The Wisdom of Stability E-Book

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

• Herausgeber: Paraclete Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 192

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Discussion around the bestseller The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher has led many people to want to know more about Benedictine principles. In an age where we might email a friend in Africa, Skype a co-worker in Brazil, and teleconference with people in different time zones–all in one day–the sheer speed of life can be dizzying. Like children stumbling off a merry-go-round, says Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, we are grasping for something to anchor our lives in a sea of constant change. In The Wisdom of Stability, Wilson-Hartgrove illuminates the biblical and monastic understanding of why staying in one place is both a virtue and good for you. "For the Christian tradition," he writes, "the heart's true home is a life rooted in the love of God." When we cultivate an inner stability of heart – by rooting ourselves in the places where we live, engaging the people we are with, and by the simple rhythms of tending to body and soul – true growth can happen. The Wisdom of Stability is a must-read for pastors, leaders, and anyone seeking an authentic path of Christian transformation. ​​"In whatever place you live, do not easily leave it." –Abba Anthony

Leseprobe

The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture

2010 First Printing

Copyright © 2010 by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

ISBN: 978-1-55725-623-2

Unless otherwise noted, scriptural references are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scriptural references marked kjv are taken from the Authorized King James Version of the Bible.

   Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wilson-Hartgrove, Jonathan, 1980-

The wisdom of stability : rooting faith in a mobile culture/by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove ; Foreword by Kathleen Norris.

      p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p.).

 ISBN 978-1-55725-623-2

1. Home—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Christian life—Baptist authors. 3. Vow of stability. I. Title. BR115.H56W55 2010

 248—dc22                                                2010000111

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete PressBrewster, Massachusettswww.paracletepress.comPrinted in the United States of America

For Dad,who established roots of love in Stokes County’s soiland keeps bearing fruit.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD by Kathleen Norris

INTRODUCTION

1. FOUNDATION WORK

The House of God

A Way of Life with God

Stability in Community

FRONT PORCHBird Watching

2. A PLACE TO BEGIN

Interrupted by Jesus

The Ladder We Climb

A Spirituality for Staying Put

FRONT PORCHBare Feet

3. STABILITY AS A CRAFT

A School for Prayer

Finding Our Rhythm

FRONT PORCHVisiting

4. ROOTS OF LOVE

The Drip Line

Tapping into a Support System

Learning to Bend

FRONT PORCH

5. MIDDAY DEMONS

Ambition’s Whisper

Boredom’s Rut

Vainglory’s Delusion

FRONT PORCHSitting and Rising Again

6. BLOOMING IN THE DESERT

To Become a Blessing

Radical Self-Honesty

COLLECTED WISDOM ON STABILITY

NOTES

FOREWORD

It is brave of Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove to tackle the subject of stability, when in American culture we learn early on to keep our options open, always ready for the new, improved model, the latest “best thing.” We consider stability tedious at best. At its worst it is seen to restrict our freedom and limit our potential. For many of us, stability is an uneasy concept; we don’t think about it much except to worry that if we remain in one place while the world changes around us we risk stagnating and becoming irrelevant. In a postmodern era of exponential change, how can we take stability seriously, let alone consider it a virtue?

In often surprising ways, this author forces stability from its cocoon of abstraction and dislodges our comfortable assumptions about it. He asks us to consider, among other things, the political and social implications of stability. Writing of the troubled neighborhood where he and his family have chosen to put down roots, Wilson-Hartgrove notes that its “problems … are directly connected to a culture where success means moving up and out… . The homelessness of guys who are hooked on crack … is but the flipside of the placelessness that drives ambitious young students to see this university town as a stop on their way to somewhere else.” In a culture devoted to the pursuit of success and fame, what makes stability so unappealing may be that it acts as “the great leveler in a society of widening gaps, calling each of us, whatever our social status, to acknowledge the extent to which we’re equally bound by powers beyond our control.” What we most need, the author insists, is something that only stability can provide, “a way of life founded on solid ground, freeing us from the illusion that we can live without limits.”

Stability might have remained an abstract concept for me had I not, much to my surprise and often against my better instincts, found myself in a marriage that lasted for nearly thirty years until my husband died. The wonderful insight of Wilson-Hartgrove’s, that stability is not something we accomplish but is always a gift, resonates with my own experience. “The heart’s true home,” he writes, “is a life rooted in the love of God, but the Christian tradition insists that this love is always God’s mercy directed at us before it is our response of trusting love. God offers us stability in the only thing that cannot fail—God’s faithfulness itself” (emphasis mine). Sometimes the conviction that it is God who has brought two people—or a community—together is all we need to keep us in the struggle to nurture and maintain relationships of trust, respect, and love. Committing to such stability is never easy, but it is always worth a try.

Drawing on the 1700-year-old Christian tradition of monastic wisdom, the author reminds us that when we opt for stability we face a cosmic struggle. There are internal battles, of course, mostly with the demons of anger, pride, and boredom. But to commit to stability also means accepting other people as they are. How dreary to consider that God has given us this family, this spouse, these colleagues on the job, this church congregation. Surely we are meant for more important things, and our talents will be better appreciated by a more sophisticated crowd. Hitting on what he terms a “bedrock reality,” Wilson-Hartgrove reminds us of the main reason Christianity will always remain unpalatable to those who are seeking an easy, ethereal spirituality. “Life with the God we know in Jesus Christ,” he writes, “is lived in community with other people.” Of course conflicts will come. Our job is to face them openly and honestly, and above all, to seek reconciliation. Stability is an essential in this process.

Seek is perhaps a dangerous word to use when discussing stability, because in some ways stability is the antithesis of the relentless seeking that is so prominent a part of American religious life. One of the more radical premises of this book is that there comes a time to set seeking aside. But as the romance of our initial religious experience fades, and the reality of life with other human beings in a church congregation seems too much to bear, we are tempted to move on. Wilson-Hartgrove asks us to stop a moment and ask if we might abandon our seeking, settle down, and allow God to find us where we are.

With its appealing mixture of personal experience and reflection along with lively biblical interpretation, this is a book in the tradition of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, demonstrating the wealth of wisdom that can come when we commit ourselves, as Wilson-Hartgrove writes, “to a place and … watch it change before our eyes.” Stability helps us to do the necessary foundation work so that we can pay close attention to what is going on around us, and adapt to changing conditions without losing our sense of place. Only stability can give us a way to accept the vicissitudes of life with a sense of peace, and even joy. It does not limit us but encloses us within God’s love, so that with the psalmist we can say:

“The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

I have a goodly heritage.” (Psalm 16:6)

—KATHLEEN NORRIS

    Honolulu, Hawaii

INTRODUCTION

This is a book about staying put and paying attention. In a culture that is characterized by unprecedented mobility and speed, I am convinced that the most important thing most of us can do to grow spiritually is to stay in the place where we are. I am not advocating a stubborn provincialism or harking back to a time before the Internet and the automobile when “things were simpler” and “life was easier.” Nor am I denying that God called Abraham, saying, “Go … ” or that Jesus left his disciples with roughly the same marching orders. But I am convinced that both our use of new technologies and our faithful response to God’s call depend on something more fundamental—a rootedness that most of us sense we are missing in our hurry to keep up amid constant change. I believe we need to recover the wisdom of stability.

Maybe this book is little more than a confession of my own need. I was raised in Christian churches by people who loved me well, charged to go out there and make a difference in the world, and given some of the best resources and training available for the task. I showed the Jesus film in the African bush, helped build schools for AIDS orphans, dug latrines in the Dominican Republic, played with kids from the barrios of Venezuela, built houses in Honduras, and tutored kids in Philadelphia’s inner city. A citizen of God’s kingdom, I tried to put my American passport to work for good in the world. But racking up all those frequent flyer miles for Jesus, I felt lonely. I wanted to share God’s love with others, but wasn’t sure where to experience it myself.

Hung over from all that travel, I stumbled into a little intentional community of Christians who were trying to love one another and their neighbors. It wasn’t easy … and it showed. But I saw something compelling in that little group’s experiment with faith: they had given themselves to God and one another in a particular place. They saw one another’s junk, and they could talk about it. In all the ordinariness of everyday life, they knew what it meant to need forgiveness and to receive it. In short, they were learning to love one another. God’s love became real for me in that place. I caught a glimpse of what I had been looking for.

Like the blind man who received his sight in the Gospels, I looked around to see my world again as if for the first time. I reread the Bible and saw in it God’s plan to redeem the world through a gathered people. Paul’s letters came alive to me as I imagined him leading a network of community organizers, convinced that they were part of the most important movement the world had ever known. When I turned to church history, I felt that same energy in monastic writings. Christians had a pretty mixed record when it came to living out the kingdom Jesus proclaimed, but the monastic movements seemed to have kept the dream alive. I fell in love with the desert mothers and fathers, with Benedict and Francis and Lady Julian and Teresa of Avila. Here was a movement of which I wanted to be a part.

And I was not alone. This God movement was a living tradition, and the gift I had glimpsed in one little community was alive and well in other places, albeit under the radar of mainstream Christianity. My wife, Leah, introduced me to that first community, beginning a journey that we’ve shared ever since. We traveled to Iraq together at the beginning of the second Gulf War, taking our cue from the example of Francis, who crossed the lines and sat with the Muslims during the fifth Crusade. In Iraq we met others on similar paths, representing a host of communities we had not known before. Inspired by the hospitality of Iraqis at a place called Rutba, we returned home to found a community called Rutba House in the Walltown neighborhood of Durham, North Carolina. We did not know at the time that rutba means “order” in Arabic. But we did sense already that we were caught up in a “new monasticism,” guided by the same power that stirred the early church and all those witnesses through the centuries.

We did not know what we were doing when we started Rutba House. We only knew that we had seen a glimpse of what God’s love looks like and that we had to respond. I do not write in praise of ignorance; I know too well the pain of our mistakes. But I also know that awareness of our ignorance sent us searching for fellow travelers and listening to ancient voices. Stumbling to find our way as a community, we happened upon the wisdom of stability.

In short, stability’s wisdom insists that spiritual growth depends on human beings rooting ourselves in a place on earth with other creatures. Most modern (or postmodern) people get uncomfortable when talking about commitment and stability. We worry that vows like stability can be dangerous. I was relieved to learn from the monastic tradition that people who have promised stability also worry about its dangers. (If you’re especially worried about the potential pitfalls of stability, you might want to read chapter 5 first.) Still, teachers ancient and contemporary challenged us to stay put. We have tried to listen to them. This book is an attempt to say what we have learned.

Staying, we all know, is not the norm in our mobile culture. A great deal of money is spent each day to create desires in each of us that can never be fulfilled. I suspect that much of our restlessness is a return on this investment. Mobility has a large marketing budget. While I don’t imagine that I can outdo Madison Avenue, I do believe stability has a power to sell itself. If you bought this book, I hope you’ll consider it a down payment on the fulfillment of your truest desire for wholeness. If you received it as a gift or borrowed it from a friend, all the better. The wisdom in these pages was all passed on to me free of charge. My work (which I’ve done the best I know how) was arranging the words.

Books like this one are written to persuade, and I’m of the conviction that an author ought to be frank about what he or she wants from a reader. So I’ll say this from the start: I hope to reprogram your default setting. As participants in a mobile culture, our default is to move. God embraces our broken world, and I have no doubt that God can use our movement for good. But I am convinced that we lose something essential to our existence as creatures if we do not recognize our fundamental need for stability. Trees can be transplanted, often with magnificent results. But their default is to stay.

Should you ever leave the place where you are? I don’t know. But I trust we are able to best discern the call of God in the company of friends when we are rooted in the life-giving wisdom of stability.

1FOUNDATION WORK

The house I live in was built in 1910, when Walltown was just becoming a neighborhood. It must have been a fine place then. Perched on a hill opposite the neighborhood church, its ten-foot ceilings with a second floor above would have exhibited spaciousness in stark contrast to the shotgun houses that lined most of these streets. In a place where black folks still accuse “uppity” neighbors of pretension by calling them “two-story Negroes,” a house like this one sticks out. Someone decided to shoot the moon when they built this place.

But the house is old now, and it shows. We moved in just after a large extended family had finished using the place as a staging ground for their drug business. Such activity (and the lack of care that generally accompanies it) takes a toll on a place and its people. Most of the house’s previous residents are gone now—buried, locked away in prison, or moved without a forwarding address. The house slouches like an old couch you might find at a yard sale—not finished, exactly, but irreparably marked by a history. The cracks in the plaster, mostly covered by caulking and paint now, suggest that the foundation is not precisely where it used to be. Over the years, things have shifted.

The instability I see in the walls of the structure I call home is troubling. They point me to foundation issues that need attention. But the cracked walls and crooked doorjambs also serve as a sign of the times, reminding me of the stability that all creation longs for in a culture of constant change. As long as the ground beneath us doesn’t move, we humans tend to overlook the support structures that make life itself possible. But when we see a crack or, worse, feel a tremor, we’re often dumbfounded. “When the foundations are being destroyed,” the psalmist asks in a moment of desperation, “what can the righteous do?”

If these walls could talk, I can imagine them joining their voices with the psalmist. Together they might say to us, “Listen, we have some foundation issues that need attention.”

By all accounts, we are living at the beginning of the twenty-first century in a time of unprecedented change. To get my head around just how much has changed in the past century, I sometimes think about my great-granny’s life. Raised on a farm in southwest Virginia in the early 1900s, she refused to ever fly in an airplane, insisting that the only way one of those things was going to kill her was if it fell out of the sky and hit her on the head. In the relatively short span of the nine decades she lived through during the twentieth century, Granny saw the world transformed from a place where her mother sent her on a day’s walk to carry chickens to market, to a world in which she watched her grandchildren go around the globe and back, sometimes within a week. Small wonder that she couldn’t take it all in.

I think, too, about the change I have seen since Granny died. One summer in the late nineties, I spent a couple of months living with missionaries in rural Zimbabwe. While there, I wrote a letter to Granny and put it in the mail. My family joked that I almost beat the letter home.

Hardly more than a decade later, a normal day for me includes e-mailing a friend in Iraq, speaking with a coworker in Brazil via the Internet, and teleconferencing with people in six different time zones. Not only have we now collapsed the travel time between almost any two places in the world to less than a day, but also we have made it possible for anyone to be virtually anywhere almost any time. The speed at which all of this has happened is dizzying.

Most of the time we celebrate these advances, rightly noting the many ways they stimulate creativity and invigorate culture. To stop changing is to die, we note. We challenge ourselves to keep up with the latest in technology and push the limits of human potential. But constant shifting also takes its toll, as I’m reminded when I contemplate the cracks in the plaster of our old home. Foundations matter, these walls seem to say. Experts in their various fields are beginning to agree.

Take the ecologists, for example. They worry that the historically unprecedented change of the past hundred years has shaken the foundations of the environment that sustains human life. At the same time, many psychologists suggest that the multitasking of our information age is leading to a dangerous form of distraction, dulling the analytical functions of our brains that allow us to make good decisions. As I write in the midst of the global financial crisis that first hit headlines in 2008, the airwaves are filled with nearly constant commentary about fundamental economic uncertainty. Their fingers always on the pulse of our collective fears, marketing firms know we are desperate for something solid to hold on to. “What does over 100 years of stability bring to a relationship?” asks a quarter-page ad in the New York Times. “In today’s ever-changing economy,” it advises, “you need a bank you can trust.”

Like children stumbling off a merry-go-round, Americans are grasping for something to anchor our lives in a sea of constant change. According to an Associated Press report from April 24, 2009, the number of Americans on the move has declined sharply in recent years, reaching the lowest percentage since the government began tracking mobility patterns just after the Second World War. Both recreational and business travel are down as families and businesses cut back to weather tough economic times.

Add to these trends the social movements—both conservative and progressive—that have emerged in response to a fundamental sense of uncertainty in our culture. From homeschool parents who want to keep their kids closer to their moral center, to the Slow Food movement that wants to shorten the distance between where food is grown and where it is eaten, people are beginning to stand their ground against the tides of mobility. “Staying is the new going,” a friend quips. In the midst of the storm that rages about us, there is a movement toward stability.

But if there are trends leading us to question and even resist the more disastrous side effects of our hypermobile culture, they may only serve to confirm the degree to which we are desperately habituated in an unstable way of life. Even our movements to address the evident crisis, notes poet and agrarian Wendell Berry, almost always fail to be radical enough. “They deal with single issues or single solutions, as if to assure themselves that they will not be radical enough.”

Though reactionary movements may be right in their analysis that something is broken and needs our attention, they fall short because they so often fail to address the root problem. They never get to the foundational issues, we might say. “The outward harmony that we desire between our economy and the world,” writes Berry, “depends finally upon an inward harmony between our own hearts and the originating spirit that is the life of all creatures… . We can grow good wheat and make good bread only if we understand that we do not live by bread alone.”

When I follow the cracks in my plaster to their source, I find a foundation beneath our house in need of repair. In a similar way, if we follow our longings for harmony and community to their root, we uncover a fundamental human need. Our desire for some place on earth to plant our feet in troubled times points us to the deeper yearnings of the human heart—to a spiritual need for stability that may well be built into us.

Whether you attribute this longing for stability to nature or nurture, it’s hard to ignore its power, especially during those times in our personal and communal lives when we feel like we need something solid to hold on to. I know getting married triggered a nesting instinct in me, tempering my desire to travel the world and spurring me on toward some semblance of a real job. Ask any pastor in the United States when their church has been the most crowded since the turn of the millennium, and barring a tragedy that touched their specific community, the most likely answer is, “The Sunday after September 11, 2001.” Whether we’re facing a significant life change or a sudden tragedy, our instinct in times of change is to reach for something stable.