Sean's meme - I have read enough .......

Here's my attempt to respond to Sean's meme here.

I have read enough.....

1. I have read enough Thomas Merton to know that silence and solitude are not self indulgent pursuits of the ultra-spiritual, but the necessary disciplines to self giving love, that make it possible to have a self worth giving.
2. I have read enough Kathleen Norris and Esther De Waal to know that the Rule of St Benedict  provides a framework of spirituality that takes the ordinary routines of life and integrates them into a spirituality that values stability founded upon, and community centred upon, the Word of God read and lived together.
3. I have read enough Chaim Potok, Elie Wiesel and Abraham Joshua Heschel, and the apostle Paul, to know that my own Christian faith is deeply indebted to, genetically connected to, the life and thought of God's ancient people Israel as they emerged from their encounter with God.
4. I have read enough George Herbert to know that words used with pastoral precision and poetic craft, in the 17th century as the 21st, become sacraments of truth and gifts of grace.
5. I have read enough James Denney to know that 'the last reality of the universe is eternal love, bearing sin'.
6. I have read enough novels by Anne Tyler, Gail Godwin and Carol Shields to know that when it comes to understanding what goes on inside us, what drives our deepest family relationships, what is the meaning of forgiveness and of love as costly self-expense, what to make of disappointment, how to hold on to friendship faithfully but not possessively, how to creatively use or destructively express anger, how to live through broken trust and learn to trust again, just how to make something of that whole fankled emotional liability we call the human heart, then these women novelists are far more perceptive guides than most pastoral theology I've read - much of it still written by men!
7. I have read enough Jurgen Moltmann to know that he isn't the last word in systematic theology, and that I don't always agree with him, but his is a passionately written theology of the Passion, drawn from a conception of the Triune God defined by intra-Trinitarian love that is kenotic, passionate and redemptive - and therefore liberating.
8. I have read enough Karl Barth to know that I'll probably never be able to read all of Karl barth, but it won't be because I've stopped trying.
9. I have read enough of Rick Warren.
10. I have read enough of Julian of Norwich to know that her Revelations of Divine Love constitutes one of the high points of medieval theology, one of the masterpieces of Christian mysticism, one of the most profound reflections on the cross ever written, and is the first major theological writing by a woman in English.

Comments

[andy goodliff]

Jim, I love the Rick Warren comment!

[Margaret]

I have read enough to you know you have read SO much more than I have!

[simon jones]

Good to see a healthy diet of fiction and poetry among the systematics. And I think you said everything there is to say about Rick Warren. Great post