Christian Spirituality
Miles, Margaret R.
It is no accident that Berry admires thing gets recycled and renewed. If there doesn't call attention to itself, and the Milton and Dante, since he too is...
...monastic women, ammas in desert asceticism, and women who were the recipients of letters and treatises of a Jerome or an Anselm are mentioned...
...our largely urban society, we cannot eas- Crossroad, $49.50, 502 pp...
...Cooper Union in New York City, recently In your editorial you try to make some the Christian tradition, as well as interested readers, will find this volume a edited Smoothing the Ground: Essays on Nauseful source of information and insight tive American Oral Literature (Univ...
...The editors' "hope that a clearer faith arouses in religious conmanuring...
...It is more narrow intellectual and geographical limREVIEWERS than just the hierarchy...
...00 M ti I4 Federal Depository library Program This program is supported by the Advertising Council and is a pubtit serrce al this publication likewise be distinguished from Christian ethics in that it treats not all human actions in their relation to God, but those acts in which the relation to God is immediate_ and implicit...
...could put that issue or those issues, io presence of approximately half of those While we are never told how the con- brackets - hold it in abeyance - until it engaged in Christian spirituality in every tributors were selected - eight doctors is resolved...
...It is possible to it...
...that notion is not the dominant image of the guide as it was for the early Christian monks and nuns...
...valuable collection of essays that reflect distinguish spirituality from docBerry's themes do not vary from book upon "the historical manifestations of trine in that it concentrates not on to book, or from genre to genre...
...Everything Berry up such laws, Berry says...
...It Berry's aim in everything he writes, from says...
...DC 20401...
...Alexandria, 'Va...
...least some of our own needs, by learning means of a return to the land might seem telling stories of his childhood...
...Careful not to neglect a broad geographical spectrum, Syriac-speaking Christians as well as Eastern Orthodox and Latin Christians are given extensive treatment...
...Most of the problems of the volume are inevitable in a collection of essays that attempts to cover an approximately 1100-year time frame and a broad geographical area...
...Thus Rabbi Harold To the Editors: I was surprised and disKushner: `.`In recent years, I have come appointed by your editorial, "Right to increasingly to appreciate the role of the Free Speech" [March 14...
...The irk- bits of primeval dust" by Jane Goodall...
...His poem "The Silence" asks totalitarian kind: a kind of updated Great cal or cultural unit, marriage or domestic the question: "What must a man do to be Chain of Being...
...Although the purpose of the volume is not to give startlingly new interpretations of the ideas and practices discussed, these nineteen essays are packed with accessible information and insightful description...
...17.95, 218 pp...
...The index lists three women In Brief there is a glaring absence of black clergy in a list of 175 names although a few and adherents of institutional religions more women than that are mentioned in THE COURAGE OF CONVICTION, edited in general...
...tion of the Odyssey, in Recollected Es- been accused of tilting at windmills...
...There is no need to make order (two of Berry's most impressive at home in the world...
...Diversity is difficult to maintain and articulate in the broad sweep of some of the essays...
...His latest book of poetry is The Father Frechette to buy bricks to Middle of the Journey (Univ...
...This neglect is not absolute: several essays mention that women were engaged in the ideas and practices discussed...
...responsibility to cut out the banal and women to thirty pages of a 500-page belabored in the essays, and, worse, has book, but might have raised and analyzed from a historical perspective the question stuffed his introduction with both...
...Washington...
...6 June 1986: 349...
...River Gorge...
...He seem something of an anachronism Berry passes through the surface of ev- holds out hope...
...Insight (Beacon...
...regeneration...
...A wise Cathoirrational in religion . . . I have come to lic theologian once advised that if there ence of women is so difficult to detect in understand that living and thinking ra- were certain Catholic teachings which a tradition that has willfully and/or tionally nourishes only the top two or were at odds with one's conscience, then thoughtlessly marginalized women three inches of my being, and leaves the one need not leave the church...
...exclusively a male phenomenon...
...Perpetua, Egeria, and a few are deeply moving reflections (Continued from page 322) Hrothswitha, the Ancrene Riwle, or the on personal beliefs...
...The communal is given attention as well as the private and personal practice of the spiritual life...
...Her most recent book is Image as 400...
...Tn one essay, he points and balanced, always passionate...
...And who is the church...
...Such an essay both irksome and ingratiating...
...buying or repairing a home...
...some of us ical theology at Harvard Divinity School and abandoned children in Hocduras (May 9 issue) should send contribuwill grieve that it does little to correct the the associate editor of the Harvard Theologiimpression that Christian spirituality was tions to: ORPHANS...
...Nothing is wasted...
...in one essay, "heretics" are defined as those "whose faith was no longer compatible with that of the great church," as if the very constitution of the ideas and constituencies of the "great church" were not itself a matter of continuing conflict and redefinition in the early centuries...
...Sister Donald Corcoran in Christian Spirituality is legitimate to speak of one monolithic spirituality in "the early church...
...These expressions on occasion give the impression that the author believes that it One f nds in each form of spiritual guidance in the major religious traditions a distinct or dominant tonality...
...Steve Allen combines his irresistible humor with a sense with it, even in an off-campus setting...
...The Zen master is characterized by his austere and insistent iconoclasm of thoughts...
...that "we have been for some time in a "an eagerness that is felt only by those The great truths of Christianity are re- state of general cultural disorder and that who are doing what they want passionworked into an environmental ethic in the this disorder has now become critical...
...writing the glamorous and the frivolous...
...In 'one of his essays he says ence, and its machines...
...solute truth: the truth of the nature of our the Earth," with its moving interpreta- At one point, Berry notes that he has existence on earth...
...It can Commonweal: 346...
...ment rights, they do nothing to foster a "From lecture platforms and in per- healthy intellectual life in Catholic sonal contact, and even in speaking on higher education...
...Visually-oriented and verbally-centered understandings of Christian spirituality are also included...
...Naugatuck, Ct...
...To find the Federal Depository in your area, contact your local library or write to the Federal Depository Library Program, Office of the Public Printer...
...ately to do," the eagerness of a man largest sense, an ordering of the world This disintegration is seen in all aspects whose aim is "a decent, open, generous that can best be described as hierarchic, a of society, from language (the theme of relation between a man's life and the "just hierarchy," not the inflexible or Standing by Words) to the basic biologi- world...
...Roberta Bondi emphasizes the use of feminine imagery for God and the centrality of Mary in Syriac spirituality, but Gy minimizes the extent of Bernard's devotion to Mary...
...of Readers who wish to enable on the diverse strands by which Christian California...
...Conspicuously and happily missing from this volume is a dominant interest in a necessarily elite-learned spirituality...
...There is . . Christian spirituality as a disci- faith itself, but on the reaction that an interweaving and a kind of spiritual pline...
...That objection is the neglect of the roles and participation of women in Christian churches...
...We just need to essays are "Poetry and Marriage" in has written attempts to answer that quesrediscover them...
...Always we sense sed of an eschatological imagination...
...Every- and more adequate understanding of sciousness and practice...
...A more serious objection in what is otherwise an excellent and valuable volume is one that will need to be consciously corrected by readers if the volume is not to seriously distort one's vision of historical Christian spirituality...
...for the resusTake My Stand...
...Part I, "Periods and Movements," includes chronological surveys, while the essays in Part II discuss "Themes and Values...
...It is the commuits...
...of Alabama...
...An ecological truth...
...stance carries the book...
...In summary, scholars and teachers of BRIAN SWANN, a professor of English at nity of believers...
...06770...
...television, I have taken every opportu- JANET KALVEN nity to defend rationality and to discour- Living with brackets age the idea that it can be achieved with a minimum of effort...
...The practices by which spirituality was realized and implemented in both East and West are treated in articles on liturgy, monasticism, icons, pilgrimage, saints, and the miraculous practice of perpetual virginity...
...of responsibility: "Man was not put on formed with the express purpose of lookEven an editorial lament that the pres- this earth primarily to buy philosophical ing for heresy in the classroom, reflectmerchandise before examining it, just as he was not put here to turn out hit record ing, I am afraid, the climate abroad in the albums, or to be utterly irresistible to the church...
...Berry takes his title of Standing by Words recalls I'll that "to live in the place that is one's stand for an old humanism...
...In short, the volume overwhelmingly reinforces the impression that it is the spirituality of "great men," of priests and of bishops who were Commonweal: 348 "types of God" that is important and writers, five religious professionals, two interesting in the history of Christian teachers, and one artist in a pear tree - spirituality...
...of monastic and lay spirituality from the scriptural base to the dogmatic framework, and the liturgical and practical expressions of Christian spirituality...
...rather, one would have at least acknowledged the rest of my soul starved...
...build his projected orphanage for spirituality has been intellectually MARGARET R. MILES is a professor of historexplored and concretely lived...
...However we react to Berry, his Edited by Bernard McGinn the root sense - will emerge from a informed and intelligent analysis of our and John Meyendorff, broad intra-Christian ecumenical enteraffluent society is worth heeding...
...Thus fatherhood/ motherhood - "begetting in the spirit" - is the distinctive character ofChristian spiritual direction, particularly in the monastic context, compared with other traditions of spiritual direction...
...If book was otherwise so thorough and sonalities, four political leaders, seven I am not mistaken, rank-and-file Cathohelpful, I felt this omission more painful lics are fairly evenly divided on 'his isthan if the volume had remained within sue...
...Abortion, it seems to me, is historical time and place...
...And it is clear that poems distinguished for their scope and tilt at windmills "that draw the lifeblood some of his roots are deep in a specific detail - or on any other subjects, in out of our veins," for they represent acts Southernness, in, for example, the anti- whatever form, Wendell Berry is ex- of a uselessly applied destructive sciindustrial critique of the Agrarians (the traordinary...
...by Phillip L. Berman Dodd, Mead, Variety in literary style and in subessays...
...need not have implied the isolation of some part is that the editor has shirked his K.S.S...
...citation of an ancient knowledge...
...Articles discuss the many facets...
...we are apparently near tors...
...abbesses and queens discussed by Bede Most recently a group of students has might have entered such a discussion...
...And seem too austere, too relentless, too about form in poetry and culture...
...Since "spirituality" is itself a term ily see how we can return to the land, we whose definition is not a matter of comcan take away with us Berry's emphasis Margaret R. Miles mon scholarly agreement, the editors on "restoring the wholeness of work" offer a working definition: ("work is the health of love" - Berry's C HRISIIAN SPIRIIUAIIFY, Origins to the Christian spirituality is the lived many aphorisms stay in the mind...
...home, by our becoming answerable to at To some, his method of restoration by writing stories about Wheeler Catlett...
...Box cal Review...
...some essays acknowledge that women existed in the history of Christianity by the use of inclusive language...
...Beginning with the editors themselves - scholars who are equal to their potentially overwhelming task of selecting the authors who could provide the range and depth the title projects - the authors discuss their subjects both knowledgeably and interestingly: Robert M. Grant, Jean Gribomont, Roberta Bondi, Benedicta Ward, J. Patout Bums, Mary T. Clark, Leonid Ouspensky, and Kallistos Ware are a few of these names...
...Some- Twelfth Century, Volume 16 of experience of Christian belief in thing can be done about our destructive World Spirituality: AnEncyclopedicHis- both its general and more spehistory, even if it is only understanding tory of the Religious Quest, is a very cialized forms...
...If there doesn't call attention to itself, and the Milton and Dante, since he too is posses- is one main theme Berry starts from it is subject shines through...
...out with approval the two Jeffersonian principles "indispensable to democracy": education, and the crucial impor- Guises of the confounding Spirit tance to the state of the small landowner I - of which Berry is one himself, work- CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY, what the various Christian communions ing his Kentucky farm, healing the land ORIGINS TO THE have seen as the inner meaning of Chrisdepleted by centuries of neglect and TWELFTH CENTURY tianity - and therefore `spirituality' in abuse...
...making then he decides it is perfectly all right to much of a jeremiad...
...His response is to note broken connections" through love, right on the Kentucky River or hiking the Red that, first, regeneration can begin now, at work, and community...
...writing what those needs are, and "by refusing utopian (and sometimes his tone might about "Discipline and Honor...
...Authors of the various essays were chosen with obvious care and represent, in most cases, acknowledged authorities in their fields...
...The volume avoids temptations to an implicit anti-material bias by the treatment of these themes, as well as by frequent reminders of the historical context, social origins, and geographical settings of the ideas and practices discussed...
...is a hard world, hostile to the values that story to: essay to poem, is to "restore the Whether he is writing about canoeing you stand for...
...And he is accessible...
...If, in with Jean Leclercq prise of this nature" is well-founded...
...Certainly, there is something Jeffer- The style of his writing is always elegant the end of a degenerative phase of an sonian about him...
...Other highlights It would not have been too much to A collection of thirty-two essays by include stories by Jules Olitski and the expect a whole essay on women's "prominent contemporaries" which is questions about "the chance gyrations of spirituality in some part of the time period under discussion...
...To others, Berry might subject is to pass through the surface...
...In some of the essays there is a tension between giving information - such as the works of the historic authors discussed - and presenting the spirituality of these authors with clarity and depth...
...Cultural and ecclesiastical assumptions sometimes govern definitions and interpretations...
...I submit that while these experiopposite sex, to use cocaine, or to wear ences may not negate our first amendthe tightest possible jeans...
...to information from the Federal government u available to you at more than 1.380 Depository Libraries across the country You can visit any of these libraries and use the Depository collection free of charge...
...For even though we are when, in an era of massive agribusiness, erything he cares about...
...Thus, the classic Hasidic spiritual guide was characterized by overflowing joy and his close bond with his community...
...Reason is not all...
...Because the and scientists, five show business per- one of those issues for many Catholics...
...The word "great" is used in several essays, and is freighted with affirmation and value - the "great fathers," the "great church...
...Which is just still "a long way from any large-scale he advocates using horses instead of trac- about everything...
...It evolutionary process...
...Correspondence as to whether there is a distinctive wom- Even so, several essays are brilliant en's spirituality...
...Because there is an ab- Standing by Words, and "The Body and tion...
...Though the notion of spiritual fatherhoodlmotherhood ntav be found incidentally in other traditions...
Vol. 113 • June 1986 • No. 11
