Timothy Radcliffe is a refreshing writer. Former Master of the Dominican Order he has long and varied experience of the ways in which cultural changes and successive social, technological and economic reconfigurations in recent decades have eroded Christian confidence in the spiritualities, traditions and ethics of Christian existence. As a writer he's hard to label. His books combine spirituality, biblical reflection, cultural comment, and what is best called Christian life coaching, in a gently suggestive rather than guru directive kind of way. Reading him is like listening to the voice of a non directive spiritual director!
Each chapter in this book read like spirituality in the form of literary essays, fairly loosely connected despite the contents page, but in each one wisdom is woven across a framework of Christian devotion, cultural observation, perceptive psychology and humane learning. The plan of the book is an exploration of discipleship which begins with two chapters under the heading 'Imagination'. The eclipse of imagination by technologically generated virtual worlds, or by the reduction of the everyday world to rational pragmatics, economic imperatives of consumption and possession, and reductionist explanations that ignore life's deeper questions,has left our culture under-equipped to seek, and sense and desire the transcendent. The recovery of imagination is essential if human beings are to grow into mature humanity and rediscover the gift of their own creation. "An awakened sense of the transcendent goes with freeing our minds from the trivialisation of contemporary culture, its tendency to be reductive and simplistic." (11)
On the basis that life is to be lived imaginatively as well as responsibly, Radcliffe encourages his readers to 'Choose Life', and that means becoming a disciple of Jesus. Hence the three main sections of the book, Journeying, Teaching, and The Risen Life. As of this post, I'm still at the journeying stage. Throughout the Gospel narrative the disciples are on an adventure with risk and cost as well as blessing; there will always be suffering, hurt and situations that make the heart ache; there will be confrontations with evil and a willingness to negate the negations and negativity in which evil thrives. God's purpose is creation, and evil is the undoing of creation. The journey is a maturing process, as each disciple discovers what true humanity is in obedience to God and service to others in the name of Christ.
What I've found in this first quarter of the book is a writer whose words have the purpose of inviting exploration, provoking new thought, and facilitating a conversation with the reader that is at times searching, and at other times reassuring. Radcliffe writes as a knowing Christian; as a monk responsible for the healthy development of a long monastic tradition; as a man with his own struggles, illness, and weaknesses; and as a writer who respects the intelligence of the reader.
As someone who enjoys books well seasoned with quotations, even I began to wonder if Radcliffe was trying to cram in more than the argument needed, either as evidence, illustration or as mnemonic summaries of what he was arguing. In the end it makes the book both more interesting, and more meandering, and a treasure trove for preachers; and Radcliffe is a very fine preacher himself. Here is one example of Radcliffe on quotation overload, the first paragraph of chapter 2:
"How then can Christianity engage the imagination of our contemporaries? I shall focus on one question - there are others - which is both the core of our questing faith and also a preoccupation of all human beings; what does it mean to be alive? John Lennon wrote in his lyric 'Beautiful Boy', 'Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.' He is not far from John Henry Newman's warning,'Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.' In Rose Tremain's novel Music and Silence, one of the characters decides that 'the secret of a successful life is not to die before one's death.'"
See what I mean?
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