Archive for February, 2004

They raised enough…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 28, 2004
in Food, Fun, Money, Photos, Vanity and Youth ministry
. 9 Comments

hugo_buzzed.jpg

It’s Saturday night, I am home from 30-Hour Famine, and I am completely bald. The photo above (of me with one of the kids from church) was snapped on a camera phone, but it shows the colored mohawk I was given last night by my youth group. I challenged them to raise $5000 for World Vision; they raised $7900 and change.

I decided the mohawk could not stay. So, after half an hour with the razor in the shower, I am balder than on the day I was born. Next year, I’m going to challenge them to raise at least $10,000!

Odds and ends

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 27, 2004
in Blogging, Clothing and Fashion, Food, Money, Politics and Youth ministry
. 6 Comments

The 30-Hour famine fast began a few minutes ago. After some quality time this A.M. with my gal and Matilde the chinchilla, I went on a quick 14-mile run from my place, traveling down through the Arroyo Seco and up into the Monterey Hills neighborhood of L.A before making my way back. I have made quick trips to Noah’s Bagels and Jamba Juice to refuel, but from noon today until 6:00PM tomorrow, nothing more. I’ll be off to church in a few hours, to help check in the kids (we think we might have over 35 show up tonight), count the money, and prepare for a sleepless night with hungry and rambunctious teens. Whether or not they will have raised enough to shave my head remains to be seen; I’ll report.

I got some nice props last night from Rudy Carrasco; he linked to my post below on my feminist cred, and he wrote:

Hugo is one of the more fascinating characters you will come across. As the self-described only Evangelical male in America to teach Gay and Lesbian studies, he is absolutely and literally in a class of his own.

Very cool. Thanks, Rudy!

As I gather with the kids this weekend, I will be praying for Haiti. Almost no one seems to want to “blog Haiti” this week! Here we all are, Christians devoted to social justice and non-violence, and we are all far more riled up about a movie than we are about this horrific and tragic situation unfolding right here in our hemisphere. Is it because the problem seems too intractable? Is it because there is no opportunity to issue thundering and self-righteous orations? Writing about Haiti just isn’t as sexy as writing about marriage or the Passion. I am as guilty as everybody else. I have no answers. But I do have prayers.

Also, I am praying for the grocery workers of the UFCW as they vote this weekend on whether to accept the latest offer from the supermarket chains. I am definitely looking forward to being able to shop once again at my neighborhood Vons. I am tired of the high prices I’ve been paying at Gelson’s, the unionized (but pricey) grocery store that is just down the street. By the way, I am trying to decide if I want to buy “Union Jeans“, sold on the UFCW website. I like the idea of wearing only union-made American stuff. On the other hand, I love good clothes. I spend far too much on dressing myself (lately, I have been buying a lot of stuff from Lucky Brand), and most of what I buy is not union-made. I think I have some room for growth there.

Time to focus on the famine!

I’m going to lose my feminist credentials again

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 26, 2004
in Abortion, Body, Feminism and Teaching
. 20 Comments

My women’s studies class is coming along very well this semester. (We spent the morning working through the concept of “coverture”, with a brief break to discuss Iroquois attitudes towards menstruation).

I did not share with my students my pleasure that the House today passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. The legislation defines “unborn child” as “a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.”

It’s been a long journey for me towards the pro-life position. I grew up in a household in which abortion rights were celebrated. Until just a few years ago, I was a regular contributor to Planned Parenthood. As recently as the 1996 election, I volunteered at a NARAL campaign event. Many folks close to me have gone through abortions, and I have witnessed the tremendous pain that an unwanted pregnancy can bring to a young woman’s life. I have great compassion for those who do choose to terminate their pregnancies. But my understanding of the nature of human life and of the body does not allow me to continue to support legal abortion. It’s been a painful journey, not least because my conversion has caused dismay and anger among old friends who remain committed to abortion rights. I remain conflicted as to what the best legal and cultural strategy is against abortion, as I worry about both babies and mothers dying as a result of illegal abortion. I’m still on this journey.

But I do notice this: the percentage of my students in women’s studies who see abortion rights as critical to their own sense of feminism has been dropping in the past decade. Students were, as I recall, much more active on the issue seven or eight years ago than they are now. Obviously, I have changed my curriculum, and that may play a part. But I also think there is a larger cultural shift going on, a shift away from an earlier era’s obsession with individual autonomy. When I first started teaching women’s history, I emphasized the abortion struggle as the great struggle of our time. I haven’t believed that for years. I have long since shifted from a belief that rights are paramount. Happiness is what my students want, not radical autonomy. Happiness without relationship is not happiness for my students; they hunger to be valued, to be recognized, to be seen. They are tired of a culture that teaches them they ought to be at war with their own bodies and their own femininity. They are overwhelmed both by our culture’s obsession with beauty and thinness and by our culture’s increasing unwillingness to value motherhood. They are starting to see that abortion is a war against the flesh and against nature in a way that anorexia and plastic surgery are acts of war against their own bodies. And though I may get my credentials as a feminist male pulled permanently, I am doing everything I can to teach them to value themselves not merely as rational, independent agents, but as unique and precious women. Biology may not be destiny, but the war to master and distort and control female flesh must stop. And I have come — with reverance and reluctance — to believe that abortion is a critical part of the war against women.

Okay, rant over. I’ve spent my lunch hour on this, and now need to go and lecture on Louis XIV.

I said yes

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 26, 2004
in Pasadena City College and Race
. 0 Comments

This morning, one of my best students from last semester asked me to be the faculty adviser to the college chapter of the NAACP. He’s the student president, and he picked me. It’s only one meeting a month, and so I said yes. The next time he and I meet, I am going to ask him what I did not ask this morning: “why me?” But heck, it’ll be fun. I like to wear a lot of hats.

The Passion and the Cross; more Mennonite responses

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 26, 2004
in Aggression and violence, Christianity, Faith and Movies
. 4 Comments

Two more nuanced editorial reviews of the Passion appeared in today’s edition of the Mennonite Weekly Review online.

Paul Schrag writes:

Though extreme violence is the movie’s centerpiece, it is violence invested with meaning and taken seriously, not crassly winked at or offered as shallow entertainment. As a story of Jesus’ life, the film is incomplete. But as an imaginative vision of Jesus’ last hours, it makes an unforgettable and mostly positive impact.

But I really liked what Robert Rhodes had to say:

One of the luxuries of life in North America is that Christianity is not of necessity a suffering faith. Here, because we are free to gather and worship, we can afford to focus on “victory” and “new life” and the many blessings of conversion and redemption.

Perhaps this is why so many seem offended by the extreme degree of violence to be found in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Here, we are not used to focusing on the bloody rigors of the cross, or on the quivering tendons and gushing blood of the man nailed to it. Instead, our faith lexicon, especially among more mainstream Protestants, is filled with images of renewal and grace and, ultimately, of arguably undeserved comfort. Unfortunately, placing so much emphasis on the joys of redemption robs the cross, and our faith, of some of its radical strength.

Such violence is what Christ endured for us all, as Gibson’s movie makes painstakingly clear. It is good that we remember this, too. We also should consider the contribution each of our sins made to that violence, and to the violence that continues all around us even today.

The Anabaptist tradition embraces constructive suffering, and it embraces the cross not merely as Jesus’ unique sacrifice (which in one sense it is) but also as Christian duty. The preeminent modern Mennonite theologian, the wonderful John Howard Yoder, writes:

The innocent, silently uncomplaining suffering of Christ is not only an act of Christ on our behalf from which we benefit; it is also an example of Christ for our instruction, which we are to follow. This portrait of Christ is to be painted again on the ordinary canvas of our lives. Did not Jesus himself say that those who would follow him must deny themselves and take up their cross?

(Bold emphasis is Hugo’s). Where Anabaptists break with other evangelicals and with our Catholic brothers and sisters is over the sense that Jesus’s response to the cross ought to be our own response to the threat of violence. As He went to Calvary, so too should we, rather than take up arms (either as individuals or in armies). Jesus’ action is redemptive but also normative for our lives.

One more line from Yoder:

No one created in God’s image and for whom Christ died can be for me an enemy, whose life I am willing to threaten or to take, unless I am more devoted to something else - to a political theory, to a nation, to the defense of certain privileges, or to my own personal welfare - than I am to God’s cause: his loving invasion of this world in his prophets, his Son, and his church.

When I do go see the Passion, it will be with those thoughts in mind.

Hurrah for Hawaii

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 26, 2004
in People and Politics
. 0 Comments

In all of the excitement about marriage amendments and the Passion, I bet you all missed Dennis Kucinich’s second-place finish in the Hawaii caucuses. Dennis even finished first on the island of Maui, besting Edwards, Kerry, and Sharpton. I really think Kucinich has a shot at 10% in California next Tuesday.

Lenten blogging

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 25, 2004
in Blogging and Christianity
. 0 Comments

Many folks are blogging the start of Lent today; not a big deal in my adopted Mennonite church, but significant indeed to me from my years in Anglican and Catholic community. One thing in particular caught my eye this morning; here’s One House, with a great piece on self-denial and struggling for God, capped off with this quotation from Joan Chittister:

We too often fail to realize, however, that people who say that they want to find God in life have to work everyday, too, to bring that Presence into focus or the Presence will elude them no matter how present it is in theory.

That’s good.

Also, Jen Lemen has a nice “lent for rookies” entry today, replete with lotsa good links.

30-Hour “Famine”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 25, 2004
in Class, Food, Money and Youth ministry
. 2 Comments

This weekend, I will be participating (for the fourth consecutive February) in World Vision’s 30-Hour Famine fundraising program. For those unfamiliar with 30HF, it is an annual event during which church youth groups go without food from 12 noon Friday until 6:00PM Saturday. Saturdays are usually spent doing community service, and participants raise funds from sponsors. A few hundred thousand American youth — and their hardy adult leaders — participate each year, and millions of dollars are raised for relief projects like this one.

I love doing overnight retreats with the teens, but I am especially fond of 30-Hour Famine. There’s nothing like the temporary deprivation of food and sugary drinks to create insta-community! The service project involves a trip to Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, where my mostly privileged teens travel from street to street, tent to tent, meeting with and offering food to the homeless. Most of my kids (for that is what I call them) have never touched a homeless man or woman before; during the service project, they often shake hands and even embrace folks whom they would normally avoid. It is initially a frightening, and even repellant experience for some of the youth — but without exception, they become excited and deeply moved as the day wears on.

I do have some problems with the whole weekend. For one thing, I have always hated the name “30-Hour Famine“. I can’t help but feel (as I have told a couple of people who work for World Vision), that calling a voluntary 30 hour period a famine somehow trivializes the horror of that word. The kids may learn compassion in a new and visceral way, but they are not enduring famine in any way remotely similar to those who are really suffering from malnutrition. I wish we called it “30-Hour Fast”. But that sounds less ringingly dramatic, and I guess it ain’t the biggest issue in the world. Doug Pagitt shares a similar thought today.

I also know full well that sending a group of largely well-off, largely white teenagers into the heart of the poorest neighborhood in L.A. can be read as a token gesture. Most of these teens will not regularly return to feed the homeless and to be involved in the work of charities and shelters who serve the poorest of the poor. (Thankfully, a few teens will get more permanently involved). The food that we will distribute this Saturday will make no long-term difference. In reality, the service project is more designed for the spiritual enlightenment of our kids than it is for the homeless folks whom we meet and feed. I have no doubt as to which group will remember it longer!

But in a very real sense, the work of 30-Hour Famine, despite its unfortunate appellation and patronizing tendencies, is still gospel work. And I do love doing it so! And, as a closing note, I have told the group that if they raise $5000, they get to do whatever they like to my hair — shave it, give me a mohawk, color it, and so forth. I’m a little bit nervous, especially as my gal and I have tickets to the opera on Sunday night!

The Passion — updated

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 24, 2004
in Aggression and violence, Christianity and Movies
. 3 Comments

Before heading off for an early-morning breakfast with my dear friend Steve, I scanned the front-page review of Mel Gibson’s Passion in today’s Los Angeles Times. Entitled A Narrow Vision and Staggering Violence, the Kenny Turan review is sensitive but disturbing. It’s the first major secular review I’ve read, and this section worried me:

The problem with “The Passion’s” violence is not merely how difficult it is to take, it’s that its sadistic intensity obliterates everything else about the film. Worse than that, it fosters a one-dimensional view of Jesus, reducing his entire life and world-transforming teachings to his sufferings, to the notion that he was exclusively someone who was willing to absorb unspeakable punishment for our sins.

Despite brief flashbacks that nod to Jesus’ other words and thoughts, no hypothetical viewer coming to this film absent any knowledge of Christianity would believe that this is the story that gave birth to one of the great transformative religions as well as countless works of timeless beauty.

And without belief, this film does not add up. Without training in or exposure to Christianity, you are likely to feel as flummoxed by what you’re seeing as Western missionaries did when they observed pagan rituals to which they lacked any emotional connection.

Perhaps Turan — whose reviews I have read for years and usually agreed with — is another non-believer hostile to Gibson’s vision. But if what he says is true (and I have not yet seen the film), then the usefulness of the picture as an evangelistic tool to reach out to non-Christians is called into serious question.

On the other hand, here’s a link to a glowing review in the journal First Things. The reviewers anticipate what the response of Christian viewers will be:

We think that it will induce humility rather than triumphalism. The film is so enthralling that perhaps some viewers will have to remind themselves that it is just a movie and not a substitute for the New Testament, much less for sacramental liturgies or the stations of the cross familiar to so many Christians during Lent. If, having seen and endured the film, Christians are able in a fresh way to wonder at the vault of the Sistine Chapel, if they can humbly return to their churches to participate in the spoken and sacramentally enacted Word, then Gibson’s Passion will have proven to be something even better than what it certainly is—the best movie ever made about Jesus Christ.

I’m going with my small group on March 5. I’ll report on the film, and our ensuing discussion, after that date.

UPDATE: Here is the review from Mennonite Weekly Review. It’s a strikingly negative analysis from the flagship newsweekly of North American Anabaptism. Here are a couple of excerpts:

The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson’s hell-fire and brimstone sermon on celluloid, falls far short of making a case for why I want to be a follower of Jesus.

The film is a violent blood-fest extraordinaire… Gibson venerates the broken body of Christ but says little about the point of the brokenness: the resurrection. His theological viewpoint demands that lots of blood flow from Christ’s wounds because there needs to be enough blood to cover all of humanity’s many and grievous sins. Told in this way, the salvation story is incomplete.

What turns me on to Christ is the new life salvation demands. New life is embodied not in Christ’s beaten and broken body but in his triumph over death. Either Gibson doesn’t understand that part of the salvation story, or he forgot to include more than a single nod to it.

Yikes.

“Robbing kids of their crises means robbing them of personal growth.”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 23, 2004
in Sexual ethics and transformation, Sexuality, Youth and Youth ministry
. 0 Comments

I stumbled across this five-year old article from Youth Specialties, entitled “The Sexual Youth Pastor”. It’s a terrific and blessedly candid roundtable discussion among four youth ministry workers, two men and two women. Though I am a volunteer, and not a paid youth pastor, I have been around youth ministry enough to recognize just how complicated it can be to serve as a role model for teenagers who are struggling to find their identities. What I love about this roundtable discussion is how fundamentally flawed all four of the youth pastors are — some are divorced, some admit to bouts of sexual attraction to their teenagers, others admit to being in deeply troubled marriages. And yet all are committed to youth work and to ministering to teenagers safely and lovingly. The really interesting aspect of the debate is summed up in the quotation that captions this entry.

One male youth pastor said:

We conduct discussions about sexuality because we know kids are acting out sexually, but we’ve got to allow for process and failure in them. We’ve got to allow for journey…

They’re going to have sex and they’re going to get pregnant and they’re going to have an abortion and they’re going to experiment and they’re going to get divorced. Now, where do I fit in that whole process? I teach intimacy, reality, humanness, and Christ.

To which one of his female colleagues replied:

That’s bull. The cost is way too high. There are things in my life I would love to erase. Have they made me a more effective youth minister? I’ll never know, because I don’t get to do my life over without those experiences… We should be teaching people that they are worthy of good choices.

Gosh, I see the good sense in both responses. But I do know this: my marriages and divorces and other countless “experiences” have given me, I hope, an extra measure of compassion and wisdom. But were these all experiences the sole source of that compassion and wisdom? I suspect not. (I remember well the logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc .) One of my best male friends — a very wise and gentle man indeed — gave his virginity to his wife of 20 years on his wedding night. He has never betrayed his vows. He also works with youth, and I have seen that for all of his lack of “experience”, he is no less well equipped to love them in all their exasperating and beautiful wildness than I am. In the end, based on both my faith and my experience, I do believe that we have got to “allow for journey”, and love them before, during, and after that journey.

Chairing the hiring committee

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 23, 2004
in Christianity and Feminism
. 5 Comments

Yesterday afternoon, we had the quarterly congregational meeting at church. Because I missed a crucial meeting a couple of months ago, I have been “punished” by being appointed chair of the “associate pastor search committee”. (We have one full-time and one part-time pastor already on staff; we are looking to replace our associate pastor who moved to Cambodia with her family last year to serve with World Vision). Anyhoo, yesterday we presented the job description to the congregation, asking for their approval of the advertisement we intend to place nationally. What followed was a brief but charged debate as to whether we should mention that women and minorities were encouraged to apply.

We are an overwhelmingly white church. Both our head pastor and our associate pastor are white males. It is a well-held assumption that we ought to hire a woman to be our third pastor; indeed, it was made clear to us yesterday that if we did hire another man there would be definite negative repercussions within the community. Disclaimer: For legal reasons, I need to be careful, even in the blogosphere, to make it clear that the official position of our committee is that we are “wide open” and willing to hire the best applicant, regardless of gender or ethnicity. Having said that, I confess that as I look at the needs and desires of the congregation, I have a strong sense that the person we hire ought to be a woman.

Except for my brief college Catholicism, I have always worshipped in churches that ordained women. (After a few years in the RCC, I admit that the first time I saw a woman consecrate the host, I was uncomfortable.) I have learned that men and women, generally speaking, bring different gifts and emphases to both preaching and pastoral care. I like hearing both men and women preach, and I like turning for pastoral care to leaders of both sexes, largely because I know that I experience the gospel far more fully in that way. Though I respect female and male leaders equally, I know that in some strange way, I hear them differently, and need both in order to be more fully discipled. I am also very much aware that when it comes to offering pastoral care, it is vital that members be able to choose between male and female pastors when confiding a deeply personal problem.

So, the bottom line is, I fully expect a woman to be hired to be our next associate pastor. How does that jive with our legal and moral responsibilities? I don’t know. But I am confident that we can, in some mysterious and perhaps (of necessity) unspoken way arrive at a candidate of the needed gender even while keeping the process fair and open. Perhaps it is a quiet form of civil disobedience, or perhaps it is genuinely unethical. I am not sure.

By the way, any lawyers and law students out there want to let me know ASAP if I just made a big mistake by blogging about this? It’s an important issue, but I want to make sure that the church is protected from any liability issues.

Ooops, he’s at it again

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 23, 2004
in People and Politics
. 3 Comments

Despite pleas from virtually every reasonable progressive in this country (including your humble blogger), Ralph Nader is going to make his third run for the presidency this year. Al Sharpton summed up my feelings nicely, which is not something I say very often:

“The only reason he’s running is either he’s an egomaniac or as a Bush contract,” Mr. Sharpton said. “What’s the point? This is not 2000 when progressives were locked out. I’m going on a national crusade to stop Nader. This is only going to help Bush.”

I voted for Ralph twice. (Yup, I was among the relatively few who voted for him in 1996, as I was fuming with Clinton over welfare reform). I voted for him in 2000, in the mistaken belief that the ideological differences between Bush and Gore (whom Nader derisively referred to as Gush and Bore) were minimal. Though Gore still won California, I still consider that vote to be the only vote I have ever cast in error.

I know a dozen other folks (including a few family members) who voted for Nader in 2000; none of us are voting for him this year. Though I voted (via touchscreen) yesterday for Dennis Kucinich, I will happily support any Democrat who receives the nomination. I think Ralph will end up being a non-factor, and I predict that he will receive barely 10% of what he received four years ago.

It’s not enough to mean well

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 21, 2004
in Class, Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Race and Teaching
. 6 Comments

Christy over at Dry Bones Dance has a terrific (albeit lengthy) entry today ; in a wide-ranging meditation she touches on race, privilege, and the gap between intent and perception in our actions. Here’s an excerpt I dug:

We all have a certain amount of power, and love dictates that we use it well. If I am not willing to risk what power I do have, if I am not willing to say hard things to my own people, and if I do not share the access and resources that I have with as many people as possible, then I hope my friends call me out and tell me to walk my talk or shut up and go home. For example, I talk a fair amount about racial justice in the church. If I am not willing to use my access as a white person to advocate for that no matter what my people think of me, then I am a hypocrite and you should call me one.

So, this is for the men (especially the white ones): I do not want your sympathy over coffee if you will not risk your status to support me in front of your boys. I won’t threaten you or think you’re the axis of evil if you won’t recognize your own privilege and use it for the benefit of everyone, but I will take notice of where our friendship stops. So, the next time someone shows you to an open door that leads to the big boy party, buy some extra invitations for those who weren’t on the guest list. If the ones in charge don’t want to let them in – stay home or throw a better party.

One of the things I always emphasize to my students is the tremendous unmerited privilege I — and other heterosexual, middle-class, white Christian males — have. I spent my younger years defiantly telling other people (usually women and non-whites) that I didn’t feel privileged and never consciously tried to use whatever privileges and unearned advantages they thought I had. Fortunately, a combination of a considerable amount of ethnic and gender studies work and an even more considerable degree of prayer and reflection helped change my mind. My feelings have damn all to do with it; my racial and sexual privilege is with me regardless of whether I am aware of it, and I have a choice to continue to take immoral advantage of it, or to act against it.

As a straight white man who teaches women’s studies to classrooms full of largely non-white women (I have one male in my women’s history class this semester), I am aware of just how anti-feminist the power dynamic in the classroom can be, despite my best intentions. To have a relatively affluent white man lecturing to a classroom that is filled with young — and not so young — African-American, Latina, and Asian women is going to be a situation inevitably charged with racial and sexual meaning and history. If I am not careful, and sometimes even when I am, the whole situation can become appallingly patronizing. It can also be transforming. I cannot escape my maleness and my whiteness and my straightness and my Christianness. I don’t want to. Those are parts of me that I embrace and rejoice in.

But I also know that those whose gender and skin tone and heritage and faith and libido match mine have inflicted a wildly disproportionate share of the social, cultural, and sexual damage in our culture, sometimes even with the best of intentions. And so because I know myself to be the beneficiary of unmerited advantage (even when it is hard to recognize), I have an extra responsibility to listen, to reflect, and to act justly. It ain’t easy. God has been good to me, and with others to hold me accountable, I can begin to act in ways that subvert my unearned privileges, and in some small way, tear down a section of the insidious and often invisible wall of race, class, and sex that separates me from those who have not been as historically fortunate as I.

“In the end, God wins.”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 20, 2004
in Christianity
. 2 Comments

My favorite pastor I’ve ever had was the former associate rector at All Saints Pasadena, Scott Richardson. He’s now dean of the Episcopal Cathedral (St. Paul’s) down in San Diego. I still get to read his winsome and moving sermons on-line each week, happily, and I love what he preached last Sunday. Here’s an excerpt:

The Bible is a tome of trust; an endless tale of doubtful anxiety that resolves in deliverance and renewal. Because of that, I don’t care that much about the ins and outs of your faith if, by “faith”, you mean your theological positions. On the other hand, I care a great deal about the quality of your trust. And, I want you to enter into deep trust through your adult awareness, knowing that things can, and sometimes do, go horribly wrong in life. We’re not simpletons, we’re not in denial, nor are we Pollyanna. The first promise of scripture is this: in the end, God wins. Because God wins, we win; and all shall be well. And the other promise is this; God is with us along the way, not preventing hardship but giving us the strength and support to press on and, quite often, prevail. Trusting that presence and that power is essential to being well in Christ; it’s our foundation.

And so is an on-going commitment to personal conversion. We are being formed, by God, in the image and likeness of Christ. This process of spiritual formation may take all eternity. We participate in this divine re-shaping right now as we receive life on life’s terms and, once again, trust that God is working God’s purpose out, even when things don’t seem to be moving in our direction.

A friend of mine once told me about a breakthrough that he experienced in his use of the Lord’s Prayer. “Give us this day our daily bread,” became, for him, “give us everything that we need in order to take the next step in the journey”. Let every part of life be daily bread, even those parts that seem less palatable. Chew your anger and your fear and your sadness and your joy and your peace and your power thoroughly. Don’t spit it out; don’t swallow it whole. Chew it, taste it, and, in time, be nourished and strengthened by it. Give us, Lord, exactly that which we need to grow and we will taste and see that the Lord is good.

Amen. (The bold emphasis is Hugo’s).

Weigel and Williams and a civilized exchange

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 20, 2004
in Christianity and People
. 0 Comments

Despite being as far to the left as an evangelical can get, I do love to read the wonderful conservative Catholic monthly, First Things. This month’s edition has an erudite, civil (thank heavens) and thoughtful debate between the Archbishop of Canterbury, the splendid Rowan Williams, and the renowned Catholic traditionalist and biographer of John Paul II, George Weigel. They debate “Just War and Statecraft”, with a particular focus on the question of whether the just war theory has an inherent bias against the use of violence. Happily, as pacifists we Mennonites reject the Just War tradition entirely –but we can still appreciate a good argument between a Catholic and an Anglican as to the tradition’s precise application in 21st century geo-politics.