Thomas Aquinas’ “Prayer Before Study”

Ineffable Creator,
Who, from the treasures of Your wisdom,
has established three hierarchies of angels,
has arrayed them in marvelous order
above the fiery heavens,
and has marshaled the regions
of the universe with such artful skill,

You are proclaimed
the true font of light and wisdom,
and the primal origin
raised high beyond all things.

Pour forth a ray of Your brightness
into the darkened places of my mind;
disperse from my soul
the twofold darkness
into which I was born:
sin and ignorance.

You make eloquent the tongues of infants.
Refine my speech
and pour forth upon my lips
the goodness of Your blessing.

Grant to me
keenness of mind,
capacity to remember,
skill in learning,
subtlety to interpret,
and eloquence in speech.

May You
guide the beginning of my work,
direct its progress,
and bring it to completion.

You Who are true God and true Man,
Who live and reign, world without end.

Amen

” . . . Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”–Colossians 2:2,3

“. . . the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.”–Psalm 19:7

Embodiment # 3: excerpts from reflection paper

“Come in! Come in!”  The high A notes fly and spin out of my mouth as I sing what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Magi in the Christmas song “Three Kings.”  This part of the song is absolutely exhilarating.  The polyphony of the choir uniting around the final “Come” is my favorite part of the Lessons and Carols’ repertoire.  When I decided to fast weekly for my embodiment project, the same invitation to “come” was what I sensed most.  I wrote in my journal:

Fasting and embodiment—I think I am on the brink of experiencing the ‘wine and milk without money and without cost’ (Isaiah 55:1).  . . . It seems like I have defined ‘journaling it out’ as the way to experience this wine and milk.  . . . I have defined experiencing you as a cognitive/emotional clarity.  I think that’s true, but I’m sensing an invitation to more . . . Lately, though, as I’ve been thinking about this nebulous idea of “embodiment” I’ve been realizing there is so much MORE of God to experience and enjoy through acknowledging the body.  I don’t know if it is proper that I have separated prayer and journaling and meditation on Scripture from bodily practices.

I sensed a longing to know God not just in my head but also in my very body through hunger and satisfaction.  As I tried to wrap my mind around fasting, Isaiah 58 intrigued me.  Why was there such a stark connection between justice and spiritual practices?  I wrote in my journal,

I’m not sure I understand the connection yet.  But somehow fasting reinforces the knowledge that I am not my own.  This attitude is what enables me to “pour myself out for the hungry” (Isaiah 58: 10). I am praying that this verse becomes alive to me during this intentional time of practices.

So I embarked on fasting once a week from lunch.  This decision revealed weaknesses in unprecedented ways.  On the day of my first successful attempt, I wrote,  “It’s so glorified, but really I found it quite miserable.  It’s very unlike forgetting to eat lunch because you’re so busy.”  On and off throughout the semester, I would plan to fast, and then skip it by making some excuse about a test, wanting to work out, or scheduling a lunch date.  Or worse, I would set out to do it, and then the idea of something immediate and delicious, like– dare I admit it–Chik-fil-a, would come into my head.

[...]

Although it was a struggle for the rest of the semester to consistently choose to fast on Thursdays or Fridays, the bitter hunger pangs gave way to a sweet satisfaction of learning to walk by the Spirit.  There were moments and lessons of “wine and milk” in the midst of hunger.

[...]

Fasting provided an occasion for choosing to not let my feelings of what I thought was real determine reality.  When I was fasting and felt hungry, I had to press through the feeling of hunger and not let my overwhelming physical and emotional desire for food be the guide of my action.  Likewise, when I feel anxious, I do not have to let that feeling or compulsion be defining of reality or a guide to my living.  Rather, fasting taught me that in hunger and in satisfaction, in anxiety and in peace, I walk by the Spirit.  As Romans 8: 11 explains, this Spirit not only guides my actions but gives life to my very body: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.”  Fasting has served (and I think will continue to serve!) to begin to form in my body a responsiveness not first to my physical desires, emotional leanings, or strange thoughts, but first to the life-giving Spirit of God.

If I walk by the Spirit, I am more aware of those who have to work and produce in spite of constant hunger.  If I walk by the Spirit, I can live beyond the Great Hall and Chik-fil-a beckoning me constantly with the opportunity to eat.  If I walk by the Spirit, I can cultivate a character that shares food, in many forms, with the hungry.  I can know God as the source of my whole life.  I can say with Jesus, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me.” (John 4:34).  I can learn to live my life the way I live when I sing: knowing God in my body’s very participation in redemptive beauty.  I can hear the Spirit still saying, “Come in! Come in!”

The redemption of gender

Augustine on gender at the eschaton from City of God:

“For then there will be no lust . . . Vice will be taken away from those bodies, therefore, and nature preserved.  And the sex of a woman is not a vice, but nature.  They will then be exempt from sexual intercourse and childbearing, but the female parts will nonetheless remain in being, accommodated not to the old uses, but to a new beauty, which, so far from inciting lust, which no longer exists, will move us to praise the wisdom and clemency of God, Who both made what was not and redeemed from corruption what He made.”

Do we know how radical that is?! The sex of a woman is not a vice.  For Augustine, who was not quiet about his sexual struggles, to write this, is HUGE.

As I have been in my Homosexuality, Controversy, and the Bible class this semester, I have been thinking a lot about sexuality, gender, and theological anthropology.  From where in the Christian narrative do we derive our understanding of the function/telos/purpose of sexuality and gender?  For many, creation seems the formidable place to begin.  We can delve the depths of Eden and inquire of the imago Dei.  While I think there is value in looking to creation, the creation story is limited in what it can offer to the conversation.  When God created Adam and Eve, he not only created gender, but he created marriage.  So, very often, I find troubling deriving specific ethics or norms about gender from the creation story because it is so contextualized to the marriage relationship.  I’m all about the complementarity of the sexes, but overly defining femininity or masculinity in terms of a marriage relationship is problematic for the single person–among whose ranks is Jesus Christ, himself.

Perhaps then, eschatology and a theology of the resurrection is the best place to look for a cogent theological anthropology of gender and sexuality.  Beth Felker Jones, Cherith Fee Nordling, Warren Smith, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine have all served to spark some of these burgeoning ideas.  Many have assumed that marriage and gender will not exist in the eschaton based on Jesus’s words in Matthew 22:30, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”

So, my question is, if marriage will not exist eschatologically, will gender? While Gregory of Nyssa took that to mean gender itself will not exist eschatologically (because of a more involved argument of gender being created simply for procreation), Augustine appears to think gender will exist eschatologically, albeit in a transformed way.   From a feminist theological perspective, to many this seems quite the opposite of shalom.  So much violence, coercion, and oppression has resulted from our gendered bodies.  It seems the only hopeful way forward is to work to eradicate gender distinctions (women can do everything men can do) or essentialize them (I am my uterus). Rather, Beth Felker Jones makes clear that the beauty of the new heavens and the new earth, the beauty of shalom is PEACE.  Peace that does not demand the eradication of distinction, but unity in it.  As Jones says, the lion and lamb are not transformed into the same thing, rather they lie down with one another–unity in distinction.  To eradicate such distinctions would in itself violent and antithetical to eschatological peace.

Could this also be the case for gender.   I still have yet to make sense of Galatians 3:28 here, but the beauty of unity in distinction that we see in gender in creation might also be helpfully understood eschatologically in Augustine’s quote.  Perhaps also this has a Trinitarian basis?

So much to think about!  Many of these are incomplete thoughts, but I feel on the verge of something…oh, theological angst…

Oh Humphrey and Ingrid–can you help me?

10 Things I love about Durham…

1. The view from my window. (which is not the Duke Chapel–that’s the view from the Bostock library windows)

2. Places like Parker and Otis.

3. Many fun things to do through Duke that are free for students: movies on campus, games (except basketball), the Nasher Art Musem, the Sarah P. Duke gardens…

4.  Kyle

5. Blacknall

6. Counter Culture coffee.

7. Lots of fun trails.

8. Learning from so many incredible professors at Duke Divinity School (such as Amy-Laura Hall, Stephen Chapman, Warren Smith, Lauren Winner, Ellen Davis, Sam Wells, Douglas Campbell, Reinhard Hütter…)

9.  Proximity to Chapel Hill and Raleigh.

10. New fun friends!

Missing St. Stephen’s…

I attended a little African Methodist Episcopal church last year during my time at the Trinity Forum Academy in rural Maryland.  St. Stephen’s started out feeling like a cultural experience but quickly became a place of refreshment and praise on my Sundays.  I was thinking about it today as I read Between Sundays: Black Women and the Everyday Struggles of Faith by Marla Frederick.  (click to read a summary).

I was reminded of my favorite song we would sing:

There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus

No, not one! No, not one!

None else could heal all our soul’s diseases,

No, not one! No, not one!

You know, Jesus knows all about our struggles,

He will guide us ’til the day is done;

There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus,

No, not one! No, not one!

Into Great Silence

I had to watch this documentary for spirituality class.  Into Great Silence portrays the life of a Carthusian monastery in Alpine France.  There are only a few Carthusian monasteries still in existence, and they still live in many ways that the first Carthusians live.  They are a cloistered order, meaning when they enter in they do not leave (except for a brief period on Sundays),and they do not have visitors (except once a years). After asking to film the order, the director had to wait 16 years before he was allowed to begin production!

The monks live in silence and solitude.  They only speak in corporate worship through reading, chanting, prayer.  They remain alone in their cells except for the appointed times for corporate worship.  The above image shows the inner corridor by which all of their cells are connected.  Each cell has a chute by which food is passed from the outside to the inside, so that the monk does not have to be disturbed.

Carthusians see it as their purpose to study and pray.  While at first, I thought their lives were antithetical to the community life that the early church seems called to, their lives are distinctly community-oriented.  They take care of each other, especially the aging among them, with attention and committment.  And they pray for the needs of the world.  Constantly.  As Dr. Winner mentioned, what we think of their lives comes down in large part to our doctrine of prayer.  Could it be that their vocations–as different it may seem to us New Wave Calvinists who cling to “cultural engagement”–are fulfilling a distinct and important function in the grand ecclesia? I have an inkling that their prayers are felt in the world more than we will ever know.

The view from my window

is so nice… It’s so great to live in places with seasons!

Embodiment # 2

Here are some more thoughts I’ve had about spiritual practices of “embodiment”:

1. The need for fasting to be accompanied with feasting.

2. The laying of hands when someone prays for you is an important way that another person’s whole self is interceding on your behalf. (I experienced this at the Bnall women’s retreat–great).

3. Embodying practices of abstention (like fasting) show me how I live by my desires/emotions.  I often let myself and my self’s understanding of reality create what is real to me.  This would be as opposed to walking by the Spirit and living all of life as a response to the calling of God.  Often I don’t live with the openness of Isaiah saying, “Here I am!”  Rather, I often let my emotions, bodily longings, fears, etc. determine what I think is real.  This is one really important thing fasting has taught me.

4. Embodying practices of abstention also free time for the service of others.  Augustine wrote, “Often, too, reflection upon the things we need for carrying on this life injures the eye of our spirit and bedims it; and for the most part it divides our heart, so that in the things which to all appearances we do rightly in our relations with our fellow men, we actually fail to do them with the intention the Lord demands.” Augustine is describing that the constant thought for food required for survival is at times an impediment to fulfilling the law of love present in Jesus’ command.  By way of a negative explanation, Augustine shows that fasting presents a freedom from the daily task of food acquisition and preparation, which becomes a freedom for loving the neighbor.

5. Practices of embodiment are really hard to do in isolation from community.  Which also hits at the need for a Trinitarian vision for practices of embodiment (we discussed this in Dr.Winner’s class).

6. You can bodily fast from things other than food.  Like criticism. Or preference. Or buying clothes.

7.  All spiritual practices need to be understood through the lens of Jesus’ words in Matthew 22:37-39:

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Bricks Without Straw

“During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.  Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God.  And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.  God saw the people of Israel–and God knew.”

–Exodus 2: 23-25

This past weekend I attended the Blacknall Women’s Retreat.  So good.  So refreshing.  So revealing that when I finally slow down all the anxiety inside of me comes rushing out and its icky but needs to leave.

Our speaker was Margot Starbuck Hausmann, a member of Blacknall and recent author of The Girl in the Orange Dress. (Check out http://www.margotstarbuck.com/index.html).  I recommend it (even though I haven’t read it) because she was a terrific teacher and speaker, pointing us to the truth of who God is.  Her big thing is “God is with us and for us.”  I initially thought it sounded kinda cheesey.  Like, God is my best friend who loves me a lot.  But then she used Exodus–you can’t euphemize God when you use Exodus.

During my solitude time, I reflected on Pharaoh’s command to the Hebrews to make bricks without of straw.  To do the impossible.  The slavery of sin and perfectionism can drive me to think of God as Pharaoh–a mean taskmaster who desires me to do the impossible.  Into this world, God makes Himself known to Moses and the people of Israel as the Deliverer, Covenant-Maker, and Lawgiver.  He is the God who sees, hears, and knows (Exodus 2:23-25).  He became the God who was with them and for them, quite in contrast to the slavemaster Pharaoh who was apart from them and against them.  This God is with us and for us then makes his covenant of love to us by which we are able to rightly live in voluntary love and obedience.  I love the contrast between the slavery of making bricks out of straw and the loving obedience desired in the 10 Commandments–especially centralized around Sabbath.  The goal of deliverance and loving obedience is rest (especially evident in the Deuteronomy 5 version of the 10 Commandments).

God is with me and for me–not so cheesey.

on grades

One of my professors said this the other day:

“I do not know of a Duke graduate who was denied ordination because he got a 3.0 rather than a 3.8.  I do however know certain Duke honor graduates who were denied ordination because they came across as too arrogant. . . . Your grades are not a test, not a measure of our spirituality, not a measure of our calling, not a measure of whether you are fit for ministry . . . when you ascend and come before the throne of jdugment, our Lord’s not gonna ask ‘what’d you make on the CH 13 final?’ But he well may ask, “Did you do it for my glory our your pride?’ he may say, “Did you do it to honor the gifts I gave you or did you do just enough to squeak by?” That’s the real question.”

a) I am so blessed to have such professors

b) such a good reminder in the midst of feelings of “swampedness”

Isaiah 43: 2

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.