Praying the Rosary

Finished another scratchboard in my prayer series.

Recommended Reading: The Naked Anabaptist by Stuart Murray

The Naked Anabaptist needed to be written, and I can't imagine anyone better than Stuart Murray to write it. I fully share Stuart's enthusiasm for what the Christian community at large can learn from the Anabaptist way of being Christian, and I hope you'll share my enthusiasm for this book. --Brian D. McLaren, author/speaker/activist

Although I have not read this book yet, I can recommend it based on all the other excellent writings of Stuart Murray. The release date is July 2010. Murray works as a writer, trainer and consultant for the Anabaptist Network based in Bristol, England. His expertise is in Anabaptist history and theology, church planting, emerging church, mission in post-Christendom. Murray provided helpful comments in a chapter on Anabaptist hermeneutics for my doctoral dissertation and has written on dialogical preaching, which is the topic of my dissertation.

This book "uncovers" the bare essentials of Anabaptism stripped of its cultural clothing within the Mennonite, Hutterite, and Amish traditions. The book addresses the following questions: What is an Anabaptist? Where did Anabaptism come from? What do Anabaptists believe? Can I become an Anabaptist? What is the difference between Anabaptists and Mennonites? As a person who came among the Mennonites 23 years ago through studying the 16th century Anabaptists, I believe Murray's book will provide a helpful guide to those interested in what the bare essentials of Anabaptism might look like today.

An extract of the book can be read at: http://www.anabaptistnetwork.com/node/539

Praying Hands

Here's another scratchboard I finished today for my prayer series.

Praying Hands: Icon for Lent

Albrecht Durer's praying hands have become an icon of the Christian prayer. The story behind the drawing goes like this:

Back in the fifteenth century, in a tiny village near Nuremberg, lived a family with eighteen children. Eighteen!
In order merely to keep food on the table for this big family, the father and head of the household, a goldsmith by profession, worked almost eighteen hours a day at his trade and any other paying chore he could find in the neighbourhood.

Despite their seemingly hopeless condition, two of Albrecht Durer the Elder's children had a dream. They both wanted to pursue their talent for art, but they knew full well that their father would never be financially able to send either of them to Nuremberg to study at the Academy.

After many long discussions at night in their crowded bed, the two boys finally worked out a pact. They would toss a coin. The loser would go down into the nearby mines and, with his earnings, support his brother while he attended the academy. Then, when that brother who won the toss completed his studies, in four years, he would support the other brother at the academy, either with sales of his artwork or, if necessary, also by labouring in the mines.

They tossed a coin on a Sunday morning after church. Albrecht Durer won the toss and went off to Nuremberg.

Albert went down into the dangerous mines and, for the next four years, financed his brother, whose work at the academy was almost an immediate sensation. Albrecht's etchings, his woodcuts, and his oils were far better than those of most of his professors, and by the time he graduated, he was beginning to earn considerable fees for his commissioned works.

When the young artist returned to his village, the Durer family held a festive dinner on their lawn to celebrate Albrecht's triumphant homecoming. After a long and memorable meal, punctuated with music and laughter, Albrecht rose from his honoured position at the head of the table to drink a toast to his beloved brother for the years of sacrifice that had enabled Albrecht to fulfil his ambition. His closing words were, "And now, Albert, blessed brother of mine, now it is your turn. Now you can go to Nuremberg to pursue your dream, and I will take care of you."

All heads turned in eager expectation to the far end of the table where Albert sat, tears streaming down his pale face, shaking his lowered head from side to side while he sobbed and repeated, over and over, "No ...no ...no ...no."

Finally, Albert rose and wiped the tears from his cheeks. He glanced down the long table at the faces he loved, and then, holding his hands close to his right cheek, he said softly, "No, brother. I cannot go to Nuremberg. It is too late for me. Look ... look what four years in the mines have done to my hands! The bones in every finger have been smashed at least once, and lately I have been suffering from arthritis so badly in my right hand that I cannot even hold a glass to return your toast, much less make delicate lines on parchment or canvas with a pen or a brush. No, brother ... for me it is too late."

More than 450 years have passed. By now, Albrecht Durer's hundreds of masterful portraits, pen and silver point sketches, water-colours, charcoals, woodcuts, and copper engravings hang in every great museum in the world, but the odds are great that you, like most people, are familiar with only one of Albrecht Durer's works. More than merely being familiar with it, you very well may have a reproduction hanging in your home or office.

One day, to pay homage to Albert for all that he had sacrificed, Albrecht Durer painstakingly drew his brother's abused hands with palms together and thin fingers stretched skyward. He called his powerful drawing simply "Hands," but the entire world almost immediately opened their hearts to his great masterpiece and renamed his tribute of love "The Praying Hands."

----story from http://www.moytura.com/reflections/prayinghands.htm


The second set of praying hands is a scratchboard drawing that I finished today. A scratchboard is a thick piece of paper coated with a thin layer of wax, then covered with black ink. The artist uses a a sharp tool to scratch away the lights leaving the darks, unlike ink and pencil drawings in which the artist adds the darks leaving the lights.

I offer this as an icon for the season of Lent, a time of prayer and meditation that began yesterday with Ash Wednesday.

Dove Tales Features My Booklet

The latest edition of the Peace and Justice Support Network's publication Dove Tales contains an article by Jack Knox on my booklet The Economic Crisis and the Divine Economy.

Download here: http://peace.mennolink.org/resources/newsletter/dt_8_1.pdf

No More Pain: Revelation 21 Painting Series

Finished the fifth painting in my Revelation 21 series today.

Goshen College Caves In To Public Opinion: Educating the Public in How to Compromise Your Faith

Recently Goshen College, a Mennonite school, changed its historical Anabaptist/Mennonite stance on not playing the national anthem at its sporting events. It caved into to public opinion criticizing its Anabaptist/Mennonite "pacifist" practice of not playing the national anthem, which is rooted in militarism and nationalism. I see this as just another sign of the slowly eroding peace witness within the Mennonite Church, which I questioned in my award winning article for Mennonite Weekly Review entitled "When is a Peace Church No Longer a Peace Church": http://www.mennoweekly.org/2008/7/21/when-peace-church-no-longer-peace-church/?print=1

News story: http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/34294434.html

Goshen info: http://www.goshen.edu/president/anthem/

A good article responding to Goshen's action can be found at JesusRadicals: http://www.jesusradicals.com/goshen-college-hurts-the-church/

Here is a letter I wrote to the president of Goshen College, Jim Brenneman, whom I know.


Jim,

I am writing to express my displeasure with Goshen College's decision to cave in to public opinion concerning playing the national anthem at Goshen College sporting events. The national anthem is undeniably a song that grows out of a militaristic and nationalistic tradition. As you have expressed in Goshen pubic communications, "Our practice of not playing the national anthem at our sporting events has been a practice of the college since its inception 114 years ago rooted in the nearly 500-year-old confessions of faith of the Mennonite heritage and in the simple New Testament expressions, “Jesus is Lord” and “God so loved the world.”

To change this practice seems to me to be just another evidence of the slow erosion of the Mennonite peace stance, which I questioned as Minister of Peace and Justice for MC USA: http://www.mennoweekly.org/2008/7/21/when-peace-church-no-longer-peace-church/?print=1. I wrote this because of what I was seeing across the denomination in congregations, conferences, and church institutions.

It is my conviction that holding to our peace witness, amid public pressure to conform, can provide better venues for dialogue and witness than letting go of those convictions by incremental compromises. Even if Goshen continues to "make peacemaking" a part of its education, this action speaks volumes as to what that really means when the "going gets tough."


Peace,

Rev. Dr. Leo Hartshorn

Here is the response Jim Brenneman sent back to me on 2/26/10:


Dear Leo,

I wanted to both acknowledge my appreciation for your feedback and also offer a word or two of response.

First, never before has Goshen College in so public a way proclaimed our commitment to peace in all its forms, than in the last two years. For the first time in GC history, we have done television ads (on regional Super Bowl/Olympics/etc.) and radio spots, proclaiming that GC is about “Healing the World: Peace by Peace.” Our website, our publications, viewbooks, speeches, have all be designed around “Making Peace”. You can read more about the GC promise of “Making Peace” in the upcoming Bulletin. These resources provide an overview of our commitment to describing ourselves in vivid, positive, affirming, contagious ways as a college that promotes peace! Literally, we are shouting it from the rooftops in new and unprecedented ways. We have not abandoned that understanding, though my hope is that we are helping to expand people's understandings of peace. It isn't just about being anti-war (though it includes that), it is about the Biblical understanding of shalom.

Second, our five core values (which positively state who we are and are a wonderful encapsulation of the Anabaptist convictions), explicitly named 8 years ago, are being used to redesign from top to bottom our curriculum; learning outcomes; board, faculty, staff orientation/education through a Core Values Institute; tenure processes; etc., so as to ensure that we “realize our intentions” in keeping GC closely tied to our Anabaptist/Mennonite roots, even while we open our doors wider to those who do not know an Anabaptist from an Antibaptist. In this way, we hope our “Anabaptist story” will truly be an intentional missional adventure (even if one never chooses to become a Christian, Anabaptist or otherwise) creating “choice” for both cradle Mennonites and others to hear the Anabaptist story and make it their own. We are self-consciously structuring our teaching and learning here at GC around the core values, trusting those values to carry the day (like a magnet to shavings), rather than bounding our set of beliefs by impermeable lines of demarcation that, while necessary at outer limits, are not the best approach in wooing new adherents or conversation partners to the table.

Third, Goshen College continues to be a leader in Peacemaking, Environmental Transformation, Intercultural Teaching and Learning, Interreligious Dialog (new SST in Egypt geared around Muslim/Christian engagement), all the things that have made it and will continue to make this such a wonderful place to learn. We also want to spread this influence in the world to include professions of diplomacy, governmental/nongovernmental leadership, civic engagement, business, and other professions not always considered part of the “peacemaking” enterprise. So when we say on our banners flying from every pole on campus: “Making peace with business, the arts, environment, sports, Christ, etc. its more than a slogan, it’s a vocational invitation.

And finally, I have devoted my entire adult ministry to bringing into the Mennonite Church hundreds of new members and have helped mentor pastoral and other leaders new to the Mennonite Church. For not a few of them, their discovery of the peacemaking way of Christ came by a welcoming spirit that did not challenge their perspectives at the door, but invited them to consider new perspectives over time and in community. That continues to be part of our missional commitment at Goshen College.

This letter might not fully address all your concerns, but I trust it helps convey that we are passionately committed to our theological heritage even as we attempt to negotiate the challenges of contemporary issues.

Peace,

Jim B.

James E. Brenneman, Ph.D.
President
Goshen College
1700 S. Main St.
Goshen, IN 46526
(574) 535-7501

A Cry of Absence: Recommended Reading

Facing six months of unemployment and a lack of direction at this late stage of my life is difficult, a spiritual struggle. So, I turn once again to a trusted guide along the way and am re-reading Martin Marty's A Cry of Absence. I would recommend it to those wrestling with God or life, on the edge of faith, for those with a "wintery spirituality."


Quotes from this contemporary spiritual classic:

"Winter is a season of the heart as much as it is a season of the weather"---pg.1

"The absence can also come, however, to a waste space left when the divine is distant, the sacred is remote, when God is silent"---pg.2

"Those in intellectual solidarity with athiests are likely to be people who have cried in anger when God seemed withdrawn, seemed powerless in the face of disease that tore the flesh of a child or parent."---pg. 13