The Lectio Letter - Issue #71 - A Deeper Christian Maturity - Part 3
“Becoming like Jesus is as much as about having a relaxed and joyful heart as it is about believing and doing the right thing, as much about proper energy (or motivation) as about proper truth.”
― Ronald Rolheiser
“One of our deepest struggles in life is dealing with the unconscious anxiety inside of us that pressures us to try to give ourselves significance and immortality. There is always the inchoate gnawing: do something to guarantee that something of your life will last. It is this propensity that tempts us to try to find meaning and significance through success and accumulation. But in the end it does not work, irrespective of how great our successes have been.”
― Ronald Rolheiser
“Nikos Kazantzakis shares a conversation he once had with an old monk named Father Makários. Sitting with the saintly old man, Kazantzakis asked him: “Do you still wrestle with the devil, Father Makários?” The old monk reflected for a while and then replied: “Not any longer, my child. I have grown old now, and he has grown old with me. He doesn’t have the strength.… I wrestle with God.” “With God!” exclaimed the astonished young writer. “And you hope to win?” “I hope to lose, my child,” replied the old ascetic.”
― Ronald Rolheiser
Welcome to Issue #71 of the Lectio Letter. This members-only newsletter is filled with music, film and food suggestions, links, and an article written by yours truly.
Whether you become a paid subscriber or not, I’m very grateful to each of you who read and respond to this newsletter.
The Lectio Letter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
PSA: I’ve heard a number of people have been missing out on the whole email if they use Gmail because the email gets ‘clipped’.
You can see at the bottom of the email if it says “message clipped”, then click “View entire message” to see it all.
You are not getting it all if you don’t see my signature at the bottom.Alternatively, if you don’t want to read this in your email, you can use the substack app (where you can listen to the article read out) or read it online at LectioLetter.com
Introduction
In the first article of this series, we began by exploring how we search for pathways towards Christian maturity. The second began a series of reflections on what Christian maturity might look like by reflecting on the first three of ten attributes writer Ronald Rolheiser mentions in his book, Sacred Fire.
Live in gratitude and thank your Creator by enjoying your life.
Be willing to carry an increasing amount of life's complexities with empathy.
Transform jealousy, anger, bitterness and hatred rather than giving them back in kind.
I argued that often, it is when we are reading those from other times and other traditions that we get ‘woken up’ by language and perspectives that remind us of the deep truths that Christianity contains. When we get used to the way people who look, believe and act like us, talk, we need fresh language that helps us reconnect to what is most important.
This article is the Third in a four-part series which will unpack ten signposts towards Christian maturity from a writer outside of my own tradition, and I suspect outside of the tradition many reading this email identify with.
The first three were;
Live in gratitude and thank your Creator by enjoying your life.
Be willing to carry an increasing amount of life's complexities with empathy.
Transform jealousy, anger, bitterness and hatred rather than giving them back in kind.
If you want to get access to that issue, you’ll need to be a paying member, but you can get a free 7-day trial and read it right now;
The next three, I’m unpacking today are:
4. Let suffering soften your heart rather than harden your soul.
5. Forgive your own sins, the unfairness of life, and those who hurt you.
6. Bless more and curse less
I hope the unpacking of these second three points in the article below helps renew your imagination for a life of continually deepening discipleship in the way of Jesus.
I hope you enjoy this Lectio article. Feel free to leave a comment or a question after you’ve read it, I love receiving those.
Status Board
Life
A week ago, we wrapped up the Children of Promise Camp 2023 which we’ve been in some ways, preparing for since November last year. It was a beautiful time which exceeded our expectations for our goals of;
Supporting and Empowering local leaders to reach their own community,
Inviting young people into friendship with Jesus
Creating a context of light-hearted renewal for children in difficult circumstances.
Our friend from the UK, Freddie Reed came and made these wonderful videos of the Camp each day. They are worth watching all the way through to receive the infectious delight these children had during their time away.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Music
Ben Howard’s song Walking Backwards ingeniously shot by La Blogotheque
We haven’t had the chance to listen to the live performances from Glastonbury Music Festival (which we vicariously watch each year). It often introduces us to new music we haven’t heard before. I’m hoping to find some performances to share with you, but for now this Phoenix performance is a good start.
Re-listening to this great song from SAULT
After listening to lots of potential background tracks for the Children of Promise videos I found this track by “Slowly Rolling Camera”
Watching
We’ve had hardly any time to be watching anything, but as part of Rachel’s Spiritual Direction Training programme she has been reading “Silence” by Shūsaku Endō and so we watched Martin Scorsese’s film adaption.
The book is considered one of the modern classics of Japanese literature, written by a celebrated Japanese Christian. It’s an exploration of the ability, or inability of Christian faith to contextualise to a radically different cultural context. The repeated assertion of the persecuting Japanese officials in the book is that Japan is a ‘swamp’ that the tree of the gospel refuses to take root in. It opens up some important questions around contextualization, the nature of Christian witness and of mission.
These can seem quite technical or ‘in-house’ discussions in Christianity which makes it quite remarkable that this book and subsequent movie directed by a Hollywood heavy-weight gained such a wide reader/viewership.
Eating
Our friend Freddie and his fiance Hannah (Who’s already featured extensively in this and other Lectio’s - see the ultimate brownie recipe and Ragu recipes here) made us this simple and delicious “pici pasta” recipe here;
Padella’s pici cacio e pepe
For the pasta:
375g white bread flour
185ml water
1 tablespoon olive oil
A pinch of sea salt
Stick the flour in a mixing bowl, making a well in the centre. Mix your water, oil, and salt, and then pour it into the well – you should start incorporating the flour until a dough begins to form. Once you’ve got a dough, put it on a clean surface and knead until it becomes smooth, then roll it to a 2cm thickness using a rolling pin. Wrap it in cling film and leave it to rest for at least 30 minutes.
Once rested, cut the dough into strips of around 15g each, and cover them with a damp tea towel. Roll the strips on a clean surface (e.g. a chopping board) using the palms of your hands, until the noodles are about the thickness of a pen. Once you’ve used all your dough, you can either start cooking, or leave the pasta in the fridge for up to 24 hours – make sure to put them in a well-floured tray though, or the strands will start to stick together.
For the dish:
Pici dough, ready to cook
160g unsalted, cubed cold butter
100g finely grated parmesan
A tablespoon of ground black pepper
Salt
Lemon juice
Get a pan of water to a rolling boil, and then season liberally with salt. Add the pici and cook them for around five minutes. At the same time, drop your butter, black pepper, lemon juice, and a splash of the pasta water in a saucepan, leaving it on a low heat until the ingredients combine. Remove the pici from the water (keep hold of the pasta water though!) and add it to the butter sauce. Sprinkle most of the parmesan on top, leaving it to melt in the residual heat before stirring. You can add a little extra pasta water on top to help it melt into that perfect smooth texture. Then, stick it on a plate, sprinkle with any remaining parmesan and sea salt, and dig in!
A Deeper Christian Maturity: Part 3
We are in a four-part series exploring insights into Christian maturing based on my reading of Sacred Fire, written by Roman Catholic author, Ronald Rolheiser.
The first three were:
To live in gratitude and thank your Creator by enjoying your life.
To be willing to carry an increasing amount of life's complexities with empathy.
To transform jealousy, anger, bitterness and hatred rather than give them back in kind.
Let’s look at the following three:
4. Let suffering soften your heart rather than harden your soul.
“There is no depth of soul without suffering.”
— Rolheisier, p. 253
We live in human relationships with broken people. This is a foundational reality. There will be times when we are hurt, times when we won’t be honoured, and times when we will be treated unfairly. How we respond to these experiences may profoundly determine the type of person we will become.
The pain and suffering in this world impact every person. None of us gets through life without some kind of wounding. We can either allow suffering to make us embittered, angry and resentful, or we can allow it to draw us into empathy, love and forgiveness, and we make this decision repeatedly throughout our lifetime.
Suffering, and the humiliation it often brings, will usually give us a fresh perspective of vulnerability. We are not limitless, and we are not all-powerful. We need God and others. Suffering either turns us inwards in self-reliance and refusing vulnerability, or it invites us outwards to see our need for God and those around us.
5. Forgive your own sins, the unfairness of life, and those who hurt you.
“As we age, we can begin to trim down our spiritual vocabulary, and eventually, we can get it down to three words: forgive, forgive, forgive!”
—Ronald Rolhesier p. 256
While God’s forgiveness is the most important factor in our lives, that forgiveness must be worked out and ‘felt’ in our own lives in order to follow in the way of Jesus.
Practising forgiveness in our own lives cannot be trivialised and it costs us everything. It requires us to forgo justice on our own terms and yet without embracing it, we will shrivel and die spiritually. As I have said above, we are surrounded by people who will love us one moment and hurt us the next.
All our Christian activities, service and theology will do little to bring us the wholeness of life we are promised unless we learn to receive and offer forgiveness. The very same place in our hearts where we offer forgiveness out to the world is the same place forgiveness flows into our hearts from God.
Some things we have experienced might require lifelong daily decisions to release others from the harm they have caused us, but doing so means that we too are released. It is being released from living under the burden of unforgiveness, a life that is marked by harm, into one that is characterised by being beloved. Life is unfair and things are not always the way God intended, but we have to come to terms with this reality while turning to God in the hopeful expectation that He has promised to make all things right. If you’re interested to explore the issue of forgiveness more, I wrote a four part series on it last year.
6. Bless more and curse less
“We are mature when we define ourselves by what we are for rather than by what we are against.”
—Ronald Rolhesier p. 260
The capacity to praise more than criticise defines maturity. Our willingness to bless and encourage others, especially those of the same gender and those who are younger, is a key sign of maturing.
It is easier to give compliments to our elders, hoping it might earn us privilege in their sight, or to give it across genders in order to build mutual affirmation. But younger people of the same gender tend to have a kind of insecurity or competition directed towards people of the same gender. Encouragement breaks this dynamic and reveals that there is more than enough honour and blessing to go around.
We bless when we no longer need to hoard accolades for ourselves and in doing so, we begin to encourage the gifts and goodness of others. We bless and encourage others even when it costs us, and even when (or especially when) it leads others to look at them, not at us. The world is constantly wearing down people's sense of self-worth, breeding increasing insecurity. The maturing person speaks out fresh self-worth and belovedness towards others using words like those of the Father as Jesus' baptism: "This is my son in whom I am well pleased.”
Conclusion
As we conclude this reflection, we need to remember that these virtues are not mere ideals, but rather they are lived out in the very fabric of the Christian life.
They offer some practical insights into the kind of qualities few of us have, but all of us are able to cultivate.
Maybe one of them stood out to you and if you sense the invitation to that, perhaps you might like to more intentionally cultivate an aspect of maturing in that particular area of your own life?
These virtues are not easily attained or maintained. They require ongoing commitment, intentional practice and, most importantly, a reliance on the transformative power of the Holy Spirit. Yet, as we embrace them, we discover that they have the capacity to shape not only our individual lives but also our relationships, our communities, and our world.
Next time, I want to cover four further visions of Christian maturity that Rolhesier offers:
7. Live in a more radical sobriety.
8. Pray for yourself, for others, and live your prayers.
9. Be wide in your embrace.
10. Stand where you are supposed to be standing and let God provide the rest.
See you then.
Miscellaneous Links
Why do bad things happen to good people?
This is the foundational question of so many crises of faith. But often, our ways of thinking about it devolve into simplified formulas around whether or not God is good. The Bible offers us a complex picture of how God runs the world and doesn’t offer a simplified picture. This Bible Story video expresses this complexity really well by examining the book of Job in concert with the other two books of wisdom; Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
How to Simplify Life by the School of Life
How Wes Anderson uses Miniatures in his movies
Four pieces of advice from The One Thing, by Gary Keller.
Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls
" The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you're keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls--family, health, friends, integrity--are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered."
Decide your future by deciding your habits
"People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures."
Ride the virtuous circle of passion-practice-skill
"Passion for something leads to disproportionate time practicing or working at it. That time spent eventually translates to skill, and when skill improves, results improve. Better results generally lead to more enjoyment, and more passion and more time is invested. It can be a virtuous cycle all the way to extraordinary results."
Go small
"If everyone has the same number of hours in the day, why do some people seem to get so much more done than others? How do they do more, achieve more, earn more, have more? If time is the currency of achievement, then why are some able to cash in their allotment for more chips than others? The answer is they make getting to the heart of things the heart of their approach. They go small. Going small is ignoring all the things you could do and doing what you should do. It's recognizing that not all things matter equally and finding the things that matter most. It's a tighter way to connect what you do with what you want. It's realizing that extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus."
Japan Has Millions of Empty Houses. Want to Buy One for $25,000?
“When Jaya Thursfield found a house he wanted to buy in Japan a few years ago, friends and family told him to forget it. The place wasn’t worth the trouble, they said. After all, it stood in a forest of shoulder-high weeds after being abandoned about seven years earlier — one of the millions of vacant houses known as akiya, Japanese for “empty house” — throughout the country.”
A new generation of airships is taking to the skies
The airship could help solve the problem of how to transport cargo “when infrastructure is lacking, or just doesn’t exist at all,” says Romain Schlack, Flying Whales’ head of communications. “We are going to add new possibilities to global logistics, while overcoming obstacles and problems on the ground.”
The Man Who Knows What the World’s Richest People Want (and How To Get It)
Rey Flemings has become one of the premiere fixers for the global elite. More than that, though, he gives the rich a place to admit what they can’t say publicly: that they need help finding happiness.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, have a question, or suggestion, feel free to leave a comment;
This edition of the Lectio letter is free to everyone, but I’d be so grateful if you’d consider becoming a supporter of my writing and ministry.
You can get a free trial below which unlocks access to all the last 70 articles and newsletters.
Finally, if you think someone else would be interested and enjoy this, please do share it with them
That’s all for now…
I found #6, esp to bless younger men very helpful. As an older man, I do think I envy the strength and agility of younger men. I think I sometimes resent they having what I once had. I have never seen this before! Hallelujah! A new way to repent!