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What Men Live By

by Leo Tolstoy

“I knew before that God gave life to men and desires that they should live; now I understood more than that.

“I understood that God does not wish men to live apart, and therefore he does not reveal to them what each one needs for himself; but he wishes them to live united, and therefore reveals to each of them what is necessary for all.

‘I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.”

This reading is from the conclusion of Tolstoy’s short story.  The whole text is available here.

Peace, dwight

In a recent conversation with some friends who are engaged to be married (congrats Thomas & Kelly) we got to talking about themes for their upcoming wedding.  We batted a few ideas around the one that seemed to generate the most conversation was:

 “If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it.

But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life.”  

- Jesus, (Luke 9:24)

These two sentences may be the key to Christ’s relational hermeneutic.  I can’t help wonder what our world might look like if our churches were to consistently use this hermeneutic to interpret: “and the gates of hell will not prevail against it,” or “Therefore go and make disciples…” etc.

peace, dwight

Who am I? 

Arguably, one of the great gifts modernity offered humanity has been the gift of “the self”; and like all gifts it cloaked a curse.  So much has been said in critique of the modern idea of the self-made, autonomous individual that one almost dreads bringing it up for fear a reader’s gag reflex may activate. 

I wouldn’t have wanted to live with the pre-modern understanding which rendered most of humanity pawns in life’s chess match.  A match in which the only players “of worth” carried special titles – and none more so than the King. 

The discovery of the individual was an important corrective.  Thanks Søren K. et al. 

The postmodern loss of self is huge.  What is a self? 

I believe we need new language to describe self.  “Person” and “Individual” have been useful terms; but both terms have been used in the modern project to highlight individuality as part of the modern corrective to the pre-modern.  In postmodern writings hyphenated terms are often used as a corrective for the modern. Terms like: social-self, communal-being, relational-self, etc.  Yet, hyphenated language rarely gains cultural traction.

I’ve been playing with the term “Codividual.”  Codividual would be an alternative to “social-self.”  Consider the term individual; “In” often suggests something like “toward”, thus in-dividual suggests a movement toward dividuation; toward being separated from the rest of humanity.

In my proposal, codividual still highlights the unique personhood through the use of the idea of “dividaul” but “Co” suggests a constitutive community making up the person.

Where Kierkegaard claimed to have been an individual, I think I would claim to be a codividual.  Notice the that photo of me is made up of hundreds of photos of family, friends, teachers, pastors, theologians, and figures from history, etc, (if only I had a picture of everything and everyone, I might be less piculated).  Click here to enlarge the photo.

peace, dwight

In the seemingly unending stack of theology papers I am privileged to be engaging, a quote from Albers’ Interaction of Color caught my heart (thanks Ed).

“In musical compositions, so long as we hear merely single tones, we do not hear music. Hearing music depends on the recognition of the in-between of the tones, of their placing and of their spacing.

“In writing, a knowledge of spelling has nothing to do with an understanding of poetry.

“Equally, a factual identification of colors within a given painting has nothing do with a sensitive seeing nor with an understanding of the color action within the painting…

“Our concern is the interaction of color; that is, seeing what happens between colors…

“Colors present themselves in continuous flux, constantly related to changing neighbors and changing conditions”  (Josef Albers, 1975, p. 5).

peace, dwight

One of the things I enjoy about weddings is that the wedding is one of the few – celebrations that focuses almost entirely on a relationship; on the “Us” of an “I/Thou.”

The very fact that marriage is held as such a strong commitment to each other, before God, the “Us’s” community, and the state, helps reinforce the fact that marriage maybe the closest human relational image we have to the Holy Trinity. The “marriage is a living spirit” embodying the selfless-love of the two persons. Plurality and oneness.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote to a young relative on her wedding day. Saying that, “Your marriage is your private possession but it’s also much more than that.” And then he said, “from this day onward it will not be your love that keeps your marriage alive but your marriage that keeps your love alive.”

I’ll have very limited web access while I’m away so it may be a few days before I’m back. If you reading this, offer a quick prayer for Lynette and Pascal as they are home without me for these days. Thanks.

Peace, dwight

Thanks for an encouraging time guys.

Peace, dwight

Yet the eye is easily deceived; slight of hand, smoke and mirrors create illusions that think are true. Vision only takes a person so far.

Why are counselors and relational theorists so concerned about hearing/listening in communication? Vision plays a vital role in hearing, think of the non-verbal communication of body language. In this sense vision is a type of hearing.

Why is it that a person can not understand a culture without understanding its language?

Listening requires the submission of my will to hear the other. Vision is about self determining and interpreting what self sees.

The whole person is needed in relational leadership, and vision (I would argue) is the weakest of all the senses interpersonally.

Peace, dwight

I am the pastor of a fellowship of Christ-commons dubbed “quest“, since we began to gather and do life together some seven years ago our constant continues to be change.

We’re in the midst of morphing again. A significant morph, a change in perspective that could impact the kingdom of God and/or could be the death of the very community that we helped birth.

I have been feeling scared. I don’t know what to do. Apart from my wife I have been feeling more alone than I ever have. And do you know what God did?

He lit up my Instant Messenger with life giving conversations with Earl, and Peter. My phone rang with Heather and then Len, and I shared a cup of coffee with Sky and had lunch with my wife. My shoulders are shacking and tears are streaming, as I am sitting here in my studio thinking about the way God has been loving me.

But I still don’t know what to do.

Peace, dwight