It seems to me that a good deal of “religious” conversation boils down to two things. The first is conversation as reporting. This usually comes from a good place, a place of some interest and concern. Sometimes it can grow into a full conversation, but often it remains a shallow (but necessary) check-in. And sometimes it can lead to the second kind of conversation: conversation for recruitment. Because there are always needs, especially in any organization with strong non-profit/volunteer-dependent work to do. I imagine we have all been on both sides of this kind of conversation. It’s one of the things I grew tired of that led to my “long epilogue” period a while ago.
I’d like to think we’re all hoping and longing for something more in our “religious” conversations (or just conversations in general . . . unless we can accept that all conversations have an underlying religious nature to them). One of the last things I’d like to mention from The Soul of Desire by Curt Thompson has to do with what we really want, what we’re always looking for, in relationships and conversations. They are mentioned throughout the book without ever really getting a full explanation (as best as I can recall or as my notes reflect), but one you see them, they make sense.
Thompson suggests that there are four things that we are always looking for but that they are actually “relational in nature . . . not so much something we acquire as something we share with others.” That’s an interesting nuance, realizing that you can’t “catch them all” and keep them for yourself. That leaves them fleeting, fragile, and ultimately dependent on others. These four things he calls the Four S’s: being seen, soothed, safe, and secure. In healthy relationships, we are not invisible, not irritated, don’t feel endangered by the immediate, and don’t feel like we have to look over our shoulders to the periphery. I don’t think the four S’s mean that we are being coddled; there’s something about this list that feels more like solid ground for real action than anything else.
Interestingly enough, the friars at the Poco a Poco podcast often use some of these words, or at least the sense of them, when they talk about how we relate to God. You can find a couple of examples in this podcast on loneliness and this one on being chosen. I do think our very human need for this things (and what we do when we can’t find them) speaks powerfully of the way that God has designed us while also reminding us how fragile these vital things are. We’re looking for them even when we don’t realize it, hoping to find it everywhere we turn. Where else better to find them than in our “religious conversations”?
Thompson’s The Soul of Desire has a lot in common with the recent work of Andrew Root (When Church Stops Working and Evangelism in an Age of Despair), it’s just that Thompson starts with the individual and moves quickly to the communal. Both writers want us to think about what it means to sit with someone else, what it means to discern the work of God in the life of a person trying to make sense of the mess of life. Root’s approach is more organic; Thompson’s is more organized and (for lack of a better term) psychologized. Thompson also starts with a nice nod to Smith’s You Are What You Love and about mankind’s nature to want, to desire (thus the book’s title). A quote from early in The Soul of Desire:
One of the books that I finished reading during my summer retreat was Fountain of Salvation by Fred Sanders. Unlike The Deep Things of God, Sanders’s other recent book on the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, Fountain of Salvation is a collection of essays that cover a wide number of angles in relation to the Christian assertion of the triune nature of God. Even though it read like a more academic book, Fountain of Salvation still had a great authorial voice that brought in a broad collection of sources from the Christian tradition about the connection between the Trinity and salvation.
(I do believe, by the way, that it’s difficult making and viewing superhero movies post-Endgame. By the end of Marvel’s “Infinity Saga,” viewers were used to quality storytelling involving multiple characters interacting on multiple levels. Spider-Man: No Way Home was able to replicate that density well because it brought in two other Spider-Men. You could argue that also worked with Deadpool/Wolverine and its use of the multiverse. All to say that even the best superhero movie post-Endgame will likely feel slight. And so you walk into Superman with advice given by others: think of it like the first Iron Man movie, when there wasn’t much expectation of anything too far beyond it.)
Space Enough, and Time 