God would not decide not to count because he would not declare that we do not count. And yet God's "would" implicates and limits his "could." The God of whom we speak is not, in the words of Pascal, the God of the philosophers but the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is the God of unbounded freedom who wills to be bound by love. God is what he wills to be and wills to be what he is. St. John tells us, "God is Love," and love always binds. In the seminars of philosophical speculation, many gods are possible. In the arena of salvation's story, God is the God who is bound to love.

Because God is a Father, He looks upon us with love. What we are and what we want and what we do and how we go about it--all of these things and more matter to Him deeply. Because they matter, He cannot chose to make them less important by merely ignoring them--pretending they don't exist. And yet, while He wills that they matter out of His Love, He also wills that we all come home to Him--but only if we want to return. We stand in the place of choice in this matter--but His will is clear--love would not lose one. Not a sparrow can fall without it being known and counted and mattering. And if a sparrow matters, so much more so that creature who is in the very image of God.

So while we're wearing our sackcloth and ashes and bringing to mind how unworthy and terrible and what great failures we are as people, we would do well to remind ourselves that that is not God's vision at all. Those thoughts are not God's thoughts about us. Just as we would not think that a one-year old who stumbles and falls trying to walk is unworthy, terrible, or a failure, so too God does not regard us in such a way. Rather, His gaze is completely love--limitless, unconditional, eternal.

Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack