Resonance Conversations
SEPTEMBER 2022 CHURCH CHAT -
We watched a video of scholar Ruth Abbey discussing Charles Taylor's concepts that help us understand the age we are living in right now and the implications for our faith and life.
We watched a video of scholar Ruth Abbey discussing Charles Taylor's concepts that help us understand the age we are living in right now and the implications for our faith and life.
We watched a video of scholar Ruth Abbey explaining some of the ideas of Philosopher Charles Taylor.
Lots of terminology to learn.
We live in a time when the default is not to be religious. Exclusive Humanism is to be closed to transcendence, being religious is to be open to transcendence. As religious people, we are used to being on the defense, as though being religious is a deficit, or at least needs to be explained. Sue, in her work as an artist that she defines as “seeking the liminal and transcendent space” –said she has conversations every week with people questioning her church attendance and religious inclinations. She said she is always explaining that church is about more than the doctrine, but is a community of people who seek God together. We all agreed that even when people live without a transcendent referent, “you won’t be able to drive the orientation toward transcendence out of people.”
We are in a secular age – a time in modernity when the concept that there is anything beyond us – transcendence - is no longer assumed. According to Charles Taylor, there is cross-pressure that impacts faith in a secular age by making faith contested by the presence of multiple accounts of belief and unbelief in contemporary Western culture. That means it’s hard to hold to either a stance of belief or unbelief, without questioning it because of all the alternatives available.
We agreed cross-pressure has positive and negative implications.
We thought it made our own faith life richer because of having to wrestle through and arrive at what we believe in light of other available beliefs. But we also saw how cross-pressure contributes to a sense of inability to commit for some, and for others creates a grab-bag of personal beliefs from various sources.
Authenticity (in this philosophical perspective – not quite the same as how we are using it in our embodying values!) is the idea that something must be true for me in order to be true. There was wondering about the place of community and communal discernment in this view that what matters to me and works for me is the highest authority. We noted how radical and counter cultural it is to be a community of people who submit to a higher authority together, who allow a set of shared values and practices shape our individual lives and communal practice. Terry wondered about the phenomenon of the mega church, a kind of authentic and individualized faith experience that is convenient but possibly lonely.
We appreciated the emphasis on living open to others. Learning about others’ beliefs need not be threatening but might be approached as only enriching. Taylor’s perspective on tolerance was refreshing. Each perspective can have an intolerant extreme – both religion and exclusive humanism. Christianity is often judged for that intolerant extreme (in fact is viewed as an intolerant religion by many), most especially by intolerant exclusive humanists. Mike wondered what it means to be a missionary today in the world, perhaps there’s an invitation to rethink evangelism in a way that actually needs others’ views.
We appreciated being given language (complicated though it may be) to the context we are in. We wondered, “How do we be people of faith and a faith community in the midst of this?” Kristen saw this as an invitation to “interrogate the familiar” and let ourselves be reoriented. She noted that we often “worship efficiency. We don’t want to take the time that real discernment and listening and waiting on God takes.” She commented how so often in church we “put God on our agenda, rather than putting ourselves on God’s agenda.”
We agreed that Christians are often functional exclusive humanists. God is an idea, or a commodity church is peddling, rather than a being who encounters us. And living in an age of authenticity brings the valuable effect of forcing churches to meet people where they are (where they demand to be met).
Lots of terminology to learn.
We live in a time when the default is not to be religious. Exclusive Humanism is to be closed to transcendence, being religious is to be open to transcendence. As religious people, we are used to being on the defense, as though being religious is a deficit, or at least needs to be explained. Sue, in her work as an artist that she defines as “seeking the liminal and transcendent space” –said she has conversations every week with people questioning her church attendance and religious inclinations. She said she is always explaining that church is about more than the doctrine, but is a community of people who seek God together. We all agreed that even when people live without a transcendent referent, “you won’t be able to drive the orientation toward transcendence out of people.”
We are in a secular age – a time in modernity when the concept that there is anything beyond us – transcendence - is no longer assumed. According to Charles Taylor, there is cross-pressure that impacts faith in a secular age by making faith contested by the presence of multiple accounts of belief and unbelief in contemporary Western culture. That means it’s hard to hold to either a stance of belief or unbelief, without questioning it because of all the alternatives available.
We agreed cross-pressure has positive and negative implications.
We thought it made our own faith life richer because of having to wrestle through and arrive at what we believe in light of other available beliefs. But we also saw how cross-pressure contributes to a sense of inability to commit for some, and for others creates a grab-bag of personal beliefs from various sources.
Authenticity (in this philosophical perspective – not quite the same as how we are using it in our embodying values!) is the idea that something must be true for me in order to be true. There was wondering about the place of community and communal discernment in this view that what matters to me and works for me is the highest authority. We noted how radical and counter cultural it is to be a community of people who submit to a higher authority together, who allow a set of shared values and practices shape our individual lives and communal practice. Terry wondered about the phenomenon of the mega church, a kind of authentic and individualized faith experience that is convenient but possibly lonely.
We appreciated the emphasis on living open to others. Learning about others’ beliefs need not be threatening but might be approached as only enriching. Taylor’s perspective on tolerance was refreshing. Each perspective can have an intolerant extreme – both religion and exclusive humanism. Christianity is often judged for that intolerant extreme (in fact is viewed as an intolerant religion by many), most especially by intolerant exclusive humanists. Mike wondered what it means to be a missionary today in the world, perhaps there’s an invitation to rethink evangelism in a way that actually needs others’ views.
We appreciated being given language (complicated though it may be) to the context we are in. We wondered, “How do we be people of faith and a faith community in the midst of this?” Kristen saw this as an invitation to “interrogate the familiar” and let ourselves be reoriented. She noted that we often “worship efficiency. We don’t want to take the time that real discernment and listening and waiting on God takes.” She commented how so often in church we “put God on our agenda, rather than putting ourselves on God’s agenda.”
We agreed that Christians are often functional exclusive humanists. God is an idea, or a commodity church is peddling, rather than a being who encounters us. And living in an age of authenticity brings the valuable effect of forcing churches to meet people where they are (where they demand to be met).
October 2022 Church Chat Summary -
We watched a TED talk by Hartmut Rosa on Acceleration, Alienation and Resonance.
We watched a TED talk by Hartmut Rosa on Acceleration, Alienation and Resonance.
We listened to a TED talk by sociologist Hartmut Rosa, introducing the concept of Resonance. Lots of terminology in this one too! Rosa says we live in an age of increasing social Acceleration. Everything is speeding up, including the rate of change itself. Technology is speeding up (In 300 years we’ve gone from horses and ships, to trains, then planes, then rockets. Information sharing moved from messengers to phones to the internet, to the internet in all of our pockets). Change itself is speeding up (Typewriters and telephone lines reigned for decades; cell phones and computers are “obsolete” in three years). We create things faster, use them up faster, throw them away faster and it all keeps going faster, and to keep up, we need to go faster and do more and do several things at the same time.
Our modern way of life is held together by dynamic stabilization – meaning, we have created a system where it is necessary to be ever increasing, in order to maintain. Increasing speed, increasing quantity, increasing reach is the goal. And we like this feeling because our ideas of what a good life is, our understanding of freedom and happiness, is tied into the idea of increasing our reach. The more I know, the more I have, the more possibilities and opportunities at my fingertips, the happier I will be. It’s why we love money, and why we love our cell phones – they both provide us wider reach. But this is not simply greed. It is fear. The world is moving so fast we fear falling behind. If we don’t keep up, if we don’t keep increasing our reach, we will be lost. This requires more and more energy be expended. Actual energy to power our production and consumption, but also collective political energy and personal psychological energy.
But everything can’t speed up at the same rate. This creates desynchronization. Nature doesn’t subscribe to dynamic stabilization – we are cutting down trees faster than they can regrow, fishing waters faster than they can replenish, pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere faster than it can be cleaned out. There is desynchronization in politics – democracy takes time. The sharing of ideas, building of coalitions, and dialoging and decision-making all take time. And the human soul cannot be ceaselessly sped up. We are not made for this kind of life. Depression, anxiety and burnout are the result of desynchronization.
Alienation results when we feel cut off from the world. The world stops speaking to us. There’s a deadness, the world feels pale, dry, unengageable. We feel an inability to communicate or feel moved by anything. We are alienated from the experience of living.
But if we were asked, What makes life good? we would share stories of connection, belonging, and awakeness. When did you feel alive? would elicit stories about being touched by a moment, tears coming to our eyes, being stopped by beauty, or captivated in wonder, or inexplicably filled with a sense wellbeing or joy. This is called resonance. Resonance is when the world is speaking to us. It is the opposite of alienation. What makes my life a good life?
Rosa suggests the answer to the problem of acceleration isn’t slowing down. While slowing down can help, we cannot take ourselves completely out of the cultural reality we exist within. The answer to acceleration is resonance. What we need, he offers, is an analysis of forms of resonance, and an analysis of what leads to forms of alienation, “what makes the world go silent?”
Resonance can’t be pursued, it can only be received. We talked about how this is a posture – a posture of receptivity, of willingness, of openness to being encountered. We can’t “make the graced event happen, but we can assume the inner stance of least resistance” to it.
The church has been carried along by the culture, importing into our practices and unspoken beliefs the idolatry – we called it idolatry directly- of dynamic stabilization – that we need more and more. The drive to extend our reach, in Christian terms, is first seen in the Garden of Eden, with the desire to know what God knows, to eat from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is a violation of trust in the relationship between creator and created- human beings wanting to be more than we are, transcend our limits. (We experience that now in multitasking). Alienation has often been used a synonym for sin.
We noted how when the pandemic first hit and everything had to stop, we felt it in ourselves. We saw it in the world – dolphins in the Venice canals, the lifting of pollution in cities, wildlife walking around Time Square. It was like everything got a second to breathe, to catch up for a beat. And now that it’s “over” we are racing to “catch up” and to resume the pace we had before, but it was already unsustainable. And how do we function within this without losing our souls? How do we resist the pull of social media or the need to keep up and not fall behind?
Our job as the church, we said, is to help each other and the world be open to resonance. Only, it’s not just some vague concept. We believe God, a personal being of love who is the source of all things and moving all things toward wholeness, encounters us. God makes Godself available to us. We practice making ourselves available to God.
This can all feel overwhelming and complicated, until we realize that the response is things like prayer and sharing joy and suffering, and being open to the Divine. Things the Church is already doing. And the sabbath command predicted what was coming – that is, God has already told us the importance of purposely living in being time. When we stop doing and rest, that opens us to resonance, so we can be reminded us of our humanity, and reconnected to each other, the world, and God. We talked about the power of gratitude. Beginning prayer with gratitude ground us in reality instead of starting us in our worries and demands. It shifts our perspective from the outset. (It’s difficult to feel both gratitude and anxiety in the same moment). Gratitude opens us to receive all the goodness, instead of starting with what we feel is bad.
We concluded that the role of the church now is to help people watch for God and join in what God is doing. We have the hope of knowing God is real and God is doing something always, in all of life. So how can we practice being open to hearing life speak to us?
Our modern way of life is held together by dynamic stabilization – meaning, we have created a system where it is necessary to be ever increasing, in order to maintain. Increasing speed, increasing quantity, increasing reach is the goal. And we like this feeling because our ideas of what a good life is, our understanding of freedom and happiness, is tied into the idea of increasing our reach. The more I know, the more I have, the more possibilities and opportunities at my fingertips, the happier I will be. It’s why we love money, and why we love our cell phones – they both provide us wider reach. But this is not simply greed. It is fear. The world is moving so fast we fear falling behind. If we don’t keep up, if we don’t keep increasing our reach, we will be lost. This requires more and more energy be expended. Actual energy to power our production and consumption, but also collective political energy and personal psychological energy.
But everything can’t speed up at the same rate. This creates desynchronization. Nature doesn’t subscribe to dynamic stabilization – we are cutting down trees faster than they can regrow, fishing waters faster than they can replenish, pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere faster than it can be cleaned out. There is desynchronization in politics – democracy takes time. The sharing of ideas, building of coalitions, and dialoging and decision-making all take time. And the human soul cannot be ceaselessly sped up. We are not made for this kind of life. Depression, anxiety and burnout are the result of desynchronization.
Alienation results when we feel cut off from the world. The world stops speaking to us. There’s a deadness, the world feels pale, dry, unengageable. We feel an inability to communicate or feel moved by anything. We are alienated from the experience of living.
But if we were asked, What makes life good? we would share stories of connection, belonging, and awakeness. When did you feel alive? would elicit stories about being touched by a moment, tears coming to our eyes, being stopped by beauty, or captivated in wonder, or inexplicably filled with a sense wellbeing or joy. This is called resonance. Resonance is when the world is speaking to us. It is the opposite of alienation. What makes my life a good life?
Rosa suggests the answer to the problem of acceleration isn’t slowing down. While slowing down can help, we cannot take ourselves completely out of the cultural reality we exist within. The answer to acceleration is resonance. What we need, he offers, is an analysis of forms of resonance, and an analysis of what leads to forms of alienation, “what makes the world go silent?”
Resonance can’t be pursued, it can only be received. We talked about how this is a posture – a posture of receptivity, of willingness, of openness to being encountered. We can’t “make the graced event happen, but we can assume the inner stance of least resistance” to it.
The church has been carried along by the culture, importing into our practices and unspoken beliefs the idolatry – we called it idolatry directly- of dynamic stabilization – that we need more and more. The drive to extend our reach, in Christian terms, is first seen in the Garden of Eden, with the desire to know what God knows, to eat from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is a violation of trust in the relationship between creator and created- human beings wanting to be more than we are, transcend our limits. (We experience that now in multitasking). Alienation has often been used a synonym for sin.
We noted how when the pandemic first hit and everything had to stop, we felt it in ourselves. We saw it in the world – dolphins in the Venice canals, the lifting of pollution in cities, wildlife walking around Time Square. It was like everything got a second to breathe, to catch up for a beat. And now that it’s “over” we are racing to “catch up” and to resume the pace we had before, but it was already unsustainable. And how do we function within this without losing our souls? How do we resist the pull of social media or the need to keep up and not fall behind?
Our job as the church, we said, is to help each other and the world be open to resonance. Only, it’s not just some vague concept. We believe God, a personal being of love who is the source of all things and moving all things toward wholeness, encounters us. God makes Godself available to us. We practice making ourselves available to God.
This can all feel overwhelming and complicated, until we realize that the response is things like prayer and sharing joy and suffering, and being open to the Divine. Things the Church is already doing. And the sabbath command predicted what was coming – that is, God has already told us the importance of purposely living in being time. When we stop doing and rest, that opens us to resonance, so we can be reminded us of our humanity, and reconnected to each other, the world, and God. We talked about the power of gratitude. Beginning prayer with gratitude ground us in reality instead of starting us in our worries and demands. It shifts our perspective from the outset. (It’s difficult to feel both gratitude and anxiety in the same moment). Gratitude opens us to receive all the goodness, instead of starting with what we feel is bad.
We concluded that the role of the church now is to help people watch for God and join in what God is doing. We have the hope of knowing God is real and God is doing something always, in all of life. So how can we practice being open to hearing life speak to us?
