The Contemplative Pastor

On holidays I started to read Eugene Peterson's, The Contemplative Pastor – Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction. It was interesting how the book seemd to just fall off the bookcase several days before my holidays..........

Here are some summary notes of one of the sections - very challenging.

Ships sail East, and ships sail West
While the selfsame breezes blow
It’s the set of the sail and not the gale
That determines the way they go.

The question at the heart of the intersection of God’s will and human wills is apparently at the heart of everything. The relation of God’s will and my will is not a specialised religious question; it is the question. The way we answer it shapes our humanity in every dimension (p 99).

1. work – negative capability
2. language – the middle voice
3. love – willed passivity

negative capability
“the suppression of self so that the work can take place on it’s own” (p101)…. a kind of submission of will to the conditions at hand, a cultivation of humility. It is a noticeable feature in all skilled workers – woodworkers, potters, poets, and prayers.
…..respectfully and reverently entering into the reality of the material or situation. Kenosis – Jesus emptying Himself – is prelude to filling. A bucket, no matter what wonderful things it contains, is of no use for the next task at hand until it is empted - negative capability.

the middle voice

When I speak in the active voice, I initiate an action that goes someplace else: “I counsel my friend.” When I speak in the passive voice, I receive the action that another initiates: “I am counselled by my friend.” When I speak in the middle voice, I actively participate in the results of an action that another initiates: “I take counsel.” ……two wills operate, neither to the exclusion of the other, neither cancelling out the other, each respecting the other.
(p 103) My grammar book said, “the middle voice is that use of the verb which describes the subjects as participating in the result of the action.” It reads like a description of Christian prayer – “the subject as participating in the result of the action.” I do not control the action; that is a pagan concept of prayer, putting the gods to work by my incantations or rituals. I am not controlled by the action; that is a Hindu concept of prayer in which I slump passively into the impersonal and fated will of gods and goddesses. I enter into the action begun by another, my creating and saving Lord, and find myself participating in the results of the action. I neither do it, not have it done to me; I will to participate in what is willed. … prayer takes place in the middle voice.

willed passivity

There are different ways of being passive: there is an indolent, inattentive passivity that approximates the existence of a slug; and there is a willed and attentive passivity that is something more like worship.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Ephesians 5:21 (NIV)
Out of respect for Christ, be courteously reverent to one another. Ephesians 5:21 (MSG)
Reverence is the operative word (p 107) – en phobo Christou – awed, worshipful attentiveness, ready to respond in love and adoration.

Love is defined by a willingness to give up my will, a voluntary crucifixion.
In marriage we learn that love does not develop when we impose our will on the other, but only when we enter into sensitive responsiveness to the will of the other… willed passivity. If the operation is mutual, which it sometimes is, a great love is a consequence (p 108).