Julyan Lidstone’s Giving Up the Purple: A Call for Servant Leadership in Hierarchial Cultures was one — and another one, which we’ve just finished, is Peter Scazzero’s Emotionally Healthy Spirituality.
- Going Back in Order to Go Forward (on breaking the power of the past, especially family)
- Journey through the Wall (referring to ‘the dark night of the soul’)
- Enlarge Your Soul through Grief and Loss (on dealing with pain)
- Discover the Rhythms of the Daily Office and Sabbath (on developing life-giving routines)
- Growing into an Emotionally Mature Adult (on making peace and resolving conflict)
- Go the Next Step to Develop a ‘Rule of Life’ (on bringing it all together in a plan)
Wisdom
I found the book to be a wake-up call. Our sudden dislocation from India, in combo with needing to work across time zones and finding it difficult to establish ourselves in community again after a decade focused elsewhere, has surfaced emotional vulnerabilities — while ‘contemplative spirituality’ easily becomes something of a faded photo. I need a re-set. Once upon a time I articulated, prayerfully and annually, my ‘rocks’ (like a ‘Rule of Life’, or trellis, for me) — but I haven’t done it recently. Some features come easier than others — like solitude, waiting, simplicity and even blogging (emerging from a desire to share and to serve others). But things like community, sabbath and prayer often remain a challenge…
Wondering
Reading the book with people from Canada, Bolivia, England, Ghana, Bosnia and Indonesia highlighted how some stuff does not cross-cultures that well at all (like the material on conflict) — and yet it was interesting how many of the issues were more universal.
The book does wander over into pop psychology every now and then. ‘True freedom comes when we no longer need to be somebody special in other peoples’s eyes because we know we are lovable and good enough’ (53). Yikes. Methinks a little dose of that supreme line in the hymnbook would help here: ‘make me a captive, and then I shall be free’.
It is my blog (!), so permit me to say that I wish people would stop using the Iceberg Model (17). Why? The iceberg cannot even illustrate the key point wanting to be made — namely, that what lies beneath determines so much of what lies above. With an iceberg what lies beneath is just more ice. The frigid blob is all the same stuff. We need to trade in the iceberg for a newer model — like the model of a tree because, with its roots and fruits, it provides the perfect illustration of what is being affirmed.
About Me
the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.
Recent Posts
Apart from the eight years in which we were based overseas, Barby has been working at the Refugee Resettlement Center in Auckland since 2002. This year she is a ‘release teacher’, spending one day each week in three different classrooms, with three different age groups. Impressive—and demanding. One day is spent with 11-13 year olds—from…
There is something pleasing about image and word working in concert together, isn’t there? I was reminded of this again with a visit from my friend—and close colleague in Langham Partnership for more than 15 years—Pieter Kwant. the son, with song Pieter and Elria, who had popped-in for three days the week before, have a…
It is clever, isn’t it? The enduring inability of foreigners to spell (and pronounce) the name of their country has led to a marketing campaign, with everything from t-shirts to coffee cups, reminding us to get our vowels right. And if that strategy proves to be unsuccessful, there is always the fallback Bart Simpson option:…
If ‘Incredible !ndia’ can headline a tourist campaign for India, what about Magnificent Mongol!a for that large land-locked country in Central Asia? Here, let me try and make a start—because there was plenty of magnificence on display when I visited last month… a walk My hotel was on a major intersection near the center of…
My records show that this is my 800th post, going all the way back to 2nd February 2006—913 weeks ago. Yes, I do think about stopping often enough and I certainly think about deleting dozens of posts, but I keep going because of three loves: (a) I love chatting away to myself, shaping-ideas and smithing-words;…
Her workplace and his birthplace are barely 60kms apart in South India—but the places they occupy in our home could not be more different. Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur takes her place across an entire shelf! … while V.S. Azariah of Dornakal looks decidedly lonely, in comparison, doesn’t he? Yes, just a solitary book—and it is…