{"id":32154,"date":"2014-11-20T02:13:03","date_gmt":"2014-11-20T07:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=32154"},"modified":"2014-11-21T13:14:39","modified_gmt":"2014-11-21T18:14:39","slug":"my-morning-with-mcbaine-and-wyman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2014\/11\/my-morning-with-mcbaine-and-wyman\/","title":{"rendered":"My morning with McBaine and Wiman"},"content":{"rendered":"

As happens every now and then, I had a furious, fortuitous conjoining that so filled the boughs with fruit that they now creak and threaten to break. And language\u2014especially quick language\u2014isn\u2019t likely to succeed in conveying the experience. What follows is a quick, momentary set of notes. But I don\u2019t want to let it pass or hold back; I want to attempt to capture and share a moment of clear resonation. <\/span><\/p>\n

Riding in to work I was reading two books: Christian Wiman\u2019s utterly unparalleled My Bright Abyss <\/i><\/a>(review forthcoming) and Neylan McBaine\u2019s desperately needed Women at Church<\/i><\/a>. The one prepared me for the other, but I\u2019ll share them in reverse order.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the end of Chapter One Sister McBaine seems to strike right at the heart of our paradox with women\u2019s issues: \u201cHow do we protect the traditions, practices, and truths of our earliest progenitors while holding sacred the rebel explosion of the Restoration?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve no desire to dilute or dismiss the vital, wrenching particularity of her focus. It\u2019s a question that any reader of my posts at Times and Seasons knows I wrestle with almost obsessively. But clearly this question expands beyond women\u2019s issues and is really a complicated paradox for the Restoration and it\u2019s disciples generally.[1]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wiman\u2019s writings this morning were focused on the difficulties and necessities of language in religious experience. Exploring and drawing on the wealth of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mystics and the ways in which they use language apophatically to indicate the ineffable nadir of religious experience, Wyman writes:<\/p>\n

\n

It goes both ways though: mystical experience [e.g., the Sacred Grove or your own first or latest communion with the Divine] needs some form of dogma [e.g., an institutional church or propositional creed or set of communal norms] in order not to dissipate into moments of spiritual intensity that are merely personal, and dogma needs regular infusions of unknowingness to keep from calcifying into the predictable, pontificating, and anti-intellectual services so common in mainstream American churches. So what does all this mean practically? It means that congregations must be conscious of the persistent and ineradicable loneliness that makes a person seek communion, with other people and with God, in the first place. It means that conservative churches that are infused with the bouncy brand of American optimism one finds in sales pitches are selling shit. It means that liberal churches that go months without mentioning the name of Jesus, much less the dying Christ, have no more spiritual purpose or significance than a local union hall. It means that we\u2014those of us who call ourselves Christian\u2014need a revolution in the way we worship (138).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We need a revolution in the way we worship. Sister McBaine helps us to understand the need for and possibilities of local revolution now with regard to women. But together Wiman and McBaine help us to see that this is always the case, particularly in our own lives and relations\u2014it\u2019s a fundamental reality of spirituality, and religious institutions must be aware of and facilitate this open questing and articulated transmission. Our pursuit of truth\u2014particularly our pursuit of true ways to live and commune and progress\u2014are always at the intersection of past, present, and future. We calcify and eventually die if we try to remain in any one domain, no matter how bright. We need constant exploration, a constant taking up of our past today for the future. And the answers aren\u2019t ever obvious. We\u2014and certainly our institutions\u2014need that flow of pure intelligence, we need the constant irruption of a Sacred Grove, we need the embodied embrace of an incarnate God.<\/span><\/p>\n

* * * *<\/p>\n

[1] McBaine seem\u2019s to me quite clear on this point, even in her focus on women\u2014she seems well aware of the expansive nature of the question and its implications for all saints. Not to be too terribly naval gazing, I\u2019ll note that this is also a question important to all attempts to take up the legacy of our past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As happens every now and then, I had a furious, fortuitous conjoining that so filled the boughs with fruit that they now creak and threaten to break. And language\u2014especially quick language\u2014isn\u2019t likely to succeed in conveying the experience. What follows is a quick, momentary set of notes. But I don\u2019t want to let it pass or hold back; I want to attempt to capture and share a moment of clear resonation. Riding in to work I was reading two books: Christian Wiman\u2019s utterly unparalleled My Bright Abyss (review forthcoming) and Neylan McBaine\u2019s desperately needed Women at Church. The one prepared me for the other, but I\u2019ll share them in reverse order. At the end of Chapter One Sister McBaine seems to strike right at the heart of our paradox with women\u2019s issues: \u201cHow do we protect the traditions, practices, and truths of our earliest progenitors while holding sacred the rebel explosion of the Restoration?\u201d I\u2019ve no desire to dilute or dismiss the vital, wrenching particularity of her focus. It\u2019s a question that any reader of my posts at Times and Seasons knows I wrestle with almost obsessively. But clearly this question expands beyond women\u2019s issues and is really a complicated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32154"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32183,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32154\/revisions\/32183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}