Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Archives for 2011

The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning

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Brennan Manning
Guest post by Roy Mathias
(In case you were wondering, the late Rich Mullins’ group “ A Ragamuffin Band” is named after the book, and Mullins wrote the introduction. )
 “The Ragamuffin Gospel” is unusual in that it spends 174 pages giving example upon example, from the gospels and life,  of
  1. how great  God’s love for us is,
  2. the all sufficiency of Grace, and how little, if anything we need to do to  receive His grace, and
  3. how little we appreciate and appropriate  the above and how little we are changed by it
(No, don’t worry, I don’t have a 3 point sermon for you.)
Another reviewer dismissed the book with “Manning is a storyteller.  This book is full of hundreds of stories, but I cannot remember a single one.”   There is indeed no “new information”  in this book .     Its contribution is that it challenges us to accept God’s immense and love and be changed by it:  
“Since the day Jesus first appeared, we have developed vast theological systems, organised world-wide churches, filled libraries with brilliant Christological scholarship, engaged in earth shaking controversies, and embarked on crusades, reforms and renewals.  Yet there are few of us who make the mad exchange for everything for Christ  … only a minority of us who stagger about with the delirious joy of the man who found the buried treasure.”  Or in the words of Paul to the Galatians, “Where is all your joy?” 
Here are a few notes and quotes. 
Commensality.  In the Middle East in Jesus time, shared fellowship at a meal may well have involved physical contact as the diners reclined at a table, and was an act of friendship.    This meaning was not lost on the Pharisees who were outraged  and enraged that Jesus entertained sinners—he accepted them as friends.  God accepted as friends, those who were sinners in their own eyes and in the eyes of their peers.
The sinners who Jesus accepted were real sinners; their sin was not just the failure to say grace before dinner.  They were the outcasts of society – prostitutes  and tax collectors.  
Grace:  Manning says
“Grace means that in the middle of our struggles the referee blows the whistle.  We are declared the winners.  It is all over for huffing and puffing piety to earn God’s favour.  It’s the end of competitive pushing and shoving to get ahead of others in the game.  We may as well head to the showers and champagne.”
How little we need to do to receive grace:  1. The prodigal son had, at best, mixed motives in returning to a reception that far exceeded his expectations.  2.  Jesus did not ask the woman caught in adultery whether she intended to reform her ways before sending  her off without condemnation, but with an order to sin no more.  3. Zaccheus had only to climb a tree in order to see Jesus to be called by Him.
Jesus acceptance of sinners allows them to freely accept their sinful state and change (e.g. Zaccheus)
God is our Father.   Manning observes that just as  three year old’s picture is never unacceptable to her father,  the prayer, no matter how poor,  of a Christian, whom comes to God as Father, is always acceptable.  He has many other useful analogies.  There are several  ministries (including the highly theological PCA organisation Sonship, and several charismatic ministries Catch the Fire, Father’s House Trust,  Father’s Love) that promote this life changing  truth.    
In this book, written well before “The Passion of the Christ”, Manning meditates on the physical suffering of Jesus, and imagines the corresponding inner suffering.  This is a demonstration of how great God’s love is.  Manning tells of someone at a retreat whose personality was completely changed by meditating on “while we still sinners Christ died for us.”
Manning challenges us “We are in awe at the immensity of His power, and His absolute holiness, but we refuse to think how great His love is, despite demonstrations in the gospels and descriptions in the epistles.”   Think about it – how many sermons have you heard on the immensity of God’s love?  God’s extravagant love is rarely mentioned in a gospel presentation, where as God’s untouchable holiness and demand for moral perfection is generally a basic point.
Freedom from fear.   Fear of God, fear of the future, fear of others-what they may do or think.  Our anxiety can completely cloud our world view.  Manning gives the example of a high powered business woman,  suffering from stress and anxiety, who was prescribed tranquilizers.  Two weeks later the doctor asked her if she was feeling any better.  Her answer, “No, but everyone else seems a lot calmer.”
This is a rather sketchy review.  There are other books on the all sufficiency of grace.  However, they tend to explain the facts, perhaps with careful attention to detail,  but leave it at that.  “The Ragamuffin Gospel”  is an extended meditation on the immensity of God’s love and the truly radical nature of grace,  and an encouragement to respond. 
Brennan Manning concludes with
“Francis Schaeffer said ‘True spirituality consists in living moment to moment by the grace of Jesus Christ.’   This book lays no claim to originality ; it is simply a commentary on Schaeffer’s statement.  As C. S. Lewis is fond of saying: People need more to be reminded than to be  instructed.”
This book is such a reminder.  Definitely worth reading.  
Here is a link to Brennan Manning’s page.  He has written many other books, but he is best know for this one from 1990.

“I Said to the Man who Stood at the Gate of the Year” (From “The King’s Speech”)

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Image credit
I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’
And he replied,
‘Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!’
                                               * * *
King George VI ended his famous 1939 Christmas message with these words. (Listen here.)
The words were written by an unknown poet called Minnie Haskell. She wasn’t credited.  “I read the quotation in a summary of the speech,” she told The Daily Telegraph the following day. “I thought the words sounded familiar and suddenly it dawned on me that they were out of my little book.”
She had published 3 books, none of which were well-known. Sadly, even the rest of this poem was not particularly good.
* * *
A lifetime of writing, and you are remembered for 4 lines.
Success or failure?
Success or failure?
* * *
Well, that is a good deal more than most people are remembered for 137 years after their birth.
But most writers, myself included, might consider that writing life to be a failure.
* * *
But, in fact, writers can’t choose. Writers can control their art and craft. They can network and hustle and get their work out there. But they cannot control whether their work touches people or not. They cannot control whether their work endures.
How much better then to leave such matters, to leave our entire writing lives, in the hands of God?
* * *
A writing life, three books, and all that survives are four lines, which no one knew you wrote:
Success or failure?
Failure, if you are the management, if you own your life.
* * *
But if you do not own your life?
If you have given yourself and your life and your talent into the hands of Christ, for him to shape as it pleases him.
That may sound grand, but, in fact, it is voluntarily acknowledging a fact.
Our lives and our careers and our work are in the hands of Christ, whether we preciously safeguard them, and polish them, and manoeuvre them, or fret about them.
We are in God’s hands, and everything comes from him, all our doing, gifting and having, and everything can be taken away by him. In an instant. In the twinkling of an eye.
* * *
So to come back to the question, if all that endured of a life is four lines, which no one knew you wrote: success or failure?
But that is not the question.
If you belong to Christ–success or failure, fame or obscurity, a million readers or none at all, your name unknown or a household word—that is his business.
You business is to ‘Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!’
Your business is to dance with your Saviour, to do the best you can each day, and then deposit the day into his hands, with its successes and failures, the times you blew it, and the times you didn’t.
The fruitful days, and the wasted days. The fruitful years, and the “wasted” years.
The times you were mindful of Christ and loved and remembered him, and the times you failed to do so.
And then tomorrow is another day, and you will again dance with him, happily, giving thanks in everything.
* * *
So Jesus, I give you my writing, and my writing career, such as it is, or may be. I leave it our hands and I am not going to worry about it any more, but only pray. (Phil 4:6-8)
I put the clay of my talent, such as it is, into your hands, and leave you to shape it as it pleases you.
Lord Jesus,
I give you my life, my plans,
·      my health of body and mind and spirit,
·      my finances,
·      my relationships.
·       I am not going to worry about these things any more, but only pray.

Top Ten Posts in 2011 from Dreaming Beneath the Spires

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1 A couple of movie reviews/reactions

 

1001 Gifts: #6 Living in the Country

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We are in London for the week, exploring museums, and taking a break from books, laptops and the internet (Hmm… in theory) to give everyone a rest before an intense term of school, work and writing, respectively.
We really loved the bird collection in the Natural History Museum today.
But being in London—we’ve rented a house in posh Kensington, walking distance from the V and A—with the hum of traffic persisting now at 23.32 reminded me of how much I love living in the country.
We live in Garsington, on a dirt, access-only road, surrounded by fields, and you can walk for miles on country footpaths, through pretty, even idyllic countryside.
What is so special to me about where I live is the silence. You cannot hear traffic, something which is quite rare in residential England, people tell me. The peacefulness of the location is the first thing visitors remark on when they get to our house—(and the house too is peaceful, much prayed over!)
* * *
When we moved to England from the US we were worried about what housing we could afford. We had a beautiful house in the US, but in 2006 when we were house-hunting, English houseprices  were 4-5 times what American houseprices were. (I don’t know what the recession has done to property values in both countries). I do know that our large, beautiful house in beautiful Kingsmill on the James, a posh, gated community would buy a small, modest house, probably a semi-detached one, in Oxford.
I felt I needed peace, quiet, solitude, space. Time to start praying.
                                                                           * * *
I had a specific prayer list for the house I wanted, and I drew it up in 2004, and consistently prayed for that house from 2004 until we bought it in 2006. I had read a book by Glenn Clarke called I will Lift up my Eyes, which mentions the importance of specific prayer.
So I made a dream big list of ten things I wanted—at least an acre (but more really) to have a huge garden; a separate detached house or apartment or cottage in that acre  in which I could go and write (the kids were both under 10 when I started praying); a pond or ponds; a stone wall with roses growing on it; a stream around the garden.
We looked at one house which met some of those criteria, but it was in one of the worst parts of Oxford. A doctor friend of house told us that all the stuff was stolen from the ambulance while he went in to make a house call. And the way some of the people there looked at us made us scared. So we didn’t look at it again, even though the house we looked at had a “holy” well mentioned in the Domesday Book, how cool is that?
                                                                                 * * *
When I saw a pictures of the second house, I was in love, and knew that this was it. It had an apartment in the grounds in which I write, two ponds, an old orchard, a vegetable garden. And even a stone wall with roses growing up on it. Beautiful, well-maintained. Wow. So exactly what I had been praying for. And an acre and a half of a garden!!
A picture of our house from the back garden

 

And here’s a recent picture, though it’s far bigger now since we’ve built a 30 sq. metre conservatory
Irene’s (in red) 12th birthday party in our conservatory

 

It’s flower-filled here after my birthday party!
Of course, we couldn’t afford it—not at all, and I bravely and foolishly told Roy I could come up with some business ideas to pay the mortgage. (All our disposable income pretty much went on the girls school fees then!)
And, what a journey that was, starting a business with no business background whatsoever—in being thrown out of my depth and so having to learn  to listen to God, in learning to think big, in learning to take risks, in being creative. In learning that nothing is impossible with God.
We’ve often thought we were foolish to blithely buy a house we couldn’t then afford. We bought it through an independent mortgage broker in 2006, who filled up the self-certified mortgage form for us,  while being as wildly optimtistic and imaginative as Perrault or Grimm.
If the business hadn’t taken off, we might well have lost the house (or pulled the girls from school. We’d have done the latter, though some of our friends who had children in the same school, said they’d rather lose their houses). The credit crunch and recession was built on this kind of lending, with the emotions leading, reason following up in the dejected rear-guard.
                                                                               * * *
But for now, we live in the quiet country, perfect for someone like me and Roy who basically want to be contemplatives in the world.
And we live in the dream house, or the house that prayer provided.
And I have paid the price, in four and a half hard, very overwhelming years in which I put my calling to write on the shelf, and published other people’s books, and put my nose to the grindstone to pay for my dream house, and the dream education for the girls.
I’ve learnt learned that
yes, dreams do come true,
and yes, it is God who makes them come true,
and yes, he often makes them come true, as a free gift, because he loves us,
and yes, he sometimes lets them come true though our blood, sweat, toil and tears, because a life too easy makes us flabby, physically, mentally and spiritually!

Working Restfully: Like a Weaned Child on its Mother’s Breast

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Original illustration by Jo Rosenblum



Psalm 131: My heart is not proud, LORD, 
 my eyes are not haughty; 
I do not concern myself with great matters 
or things too wonderful for me. 
2 But I have calmed and quieted myself, 
 I am like a weaned child with its mother; 
 like a weaned child I am content.

Like a weaned child on its mother’s breast, even so is my soul. I guess I am slowly moving towards this existential state, and it’s a wonderful place of rest.

The weaned child on its mother’s breast is parented; it is not alone. It’s not an orphan. It does not have to look out for itself, to hustle or push.

It is not a feral street child!
·      * * *

At this moment in the writing world, the gatekeepers are losing power. Through self-publishing, blogging, Facebook and Twitter, we can acquire an audience who like our stuff, whether the gate-keepers like it or not. Anyone who hustles can gain an audience, it sometimes appears.

And with this American sense of opportunity, of the world belonging to anyone who will work for it, can come a concomitant sense of anxiety and stress. The world can be yours, if you work, strive, push. And there’s a sharpened imperative: work, work, work. Like orphans. As if everything depended on us.
* * *

When George Mueller worked in Bristol, at the height of the Industrial Revolution, he was appalled to find people working 12 hours a day, 70 hours a week, and then working on Sundays too, if they could.

When he suggested they work less, they’d ask, “But how would we feed our families?” And so, he decided to raise money, serious money, to look after the orphans he took in, by prayer alone. Googling it shows he raised 7 million dollars in today’s money. Without asking a soul, or letting them know his needs. Just through prayer. Wow!

Hudson Taylor similarly raised significant money by prayer alone. His motto was To Move Man, Through God, by Prayer Alone. 

And if it worked for them, might it not work for me? If God could give Mueller 7 million dollars, through prayer, can he not also give me readers whom I can be a blessing to, through prayer and trust, without hustling?

The trick will be actually praying, not intending to pray. ( The same deal as with writing or exercise!)

                                                           * * *

Do I have the courage to leave my writing, and its success or failure to God, and to let the Lord be my literary agent?

To spend minimal time on promotion—I lack the faith to spend no time at all–but instead pray for blessing on my writing? Will it work? I will have to try and see.  

I know when I attempt to be my own literary agent, I make a fool of myselfJ! Get pushy, over-energetic, over-aggressive, over-promote. There is after all a reason for literary agents: when you are great with book, or blog post, and it appears, you are in no fit state to decide if it’s beautiful or ugly, personified, genius or trash. Mums are no fit judges of their babies. Most mums declare their babies are beautiful, even those babies who look wizened, red and wrinkled to an independent jury.

Like a weaned child on its mother’s breast, even so is my soul. And that is my desire: To work restfully and prayerfully.  Brother Lawrence, the kitchen monk describes this,

That’s how I would like to work: with the same peace and tranquillity. And “gaming” the results through prayer, with as little self-promotion as possible.

“The Nativity” by C.S. Lewis

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 Image
The Nativity

by C.S. LewisAmong the oxen (like an ox I’m slow)
I see a glory in the stable grow
Which, with the ox’s dullness might at length
Give me an ox’s strength.

Among the asses (stubborn I as they)
I see my Savior where I looked for hay;
So may my beast like folly learn at least
The patience of a beast.

Among the sheep (I like a sheep have strayed)
I watch the manger where my Lord is laid;
Oh that my baaing nature would win thence
Some woolly innocence!

Plucked, dazzling, from the eternal heavens into time… Luci Shaw, “One”

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 http://www.abrahampiper.com/

One by Luci Shaw
Winter, and very cold,
and the night at
its deepest. The politicians,
as usual, double-tongued.
The town chaotic, teeming
with strangers.
And tonight, as often
in winter, in Bethlehem,
snow is falling.I always love how each flake,

torn from the sky,

arrives separately,

without sound, almost

unnoticed in

a flurry of others. How

each one (on a clear

night) lies there glittering

on the swelling breast

of snow, crisp

and intact, as wholly itself

as every radiant star

in a sky sparkling

with galaxies.

 

How many new

babies tonight

in Judea, coming

like snowflakes?

 

But plucked,

dazzling, from the

eternal heavens,

into time,

tonight is born

The One.