Reading and Thinking

Reading and Thinking this week

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            I am officially on my two week vacation. It could hardly be more needed. I had planned to attend the Image Journal sponsored Glen Workshops in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There were some things going on in life closer to me that seem to need special attention at this time, and I have some things to do at the house, and some need for simple rest – so it is a staycation. I did notice Wendell Berry’s book Imagination in Place resting in a place with some other unread books. Since I bought my copy of that last year at the Glen – I thought this would be a good time to start reading it. If any Glen people happen to see my blog – fat chance (it is the one time when people aren’t checking their browsers for something to read), I will definitely be thinking of you. The Glen is a wonderful place to meet talented writers, artists, and creative people. It is humbling because you might live in a place where you don’t meet many and you begin to think you are pretty good and then you meet people that are really good and you aware of mediocrity in your writing, and thus become slow to say things like “I blog.” You also happily discover that creative people tend to love encouraging people who are simply trying to be creative.

 

            In addition to just starting Berry’s book I have been plodding so very slowly through Living Justice by Thomas Massaro SJ. Massaro’s book is a textbook on Catholic social justice teaching. Although I am a Protestant, I find myself increasingly respectful of the insights of the Catholic Social Justice tradition. One advantage Catholics have on speaking to these issues is that Catholicism represents people from industrialized and developing nations; with constituencies that fill the scope from deeply conservative to progressive, and fill the spectrum of human existence among people of many languages, cultures, and national settings. Much of Catholic social teaching is the result of perspectives percolating to the top from the localized levels of church life until they are finally represented by Bishops, councils, and Popes. Being a Protestant I do not have to take everything as authoritative, but for the most part I find everything discussed as something useful to be appropriated into life at some level. Since Massaro’s book is a textbook I find myself reading it like I did an important textbook in college. I found when I read a book for the first time I simply saw what interested me. It took me a second reading to see what really interested the author so that I began to get an idea of what his message was and not just as a vehicle to appreciate what I appreciate. I won’t say much about Living Justice in this blog, but hopefully in future blogs as I read the book a second time I will feel more confident of my understanding the author’s concerns and not just mine.

 

            Both of these books are books which seem to fit into the sort of works that address aspects of a general theme I am seeking to better understand. Years ago I passed through a sort of crisis in my Christian life. Since becoming a Christian, I have never had any trouble seeing that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity was taught in the Holy Scriptures. I did go through a period when I began seeing that we Christians seemed to say the Trinity was an essential doctrine according to the faith, but in every day Christian life we seemed not to present it as a very useful teaching with useful applications to life. Eventually I discovered that this was not so for the ancient church fathers, and one could include the ancient church mother Saint Macrina who helped her brothers Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa towards their Trinitarian doctrinal understandings. For the church fathers, the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of Christ’s incarnation stood in the center of what they called the Christian Gospel.

            For me one of the eventual practical ramifications for me in understanding the Trinity was in understanding the nature of our humanity, as created in the image of God. We understand in the Trinity that God is one in three and three in one. He exists as God in union; one God. He exists as God revealed in three persons; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons but one God. This is holy mystery but God is seen as distinct existing persons and one God in unity. I will never try to explain God, for to do so I am convinced will only lead to confusion. But looked the other way what I understand only vaguely in mystery helps inform me as to our human complexity. We exist individually and communally. We cannot truly separate the individual and communal existence. Why do I believe and behave as I do? How much is because of my unique individuality, and how much is due to my unique setting in place, in culture, in family, in tribe, tongue, nation, and varied experiences? How much of me is me because of choices I made consciously and how much is me because of environment that shaped me unconsciously?

            These two books help point me to aspects of this mystery of the human experience that exists in part because of genetics, in part by cultural shaping from varied aspects of culture including family, community, education systems, church influences, and national issues. Berry’s emphasis in writing has as one of his most important themes how to maintain an emphasis on local community when we are being shaped by a nearly omnipresent pressure to be people who are global, online, taking their place in the big issues, while hard pressed to know an actual neighbor. He yearns to maintain a localized community where issues instead of floating from the top to the bottom of the layers of life percolate from the experiences of the local. That seems to me a worthy venture.

            Massaro’s textbook would not argue against the importance of the local, but would seek to bring together collected wisdom to encourage people to responsibly seek out ways of dealing with various social and cultural issues of our day. I have happily found Massaro to be more interested as a text book author to present general perspectives on cultural issues than trying to express his agenda. He gives us information about the formation of the social justice issues as presented in Catholic teaching but reminds us that while there are general teachings, there are still varied ways those who take the teachings seriously would seek to apply the lessons of Catholic teaching in a large world, with varied cultures and ways of living.

            I suppose because I believe in the Holy Trinity and man created in the image of God, these sorts of books that help give me additional perspectives into the connected life of humanity in collective and humanity in individuality will interest me for the foreseeable future.