21ST CENTURY
COLLEGIATE MINISTRY DESIGNS
ASPEN, CO APRIL 1-4, 2019
21st Century Collegiate Ministry Design Retreat Index Links to Videos and Key Organizational Partners: **Brief Intro to the Retreat from Rimes ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=LHzp_lH4-Ug **IDEO Design Video ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dtrkrz0yoU **Andy Crouch's - Culture Makers Video ~ https://youtu.be/N125s6xT9WM **Aspen Institute Doerr-Hosier Building ~ https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/profile-aspen-institute-s-doerrhosier-center/ UMC Young Clergy Initiative ~ www.explorecalling.org Communities First Association ~ www.cfapartners.org Mere Christianity Forum ~ www.faithreasontomfoolery.org **please watch video
Included in this document: 1. Agenda 2. Covenants of Presence 2. 21st Century Collegiate Ministry Values 3. Key Retreat Leaders 4. Leader Bios 5. Design Partners 6. Possible Resource Designs 7. A Quadrilectic: Our Theological Moorings... 8. Wesleyan Distinctives: Grace, Piety, Mercy, Holiness TASTE AND SEE THAT THE LORD
10. Howard Thurman's ~ "The Sound of the Genuine" IS GOOD; BLESSED
IS THE ONE
WHO TAKES REFUGE IN HIM.
11. Parker Palmer's ~ "The Broken Open Heart" PSALM 34:8
21ST CENTURY COLLEGIATE MINISTRY DESIGN GATHERING HOSTED BY MERE CHRISTIAN FORUM AND FACILITATED BY REESHEDA GRAHAM WASHINGTON
Welcome! We are so excited to have you here with us in Aspen, Colorado. Over the next four days you will think, share and innovate with a dynamic group of leaders to design resources that support the vital work of collegiate ministry in the 21 st century. WE ARE PREPARING TO DO A NEW THING! ARE YOU READY?
MONDAY – THURSDAY APRIL 1ST – APRIL 4TH ASPEN, COLORADO
DAY ONE – MONDAY, APRIL 1ST 2019 1:00 PM
Registration & Packet Pickup Begins and resumes until 3:00 PM
2:45 PM
Gather at Doerr – Hosier Center
3:00 PM
Welcome & Introduction
3:30 PM
Opening Worship by Tony McNeill
3:45 PM
Collegiate Ministry AF: A Contextual Precursory Cultivation
4:30 PM
Engaging the Pre-Work
BREAK 5PM – 5:10PM 5:10 PM
A Look at a Sample Resource presented by Miki L. Grace
6:10 PM
Painted on Canvas Discussion by Reesheda Graham Washington
6:15 PM
Evening Worship by Tony McNeill
6:30 PM
Dinner on Your Own
DAY TWO – TUESDAY APRIL 2ND 2019 7:30 AM
Breakfast
8:30 AM
Morning Worship by Tony McNeill
8:45 AM
Digestion and Direction Session
9:00 AM
PINCH - Design Phase ONE
9:45 AM
Digestion and Direction Session
10:00 AM
PULL - Design Phase TWO A BREAK 10:30 AM – 10:40 AM
10:40 AM
PULL - Design Phase TWO B
11:10 AM
Digestion Session
11:30 AM
Reflection Session LUNCH 12:00 PM – 12:45 PM
12:45 PM
The Power of Play facilitated by LeAnn Jenkins
1:00 PM
PLAY - Design Phase THREE
2:30 PM
Digestion and Direction Session BREAK 3:30 PM – 3:45 PM
3:45 PM
Masterpiece facilitated discussion by Miki L. Grace
4:00 PM
PICK - Design Phase FOUR
5:15 PM
Worship by Tony McNeill
5:3O PM
Based on sign-ups optional group coaching is available during this time.
7:30 PM
Dinner on Your Own
DAY THREE – WEDNESDAY APRIL 3RD 2019 7:30 AM
Breakfast
8:30 AM
Morning Worship by Tony McNeill
8:45 AM
PUSH - Design Phase FIVE
9:45 AM
Prototyping: Showing Your Work facilitated by Miki L. Grace BREAK 10:15 PM – 10:30 AM
10:30 AM
PROTOTYPE - Design Phase SIX LUNCH 12:30 PM – 1:15 PM
1:15 PM
Pitch Makes Perfect facilitated by Reesheda Graham Washington
1:45 PM
PITCH CRAFTING - Design Phase SEVEN
2:30 PM
Process the Pitch BREAK 3:15 PM – 3:30 PM
3:30 PM
Graduate facilitated by Reesheda Graham Washington
3:40 PM
POLISH - Design Phase EIGHT
4:40 PM
Digestion and Direction Session
5:10 PM
Worship by Tony McNeill
5:30 PM
Respite
6:30 PM
Dinner Reception
DAY FOUR – THURSDAY APRIL 4TH 2019 7:30 AM
Breakfast
8:30 AM
Morning Meeting and Meditative Devotion
8:45 AM
PITCHING
10: 00 AM
Consecration and Closing
Covenants of Presence Be deeply present, extending and presuming welcome. Set aside the usual distractions of things undone from yesterday, things to do tomorrow. Welcome others into this design space and presume you are welcome as well. Listen Generously. Listen intently to what is said, listen to the feelings beneath the words. As Quaker Douglas Steere writes, “To listen another’s soul into life, into a condition of disclosure and discovery – may almost be the greatest gift we can offer to another.” We come as equals. We don’t have the same gifts, limits, or experiences, but no person’s gifts, limits, or experiences are more or less important than another’s. Stay curious about each other. Curiosity helps create good conversations and enables us to share our deep longing and real fears when we feel others are genuinely interested in us. Let us be inquisitive and invested in one another. No fixing. We are not here to set someone else straight, right a wrong, or provide therapy. We are here to witness God’s presence and movement in the sacred stories we share. Suspend judgment. Set aside your judgments. By creating a space between judgments and reactions, we can listen to another person, and to ourselves, more fully. Turn to wonder. If you find yourself becoming judgmental or cynical, try turning to wonder: “I wonder why she shared that story or made those choices?” “I wonder what my reaction teaches me?” “I wonder what he’s feeling right now?” Expect our conversations to be messy at times. Life doesn’t move in straight lines and neither does good conversation. Let us assume that our ideas, observations and conversations all come from a desire to create the future we all long to see. Consider that our ideas build upon each other even if we can’t see how they link logically one to another. Be mindful and respectful of time. We all have something important to share and the discipline of time invites us to focus and make particular choices about what to share and how much to share so that we might hear from everyone, not just a few passionate people. Welcome discomfort and dislocation. In the midst of new and uncomfortable places and the company of strangers, move against an instinct to construct a mental space of safety or to check out. See in what causes unease another world to be discovered. Perhaps it already lives secretly within you. Believe that it is possible for us to emerge from our time together refreshed, surprised, and less burdened than when we came. Expect that our work together can provide renewal, refreshment, and possibilities for what we can do together to create the future that is waiting to be born, and that seeds planted here will keep growing and flourish in the days ahead in service to God’s church and renewing work in the world.
Vital 21st Cenutury Collegiate Ministry Values
DISCERNMENT RETREAT - LAKE DALLAS, TX 2018
These are the discerned values our gleaned from many others as essential for vibrant 21st century collegiate ministry. This is not an exhaustive list but an essential list for collegiate ministry leaders, lay and clergy alike, students, and collegiate ministry related institutions to embrace if we are to provide healing and vitality in the world...
INTEGRITY syncronicity between one's inner and outer life; between one's professed beliefs and commitments and one's way of life... wholeness
COURAGE the capacity to act in the face of challenging odds and to overcome one's fears for the sake of a conviction or cause, including oneself or others
COMMUNITY a connection between persons grounded in shared commitment to a set of values and or practices that nurture life, vitality, and resilience for all involved
JUSTICE
CURIOSITY embracing persistent questions of significance and cultivating space for wonder, mystery, and discovery
COMPASSION
love made manifest in deeds; equity, inclusion, and affirmation for all, particularly the vulnerable; holding institutions accountable to their values in service to protecting the dignity and sacred worth of all
accepting Jesus’ invitation to seek solidarity with marginalized persons and working with God and others to realize change; centering the voices and experiences of vulnerable brothers and sisters
AUTHENTICITY
TRANSFORMATION
a lifelong quest to discern and embrace one's authentic self and courageously living into the truth of who God has uniquely created you to be;
joining God in the co-creative process of bringing into being the good, true, and beautiful of the new creation in the here and now
Retreat Leadership
TASTE AND SEE THAT THE LORD IS GOOD; BLESSED IS THE ONE WHO TAKES REFUGE IN HIM. PSALM 34:8
Rimes McElveen is the Executive Director and Collegiate Minister of Mere Christianity Forum, a campus ministry at Furman University in Greenville, SC. He has served in numerous churches, campus ministries, camps, and mission contexts and presently serves as a consultant to the Forum for Theological Exploration on two grant initiatives: Intentional Christian Communities Network Initiative and the Lilly Collegiate Ministries Theological Exploration of Vocation Initiative. Rimes has also spoken to and lead workshops on collegiate ministry at national conferences over the last decade. Recently, he has written multiple grants with the United Methodist Young Clergy Initiative to “Discern, Design, Develop, and Deploy 21st Century Collegiate Ministry Resources.” This work is aimed at lifting the field of collegiate ministry and supporting the vital work of nurturing faithful discipleship, vocational exploration and discernment, identity formation, and convictional commitment making among young adults through collegiate ministries.
Reesheda Graham Washington is a speaker, author, facilitator, and entrepreneur. The executive director of Communities First Alliance, Reesheda drives the national mission of multiplying asset-based community development, economic development, and equity (ABCDE²) in both faith-based and non-faith based contexts. Reesheda is also the CEO of L!VE Café, an artisanal destination coffee shop that serves as a community hub for courageous, authentic and abundant living experiences. Co-author of “Soul Force: Seven Pivots Toward Courage, Community, and Change”, Reesheda & Shawn Casselberry penned this book as a guide to transformational living. It is from these roles that Reesheda speaks, coaches, consults, and facilitates to inspire holistic and abundant lifestyles and healthy, vibrant, and sustainable organizations.
Dr. Tony McNeill affectionately known at "Dr. T.," is a sought-after workshop clinician, lecturer, consultant, mentor, and guest choral conductor throughout the country. During the 2017-2018 academic year, Dr. McNeill served as Visiting Professor and Interim Choral Director at Texas Southern University (TSU) in Houston, TX. Prior to TSU, Dr. McNeill served four and a half years as the Director of Worship and the Arts at Atlanta's Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, “America's Freedom Church." From 2010 through 2012, Dr. McNeill served as a Visiting Lecturer in Choral Music at his alma mater, Appalachian State University in Boone. Currently, Dr. McNeill serves on the staff of Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary, where he coordinates the Worship Leadership Certificate Program. He is also the choir director/accompanist (part-time) for the Sanctuary Mass Choir at Oakhurst Presbyterian Church in Decatur, GA.
Collegiate Ministry Designers Andrew Beard Sarah Bollinger Paul Burson Keith Daniel
bearda@hpumc.org sbollinger@gbhem.org pburson@regis.edu kd1@duke.edu
Hyde Park UMC UMC GBHEM Romero House/Regis University Duke University
Mark Forrester mforrester@gbhem.org UMC GBHEM Miki Grace mgrace@cfapartners.org Communities First Association Reesheda Graham Washington rwashington@cfapartners.org Communities First Association Rich Havard rich@letsgetinclusiveuic.org Inclusive Collective LeAnn Jenkins leanndjenkins@gmail.com Communities First Association Jazzy (Jasmine) Johnson Jazzy.johnson@intervarsity.org Intervarsity Katherine Lam katherine@ylchicago.com Young Life Allison Leigh aleigh1@udayton.edu Universtiy of Dayton Christopher Malano Paul Massingill Rashad Mays Michael McCord
cdmalano@unmalumni.com massingillpaul@gmail.com rashad.mays@intervarsity.org michael@umcommission.org
Newman Center @ University of Hawaii Central Texas UMC Conference Intervarsity UMCommission on Higher Education
Rimes McElveen Tony McNeill Ben Miller Kelly Mulderig
rimes@faithreasontomfoolery.org Mere Christianity Forum tmcneill1971@gmail.com Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary ben@isuencounter.org Encounter Campus Ministry kellymulderig@gmail.com Young Life
Megan Otto motto@uumc.org Nathalie Parker-Nelson nelsonnathalie@gmail.com Bart Patton bartp@smu.edu Tiffanie Postell t.postell@gmail.com
University UMC, Austin, TX, & UMCMA #LIT and National Network of Young Adults Perkins School of Theology, SMU Wesley Foundation/Fellowship
Tabitha Rankin Nicole Riley Billy Riley Rob Schrump
tmrankin@wileyc.edu nriley@ccojubilee.org billy@chestertonhouse.org rschrumpf@pcch.org
Wiley College Coalition for Christian Outreach Chesterton House (Christian Study Ctr) Campus Christian House, Purdue University
Derrick Scott III Latricia Scriven Rozella White Heather Wynn
derrick@campustocity.org Campus to City Wesley, Jacksonville, FL latricia.scriven@flumc.org Wesley Foundation rozella@rozellahwhite.com RHW Consulting heather@faithreasontomfoolery.org Mere Christianity Forum
Design Retreat- Aspen, CO, 2019 Possible Resources To Be Designed Decolonizing Collegiate Ministry Authentic Intersectionality in Collegiate Worship Psychological First Aid for Peer Ministers and Collegiate Ministry Leaders Transformative Service/Learning/Immersion Experiences Retreat Resource for Students and/or Leaders Faithful and Effective Parish Based Collegiate Ministry Vital Multi-Site/Multi-Campus Collegiate Ministries Dynamic Collegiate Ministry in Commuter/Community College Context Ancient Future Collegiate Ministry - Old Wine in New Wineskins Mentoring as Means of Grace Race, Gender, Sexuality, Equity, Inclusion, and Affirmation The Activist Life - Collegiate Ministries as Christian Justice Incubators Social Entrepreneurship as Spiritual Discipline 365Christian - A Liturgically Rich Christian Life in the Daily Round Board-Raising and Management Fundraising and Fiscal Management Solutions Residential Intentional Christian Community Retreats of Transformational Power Renewal for Leaders Training in Collegiate Ministry Leadership for Student, Lay, and Clergy Interfaith Dialogue and Collaboration Large collegiate ministry conferencing Embodied Apologetics
A Quadrilectic
Our Theological Moorings...
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Quote Bulletin 17198 reads
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Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. --Howard Thurman
The Sound of the Genuine by Howard Thurman, Nov 30, 2017
From Howard Thurman's 1980 commencement address at Spelman College. There is something in every one of you that waits, listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself and if you cannot hear it, you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching and if you hear it and then do not follow it, it was better that you had never been born… You are the only you that has ever lived; your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all of existence and if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls…
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. Mahatma Gandhi
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There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself and sometimes there is so much traffic going on in your minds, so many different kinds of signals, so many vast impulses floating through your organism that go back thousands of generations, long before you were even a thought in the mind of creation, and you are buffeted by these, and in the midst of all of this you have got to find out what your name is. Who are you? How does the sound of the genuine come through to you… The sound of the genuine is flowing through you. Don’t be deceived and thrown off by all the noises that are a part even of your dreams, your ambitions, so that you don’t hear the sound of the genuine in you, because that is the only true guide that you will ever have, and if you don’t have that you don’t have a thing. You may be famous. You may be whatever the other ideals are which are a part of this generation, but you know you don’t have the foggiest notion of who you are, where you are going, what you want. Cultivate the discipline of listening to the sound of the genuine in yourself Now there is something in everybody that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in other people. And it is so easy to say that anybody who looks like him or her, anybody who acts as this person acts, can’t hear any sound of the genuine. I must wait and listen for the sound of the genuine in you. I must wait. For if I cannot hear it, then in my scheme of things, you are not even present. And everybody wants to feel that everybody else knows that she is there. I have a blind friend who just became blind after she was a grown woman. I asked her: “What is the greatest disaster that your blindness has brought to you?” She said, “When I go places where there are people, I have a feeling that nobody knows that I’m here. I can’t see any recognition, I can’t see… and if nobody knows that I’m here, it’s hard for me to know where I am.” There is something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in your mother, in your father, in the people you can’t stand, and if you had the power you would wipe them out. But instinctively you know that if you wipe them out, you go with them. So you fight for your own life by finding some way to get along with them without killing them. There is something in you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in other people. And if you can’t hear it, then you are reduced by that much. If I were to ask you what is the thing that you desire most in life this afternoon, you would say a lot of things off the top of your head, most of which you wouldn’t believe but you would think that you were saying the things that I thought you ought to think that you should say.
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But I think that if you were stripped to whatever there is in you that is literal and irreducible, and you tried to answer that question, the answer may be something like this: I want to feel that I am thoroughly and completely understood so that now and then I can take my guard down and look out around me and not feel that I will be destroyed with my defenses down. I want to feel completely vulnerable, completely naked, completely exposed and absolutely secure. This is what you look for in your children when you have them, this is what you look for in your husband if you get one. That I can run the risk of radical exposure and know that the eye that beholds my vulnerability will not step on me. That I can feel secure in my awareness of the active presence of my own idiom in me. So as I live my life then, this is what I am trying to fulfill. It doesn’t matter whether I become a doctor, lawyer, housewife. I’m secure because I hear the sound of the genuine in myself and having learned to listen to that, I can become quiet enough, still enough, to hear the sound of the genuine in you. Now if I hear the sound of the genuine in me, and if you hear the sound of the genuine in you, it is possible for me to go down in me and come up in you. So that when I look at myself through your eyes having made that pilgrimage, I see in me what you see in me and the wall that separates and divides will disappear and we will become one because the sound of the genuine makes the same music. *** You can access the full text of Thurman's address here. For more inspiration join Saturday's Awakin Call with animal rights activist Jasmin Singer who followed the voice of the genuine within herself. RSVP and more details here.
Howard Thurman (November 18, 1899 – April 10, 1981) was an influential African American author, philosopher, theologian, educator and civil rights leader. He was Dean of Chapel at Howard University and Boston University for more than two decades, wrote 21 books, and in 1944 helped found a multicultural church. Thurman, along with Mordecai Johnson and Vernon Johns, was considered one of the three greatest AfricanAmerican preachers in the early 20thcentury.
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a Weav ings r e p r i n t
The Broken-
Open Heart Living with Faith and Hope in the Tr agic Gap by Parker J. Palmer
Just heard an NPR interview with Basim, an Iraqi who worked as an interpreter for American troops. He took the job believing that the Americans represented hope for his country. But when Abu Ghraib showed Iraqis that Americans could be as brutal as Saddam’s police, Basim’s efforts to bridge the two cultures brought death threats against him and his family and they were forced to flee their homeland. “Was it naïve to believe that you could stand in the middle like that?”, the interviewer asked. Without hesitation Basim answered, “No. It wasn’t at all.” If reconciliation is going to happen, he said (now I paraphrase), there must be people who are willing to live in the tragic gap and help the two sides understand each other. I’m deeply moved by Basim’s witness—and I wonder about my own . . . —From my journal, July 5, 2008
Becoming Civilized
O
n t h e lo n g l i s t of hopes that have driven our ancient and unfinished project called “becoming civilized,” overcoming the tyranny of the primitive brain is surely at or near the top. No one who aspires to become fully human can let the primitive brain have its way, least of all Christians who aspire to a gospel way of life. When the primitive brain dominates, Christianity goes over to the dark side. Churches self-destruct over doctrinal differences, forgetting that their first calling is to love one
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another. Parishioners f lock to preachers who see the antiChrist in people who do not believe as they do. Christian voters support politicians who use God’s name to justify ignoble and often violent agendas. When the primitive brain is in charge, humility, compassion, forgiveness, and the vision of a beloved community do not stand a chance. The primitive brain contains the hardwiring for the infamous “fight or f light” ref lex that helps other species survive but can diminish, even destroy, human beings. The moment we sense danger, real or imagined, that hardwiring induces a state of tension that we want to resolve right now, either by eliminating its source or by removing ourselves from its reach. That’s a good thing when you are about to be attacked by a tiger or hit by a bus. It is a very bad thing when you are dealing with an attitudinal teenager, an idea that threatens some taken-forgranted belief, the challenge of racial or religious “otherness,” or a local or global conf lict that would best be resolved non-violently. Unfortunately, the fight or f light ref lex runs so deep that resisting it is like trying to keep your foot from jumping when the doctor taps your patellar tendon. But against all odds, resisting it has been key to the project called civilization ever since we climbed down from the trees. Learning how to hold life’s tensions in the responsive heart instead of the reactive primitive brain is key to personal, social, and cultural creativity: rightly held, those tensions can open us to new thoughts, relationships, and possibilities that disappear when we try to f lee from or destroy their source. If we had not sought ways to hold tension creatively, our species would have long since wasted away in caves or been done in by war. If “caves” and “war” sound like words from today’s headlines, it is only because they are. Despite millennia of cultural inventiveness, we have not yet vanquished “the enemy within.” What are some of the cultural inventions meant to help us hold tension in a life-giving, not death-dealing way? Language itself is among the first of them, because it allows us to respond to tension with words instead of actions. Even if the first “word” is a ref lexive shout at the moment tension hits, the words that follow can be inquisitive and exploratory, as in
Can suffering become lifegiving rather than deathdealing?
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“Hey! What’s going on here?” Language leads to the possibility of understanding, and thus to a true resolution of tension, something that is never achieved by fighting or f leeing, which merely leave more tension in their wake. The arts are a civilizing institution that can help us learn to hold tension in a way that leads to life, not death. A good painting, a good drama, a good novel, and a good musical composition share at least one trait: they are animated by the tension between their elements, a tension that not only attracts the eye, the ear, and the mind, but draws us into the experience art offers, the reality it has to share. Entering into the tension of great art, and allowing that tension to pull our hearts and minds open, is a time-honored way of becoming more human. Education is another ancient institution designed to help us hold tension creatively. A good education teaches us to respect that which is “other” than our experience, our thoughts, our certainties, our world. A good education helps us embrace complexity, find comfort in ambiguity, entertain contradictory ideas, grasp both poles of a paradox. It challenges the primacy of the primitive brain, drawing on the larger capacities of the human self to hold the multiple tensions of thought, and life, in ways that invoke the better angels of our nature. And then there is religion…
Religion and the Br oken Heart
W
h e n t h e p r i m i t i v e b r a i n takes charge we are in thrall to the fallen angels, and the outcome is altogether predictable: we contribute to the dynamic of violence that constantly threatens life itself. Why do we persist in tr ying to “solve” problems with violence, despite the fact that violence threatens our survival? That question has several valid answers. But the one I want to pursue here has yet to get its due and takes us directly to a key function of the spiritual life: violence arises when we do not know what else to do with our suffering. Think back, for example, to the murderous and heartbreaking events of September 11, 2001, that created such widespread tension and suffering. America was attacked, we suffered, the primitive brain kicked in, and “fight or f light”
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was elevated from the nether regions of the brain stem to policy options in the White House and the Congress. As nation-states usually do when they have superior firepower, our government chose to fight (although largely against the wrong enemy in this misbegotten case). Now, eight years later, the violence in our world has multiplied. We chose to fight despite the fact that an alternative path was available to us, a path of seeking justice rather than making war that might have allowed us to create rather than destroy. In the process, we squandered the life-giving sense of global community that began to emerge in the weeks following September 11 as people of many lands empathized with our suffering, including, amazingly, people whose suffering we helped cause. Can suffering become life-giving rather than death-dealing? Could America’s suffering in the wake of September 11 have yielded outcomes other than violence multiplied? We don’t need to become dewy-eyed dreamers to answer that question with a “yes.” The experience of our own lives proves it. Who among us has not suffered the loss of someone precious to our hearts, a loss so heartbreaking that we wondered how we could go on living? Who among us has not been tempted to shut down in the wake of such a loss, to turn toward bitterness, cynicism, and anger, perhaps even going there for a while? And how many of us have sought formal or informal spiritual practices—from meditation to walks in the woods— to transform a wounded, shut-down heart into something more trusting, more capacious, a heart that dispels the darkness and opens to new light and life?
T
h e a lc h e m y that can transform suffering into new life is at the heart of every religious tradition I know anything about, including my own Christian tradition. Of course, Christianity, like every religion, has shadow as well as light: it has sometimes fueled the fight or f light response. Religion has always provided powerful rationales both for fleeing from the problems of “this sinful world” and for trying to blow “the enemy” to kingdom come. But the great traditions at their best aim at helping us hold tension and the suffering it brings in ways that enhance spiritual creativity and build the beloved community. They do so by focusing on the inevitable experience of heartbreak.
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There is no way to be human without having one’s heart broken. But there are at least two ways for the heart to break— using “heart” in its root meaning, not merely the seat of the emotions but the core of our sense of self. The heart can be broken into a thousand shards, sharp-edged fragments that sometimes become shrapnel aimed at the source of our pain. Every day, untold numbers of people try without success to “pick up the pieces,” some of them taking grim satisfaction in the way the heart’s explosion has injured their enemies. Here the broken heart is an unresolved wound that we carry with us for a long time, sometimes tucking it away and feeding it as a hidden wound, sometimes trying to “resolve it” by inf licting the same wound on others. But there is another way to visualize what a broken heart might mean. Imagine that small, clenched fist of a heart “broken open” into largeness of life, into greater capacity to hold one’s own and the world’s pain and joy. This, too, happens every day. We know that heartbreak can become a source of compassion and grace because we have seen it happen with our own eyes as people enlarge their capacity for empathy and their ability to attend to the suffering of others. Transforming heartbreak into new life is the aim of every religious tradition at its best, as witness this Hasidic tale. A disciple asks the rebbe, “Why does Torah tell us to ‘place these words upon your hearts’? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?” The rebbe answers, “It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.”⁄ The same point is made by the Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan: “God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open.”¤ In Christian tradition, the broken-open heart is virtually indistinguishable from the image of the cross. It was on the cross that God’s heart was broken for the sake of humankind, broken open into a love that Christ’s followers are called to
There is no way to be human without having one’s heart broken
⁄ I was told this hasidic tale by philosopher Jacob Needleman, an heir to the oral tradition, who kindly put it in writing for me so I could recount it correctly. ¤ Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (San Francisco: Conari Press, 2000), 419.
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emulate. In its simple physical form, the cross embodies the notion that tension can pull the heart open. Its cross-beams stretch out four ways, pulling against each other left and right, up and down. But those arms converge in a center, a heart, that can be pulled open by that stretching, by the tensions of life—a heart that can be opened so fully it can hold everything from despair to ecstasy. And that, of course, is how Jesus held his excruciating experience, as an opening into the heart of God. At times, sadly, the cross has drawn believers toward the spiritual shadows of both masochism and sadism. Some Christians believe that if they are not suffering they cannot possibly be doing God’s will. They have every right to hold this belief, though I can’t imagine that it pleases a God who laughs as well as weeps. Some Christians believe that they have the right to inf lict suffering on people who do not share their version of
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God’s will. That is a belief that no one has the right to hold, one that I have to believe runs counter to the will of a lifegiving God. If we Christians want to contribute to the healing of the world’s wounds rather than to the next round of wounding— and we have a long history of doing both—much depends on how we understand and inhabit the cruciform way of life that is at the heart of our tradition.
Living in the Tr agic Gap
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o l i v e i n t h i s w o r l d , we must learn how to stand in the tragic gap with faith and hope. By “the tragic gap” I mean the gap between what is and what could and should be, the gap between the reality of a given situation and an alternative reality we know to be possible because we have experienced it. That alternative reality is not a wish-dream or a fantasy, but a possibility we have seen with our own eyes. Here’s an example. For eleven years, I lived in a Quaker community of some seventy people where there was a degree of mutual sharing, material and spiritual, that I have never experienced since, except among close friends. In most of the neighborhoods, workplaces, and voluntar y associations I know anything about—including, too often, the church—people share very little. That’s the reality, but I know it could be otherwise, because I have experienced an alternative reality populated by people as inclined toward hoarding as I am. So I have a choice. I can hold the tension between reality and possibility in a life-giving way, standing in the gap and witnessing with my own life to another way of living, slowly and patiently calling myself and my part of the world toward something better. But if I cannot abide that tension, I will try to resolve it by collapsing into one pole or the other—the same quick “resolve the tension” ref lex that creates the fightor-f light response. When I collapse into the reality of what is, I am likely to sink into corrosive cynicism: “Community is impossible, so I’m going to focus on getting my piece of the action and let the devil take the hindmost.” When I collapse into pure possibility, I am likely to f loat off into irrelevant idealism: “Oh, how lovely it would be if….” Corrosive cynicism and irrelevant idealism may
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sound as if they are poles apart, but they take us to the same place: out of the gap and out of the action, out of those places we might make a life-giving contribution if we knew how to hold the tension. The gap is “tragic” not merely because it is sad but because (in the Greek, biblical, and Shakespearian sense of the word) it is inevitable, inexorable, inescapable. The form it takes changes over time, but there will always be a gap between what is and what could and should be. For example, when we achieve progress on racism, we can always see a new and better place where humanity could and should go. When we do not know how to live creatively in that infinite regress, we cannot live in a way that brings new life into the gap. And how do we learn to live that way? What are the spiritual practices that can help us transcend the primitive brain and hold tension in our hearts, allowing it to break our hearts open rather than apart? The question is an important one for Christian communities, because those communities are the context in which some of this learning could and should be happening. Of course, the preaching and teaching ministries are important in helping church members understand the importance of learning to hold tension. But if a congregation does not embody this practice in its own life, its own “hidden curriculum,” there is not a sermon or a lesson plan on the planet that can change the dance. A congregation whose members bury their differences and divisions for fear that surfacing them will blow the “community” apart is neither a true community nor a place where people can learn a cruciform way of life. We don’t learn to love from being talked at but from being around love in action. We don’t learn to hold tension in ways that open the heart by reading essays but by being around others who keep learning how to do it and invite us to try it for ourselves. One example of that “hidden curriculum” is the way congregations make decisions. Too often, that way is majority rule, a process designed to resolve tension as quickly as possible, kowtowing to the instincts of the primitive brain. An issue is put before the group, differences of opinion emerge, tension deepens, and someone “calls for the vote” to put us out of our misery. But the misery rarely ends with the vote because the
Heartbreak can become a source of compassion and grace
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process is essentially adversarial, which is how the primitive brain wants it. When fifty-one percent can tell forty-nine percent where to get off, the latter may tr y to subvert the majority will for months, years, decades, or generations to come. Just look at your own church or the one down the street! Making decisions by consensus instills different “habits of the heart.” Here, a decision cannot be made until no one in the room feels a need to oppose it (a different and more reachable norm than requiring everyone to feel positive about it). Here, the rules compel us to listen to one another in a collaborative, not adversarial manner, seeking what we might affirm in “the opposition’s” viewpoint—because if we don’t, we will stay stuck. As we listen with new ears, we not only learn to hold the tension of opposites, we also learn that doing so can open us, individually and collectively, to a new and better way of resolving the issue at hand. The principle that congregational practices should embody tension-holding can be applied to other areas, of course, such as how congregations educate children and adults. Dropping information into people’s heads will not do the trick, nor will telling them what to think and believe. But disciplined forms of dialogical teaching and learning, in which people are required to listen to differences, hold ambiguity, and learn how to engage in creative disagreement challenge the dominance of the primitive brain and help us learn to hold tension in the capacious mind and heart.
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a n d - i n - h a n d with the transformation of congregational practices go transformed individuals, clergy and lay, who have spiritual disciplines that help them stand in the tragic gap with faith and hope. Those disciplines have been the subject of countless books and articles. They are as varied as people themselves: everyone has his or her own way of turning this “vale of tears” into a “vale of soul-making,” to quote the poet John Keats.‹ But I believe that underneath that variety, there are three things we all must learn to do if what Keats called our “world of pains and troubles” is to become a school of the Spirit, the heart, the soul. First, in a culture where the answer to the question “How are you?” is supposed to be “Just fine” even when we are not, ‹ John Keats: Selected Letters, ed. Robert Gittings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 232.
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we must learn to acknowledge and name our suffering honestly and openly to ourselves and to others. This is called “becoming vulnerable”—a hard thing to do in a culture that does not respect the shadow, where even among friends we are at constant risk of someone trying to “fix us up,” an act that drives the suffering soul back into hiding no matter how well-intended. We need to find a trustworthy friend or two who knows what it means simply to receive and bear witness to our pain. As we cultivate such relationships, we will find ourselves rewarded with a comforting, “Welcome to the human race.” Second, once we have named and claimed our suffering, we must move directly to the heart of it, allowing ourselves to feel the pain fully, rather than doing what our culture teaches— numbing it with anesthetics, f leeing from it with distractions, or fighting it off by blaming and attacking the external source. The only way to transform suffering into something life-giving is to enter into it so deeply that we learn what it has to teach us and come out on the other side. Third, if we are to learn from our suffering, we must create a micro-climate of quietude around ourselves, allowing the turmoil to settle and an inner quietude to emerge, so “that of God within us” can help us find our way through. Nurtured by silence, we can stop taking our leads from the voices of ego and world and start listening instead to the still, small voice of all that is Holy. None of this can be done on the cheap. It requires what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “costly grace.”› But if we are willing to pay the cost, that grace will be given and we will purchase the pearl of great price—a chance to participate in God’s continuing creation of the beloved community.
› Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English Edition, vol. 4, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey, trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2001), 43.
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pa r k e r j. pa l m e r is founder and senior partner of the Center for Courage & Renewal. Author of seven books—including A Hidden Wholeness, Let Your Life Speak, and The Courage to Teach—he holds the Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley and ten honorar y doctorates. In 1998, the Leadership Project named him one of thirty “most inf luential senior leaders” in higher education and one of ten key “agenda-setters” of the decade. In 2005, Jossey-Bass published Living the Questions: Essays Inspired by the Work and Life of Parker J. Palmer.
Thank you for your interest in this article from Weavings. To learn more about our publication and ministry, please contact us at www.weavings.org or weavings@upperroom.org. A reprint from Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life, March/April 2009, Vol. XXIV, No. 2. Copyright 2008 by Upper Room Ministries ®, Nashville, TN. Art used with permission of the artist. All rights reserved.
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FAITH. REASON. TOMFOOLERY.