Spiritus-A Journal of Christian Spirituality最新文献

{"title":"\"What Deepens the Deep for Us\": Poetry, Contemplation, and the Art of Reading","authors":"Mark S. Burrows","doi":"10.1353/scs.2023.a909107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/scs.2023.a909107","url":null,"abstract":"\"What Deepens the Deep for Us\":Poetry, Contemplation, and the Art of Reading Mark S. Burrows (bio) The sole archives of the divine are poems, and an address to the god, more than any other kind, requires a conversion in language or an entirely different attitude within it. —Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe This essay undertakes the task of unfolding Lacoue-Labarthe's bold claim,1 exploring poetry as a literary genre and examining how it relates to \"an address to the god,\" here understood as contemplative practice.2 As Lacoue-Labarthe suggests, such an approach identifies poetry with prayer since each depends upon nothing less than \"a conversion in language\" and nothing other than \"an entirely different attitude within it.\" It is important to say that both have more to do with practice than theory, steering us toward the question of reading as contemplative engagement and inviting us to consider contemplation as a poetics of experience. What unites the two is that each gestures toward, and indeed depends upon, such a conversion—in terms of language, first of all, but just as importantly a broader view of life itself. At the outset, it must be said that the matter of what constitutes contemplation—and poetry itself—is not uncomplicated, particularly in a culture shaped by pressures that ignore the call to \"address the god\" and dismiss the poetic as an irrelevant luxury in \"a world come of age.\"3 Nietzsche anticipated the challenge when he conceded that Down below—everything speaks, everything is missed. One might ring out one's wisdom with bells, but the merchants in the marketplace will out-ring it with pennies. Everything down there speaks, but no one knows how to understand. Everything falls into the water, but nothing falls into the deep wells. Everything down there speaks, but nothing comes to completion. Everything cackles, but who knows to sit quietly on a nest and hatch eggs?4 This essay explores how poetry might be engaged as a means of orienting ourselves to a contemplative practice of reading, examining the ways that such a practice expands our capacity to listen for the voice of the \"other,\" so that our words—and we with them—might fall into \"deep wells.\" [End Page 269] \"A RAID ON THE INARTICULATE\" In a short prose-poem entitled \"Lecture on Mystery,\" the Polish poet Adam Zagajewski approached the challenge of speaking about poetry with a wryness characteristic of his thought: We do not know what poetry is. We do not know what suffering is. We do not know what death is. We do know what mystery is.5 Or do we? Zagajewski avoids going further in attempting to define \"mystery\"—for good reason, one might add, leaving us wondering how, if at all, we might \"know\" what mystery is, to say nothing of daring to speak or write about it. The point he is making is not that of explaining this but rather of pointing to mystery as an essential dimension not only of suffering and death but of poetry as well. One might even go so far as to say that a poetic gestur","PeriodicalId":42348,"journal":{"name":"Spiritus-A Journal of Christian Spirituality","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135688599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land by Norman Wirzba (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/scs.2023.a909116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/scs.2023.a909116","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land by Norman Wirzba Matt Boswell (bio) Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land. By Norman Wirzba. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2022. 264 pp. $29.00. I am a resident of Camas, Washington, deliberately. I live near the Quaker meeting I pastor—a four-minute drive or fifteen-minute walk—but also a two-hour drive (or less) to Wy'east, Loowit, Klickitat, and Seekseekqua (or, by their settler names, Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Jefferson, respectively). I am also two hours from several Pacific coast trails and only minutes from the Columbia River Gorge. I live in a hiker's paradise and do not take that reality for granted. As often as I can, I am on the trail: exploring new trails and expanding my sense of community, each trail's ecosystem feeling like a new friend; and returning to trails that have left an impression on me, each visit like a reunion with old friends. I have come to recognize that I do not just \"love\" hiking or \"love\" these places, either in the sense of intense enjoyment or responsive care, even if these trails do give me pleasure or motivate me to consider my responsibility to protect and nurture these spaces. It feels more fitting to say that I have fallen in love with these places. I want to be with them. I want them to flourish. I recount hiking stories and share pictures on my social media accounts, inviting others into my joy and hoping they'll want to \"come and see\" for themselves, if possible. Given how revitalizing and clarifying these hikes are, I have come to need them. And, with more time, I have come to understand the patterns and particularities of these trails' ecosystems. How do I know I am smitten? One of my favorite wildflowers is the Columbia (tiger) lily, an orange, brown-spotted, downward-facing wildflower that thrives in subalpine meadows and forests. Their presence is delightfully unpredictable; I can hike a seven-mile trail and encounter only a single trailside Columbia lily, then drive past hundreds of them thriving in a roadside thicket. In June 2022, I discovered a single Columbia lily in Lacamas Park, a roughly 300-acre, trail-laden forest park of creeks, waterfalls, and wildflowers within Camas city limits. This park is known for its annual May bloom of purple Camas lilies, but this was the first Columbia lily I had seen in my seven years of living in Camas. A year later, in June 2023, I navigated the forest trails to this same spot, hoping to find that lily again. It took some searching, but when I found it, I broke the calm silence of the forest with a guttural and visceral \"YES!!!\" My shout reflected an interconnected set of feelings and impulses. Ecstasy. Relief. Protective concern. Attention. Reverence. Eagerness to share the good news with others. Innocent disregard for the spectacle, my exuberance may have seemed to the pair of hikers resting on a nearby rock. Many Quakers like","PeriodicalId":42348,"journal":{"name":"Spiritus-A Journal of Christian Spirituality","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135688577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Let Him Remember","authors":"Sydney Lea","doi":"10.1353/scs.2023.a909112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/scs.2023.a909112","url":null,"abstract":"Let Him Remember Sydney Lea (bio) But if a man live many years and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. Ecclesiastes 11:8 (KJV) Out alone in a quarrelsome wind,he watches two clouds that accept it,two noisy ravens that struggle against it,gathering five feet, losing three.All could blow away in an eyeblink. The ravens are trading one callfrom among their many: gawp, gawp.To his left, he imagines a dusky form.He doesn't look there. He looks at the sky.One bird dives into a pine and disappears. The other fights on.The man has arrived at a point in his lifewhen some inklings, however vague,rekindle vivid scenes,in his case mostly from boyhood. He has no idea what seizes him here,what summons his uncle's farm,not yet besiegedby tanning parlor, deli, chain store.It may be a scent on the wind, though its burden back then was all straw and mire.Beef steers stood rump-to in a field,tails blown between hind legs,steaming nostrils ringed by ice.He recalls the cattle's occasional moans. [End Page 334] He felt, untimely, that night was falling,as he does just now, though it's noon,and that the cold could blow right through him.If the boy didn't think in metaphors yet,still he sensed something dark in the world– darker still than those ravens. [End Page 335] Sydney Lea Sydney Lea is a former Pulitzer finalist and winner of the Poets' Prize. He was Vermont's Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2015 and is the author of twenty-three books: a novel, five volumes of personal and three of critical essays, and fourteen poetry collections, most recently Here (Four Way Books, NYC, 2019). His fifteenth collection, What Shines?, will be published in February. Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press","PeriodicalId":42348,"journal":{"name":"Spiritus-A Journal of Christian Spirituality","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135688600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Crippled Grace: Disability, Virtue Ethics, and the Good Life by Shane Clifton (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/scs.2023.a899774","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/scs.2023.a899774","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Crippled Grace: Disability, Virtue Ethics, and the Good Life by Shane Clifton Maureen Pratt MTS, MFA (bio) Crippled Grace: Disability, Virtue Ethics, and the Good Life. By Shane Clifton. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2018. 285 pp. $44.99 pbk/ $42.74 eb. A few years after my diagnosis of disabling lupus, a Christian friend asked if I was \"over it\" yet. When I explained that lupus is a chronic condition with no medical cure, my friend said, \"You're not cured because you're not faithful enough.\" This encounter, a discomforting and disheartening reminder of how entrenched some uncompassionate attitudes toward virtue and health still are, resurfaced in my mind several times as I read Shane Clifton's Crippled Grace: Disability, Virtue Ethics, and the Good Life. In this profound and provocative book, Clifton reflects on two central questions: what is the significance of the Christian virtue tradition for the happiness (flourishing) of people with disabilities, and might disability itself offer \"fresh insight into how we should understand flourishing?\" (225) A theologian by training—\"ecumenical and liberal (by which I mean open-minded in inclination)\" (3), Clifton is honorary associate and professor at the Centre of Disability Research and Policy in the faculty of health sciences at the University of Sydney. However, perhaps even more important than his academic bona fides is his lived experience as an adult abruptly thrust into personal disability through a bicycle accident that rendered him a quadriplegic. This experience provides indispensable, authentic (and very honest) context to Clifton's reflections and, with the other narratives he includes in the book, brings what might have otherwise been a detached work into compelling, personal conversation with the subject matter and the reader. Prior to his accident, Clifton admits he had read nothing about disability, a comment perhaps not surprising; \"disability is marginal to theological reflection\" (151). Afterward, totally inter/dependent on others for all his care and slipping \"into a deepening unhappiness\" (4), he describes picking up a book he had begun reading pre-accident: Alistair MacIntyre's Dependent Rational Animals. There, he \"discovered within its pages a spark of hope\" and began to consider how the Christian virtue tradition could inform a way of \"conceiving of happiness that could transcend my disability: happiness as a life lived well in and through its difficulties\" (4). This inquiry, richly developed in the book, leads him not only to reflect on the historical and contemporary social reality of disability and its attendant duality, suffering and joy, but also to apply a hermeneutic of disability (and at times one of suspicion) on traditionally conceived theological and philosophical notions of the nature and practice of virtue, the attainment of happiness, and what it means to live a \"good\" life. After an introduction to his personal and professional story and appr","PeriodicalId":42348,"journal":{"name":"Spiritus-A Journal of Christian Spirituality","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135469562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ignis Fatuus or Illumination? A Theological Reflection on Le Mythe de Sisyphe and the Eternal Return of the Liturgy","authors":"Trevor B. Williams","doi":"10.1353/scs.2023.a899753","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/scs.2023.a899753","url":null,"abstract":"Spiritus 23 (2023): 36–50 © 2023 by Johns Hopkins University Press Gathering for worship is integral to Christian life and in the Catholic Church constitutes its source and summit. Yet, attendance among the laity is astonishingly low. It is unlikely that there is a single explanation for this phenomenon (preexisting the pandemic), but one of the most common papal responses to this spiritual problem is to lament widespread practical atheism or religious indifference. Pope Francis, for example, said that","PeriodicalId":42348,"journal":{"name":"Spiritus-A Journal of Christian Spirituality","volume":"23 1","pages":"36 - 50"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43308909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cemetery Soundscape","authors":"Michael Dechane","doi":"10.1353/scs.2023.a899771","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/scs.2023.a899771","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42348,"journal":{"name":"Spiritus-A Journal of Christian Spirituality","volume":"23 1","pages":"170 - 170"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43418113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Prophetic Belonging: Disability, Hospitality, and Being Church Together","authors":"Thomas E. Reynolds","doi":"10.1353/scs.2023.a899754","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/scs.2023.a899754","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42348,"journal":{"name":"Spiritus-A Journal of Christian Spirituality","volume":"23 1","pages":"51 - 65"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47702177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Minister of Loneliness","authors":"Yahia Lababidi","doi":"10.1353/scs.2023.a899770","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/scs.2023.a899770","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42348,"journal":{"name":"Spiritus-A Journal of Christian Spirituality","volume":"23 1","pages":"168 - 169"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48805923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Slap","authors":"R. Cording","doi":"10.5040/9781350975675","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350975675","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42348,"journal":{"name":"Spiritus-A Journal of Christian Spirituality","volume":"23 1","pages":"156 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46103059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"We Were Left with Nothing","authors":"R. Rowland","doi":"10.1353/scs.2023.a899764","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/scs.2023.a899764","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42348,"journal":{"name":"Spiritus-A Journal of Christian Spirituality","volume":"23 1","pages":"159 - 159"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47189965","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}