Midweek Meditation: "This is My Prayer For You"

This week, I like to share a song about praying for others. The best gift we can ask for is Jesus.



Here are the words of this simple but lovely song.

BookPastor >> "The Practice of Pastoral Care" (Carrie Doehring)

This review was first published at Panorama of a Book Saint on July 28th, 2015.

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TITLE: The Practice of Pastoral Care, Revised and Expanded Edition
AUTHOR: Carrie Doehring
PUBLISHER: Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015, (232 pages).

Pastoral care is a critical part of any Church ministry. The word "pastor" is synonymous with "shepherd." Unlike some places that sees the pastor as the leader-CEO, the true biblical basis of a pastor is to shepherd the flock. How we practice pastoral care however have changed, partly because of changing needs. In this book, the way is to adopt a "postmodern approach" toward the practice of pastoral care. Calling it an "intercultural approach," pastoral care in this book means not just listening to the stories of the people but also to create meaning of them. It means learning to piece together the broken pieces of life. It means learning to help people tell their stories. It means cultivating trust. For Carrie Doehring, it is the heart of pastoral care where people are willing to open up their lives to caregivers. It is about creating opportunities for "care conversations" and relating real-life to theological truths and biblical principles. Doehring goes a step further to advocate for a care that brings back individuals from a de-centered sacred bearings due to suffering and painful circumstances. How can one show compassion and understanding toward those questioning their faith and religious values? This calls for a "theological, cultural, and psychological expertise" that can help care for parishioners and people in such need, what Doehring refers to as "the compassionate art of intercultural care." Carers essentially enter into the lives of others, sharing in their pain, walking with them in the valley of questions and celebrating with them in the answers of joy. It is about intermingling one's lives with another so as to build a bridge that aids integrative moments and shared stories. It is collaborative exploration of new and strange emotional territories. The author attempts to use a "trifocal lens" which comprises of a precritical, a modern, and a postmodern approach.  As a first-order language, a precritical lens looks at the world from a divine perspective. The modern lens is a second-order language that adopts "text critical methods" and social sciences to include empirical analysis and rational judgment of knowledge. The postmodern approach is the third-order language that nuances all of these in the light of present contexts. This approach involves the meaning making and the response of individuals to the earlier two orders of language. She summarizes the book's structure in six parts.

Midweek Meditation: "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day"

This is still my favourite rendition of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Christmas carol, "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day."

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men. 

I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men. 

And in despair I bowed my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men." 

Till, ringing singing, on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

conrade

BookPastor >> "Walking Backwards to Christmas" (Stephen Cottrell)

This review was first published at Panorama of a Book Saint on November 26th, 2015.

Have a Blessed Christmas.

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TITLE: Walking Backwards to Christmas
AUTHOR: Stephen Cottrell
PUBLISHER: Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015, (128 pages).

We have all heard of the Christmas story. We watch children perform nice plays on it. We sing carols about it. We see the beautiful Christmas lights and festivities all over town. Many popular images of Christmas include scenes like:

• The three wise men offering gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to baby Jesus
• Animals surrounding baby Jesus at a stable
• Shepherds seeing the bright star that lights up the night sky
• Joseph and Mary cuddling the little baby
• and so on..

Many of us are also familiar with the stories of Christmas, the signs in Isaiah, the prophecy of Zechariah, the angel before Mary, and the events leading to the birth of Jesus Christ. Most of the time, these are forward movement stories, meaning, they start sometime way back in history and progress to the birth of Christ as the climax. What if we look at a picture and start telling a story backward? What if we let our imaginations fill in the blanks of the biblical story, of how we can uncover the many plots, motives, and the associated responses to the Christmas story? Like some movies that begin with a dramatic finish and then offer viewers a flashback of "Seventy years ago," "Eight months before," or "Seven days back," Stephen Cottrell gives a fascinating first-person storytelling backwards. Without compromising on the biblical information we have, narrating the events and responses of the various movements can be informative and insightful.

What's Your Christmas Bucket List?

As many people embark on the annual shopping craze, it is timely to check out what the true Christmas bucket list is. 

What will be your "grown up Christmas list?"

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Midweek Meditation: "Renewal of Prayer" (J.-P. Dubois-Dumée)

In this spiritual renewal, I believe that one can detect among other things:

• a need for permanence in a civilization of transience;
• a need for the Absolute when all else is be- coming relative;
• a need for silence in the midst of noise;
• a need for gratuitousness in the face of unbelievable greed;
• a need for poverty amid the flaunting of wealth;
• a need for contemplation in a century of action, for without contemplation, action risks becoming mere agitation;
• a need for communication in a universe content with entertainment and sensational- ism;
• a need for peace amid today’s universal outbursts of violence;
• a need for quality to counterbalance the increasingly prevalent response to quantity;
• a need for humility to counteract the arrogance of power and science;
• a need for human warmth when every- thing is being rationalized or computerized;
• a need to belong to a small group rather than to be part of the crowd;
• a need for slowness to compensate the present eagerness for speed;
• a need for truth when the real meaning of words is distorted in political speeches and sometimes even in religious discourses;
• a need for transparency when everything seems opaque.

Yes, a need for the interior life . . (J.-P. Dubois-Dumée, “Renewal of Prayer,” Lumen Vitae 38, no. 3, 1983: p273–274)

BookPastor >> "Mudhouse Sabbath" (Lauren Winner)

This review was first published at Panorama of a Book Saint on August 6th, 2015.

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TITLE: Mudhouse Sabbath: An Invitation to a Life of Spiritual Discipline - Study Edition
AUTHOR: Lauren Winner
PUBLISHER: Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2015, (224 pages).

Christianity have roots in Judaism. They read the Torah or Pentateuch. They celebrate the Tehillim, (songs of praise), also known as Psalms.  Like the Proverbs and Jobs, the Psalms are part of the wisdom writings called the Ketuvim. As a convert to evangelical Christianity, the author often reflects back on her Jewish upbringing and fondly cherishes the rituals, the rules, and the meaning behind the Jewish spiritual practices. Out of that fond reflection comes the writing of this book which gives her a chance to revisit the riches of the Old Testament practices and how many of them can be appreciated in our modern world. In this updated edition, Winner adds in a greater awareness of pursuing God's justice in this world on top of just enjoying our spiritual life. She helps us reflect on how fasting can be related to caring for the poor, and how Sabbath keeping is to be integrated into the whole week by virtue of Sabbath not being at the beginning or end of the week, but the middle. She weaves into this book her own personal journey through experiencing her mum's passing, her broken marriage, a little older and wiser too. Having moved from Virginia to North Carolina, she has also moved from outside coffee shops to having coffee at home instead. In a way, this book is about moving from one place to another, in particular from Judaism to Christianity, and in the process trying to make sense of the commonality between the two. Perhaps, it is to expand the common space of understanding and to help those of us without a Jewish background to better appreciate the practices of Sabbath keeping and other important rituals. It helps us to go beyond the outer display of religiosity toward an inner appreciation of the essence of Jewish spirituality. The "study edition" format is about a twelfth chapter scattered throughout the other eleven in the form of study questions. For me, reading through this book is like eavesdropping the author's appreciation of her Jewish heritage from a Christian perspective.