This is a personal reflection on the first hundred pages of the book
In the Midst of Much-Doing: Cultivating a Missional Spirituality, by Charles Ringma (Langham, 2023)
I have some reservations about "Christian Spirituality" that are slowly being eroded. One reservation is the fear of subjectivism that neglects objective and universal truths stated concretely (albeit imperfectly) by Orthodox creeds and doctrine, based on Biblical revelation. A second reservation is the fear of spirituality and meditation leading to self-absorption, introspection, individualism, and a self-legitimation of consumerist desires and aspirations. Finally, I have a prejudice to choose activism over contemplation. This book does much to address my concerns and invites me to a balanced Christian spirituality. The following statement in the Preface resonates with me.
the genesis for this book was formed in the midst of my own unsustainable evangelical activism, which was further complicated by my somewhat compulsive personality. My search for a more sustainable spirituality was also influenced by some unhealthy theological concepts that I inherited from my Reformed tradition—particularly its election anxiety and paramount focus on personal piety, with little attention to nurturing liturgical and communal spiritual practices.
My focus on personal activism was also unwittingly reinforced by naïve Western notions about our capacity to change the world because we presume that God is “on our side.” When we take on a calling that is well beyond our capabilities and resources, we may boldly set out to try to make things better in our society while treating God as an onlooker, a boss we are seeking to please, or someone who is there simply to cheer us on. (page xxv)
If “Reformed tradition” is replaced with some of the churches and organisations I have been involved with over the past four decades this reflects my own experience. I have had three major burnouts, each accompanied by mental illness. In all cases, they were precipitated by unsustainable activism, driven by wrong thinking and distorted theology.
Only over the past few years have I come to appreciate, and even celebrate(!), my uniqueness as an introvert, a scientist, and a Christian intellectual. I am easily drained by social interactions, uncertainty, noise, crowds, rush, .. but am energised by time alone, reflection, reading, planning, rest, Sabbath…
Central to the book is the “trialectic paradigm of the head (theological formation), heart (spiritual formation), and hand (missional formation).” These cannot be separated, isolated, or given relative priority. We need to engage all of them and integrate them into our lives.
“the fundamental theme that runs through this book, … is that mission is not just a task but a way of life… our missional calling is: to join and cooperate with God’s redemptive, healing, and transformative activity in bringing all things into the new creation.” (page 21)
What is Christian spirituality? It is a relief to learn that it is quite different to forms that I encounter and resist. In particular, it is Trinitarian. The Spirit is not some vague source of mysticism that will affirm our own fantasies and desires but rather the presence of the Father and the Son, bringing to mind the teaching of the Son.
Christian spirituality is motivated and shaped by a life devoted to following Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. (page 25)
key definition…: a missional Christian spirituality is a way of life in Christ through the Spirit that animates our love and service to others. (page 26)
Ringma identifies seven marks of Christian spirituality: a way of life, cruciform, sustained by the Spirit, communal, spiritual disciplines (Sabbath and self-care), for the life of the world, and being sent.
Evelyn Underhill said that Christian spirituality has “everything to do with the political” (page 33). I found this surprising as I tended to think of her as a mystic who was disengaged from the “real” world.
Underhill also strikes a helpful note of realism, reminding us that in the grand purposes of God—the restoration of all things in the new creation already begun in Christ—we are “to take our small place in the vast operations of His Spirit.” In this, she highlights the importance of knowing our particular calling and giftedness so that we can function out of who we are and what we have already received. Thus, our missional spirituality does not depend on us alone, but has everything to do with the ways in which we have been gifted and called. This implies that we will need to embrace both our calling and our limitations. As a consequence, ministry is not a “grinding” activity, but rather joyful and purposeful service—which is also costly. (page 35)
This is amazing for me to read. It is liberating. I wish I had internalised this forty years ago. Being a low-energy academic introvert is not a flaw, curse, disability, distraction, or self-indulgence. It is part of my calling and giftedness. This includes my privileged family and academic background, education, and professional experience. This includes my love for learning, science, and nature. As well as my passion for justice and concern for the marginalised.
As a Christian intellectual, I enjoy reflecting on the world (politics, economics, science, technology, culture, and education) and trying to understand it through multiple lenses including theology. I enjoy sharing those reflections through writing, teaching, blogging, and my work with the Logos and Cosmos Initiative, within the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. I receive positive feedback and affirmation from others for these activities. Thus, I find the passage below helpful and encouraging to put my efforts in the broader context of missional spirituality.
In contemplating the face of God through prayer, solitude, reading, and reflecting on
Scripture and our world, we cultivate friendship with God and we seek God’s will for our time. This will involve a hermeneutics of both text and context. Understanding our world will also involve the work of exegesis, theology, and the historical and social sciences. In our contemplation of the world through the cycle of action and reflection, we seek to understand both the goodness of God in our social fabric and institutions as well as the idolatries of our society and culture. Amidst this interplay, we seek to discern how God is inviting us to participate in God’s passion for the healing and reconciling of all things through Christ. (page 83)
Henri Nouwen notes how time with God is not inward looking and selfish, but rather gives us fresh eyes to wonder at those we love and care for.
Following the desert father, Evagrius Ponticus, Nouwen says that contemplation is about seeing “things for what they really are” and moving from “opaqueness to transparency.” Thus, the “contemplative life is a life of vision.” This new way of seeing involves seeing all things bathed in “the Creator’s love” and in the light of “the hand of God with us” in all that we are and do. However, this way of seeing life and the world is not based on a few extraordinary moments, but a whole way of life that is possible when the “God within us recognizes God in the world.” Nouwen observes that when we see “ordinary life with its daily routines and responsibilities with a ‘deeper vision of life,’” it has consequences for how we see others. He writes, “our time of being with God gives us new eyes to see the beauty and gifts in those for whom we care.”
Contemplation is not escapism from our struggles or from the suffering in the world, but actually the path to a deeper engagement with the world.
A key summary of Nouwen’s understanding of contemplation is that “the movement from loneliness to solitude is not a movement of growing withdrawal, but instead a movement toward a deeper engagement in the burning issues of our time.” (page 104)
Thomas Merton has a similar perspective. Contemplative prayer enables us to see the world as it is, in all its created beauty and the ugliness of human sin and idolatry.
Merton makes it very clear that contemplative prayer is not simply for monks, and he further emphasizes that it is not a way of escaping from life’s realities. In fact, the contemplative is always “searching . . . his [her] own heart” while at the same time plunging “deep into the heart of the world.” This form of prayer and reflection “does not blind us to the world, but . . transforms our vision of the world,” so that we can see the love of God upholding our world and gain insight into the “falsity and illusion” of much of life, along with “exposure to what the world ignores about itself—both good and evil.” (page 106)
I had the completely wrong idea about Teresa of Avila. My views were coloured by the discussion about her “ecstatic” experiences. However, she was actually a very practical person, being influential in "the Catholic reform movement, with Teresa of Avila’s emphasis on the “journey to spiritual marriage” and its outworking in “growth in love of neighbor,” " (page 115)
Ringma’s summary puts things in perspective.
While it is possible for the Christian mystic to get marooned in the eddies of one’s own spiritual experiences, this is not the hallmark of the Christian mystical tradition. Rather, its orientation is rooted in the inextricable connection between the love of God and the love of neighbour. As such, there is a direct link between mysticism and ministry, (page 116)
Mysticism (contemplative prayer) focuses on internalising God’s love for us. But a genuine experience of that love through the Spirit cannot but overflow into a love of others, particularly those whose God’s heart breaks for, the lost and the marginalised.
Finally, I love the following quote:
The Jesuit philosopher and spiritual director, Father Thomas Green, while emphasizing the transcendence and otherness of God, notes that “God is really the most sensible person that I know” (Prayer and Common Sense, 9). What he means by this is not a denial of the mystery of God in the life of faith, but that living the Christian life is also about responding to and living normal life realities. He notes that “this world—and our human experience—is not a dream, to be rejected as illusory or unreal. Rather, we are called to see it from a new vantage point, in a new light”
This book has already had a profound impact on me. I commend it to you.
Note: I received a complimentary copy of the book from the author, who is a fellow "holy" scribbler.
