Space Enough, and Time

Reflections on Mortal Goods by Ephraim Radner, Part Seven

I find two things particularly encouraging as Radner brings the first major section of Mortal Goods to a close.  He has already laid the groundwork for a conversation about “Christian politics” by reminding us that life is rooted in what God gives us, lives of sojourning and beauty in every respect (even in the difficult and chaotic).  His last turn, then, is about the “incompleteness” of a life.  That “incompleteness” partially manifests itself in our need for others, and of our lives being embedded with the lives of others whether we like it or not.  And to make sense of this, he turns to a monk I’m quite fond of: Benedict of Nursia.

I’ve been either thinking about or around the ideas of Saint Benedict for almost two decades now.  He became a part of my own faith journey early on in my time in Hawaii.  His “rule” comes back around into my orbit every few years in different ways, from different sources.  And he comes back around this time through Radner.  Benedict has a great vision for what it means to live simply and in community in a way that makes God central.  Radner writes:

It turns out, however, that in Benedict’s vision, saving one’s soul, as it were, is just life with others, not a common life as a means but as the very shape of “service” (a great Benedictine term) itself.

And then:

We cannot live without others; we cannot live with them as we choose.

Benedict’s Rule has much to say about such living, most of it “practical” while all of it being deeply “spiritual” in a way that would catch many of us off-guard in our modern way of thinking about community.  The monks: they are getting something right, something that we should learn from.

The second thing that I find encouraging as Radner brings this section of the book to an end is the added detail about his own life: his growing up, his missionary service, the “evolution” of his understanding of life across the years.  He speaks soberingly and realistically, which is a nice contrast to other writers who say great things but don’t necessarily root those things in their own lived experiences.  Radner does that here to a proper amount, and it is encouraging.

The shape of this life, my life, is hardly clear in light of this.  But just because of this comprehensive inclusion of us all in the wide spin of God’s creation, we are placed within a wider act of God, a defining relationship of receipt.  I am willing, therefore, to offer this life, though it seems so formless in its pieces.  Grace holds it together, even as the formless “it” is still something given over to me and seems to constitute all I have.  Though I alone can offer it, dislocated and incomplete as it is, my life’s jagged form is my own kind of grateful gathering of those I live with.  My life— and thus my offering— takes in my mother’s and my sister’s lives (and deaths), my children’s and my friends’, my spouse’s, and all the smaller and greater joys and catastrophes of their existence. My offering rephrases them all, articulates their forms in a singular and intentional fashion.

And so all of the threads, the good and the bad, are redeemed in their being brought to God as the offering of a life.  Not something taught often, even for Radner, but now being taught for others (those like his own children).  Near the end of the section’s final chapter he writes this:

We shall need to learn to live with all the upendings of our tiny spheres of life, endure them, find light within them, and then offer them up to God.  And someone must teach us how. This is what any Christian political responsibility bears most heavily as a calling.

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This is a good and necessary stopping point for these reflections, for me and for now.  These last few posts have been highlights of the book for me.  I’ll definitely revisit the ideas of the book, though not as part of this “series.”  For years I have felt the importance of the little things, the regular things, in life (first thanks to writers like Frederick Buechner and now through writers like Ephraim Radner).  It’s the stuff of “ordinary time” for me.  I’m grateful for the way Radner sets the stage for conversation, sometimes provocatively, always interestingly.  And I’m glad he “lands” with some more biography and with a mention of Benedict, who I always think has much to teach us about Christian life together.

Reflections on Mortal Goods by Ephraim Radner, Part Three

The third chapter of Ephraim Radner’s Mortal Goods is one that really sings to me.  After getting the lay of the land as a place and time for “evil days,” Radner dives right into what it means to try and live amidst those days.  He asks:

Where shall we escape the evil that turns each day into a test? How do we locate in time the way that the Good Life, however much entwined with “today” and thus with today’s evils, also engage something beyond such contemporary burdens? Another way of putting the question is, “Are we heading somewhere?”

I do think it is a step, not quite a leap, to go from being somewhere to heading somewhere on Radner’s part, as he is particularly concerned with the here-and-now.  But (he is aware that) the Biblical Story is full of movement: Abraham and Canaan, Moses and the Promised Land, a faithful family on the way to Jerusalem for a feast.  So even in a stationary life, there is a pull of some kind of movement.  Radner points to the Christian tradition’s image of “sojourning” as a way of understanding this movement, a way that is “both direction and posture, both of which are determined by a director and a form.”

There are Old Testament and New Testament threads for sojourning, what Radner points to in Psalm 119 as being “a stranger on the earth.”  And with the image of the stranger comes the image of the pilgrim, which also has root in the broader Christian tradition.  A great line from Radner about being a pilgrim:

To be a pilgrim is a life itself, not the end of a life.

Which is a great distinction and a good note.  Because the destination matters, and the destination is something like a step beyond the life itself.  And while Radner restrains himself from being to afterlife-centric (he is, after all, focusing on mortal goods), he does want his readers to see that the pilgrim/stranger life is intrinsic to the Christian life.  He goes on to say:

The fact that sojourning is the posture of a mortal human being simply means that the human creature is constantly being thrust back into a world of things, of created gifts and limitations, of swimming within them, of finding them ever anew and losing them ever anew, such that “newness” is both real and not capable of being tamed or manipulated— as much a source of fear, therefore, as of promise or hope.

In some sense, the image of the pilgrim/stranger is one doing his or her best to live well in the “now but not yet” of God’s kingdom.  Living in the tension of what is right in front of you and what is in the best part of your heart (should?) throw you back on that which does not change.  But Radner is also wise to note another dimension that exists for the Christian in this life:

The Christians Peter calls “strangers” (1 Peter 2:11) are not “on their way to Zion”; the are Zion in this place.  What they are close to is Jesus, whose own life is manifested in suffering, resurrection, vindication, and glory, the Word made flesh.

Lewis would call the church, the gathering of Christians in this life, an “outpost,” I think.  Lots of Christians would name it as such.  It’s meant to be a kind of precursor to the end of a pilgrim life, not everything eternal, but something closer in that direction or way of being.

All of this does make you wonder how comfortable we have become in the “now” that no longer really points to the “not yet.”  It leaves you wondering how well we see ourselves and our current predicament (or if the predicament even matters).  That good and healthy tension should always be there, should not come as a surprise to us.  It doesn’t mean that it dictates real hope and joy; it’s the knowledge of real joy and hope that makes the tension possible.

Reflections on Mortal Goods by Ephraim Radner, Part Two

In the last few weeks of my spring course, we use 1 John as our opening Scripture.  The letter allows for a number of call-backs to both the Old Testament and John’s Gospel.  He often refers to his readers as “dear children,” which is an opportunity for me to remind my students that he’s not being dismissive so much as he is showing compassion and care for them in a world of darkness and light.  I was glad to see Ephraim Radner reference 1 John as an example of a “letter to children,” which is what Radner intends Mortal Goods to be.  Radner explains:

I want my children to live well.I want them, as I will explore the matter, to live a good life, perhaps even “the Good Life,” as philosophers have envisaged it.To do that, however, they must be willing to inhabit a common space where God gives all, where all is taken away, and where, in the midst of this grand movement, a few clear lines of divine glory are etched, received, and followed.

He also says something in reference to the call in Ecclesiastes to remember God in our youth that has stuck with me (and might work its way into a talk at school next month):

“Remembering thy Creator” now, for the young, is of paramount importance because the discipline of remembering is learned early on, if it is to be used at all.

Radner, like so many others, feels a real impetus for passing down what he believes and lives.  A big part of what I like about the first half of Radner’s book, though, is his choice to take time to set real context.  Because, in a sense, advice is always contextual.  And while the context he gives isn’t necessarily bad news, it is a reminder that things aren’t (nor have they ever been) as rosy as they might seem:

If we wish to help our children live the Good Life, we must surely ask where, in fact, the Good Life is to be lived. And the answer is “in the midst of evil days.” Perhaps not always, not for everyone. But it seems that this is the time in which I am now writing, and it is also so for those to whom I write: the days are evil indeed.

Radner gets this idea, or at least this particular wording from Paul’s challenge in his letter to the Ephesians to make the most of their time, because the days are evil (5:15-16).  But it’s not a total either-or for Radner.  Life is rarely that cut-and-dry:

The Good Life is possible, surely, in the midst of any “day,” good or evil. For God offers goods, and hence the Good itself somehow, in the midst of all days, since every day is his. He calls us into the good of living “in and through.” And for this, God gives grace that is joined to the very limitations that shape our burdens.

Radner points out an interesting thread in our 21st century America struggles.  As he sees it, the struggle starts with irresolution and leads to a growing sense of impossibility:

The experience of irresolution— of not “solving” the problems one can identify— appears to be growing into a larger vision of impossibility that touches on a loss of faith in family and communal identities, in legislative and broader political systems, in religious claims themselves (not just “institutions,” a problem in earlier ages), in the future itself.

Radner gives no easy answers, of course.  He’s really just getting started in his overall argument.  One could easily make a connection between the “abnormal politics” previously mentioned and today’s “vision of impossibility” than many people live with.  These are especially great questions for the church, though many of us won’t particularly like where Radner leads . . . which is another reason he is worth listening to.