Greenflame

A bed-time prayer from my three year old daughter.

“Dear Jesus, please look after Daddy, and Jesus please look after Jesus. And Jesus please look after – who’s Jesus friend? Oh yes, God. – Jesus please look after God too. Amen.”

Spent part of yesterday lecturing on how the love relationship within the Trinity was picked up by various theologians’ understanding of the image of God. Sometimes the children’s simpler ways of expressing things work best – the members of the Trinity are friends.

Maggi’s recent posting Rahner was an amateur and Steve’s posting of a while back a jest at floating language struck chords with me. I’m a theologian by profession, spending my working week researching, developing and teaching theology yet I often think of myself as a “beginning theologian”. The more I know and study the more there is to explore within God and God’s creation.

The term “beginning theologian” is one that has stuck with me every since I read the excellent book Confessions of a Beginning Theologian by Elouise Renich Fraser, Professor of Systematic Theology at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (Philadelphia).

The book covers her journey from conservative Southern Baptist roots, through seminary and university theological studies, and into theological teaching. Through this all she learns

I hate looking and sounding like a beginner. Making mistakes and asking questions. Not sure yet where I’m going, much less how I’m going to get from here to there. Afraid of what might happen along the way. But God loves beginners.

Becoming a theologian is about becoming a beginner. It isn’t about whether you’re old enough, young enough, smart enough or good enough. . . .

It isn’t about becoming someone else, changing your personality or leaving your past behind. And it isn’t about becoming dull and dry, giving up fun and excitement, retreating from the world to attain some more exalted existence.

Definitely about being playful, an “amateur”, recognising that anyone who has had a thought about the divine is also a theologian, and that we make mistakes as we struggle to grasp the infinite. Highly reassuring.

Her book is interesting too in that it gives a woman’s perspective on the inside of seminaries and theology departments. In the book at one place she finds herself ostracized by conservative women for being “too feminist” while their liberal counterparts consider her “too fundamentalist”. Challenged me to consider how I view and treat my female colleagues and students.

So borrow the book and give it a read – even if you only read the first and last chapters it’ll help you get a feel for becoming a theologian.

There are some excerpts from the book can be found at Amazon.

Came across this today while doing some literature trawling. I’m lecturing on “being human in a technocultural world” in a couple of weeks time and I’ll probably add this article into the suggested readings for the class.

See: God Is My Palm Pilot, Sojourners Magazine/July-August 2001.

In it one of the authors (David Batstone) writes

So what does it mean to be spiritually alert in an age of technology? It means being conscious of the choices that are before us and where they are likely to lead. It means charting how knowledge is distributed and how to access it. It means learning the ideas, skills, and strategies that enable success in a given location. It means learning how to use the resources of local communities to establish leverage against dominant elites. It means intentionally creating the kinds of community that allow us to live with dignity. It means learning how to take care of people, not just people learning how to take care of themselves.

For an article on technology and faith and looking at issues of access to information they have, somewhat ironically, an extended web version of the print version at Web Exclusive: God Is My Palm Pilot, Sojourners Magazine/July-August 2001.

A recent article on Roman Catholic blogging at COMMONWEAL – February 27 2004 – St. Blog’s Church.

There’s a related article at Reporting From the Trenches: The New Catholic Media.

In our house group we’ve been talking about vocation and employment recently. (Actually we’ve been using a book of studies somewhat variable in quality). Last week we were talking about the difference between vocation or calling and paid employment – what overlap is there between each of those?

It was my turn to lead things so I was looking for an interesting way to talk about vocation. I’ve been influenced by Richard Bolles little book “How to find your mission in life” (also part of “What color is your parachute?”) and like his three-fold approach to this. In a nutshell it’s like this:

• Your first mission in life is to love, worship and serve God.
• Your second mission is to love one another.
• Your third mission is to go that which you have been uniquely gifted to do and enthuses you while carrying out your first two missions.

So your vocation is always framed by loving God and loving one another.

Pizza works well to demonstate this. The base is like Jesus Christ – the bread of life. The love of God like the tomato base that covers the base and undergirds all. The cheese is the love of one another that holds all the rest in place. And then we can add on what we like within that context to create a pizza or vocation that is uniquely ours.

So we talked and then we ate different pizzas. If we’d had more time I’d have had us make them as well.

(Sometime I’ll blog why the emergent church is like a pizza)
Bon appetit!