Retreating (close to home!) by Cindy LaFerle

January 11, 2014 by

THIS WEEK, ReadTheSpirit is recommending books by poet and  journalist Judith Valente. (And, don’t miss Judith’s own column on 10 steps toward rediscovering peace.) However, when we read such stories, we might get the mistaken impression that retreats are only for well-to-do people who can travel great distances. So, we invited author and columnist Cindy LaFerle to share this chapter from her book Writing Home about a simpler solution she has found.

Retreating
(Close to Home)

By CINDY LaFERLE

Four times a year, I indulge in a ritual that puzzles my neighbors, not to mention my family.

It goes something like this: I rise at dawn on a weekday and load my car with two large tote bags—one crammed with books, the other with pajamas and a toothbrush. I back out of the driveway quickly and disappear for twenty-four hours. The next day, I come back looking as if I’d spent a full week at five-star spa.

My sacred escape, as I call it, is a mere twenty minutes from home, but seems a universe away.

“So, did you have fun at the monastery?” my husband teases when I return.

My hideaway isn’t exactly a monastery—but it’s the next best thing. Secluded on a wooded estate in Bloomfield Hills, Manresa Jesuit Retreat House remains one of the best-kept secrets in my part of Michigan. It’s where I go when my shoulders lock up and I can’t quite silence the white noise buzzing in my head. It’s where I turn when I feel unappreciated, uninspired, overtaxed and overwhelmed.

No, Manresa doesn’t offer facials, glycol peels, pedicures or therapeutic massages. And while the historic Tudor-revival mansion graciously opens its meeting facilities to business functions and networking events, it remains, at its heart, a place for the spirit. Religious artwork and gilded icons decorate the hallways, while Stations of the Cross and Catholic statuary anchor its manicured acres of tranquil garden paths.

And nobody goes home hungry. On a recent overnight retreat, three church friends and I enjoyed heaping portions of “Jesuit cuisine”–a divine menu of real comfort food, including roast chicken, green beans, and divine, buttery mashed potatoes. And, as we quickly discovered on a midnight kitchen raid, there’s always a plate of homemade cookies left for snacking.

After dinner, my friends and I usually set aside time alone for reading and reflection. While I also read inspirational literature at home, I enjoy this genre most in the sanctuary of my private room at Manresa. (The paneled library downstairs, in fact, is where I first discovered the writings of Henri J. M. Nouwen.)

Spending just a few hours this way, I feel as if my frazzled parts had been gently polished and refastened.

I highly recommend retreating to everyone, regardless of religious affiliation. Women, especially, need to give ourselves permission to step aside for a breather, even if our loved ones think we’re being unsociable, or, heaven forbid, neglectful. Our devotion to family and career seldom allows time to quench the soul, and few of us have a quiet place where we can pause to refuel.

Unlike health spas, where the lodgings are typically deluxe, religious retreat houses offer minimal amenities. Expect no television and very few distractions. Manresa, for example, enforces periods of silence that must be respected by all guests.

A spiritual retreat can be held in any secluded location, but be sure to plan well in advance. Leave secular worries behind and cell phones turned off. And if you’re not attending a guided retreat, prepare your own list of spiritual activities–group discussions, personal journaling, meditation, or prayer focus.

Wherever you retreat, your aim should be to return to your daily responsibilities with fresh perspective and a renewed spirit to share with others.

Care to read more?

Look around your region of the U.S. for retreat centers that are open to the public at a reasonable cost. Because retreat centers vary so widely, you might try asking a pastor, rabbi or imam in your area about sites they may recommend. If you ask friends from a similar religious background for suggestions, you’re more likely to feel comfortable when you arrive.

This column was reprinted with Cindy’s permission from her book Writing Home, which ReadTheSpirit also highly recommends. You’ll also enjoy her regular columns at www.LaFerle.com.

The Brennan Manning interview with Greg Garrett

December 16, 2013 by

BRENNAN MANNING is the reason we’re talking with Greg Garrett this week. Since ReadTheSpirit online magazine was founded in 2007, Greg Garrett has been a frequent guest, talking about each of his new books with Editor David Crumm. But, The Prodigal: A Ragamuffin Story is unique among Greg’s long list of titles. In the months before Brennan Manning’s death on April 27, 2013, Greg collaborated with Brennan to fulfill a final wish: to write a novel embodying Brennan’s central theme about Grace.

Brennan has such a huge following that, in the weeks since this novel was finally released, the book has racked up 25 reader reviews in Amazon, 24 of them raving about the book with 4- and 5-star reviews. That’s a remarkable outpouring of affection. In a preface to one of Manning’s earlier books, the popular musician and worship leader Michael W. Smith tries to describe Manning’s huge appeal. Smith uses words like “refreshing” and “life-changing,” “dangerous” and “transformative.”

Brennan’s chosen term was “Ragamuffin,” which he used to describe his own deeply troubled life. Grace means that God loves us, even when we are at our most troubled in life, he argued. We don’t earn God’s love. God loves each and every person, even Ragamuffins, all the time.

The journalist and best-selling author Philip Yancey knew Manning and loved his joyful compassion and his utter honesty about his many failings. In trying to capture Manning’s appeal, Yancey quotes Leonard Cohen:

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.

David Crumm talks with Greg Garrett about his new book, written with Brennan Manning before his death …

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH
GREG GARRETT ABOUT BENNAN MANNING
AND ‘THE PRODIGAL’

DAVID: Most of our readers will recognize Brennan Manning’s name and maybe the term, “Ragamuffin,” but—truth be told—a lot of readers won’t know much more about him. So, let’s start with a little background: Brennan Manning was born in New York City in the depths of the Great Depression. He served as a U.S. Marine in Korea. He was ordained as a Franciscan priest in 1963 to work with the poor. He also was an alcoholic. He destroyed many relationships in his life. And eventually, he became a worldwide sensation for preaching a message that—even in the darkest depths of our lives—God never stops loving us. Is that a fair summary?

GREG: Yes. We could say: If you wrote Brennan Manning as a character in a novel, people would have trouble believing he was real.

DAVID: Be careful there. You actually cast a Brennan Manning kind of character in this new novel you wrote with him, The Prodigal. So, tell our readers more about Brennan’s life.

GREG: Brennan was a muscular Christian in the sense that he was putting faith into action in all sorts of places and all sorts of ways. Often his faith was lived out in manual labor. He worked as a dishwasher; he worked around the docks in New Orleans; at one point, he lived in a cave in the desert. All his life, he battled with his alcoholism. He left the priesthood to get married and even that relationship didn’t work out. Central to his understanding of his own life and his understanding of God was that, in our strength, we are failures. But, with God’s help we can be something closer to what God wants us to be. The inspirational message that people took away from his talks and sermons and books was that we are loved, we are forgiven.

Many readers know that I’m a recovering fundamentalist myself, so I understand why Brennan’s message is such a breath of fresh air to so many people who live with guilt every day. One of Brennan’s central teachings is that God loves us even when we are at our most un-loveable. That doesn’t mean God wants us to remain doing un-loveable things, but God loves us even as imperfect people—even, as Brennan describes it—as Ragamuffins. That’s the radical love and forgiveness and grace that informs everything Brennan wrote and taught. And it informs this new novel—his final book—as well.

WRITING A NOVEL LIKE PEN PALS

DAVID: I’m sure readers will want to know how you collaborated on this novel. You live in Austin, Texas, and Brennan lived in New Jersey for the final phase of his life. How did this work?

GREG: Brennan knew he was in decline and the end was coming, so he had two last wishes. First, he wanted to leave a memoir and he did that with a co-author in 2011 in a book called, All Is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir.

Then, his final wish was to write a novel. People who have followed his work over the years know how much importance he placed on telling stories. He understood that, while many people will read and respond to nonfiction, there is an incredible power to move people through fiction. We share the same literary agency and, as Brennan became more feeble, his agent and my agent talked about this project. They wanted someone who wasn’t traditionally known as a “Christian novelist.” My name came up pretty quickly, I’m told. I have written novels, which we might describe as literary novels. So, the agents got us together and we started this process in the spring of 2012.

We began moving back and forth with ideas, very fast, and the process was simpler than I had imagined. At that point, he already was in long-term care in New Jersey. So, we wrote this novels as pen pals. He’d have an idea and I’d receive that. Then, I’d add to the ideas and we’d go back and forth.

DAVID: One way this new novel is described is with the question: What happens the day after The Prodigal returns? And we’re talking here about the world-famous “prodigal son” from Jesus’ parable about the selfish, wayward young man who flees from his family home and makes a complete mess of his life. Then, surprisingly, in the depths of his despair, the young man’s father welcomes him home. The prodigal’s brother resents this, because this faithful brother stayed at home and did all the hard work while the prodigal was out partying. Nevertheless, the father insists on welcoming him home with open arms.

GREG: That story had been foundational throughout Brennan’s writing and teaching and I think I said something, in one of our early exchanges, like this: The place where the prodigal story starts to get interesting for me is what happens on the second day. How do you come back from your mistakes? How do you begin to make things right? How do you begin to live in a different way? These are questions Brennan always wrote and taught about. They became the core of the novel.

WHO WOULD YOU CAST IN THE MOVIE VERSION?

DAVID: I don’t want to spoil the novel by revealing too many details in this interview, but in the opening pages of the novel we learn that the Rev. Jack Chisholm, the celebrated pastor of a megachurch in Seattle, has been caught in a terrible lapse of judgment. His drinking and his affair with a woman are caught by witnesses on social media and this firestorm engulfs him very rapidly. He has been estranged from his own father and he hasn’t returned to his little hometown in many years. But, as he’s becoming almost suicidal, his father shows up and welcomes him home. Tell us a little more about the plot, but we won’t spoil any of the surprises, OK?

GREG: Sure. What we can say is that Jack falls from grace in a very big way, as you’ve just described. He’s not a serial cheater, but he does have an affair. When it all becomes public, he loses his family, he loses his church, he loses his book contract. He tries to drink himself to death in Mexico. Then, his father invites him to come home. It’s the prodigal story with some changes. The brother, who stayed at home in the original story, is now a sister in this novel, for example.

DAVID: Within Jack’s fall and his gradual climb toward reconciliation is also a dramatic change in Jack’s understanding of the Christian faith, right?

GREG: Jack is famous as a preacher for this kind of neo-Calvinist theology that says God is not very fond of you, and that you don’t deserve to have God be fond of you. It’s a damaging theology. His catchphrase is, “We have got to do better.” He’s basically teaching that we can somehow earn our way into God’s favor.

I didn’t model him after any specific megachurch pastor, but I can tell you that there are a lot of people out there who are like Jack in some ways.

DAVID: Readers won’t have any trouble recognizing Jack as a realistic figure among today’s religious elite, a kind of composite of a number of big names.

So we don’t spoil the plot developments in the book, let’s describe this story by actually casting this book as a movie, OK? When I finished this novel, I thought right away: Oh, someone is going to make a movie of this! So, let’s say Hollywood rolls out a big budget and a producer could have his pick of actors.

Who would play Jack Chisholm, the central character?

GREG: It needs to be a person who can project both self-confidence and brokenness. I’ve really liked Bradley Cooper’s work recently. At his core, Jack is an absolutely broken person and his own theology has grown out of his own self loathing. Bradley Cooper has shown us in movies like Silver Linings Playbook that he can portray someone who we care about, yet who can wind up doing some terrible things, and who still can have the potential for change.

DAVID: So, Bradley Cooper stars as Jack Chisholm in your ideal movie version. Then, who plays Jack’s father.

GREG: Robert Duvall. Now, I know that he’s a kind of predictable “go to” choice for that kind of role. But we need a strong actor for the father who, for years, has been this kind of forbidding, scary character. Yet, this father is coming to the end of his life and he’s trying to find a better way to live, as well.

DAVID: Jack’s older sister? Who plays the stay-at-home sibling who was so dutiful that she resents Jack’s return? I’m thinking Holly Hunter.

GREG: Well, that could work, although the sister is in her 30s, or maybe as old as her 40s, and Holly Hunter is now in her 50s. You’ve got the idea, though: a Holly Hunter kind of actress.

DAVID: And the small town preacher in your book—who plays him? He’s really the Brennan Manning voice in the novel.

GREG: Hmmm, Father Frank. Who could play Father Frank? He’s a character in his ‘60s. I was thinking of someone like Jeff Bridges, especially the kind of Jeff Bridges role in that movie about the aging country singer, Crazy Heart. In the novel, Father Frank is someone who, like Henri Nouwen or Brennan Manning, can turn his own brokenness into the core of his ministry.

DAVID: Yes, I like that idea of Bridges in that role! I’m beginning to “see” this story in a new light now that we’ve cast the stars in the movie. Maybe it will help readers to glimpse the really compelling nature of this story—without spoiling details.

I want to ask one last question that I’m sure readers will ponder: Did Brennan Manning live long enough to read the final novel?

GREG: I finished my work, as his collaborator, in March. And, because we worked as pen pals, I wasn’t there beside him in those final weeks and I’m not sure if he read the entire novel. He certainly went back and forth with me on the versions up until the end.

DAVID: Well, I’m glad to see it’s being received in such a warm way by his many fans.

GREG: I did hear from HarperCollins that booksellers blew through the first printing of The Prodigal and they’ve already had to run a second printing.

There are a lot of people who loved Brennan and this book does have the special appeal of being his first novel—and his last book—all in one. I’m hearing, already, from clergy who are asking their entire congregations to read this in preparation for talking about this as a congregation.

I feel very good, today, that Brennan and I were able to finish this project before he died.

CARE TO READ MORE GREG GARRETT?

READ GREG GARRETT’S ONGOING COLUMNS Greg writes regularly within the Patheos website. The link here takes you to Greg’s index page for recent columns.

VISIT GREG ON FACEBOOK He’s already got nearly 2,000 friends, but there’s room for you, too, especially if you’re involved in ongoing discussion of Greg’s books and you want to follow his new releases.

‘THE OTHER JESUS‘ If you like Greg’s approach to faith in today’s interview and in The Prodigal novel, you’ll definitely want this 2011 book. The link takes you to our 2011 interview with Greg about moving from a religion of fear to a faith in the love of God.

‘THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO U2‘ Early in his career, Greg Garrett was a rock journalist for a time and this book on the band U2 provides a great doorway for congregations to discuss the significance of U2’s music and activism.

‘HOLY SUPERHEROES!‘ We’re linking, here, to Greg’s most recent piece for ReadTheSpirit on comic books. A life-long fan of comics, Greg literally wrote The Book on the religious themes in comics. This 2011 piece reflects on some recent super-hero movies and also describes Greg’s book, as well.

‘IS HARRY POTTER “CHRISTIAN”? That was the provocative question we put to Greg in 2010, when a new Harry Potter blockbuster was opening. Once again, Greg wrote The Book on how congregations can spark inspiring discussions about the J.K. Rowling novels and movies.

(Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, spirituality, values and interfaith and cross-cultural issues.)

Wow! MSU students produce a guide to America in 70 days!

December 8, 2013 by

A NOTE from ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm:
We crowed last year when Michigan State University School of Journalism students produced an important book, The New Bullying, in just 101 days. Those 101 days were counted from the original idea, through extensive nationwide research, to writing, editing and final publication. Well, this year, another MSU class has trumped that accomplishment by producing a valuable new guidebook to America, written to help newcomers from abroad feel welcome in the U.S.—in just 70 days!

ReadTheSpirit Books works regularly with the MSU journalism teams to produce these books and, today, we’re celebrating with this latest group of talented students. Even more importantly, we’re celebrating on behalf of the thousands of visiting international students who will be helped by this book!

(Want to get your copy now? Here’s the Amazon page for 100 Questions and Answers about Americans.)

PRESS COVERAGE

NEWS UPDATE DEC 11: Xconomy business news magazine’s Sarah Schmid covers the launch of the new guide. Schmid describes the guide as evidence that “Michigan is poised to become a hot spot for global talent because of its popularity with international students, particularly those studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.” (Read the entire Xconomy story.)

NEWS UPDATE DEC 11: Center for Michigan’s BRIDGE magazine’s Kathy Barks Hoffman says this guide fits perfectly into Michigan’s push to welcome newcomers. She writes: “Gov. Rick Snyder is pushing for more international students to study and stay in Michigan. The Global Talent Retention Initiative, funded by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and a grant from the New Economy Initiative of Michigan, is bringing together Michigan universities, economic development groups, ethnic chambers of commerce and professional organizations to help retain top international talent in the state by finding them jobs with Michigan companies.” (Read the entire BRIDGE story.)

And here is Joe Grimm’s story about the launch, posted December 9:

AN “EYE-OPENING” GUIDE
FOR COMING TO AMERICA

By MSU’s JOE GRIMM

Some Michigan State University journalism students spent the last day of classes, Dec. 6, giving copies of their semester’s labors to international students at a book launch.

In just 10 weeks, the students published a 60-page guide, 100 Questions and Answers about Americans.

Their aim was to use journalism to help international students better understand American customs and behaviors. The need for this kind of outreach has grown. International enrollment at U.S. colleges and universities has gone up for seven years in a row and was at 819,000 in 2012-2013. Michigan State, with more than 7,000 international students, is in the top 10 among American universities.

The project was proposed and supported by a grant from MSU’s Office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives. The guide is the second in a series of guides to cultural competence published by the MSU J-School and Read the Spirit Books.

Several more guides are in the works for 2014.

The class of 16 students asked students from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North and South America for their questions about life in the United States. The answers were researched, written and vetted. The students added a glossary of idioms and slang.

The guides are created with a four-dimensional approach that stresses respect, accuracy, authority and accessibility.

Powered by proprietary Read the Spirit publishing technology, the guides are available on paper, Nooks, Kindles and e-books. The entire process, from getting their assignment to having the guides appear on Amazon, took just 70 days.

Some of the questions:

“People in the United States smile at strangers for no reason. Why is that and what is the meaning?”

“What does ‘How’s it going?’ mean?”

“How can I connect with people here if I don’t understand cultural things like old TV shows, celebrities or sports?”

“When should I tip and how much should I leave?”

“What is included in a date?”

Do these sound like simple questions? Not if you come from a culture where customs of hospitality and relationships are quite different. As our American university students researched these guides—and talked to a wide range of people in their reporting—they wound up with many new insights into the challenges newcomers face in the U.S. Common phrases and small gestures that “we” take for granted are confusing, and may even seem offensive, to people who are trying to form new friendships but don’t understand “our” signals.

Student Marlee Delaney wrote, “The project was really eye-opening for me, as a student and as a journalist. I was really surprised to hear some of the questions that these international students came up with. I had no idea international students felt intimidated by Americans because oftentimes we feel intimidated by them.”

Merinda Valley expressed similar feelings. “As I asked and answered questions for our guide, I realized that many international students have trouble starting conversations and forming friendships with Americans. Though I feel that I’m attuned to the difficulties of living in a foreign country, this really surprised me. So, if our guide can take away some uncertainty about American culture, I think it will be valuable to a lot of people who want to interact with Americans and simply enjoy their experience here.”

Joe Grimm is the Michigan State University School of Journalism instructor in this course and series editor for the cultural competence guides project.

Review of Margarethe von Trotta’s ‘Hannah Arendt’

December 7, 2013 by

MOVIE REVIEW
BY READTHESPIRIT EDITOR DAVID CRUMM

If you care about peacemaking and global justice, then you must be fascinated to find the fury rising once again around Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. The impassioned voices either defending or denouncing Arendt are, once again, nearly as impassioned as when The New Yorker magazine first published her five-part series as “A Reporter at Large”  in 1963. Then, Viking collected the series into a book. Now published by Penguin, hundreds of thousands of copies have been sold.

A new film defending Arendt and casting her as a brilliant crusader—as a new kind of sophisticated, feminist thinker for a new era in world history—is making the rounds, now in a DVD edition by Zeitgeist. It’s called simply Hannah Arendt. The convergence of the 50th anniversary of her landmark, incendiary work of news-analysis—and this very compelling new film about her life—now places Arendt squarely in the cross hairs of people who were not even alive during the Holocaust. In reviewing this new film, I must point out that, at age 58, I was not alive during World War II, either.

These days, most Americans don’t even know her name. In preparing to review this film, I asked a number of well-read writers what they thought of Hannah Arendt and, generally, the response was: “Oh, the Eichmann writer.” While her book flooded the world, few people living today have actually read it. I’m one of her readers, because I make a brief reference to Arendt’s classic phrase, “the banality of evil,” in my own book, Our Lent: Things We Carry. I briefly discuss her argument in my own chapter on Pontius Pilate trying to wash his hands after condemning Jesus.

4 Things to Understand about Hannah Arendt

She came of age in a circle of brilliant thinkers: Born to a Jewish family in Germany in 1906, Arendt’s life is a Zelig-like tale of connections with a wealth of towering intellectual figures emerging in that era before World War II. She became a philosopher and political theorist in a long series of books, dominated by Eichmann in Jerusalem. Until her death in 1975, her life revolved around the issues raised in that 1963 work. Her circle of friends is crucial to understanding the explosive worldwide debate that stormed—and continues to storm—around her work. Critics later argued that some of her friends may have been dark collaborators in her work; some of her friends came to her vigorous defense; some of her friends were transformed into relentless enemies by her work.

In the film: Of course, Margarette von Trotta’s film is a vigorous defense of Arendt’s life and work. The film does explore many of these complex friendships, generally depicting each relationship in ways that are sympathetic to Arendt’s memory. If you are reading this review and, already, you are realizing that this era of history is way beyond your own background—then you definitely will want to explore a bit of Arendt’s Wikipedia page before seeing the movie.

She was touched by the Holocaust: She fled the Nazis twice and was imprisoned for a time in a camp, although she was able to flee to America thanks to special visa. To this day, the question is hotly debated: How well did she understand the nature of the Shoah?

In the film: These two escapes are mentioned at several points in the film, but are not well explained for newcomers to this story. Again, read a bit of background on Arendt before you see it.

She went to Jerusalem to “cover” the trial of Adolf Eichmann for The New Yorker magazine: She attended some, but not all, of Eichmann’s trial. She was stunned by her first encounter with this major architect of the Holocaust (who had fled to Argentina, but was kidnapped by Israeli forces and was put on trial in Jerusalem). Watching him speak from his glass-walled corner of the courtroom, Arendt formulated her most important conclusion: In the 20th century industrial age, vast crimes against humanity could be organized into a series of actions fit for bureaucrats to maintain as a matter of ordinary business. Her “banality of evil” phrase was not excusing or defending Eichmann, but was pointing at a far deeper truth: In a technologically advanced world, huge crimes could be conceived and broken down into steps fit for bureaucrats. This remains her most important insight—and the point I briefly discuss in my own book.

In the film: We are given the impression that Arendt covered nearly all of the trial in person, either in the courtroom or in the journalists’ newsroom via closed-circuit TV into the courtroom. We also are shown how extensively she studied transcripts and other records. The film does not deal with the more recent criticism by historians that her attendance at the trial was just a handful of days she spent sampling the real action in the courtroom. In the film, she seems steeped in all of the trial records.

She seemed to be attacking the courage of the Jewish people, collectively: It is almost impossible to imagine the impact of her reporting on Jewish survivors little more than a decade after the Holocaust’s end—and on Israelis in a tiny, besieged nation still trying to establish itself. A key section in her reporting criticized officials in European Jewish councils during the Holocaust for cooperating with Nazi transports to the death camps. To this day, scholars continue to study this question and to rebuke Arendt’s implication that these Jewish leaders did not do enough to try to save their people.

In the film: This is one of the strong points in the movie. We come away from the film, on balance, thinking that Arendt was indeed far too arrogant in the section of her reporting that seemed to attack Jewish leaders during the Holocaust. In a number of scenes, we see how—by sheer force of her considerable personality—she convinced The New Yorker editors to publish that incendiary section (about 10 pages out of 300 pages). In the film, Arendt is allowed to defend herself on this point but we do come away regarding this point as part of the tragedy of her life. She truly was out of her depth in making some of these charges and she paid for that over-reaching in her book with death threats and criticism that haunted her final decade.

OUR RECOMMENDATION: If you care about the course of peacemaking and global justice, since World War II, you must know something about Hannah Arendt. This film is absolutely compelling: For a docu-drama about a sophisticated intellectual, you certainly won’t want to stir until it’s over. Critics who have slammed this film—and there are some—see it as a shameful defense of a woman they still regard as an evil figure on the world stage. Critics who praise this film—and I am among them—see it as a fascinating cinematic introduction into the most important point Arendt was trying to make: that the nature of evil in the world is changing dramatically in our modern era. In her view, we may need to look for the bureaucrats in ordinary-looking offices to unearth the true monsters in this new age.

As The Paris Review pointed out earlier this year, this point should not be missed or overshadowed in the midst of the related controversies about Arendt. Robert Lowell termed her portrayal of Eichmann a “masterpiece,” and Bruno Bettelheim said it was the best protection against “dehumanizing totalitarianism.”

The New York Times film critic A.O. Scott made the same point in his review, which praises the film for raising awareness of her life: “We may need her example more than ever. It’s probably too much to hope that Ms. von Trotta and her star, Barbara Sukowa, will do for Arendt what Nora Ephron and Meryl Streep did for Julia Child, but surely a fellow can dream.”

I urge you to see this film yourself; I urge you to see it with friends; I urge you to acquaint yourself with the life and work of Hannah Arendt. You will be a better peacemaker for the effort.

CARE TO READ MORE?

The New York Times Review of Books just published two commentaries on Hannah Arendt and Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Watch filmmaker Claude Lanzmann: First, if you have read this far in the review, then you will want to know that Lanzmann’s most famous documentary on the Holocaust is now on sale for American viewers in Blu-ray as: Shoah (Criterion Collection). If you follow Holocaust studies, then you know his epic film has been hard to find for American viewing for many years. It’s expensive, but—again, if you are fascinated by this era or your work involves reflecting on the Holocaust for students or for readers—buy a copy of the Criterion Collection set right now. It may go out of print; other Criterion titles have. Then, continue to watch for news on Lanzmann, because he already is showing his latest production, The Last of the Unjust, a documentary that focuses on Theresienstadt and already is being described as a rebuke of Hannah Arendt.

(Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, spirituality, values and interfaith and cross-cultural issues.)

Remembering Nelson Mandela 1918 to 2013

December 6, 2013 by

The world is awash in memorials and remembrances of Nelson Mandela. ReadTheSpirit, here, offers some texts, columns and reflections on his life and the struggle for freedom in South Africa that you won’t find without our help. Please, remember, reflect and recommit yourself to peacemaking …

HONORING NELSON MANDELA’S COURAGE

U.S. President Barack Obama honored Mandela, on behalf of the American people, quoting from Mandela’s famous 1964 address to the court that ultimately convicted him and sent him to prison for nearly three decades. We have the complete text of Obama’s remarks, courtesy of the White House. Then, we also have an extended excerpt from Mandela’s own historic address to the court that convicted him, from 1964.

INTERVIEW WITH MPHO TUTU

In their book Made for Goodness, Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho Tutu welcome us into their South African family—a courageous community of relatives and friends who produced one of the great miracles in modern history: the end of Apartheid. This 2010 author interview, we get Tutu’s perspective on the historic events that unfolded out of South Africa. In a separate piece, Mpho Tutu also provided her perspective on the movie, Invictus.

MANDELA, INVICTUS & OTHER MEDIA

In 2011, we marked Mandela’s 93rd birthday, which coincided with the 200th birthday of William Makepeace Thackery, the acid-penned writer who originally composed Invictus. AND, if you’re thinking of watching Invictus to honor Mandela, you’ll also want to read faith-and-film writer Ed McNulty’s review—and discussion guide—to that film. Then, in addition to that Invictus study guide, Ed McNulty immediately posted an additional column, reflecting on a wide range of films and other media related to Mandela’s career.

“HAVE YOU HEARD FROM JOHANNESBURG?”

The ultimate film documentary on the decades-long campaign to defeat Apartheid is Have You Heard from Johannesburg, a truly monumental achievement produced in part for national PBS airing in 2012. Read about this documentary and you may also want to follow links in the story to PBS’s website, where you can find out more about the production.

SEAMUS HEANEY & “THE CURE AT TROY”

In remembrance of Mandela and celebration of his legacy, we are likely to hear lines from Seamus Heaney’s poem, The Cure at Troy, which was written at about the time Mandela was about to be released from prison. Here is our story, written when Heaney died, about his frequently quoted poem. If these lines intrigue you, then you’ll also want to look back to a poem written by noted peace activist Ken Sehested called The Deuteronomist, which echoes Heaney’s and Mandela’s spirits.

SOUTH AFRICAN CENTENNIAL & INTERFAITH CONNECTIONS

In 2010, Stephanie Fenton’s Holidays column marked a centennial celebration in South Africa, including a number of key interfaith connections.

President Barack Obama honors Nelson Mandela’s courage

December 6, 2013 by

U.S. President Barack Obama honored Nelson Mandela, upon news of his death, with this statement that was carried by news media around the world:

At his trial in 1964, Nelson Mandela closed his statement from the dock saying, ‘I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

(Read an excerpt of Mandela’s original address in a second ReadTheSpirit post.)

And Nelson Mandela lived for that ideal, and he made it real. He achieved more than could be expected of any man.

Today, he has gone home. And we have lost one of the most influential, courageous and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth. He no longer belongs to us—he belongs to the ages.

Through his fierce dignity and unbending will to sacrifice his own freedom for the freedom of others, Madiba transformed South Africa—and moved all of us.

His journey from a prisoner to a president embodied the promise that human beings – and countries – can change for the better. His commitment to transfer power and reconcile with those who jailed him set an example that all humanity should aspire to, whether in the lives of nations or our own personal lives. And the fact that he did it all with grace and good humour, and an ability to acknowledge his own imperfections, only makes the man that much more remarkable.

As he once said, ‘I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”

I am one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela’s life. My very first political action, the first thing I ever did that involved an issue or a policy or politics, was a protest against apartheid. I studied his words and his writings. The day that he was released from prison gave me a sense of what human beings can do when they’re guided by their hopes and not by their fears.

And like so many around the globe, I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set. And so long as I live I will do what I can to learn from him.

To Graca Machel and to his family, Michelle and I extend our deepest sympathy and gratitude for sharing this extraordinary man with us. His life’s work meant long days away from those who loved him the most. And I only hope that the time spent with him these last few weeks brought peace and comfort to his family. To the people of South Africa, we draw strength from the example of renewal and reconciliation and resilience that you made real.

A free South Africa at peace with itself—that’s an example to the world. And that’s Madiba’s legacy to the nation he loved.

We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again. So it falls to us as best we can to forward the example that he set: to make decisions guided not by hate, but by love; to never discount the difference that one person can make; to strive for a future that is worthy of his sacrifice.

For now, let us pause and give thanks for the fact that Nelson Mandela lived—a man who took history in his hands, and bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice. May God Bless his memory and keep him in peace.

The N.T. Wright interview on the inspiration of Paul and Psalms

December 2, 2013 by

N.T. Wright is writing like a man on a mission, now that he has left his role as bishop to devote his remaining years to producing books that he hopes will inspire individuals and strengthen congregations. At the moment, he is publishing his longest book (1,700 pages bound into two volumes weighing in at 5 pounds) and one of his smallest books (a mere 200 pages, less than 10 ounces and small enough to tuck into a coat pocket).

Both books will be eagerly snapped up by the host of N.T. Wright fans around the English-speaking world.

ON PAUL

Paul and the Faithfulness of God:
Rowan Williams, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the worldwide Anglican Communion from 2002 until his retirement in 2012, describes this massive work with these words: “N.T. Wright’s long-awaited full-length study of St. Paul will not in any way disappoint. From the very first sentence, it holds the attention, arguing a strong, persuasive, coherent, and fresh case supported by immense scholarship and comprehensive theological intelligence.”

David Crumm, Editor of ReadTheSpirit, adds to that review: “Rowan Williams’ praise is well founded, although not every reader will find the entire book exciting from the first sentence. Certainly—clergy, educators, small-group leaders and men and women who love Bible study will enjoy this landmark in scholarship. More importantly, Wright uses this book to argue against those evangelical activists who use Paul as a source of one-line ‘proof texts.’ Today, Paul would be shocked by some of the ways his letters are quoted out of context, Wright tells readers. Paul never intended to serve as a finger-wagging disciplinarian. His vision was far, far larger, Wright argues.”

ON THE PSALMS

The Case for the Psalms: Why They Are Essential:
Once again, let’s turn to Rowan Williams: “A characteristic blend of learning, personal insight and spiritual perception. This book will be of enormous help to Christians who want to know how to make fuller use of one of the greatest scriptural resources for prayer.”

David Crumm of ReadTheSpirit says: “Buy this for your friends who rarely set foot inside a church—and for your friends who flock to megachurches with an electrified sound track of pop praise songs. Both will discover the world’s greatest collection of sacred hymns with a friendly yet passionate guide—Wright himself—to make the introductions.”

Tom Wright’s opening lines in the Psalms book: “This book is a personal plea for the Psalms, which make up the great hymnbook at the heart of the Bible, have been the daily lifeblood of Christians, and of course the Jewish people, from the earliest times. Yet in many  Christian circles today, the Psalms are simply not used. And in many places where they are still used, whether said or sung, they are often reduced to a few verses to be recited as ‘filler’ between other parts of the liturgy or worship services. In the later case, people often don’t seem to realize what they’re singing. In the former case, they don’t seem to realize what they’re missing. This book is an attempt to reverse those trends. I see this as an urgent task.”

David Crumm spoke with Wright via telephone during one of Wright’s recent U.S. tours …

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW
WITH N.T. ‘TOM’ WRIGHT
ON PAUL AND PSALMS

DAVID: The story behind this big new book on Paul is as dramatic as the arguments you make in the book itself. You gave up being a bishop to finish this book! Tell us about the decision.

TOM: That was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make professionally or personally. It was a huge joy to be the Bishop of Durham. That’s where I come from and I really loved being back there. I loved doing that work. Then, in 2009, I had a four-month sabbatical and went to Princeton to finish writing this book on Paul. I thought I could finish most of the book during the sabbatical, then I could go back to Durham, be bishop for another four or five years—and retire at that point. But, by Christmas of 2009, I had written a lot and researched a lot—and I was thoroughly enjoying the work—but I wasn’t able to get far enough toward completing the book so that I could just keep being Bishop of Durham and then expect to wrap up the final parts of the book in a weekend here and there.

The choice was very difficult. My wife and I were aware that this huge project was just sitting there unfinished. I either had to decide that this project was just a hobby until I later would retire as bishop—or we were going to have to consider moving elsewhere, soon. At the same time St. Andrews was knocking at my door, looking for a senior New Testament person for their staff. All the lights turned green in that direction and we were astonished at how well everything worked out. I know my decision shocked a lot of people, including some of my friends. But the move enabled me to finish this and other writing, as well. (For more on the chronology of these moves, see our N.T. Wright Resource Page.)

DAVID: So, the next question is: Can readers dive into this book on Paul, or do they have to read the three previous books in this overall series? Starting with this book, they will miss the full sweep of your previous three volumes in the series, but they clearly can find a lot of new insights here with Paul. What do you think?

TOM: Yes, I think someone can pick up this book and read it from start to finish, without first reading all the others. Think about it! (laughing) It’s enough to ask someone to read these 1,700 pages! It would be just too daunting to suggest that they have to start by reading a couple thousand pages of other books before they can even open this one on Paul. Sure, this book stands on the shoulders of my earlier books. But this one, I hope, is worth reading even as a freestanding book.

TOM WRIGHT: A REBUKE OF PROOF TEXTING

DAVID: There are sections of this new book that will be daunting to general readers. But there also are sections that are very quotable. I marked a lot of them in my copy of the book. Let me zero in on one immediately. You take aim at proof-texting evangelicals who want to chop up Paul into a set of individual rules to be followed one by one.

Let me read a section from your book. You write, “I marvel in particular that many commentaries, which one might suppose to be committed to following the argument of the text they are studying, manage not to do that, but instead to treat a Pauline letter as if it were a collection of maxims, detached theological statements, plus occasional ‘proofs from scripture’ and the like. I take it as axiomatic, on the contrary, that Paul deliberately laid out whole arguments, not just bits and pieces, miscellaneous topoi which just happen to turn up in these irrelevant ‘contingent’ contexts like oddly shaped pearls on an irrelevant string.”

That’s fairly pointed language. Proof texting isn’t the way to read Paul!

TOM: Well, of course, we can say that there are places in Paul’s writing where you can put in a thumb and pull out a plum. There are lines in Paul where he sums up some of his arguments, for example. But the point I am making in that section you just read is: Let’s be sure that, if you’re reading one sentence, that we also see the context of the paragraph, and the context of the entire letter. By relying exclusively on a single verse, we can tend to distort the big picture. And the big picture is that Paul was developing a whole new way of looking at the world, at God and at everything else.

‘LAUNCHING CHRISTIAN PUBLIC THEOLOGY’

DAVID: The larger argument that runs through these 1,700 pages is that Paul was a theologian, not just a finger-wagging problem solver. Even though Paul didn’t sit back and write out a huge theological masterwork—you argue that Paul really did see himself as revealing a much bigger picture of Christian theology. People who are obsessed with the individual rules miss the bigger picture.

TOM: One of the great strands that runs through this new Paul book is that Paul was launching Christian public theology. This was not a private project. He was launching a worldview that could hold its head up so that people could look deeply into this theology and say, “My goodness. This makes sense.”

DAVID: Here’s another shocker for some of your evangelical fans: You argue very strongly in this new book that Paul was not a world-rejecting theologian. In other words, Paul believed that this world is the one God is perfecting. Christianity is not about simply saving your soul, grabbing a ticket to heaven somewhere over yonder—and this world be damned. That wasn’t Paul’s viewpoint.

TOM: It’s ironic and amusing to me that some American evangelicals have this as a cultural marker. It’s ironic because America—of all the countries in the world—is so wonderfully supplied with resources and has so many rich people living there. The evangelical community itself has often been quite well to do and powerful. Yes, there are many poor evangelicals, but there also are many wealthy and influential ones as well. So, why reject this world? To me, that’s an irony.

But, you are correct: I want to say very clearly to readers that, no, we are not merely passing through this world. That idea is a complete misunderstanding of the whole New Testament. That idea of rejecting this world goes back to the Middle Ages when this present world was a dark and gloomy and terrible place and the only thing you realistically could do was to say your prayers and hope for a better world elsewhere. But why should this remain a 19th or 20th century evangelical hangup?

If people are still claiming that God is not interested in this world, then I say that kind of preaching would leave Paul wringing his hands! God’s purpose is to renew the world—not to replace it!

DAVID: Let me read a few lines I marked, sprinkled through this book. Here’s one: “The reign of God’s restorative justice and healing peace is meant for this world, not for some other.” Here’s another one: “Paul believes that he is living in the world over which Jesus, the Messiah, already reigns as Lord.” And here’s one more, even stronger: “Paul did not see himself as simply snatching souls out of this world’s wreck in order to populate a Platonic heaven. In the light of Paul’s statements in various places about his hope for the whole creation, we should take seriously what he says about God reconciling ‘the world’ to himself.”

In one of my favorite passages in your new book, you use the British metaphor of teatime. You say that faith is not about dreaming of teatime in heaven, somewhere else. It’s about actually getting out the china and preparing the tea and sandwiches, every day, in this world.

TOM: That’s exactly right.

Now, the danger of saying this is that people must see what I’m writing here in the context of the entire New Testament. People may think I’m preaching the old Social Gospel. “We’ve heard that and it didn’t work,” they will say. “Oh, he’s just saying we should be nice to each other and take care of the poor.”

I want to say to them, “Well, one reason the old approach to the Social Gospel didn’t work is that we tried it in the wrong framework. If we let him, Paul will show us a far larger framework of what we should be about in this world.”

Actually, one of the most exciting things I experienced as Bishop of Durham was to work with people in ordinary churches who were out in their streets and community doing the things the church should be doing. I’m talking about ordinary little churches on the street corner—sometimes with just 50 people on a Sunday morning. But they were true followers of Jesus and they were doing things because that’s what followers of Jesus do: They were helping out in old people’s homes, they were visiting prisoners, they were feeding people.

It’s when people gather and follow Jesus like this that other people begin to ask: Who are these people? Why are these people doing these things? Why aren’t they just sitting at home and watching the television like other people?

This is how Christianity spread two millennia ago. It happened when people began asking these very questions: Who are these people living like this?

The thing that really matters is the actual transformation of human communities by the self-sacrificial love of those who are grasped by the sacrificial love of God in Christ. That’s the inauguration of God’s new world. I’m certainly not preaching an old line about shining a little candle in the darkness to make one feel better. I’m talking about something bigger: Rays breaking through in our world that show the sunrise is coming.

POINTING TOWARD ROMANS 14

DAVID: I’ve been asking you about provocative passages in your book, but it’s easy to see that you really do intend this new book on Paul to serve as a healing manifesto. In asking these questions, I’m pointing out what I see as a major opportunity with this book: Sure, your more conservative American fans will invest in this big new book. But I think there’s a whole lot of refreshing, deeply insightful analysis here that mainliners and Catholics will find fascinating, as well. I think, at this point, your—shall we say—your religious-political viewpoint is beyond the typical American categories. To some, you continue to read like a conservative; to others, you read like an American liberal.

I think the foundational touch points in scripture are fascinating, too. One of the passages from Paul that you refer to at least a half dozen times through this new book is Romans 14. This is where Paul urges Christians not to let disputable issues divide them.

TOM: Romans 14 is addressing the Christians in Rome, knowing that there are several different house churches there, quite probably from different cultural backgrounds. Some were Jewish Christians who believed that they must keep every detail in the Torah and that they must not keep company with people who didn’t see it that way. Then there were Gentile Christians who were saying: Well, this is a whole new thing, so we can ignore those Jewish Christians down the road. In Romans 14, Paul is skillfully addressing these issues.

DAVID: You make several references to the way you translate 14:1. In your own earlier book, called the Kingdom New Testament, you translate it as: “Welcome someone who is weak in faith, but not in order to have disputes on difficult points.” This is part of an argument that comes full flower, later in Chapter 14, when Paul writes—and, again, this is your translation: “Do not, then, pass judgment on one another any longer. If you want to exercise your judgment, do so on this question: how to avoid placing obstacles or stumbling blocks in front of a fellow family member.”

TOM: In Romans 14:1—and I do have the Greek in front of me as we are talking—Paul is describing disputes about matters with different judgments in the community. The point he is making is that people should get together and not use differences of opinion as a point of squabbling.

Now, I need to say: For Paul there are some lines in the sand, or red lines we might call them, but part of the tricky thing in reading Paul is finding where he actually says there is a line that no one can cross and remain within the fellowship of the Messiah people.

In this section of Romans he was more concerned about ending divisions that came down to squabbling and discrimination over differences of opinion. He wanted people to see beyond those squabbles.

DAVID: In this book on Paul, I should point out: You don’t really dive deeply into these specific disputable issues. In other words, in these 1,700 pages, you don’t go on to sort out the further interpretation of these passages as it relates to Paul’s specific moral code. That’s for another book. This book is about Paul’s larger theological worldview. He wanted people to stop squabbling about disputable issues because Paul’s goal was a far larger community coming together as, to use your phrase, “Messiah people.” The first step, in Paul’s view, was welcoming people so they could form this people Jesus was calling into being.

Now, I also need to step back for a moment. I know you’ve got at least a couple more big volumes in this overall series yet to come. And, we should mention, as well, the first three books in this series. Let’s do it as three short questions and answers. So, give us a little summary of Part 1, which was The New Testament and the People of God, back in 1992. It still gets rave reviews from your readers. There are now 40 reviews on Amazon and 38 of them give it 4 or 5 stars. And—this is key—people are still posting glowing reviews on a book that’s been out for more than 20 years! So, in a line or two, what’s it about?

TOM: In that first book, I tried to cover things I wanted my students to know before they started a serious study of the New Testament. This book is a sketch of 1st century Judaism and what early Christianity was all about.

DAVID: Part 2 was Jesus and the Victory of God. Again, rave reviews on Amazon: 50 out of 52 reviews give it 4 or 5 stars. Summarize it?

TOM: This is a full-scale attempt to put Jesus of Nazareth in a historical context and to ask the questions: What were his aims? What did he think he was supposed to be doing? Why did he die? What did he mean when he said God’s Kingdom is arriving?

DAVID: Part 3 was The Resurrection of the Son of God. This time 62 of 69 reviews are 4 or 5 stars. Again, can you give us just a line or two describing it?

TOM: This book asks: What exactly happened on Easter morning? But in order to address that question, we have to look at beliefs about what happened across the ancient world, the ancient Jewish world and the emerging Christian world.

TOM WRIGHT PLEADS FOR THE PSALMS

DAVID: Finally, I want to ask about the new book on Psalms. I think this little book is going to be very popular with a lot of readers. But the most striking quality in this book is passion. You really are pleading for the Psalms here, right?

TOM: I have been shocked over the last decade or two because in my country and I think in yours, too, some of the most vibrant and lively Christian churches seem to be giving up on the Psalms. Some of these churches have very lively worship songs they like to sing. But, in my view, biblically rooted Christians should place the Psalms absolutely at the center of worship. Yet, Psalms are nearly forgotten in many places.

I like creative new music and it’s wonderful when churches have people writing these new songs, but I don’t think there’s ever been a serious Christian movement in the last 2000 years that didn’t place the Psalms at the core of worship and devotional life. I look at the present context, which is Psalms missing in many churches, and I am saying to readers: What is wrong with this picture?

DAVID: It’s more than a matter of history. Most importantly, as you point out in your book, the Psalms contain the whole range of human emotion—crying out toward God in all conditions of life, right?

TOM: There’s no emotion we can feel that the Psalms don’t already have in spades. This allows us to bring anything we can conceive in our human lives today—whatever challenges we face—and find them voiced in the Psalms long before us. If we forget the Psalms, we are aiming toward shallow, transparent Christianity.

DAVID: Well, our readers will get the point after that kind of comment. You feel very strongly about this.

TOM: My publisher at HarperOne, Mickey Maudlin, says we should be asking: What would Jesus sing? Maybe we can get more people asking: “WWJS?” I’ve actually used that line in talks. The Psalms are Jesus’ hymnbook. These Psalms are songs Jesus would have sung and that Jesus wants us to sing with him, today.

DAVID: Finally, I’m sure our readers would like to know: What’s next?

TOM: Well, I still haven’t finished what I regard as the backup book for the Paul project, which also will be from Fortress Press: Paul and His Recent Interpreters. I was going to finish it this past summer, but the copyediting for this massive 1,700-page book took all summer. There already are references out there to this next book, but the truth is: It isn’t finished yet. That will come soon, but it’s been delayed.

Then, I’m supposed to be doing a commentary on Galatians for Eerdmans. There are a whole lot of things I’m hoping to do further down the track.

DAVID: Well, we’ll keep in touch. Our readers will stay tuned.

Want more on N.T. Tom Wright?

Visit our extensive N.T. Wright Resource Page for summaries of his earlier books and links to earlier interviews with the Bible scholar.

(Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, spirituality, values and interfaith and cross-cultural issues.)