Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Wendell Berry by Michael Stevens, "Knowing Your Place"



Author, Professor Michael Stevens


What can commitment to place and community mean for those not living in an agrarian countryside? Are there institutions that can serve as substitutes? The authors think so: "the flourishing of placed and peopled churches within local cultures." 


Amazon Link



Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life:
A Reader's Guide Paperback – December 1, 2008
by J. Matthew Bonzo (Author), Michael R. Stevens (Contributor)

 

Wendell Berry's poetry, fiction, and essays persistently ask the question: How can we live meaningful lives in a consumer-driven, fragmented age? His honest search for health in the midst of disease has garnered attention and discussion in both conservative and progressive circles. Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life thoroughly examines Berry's main themes of community, place, and conservation. It offers an apology for the power of Berry's vision and the ways in which his account of the world resonates with the biblical narrative. Pastors, students, professors, and laity will discover in this book how to flesh out Berry's worldview and foster a culture of life in their neighborhoods, churches, and schools.
Dr. Michael Stevens believes Wendell Berry is a crucial voice for the world today, and more particularly, for Christians. His book, written with co-author Dr. Matthew Bonzo, “Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life” evaluates Wendell Berry’s writings theologically, addressing themes congruent with contemporary theological concerns while acknowledging ways Berry’s vision can be adopted and lived. It’s no secret that Bonzo and Stevens find Berry to be a profound writer who provides the church with a new vision of life. While Berry’s writing is unlike traditional theological writing, the authors affirm Hauerwas’ statement at the end of the Gifford Lectures in “The Necessity of Witness” when he “offers John Paul II, John Howard Yoder, and Wendell Berry as crucial voices exhorting the church to a properly countercultural vision of life.” Though Berry seems like a “surprising inclusion” in this list, Bonzo and Stevens argue it is because Berry “represents the fullest embodiment of telling ‘the Story’ through stories… Berry’s work is precisely the sort of ‘renarration’ that can bring healing and make visible the call to ‘practice resurrection’” (35).
*This lecture is co-sponsored by the Au Sable Fellows & Graduate Christian Fellowship.

 

Michael Stevens (Ph.D. in Literature, Institute of Philosophic Studies, University of Dallas) is an English professor at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he has taught since 1997. His original graduate work on T.S. Eliot’s socio-political ideas led him on a circuitous route to the fiction, poetry, and essays of the Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry, about whom he and colleague Matt Bonzo wrote Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life for Brazos Press in 2008. [Stevens] has also published articles and chapters on Berry’s critique of higher education, his pacifism, and his fictional universe.
A native of Harford, in rural Cortland County, New York, Stevens attended high school in Dryden and often visited his grandparents on Ellis Hollow Road in Ithaca. After college, he even worked a brief but eventful stint at Cornell University Catering! He and his wife Linda (a native of Long Island) have raised their three kids in Michigan, amidst maple trees and apple orchards that betoken the strong link to New York State of Michigan’s early settlers (yes, there is an Ithaca, Michigan, and a Dryden, etc.). Ethan (20), Julia (17), and Gabe (15) are still waiting for Dad to take them to the Moosewood Restaurant on one of these Grandma visits.


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What a Poem Looks Like | Wendell Berry's "Sycamore"
Apr 25, 2020




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Book Review by Josh Sweeden, Ph.D.


Student in Practical Theology


Matthew Bonzo and Michael Stevens believe Wendell Berry is a crucial voice for the world today, and more particularly, for Christians today. Their project is simple: to analyze and evaluate Wendell Berry’s writings theologically, addressing themes congruent with contemporary theological concerns while acknowledging ways Berry’s vision can be adopted and lived. It’s no secret that Bonzo and Stevens find Berry to be a profound writer who provides the church with a new vision of life. While Berry’s writing is unlike traditional theological writing, Bonzo and Stevens affirm Hauerwas’ statement at the end of the Gifford Lectures in “The Necessity of Witness” when he “offers John Paul II, John Howard Yoder, and Wendell Berry as crucial voices exhorting the church to a properly countercultural vision of life.” Though Berry seems like a “surprising inclusion” in this list, Bonzo and Stevens argue it is because Berry “represents the fullest embodiment of telling ‘the Story’ through stories…Berry’s work is precisely the sort of ‘renarration’ that can bring healing and make visible the call to ‘practice resurrection’” (35).

Three significant themes evident in the writings of Wendell Berry constitute the heart of this text. Bonzo and Stevens first engage Berry’s notion of healing, a constant theme in Berry’s writings referring to individuals, communities, land, home, education, and society as a whole. Berry believes that all of these suffer from disease and are in need healing. Berry maintains a “creation-centric” vision which upholds the good of God’s created order while also maintaining its ‘fallen-ness’ and need for redemption. The disease needing to be addressed is partly due of the reality of a fallen creation. More important for Berry, however, is modernity’s proliferation of disease. Against the specific ills of modernity Berry provides a new vision for life which he finds rooted in the good of creation, community, and cultivation.

A second significant theme Bonzo and Stevens engage is hospitality. Berry’s descriptions of the community and household consistently establish hospitality as its center. Permeability of boundaries is how Bonzo and Stevens describe Berry’s hospitality. While communities and households maintain certain boundaries necessary for life together, the practice of hospitality makes these boundaries fluid and flexible. Hospitality involves “temporary or provisional entry into the membership of place and relationships.” It is a form of risk. Continuing the theme of health, Bonzo and Stevens note that communities “must already have a measure of health…[and] proof of willingness to be vulnerable” (141). Exploring Berry’s various writings, Bonzo and Stevens note six categories of hospitality integrally tied to community life. Ultimately hospitality is the practice of offering healing; it “has room for the wounded (and for being wounded).” In hospitality there must “be room for everyone, with the only caveat being that love must be accepted as given; it must be received as gift” (163). When hospitality becomes understood primarily as a practice of households and communities questions regarding the true inclusivity of women and marginalized peoples must be raised. Bonzo and Stevens address this briefly by stating the importance of such questions, noting that rural communities historically have not offered sufficient “quality of life and status to women.” Furthermore, they wonder how “marginalized groups of all sorts fit Berry’s notion of local, healing community” (116). In the midst of these questions, Bonzo and Stevens are explicit in acknowledging the varied possibilities for community and household. Working a farm in rural Kentucky is not, and should not be, the only option for all, what matters is making community and home in the place where we find ourselves, to “start where we are, and we’re all somewhere” (123). This does not negate some of the unjust and oppressive patterns present in rural communities and households, but it does show that Berry’s vision is not tied to a fixed understanding of rural America, but can (and should) be dynamic and embodied differently in varying contexts.

A final significant theme of Berry’s that Bonzo and Stevens consistently note is household. “Households are not utopias, nor are the communities they ideally help to build” (113). Households carry certain structures of authority, maintain various traditions and norms, and form specific virtues and character traits. It’s not uncommon for these to be problematic; as capable as households are for establishing ‘good,’ they can be equally destructive and ill-ordered. Nevertheless, a revival of household economics is needed according to Berry. One fundamental way this is accomplished is by countering the modern ideal of separation of work and home. Berry argues that “healthy households cannot be fostered when work is utterly external to the home.” Today work is something we “just attempt to escape,” and as a result, “our home becomes merely a place of recreation.” What “Berry calls for is a return of work to the home, because this is the place where character and communal virtues are formed” (112).

In addition to the significant attention given to the three themes discussed above, Bonzo and Stevens engage Berry’s theological contributions on topics of creation, gift, place, education, and redemption. This text is undoubtedly a needed complement to Berry’s prolific writing for all who wish to engage him theologically. The writings of Wendell Berry have, and will continue to have, a widespread influence. Reading Berry with a theological lens greatly assists the church to embody the alternative and redemptive forms of life presented by Berry—arguably forms of life necessary for Christian witness.

Bonzo and Stevens’ exploration of Berry does fall short of providing in-depth critical theological evaluation. Though the text intentionally avoids placing Berry under the microscope of a theological discipline and audience to which his writings were never directly written, critical theological evaluation remains necessary before the church and theology can assert and appropriate Berry’s contributions. Bonzo and Stevens are exceptional at displaying the strengths of Berry and possible ways the church’s life and theology can be enhanced. Some issues, however, require more critical evaluation. Berry’s creation-centrism, as one example, should not be presented without significant theological discussion regarding its interplay and distinction from Christocentrism. How might Berry’s thesis shift in light of the person of Jesus Christ? How might the church adapt Berry’s contributions, but necessarily challenge his theological foundation, to more appropriately reflect the Christian emphasis on Christ as the starting point for theology?

Ultimately, Bonzo and Stevens themselves make a substantial contribution to the church and theology by exploring the implications and possibilities for the church and Christian life evident in the writings of Wendell Berry. As the authors appropriately display, Wendell Berry is “a necessary voice.” Without a text as comprehensive and articulate as this one, Berry’s voice could not be as far-reaching or as sensibly understood.









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