imago dei
Illustration by Ryan McQuade
CHRISTIAN MYSTICS HAVE a definite dramatic streak. Their transformative encounters with God are full of divine revelations (Julian of Norwich), ecstatic visions (Teresa of Ávila), stigmata (Francis of Assisi), erotic imagery (John of the Cross), and all manner of artistic compositions (here’s to you, Hildegard of Bingen).
But then there’s Brother Lawrence who — if he is known at all — is known for experiencing God’s presence as he washed dishes, cooked eggs, or did other monotonous chores that came with life in a 17th-century French monastery.
Born Nicolas Herman, he emerged from one of Europe’s deadliest religious wars a disabled veteran. Haunted by his past actions and convinced he was eternally condemned, he failed as a hermit (too much time alone with his thoughts), then as a footman (“a clumsy oaf who broke everything,” he recalled), before eventually joining the lay brothers of the Order of the Discalced Carmelites in Paris in 1640. Yet Brother Lawrence’s anxiety persisted. When he tried to pray, he spent the whole time “rejecting thoughts and then tumbling back into these same thoughts.” Eventually, he gave up all his spiritual exercises and focused on becoming aware of God’s presence as he did his assigned work in the monastery’s kitchen. What he experienced wasn’t a celestial vision, but what he had sought all along: God’s peace.
“We go to such great lengths, trying to remain in the presence of God by so many methods,” he told a friend who posthumously published Lawrence’s modest writings and letters. “Isn’t it much shorter and more direct to do everything for the love of God?”
Carmen Acevedo Butcher, an award-winning translator of mystical and classic Christian texts, was drawn to Brother Lawrence’s gentle practice. Acevedo Butcher herself grew up saddled with severe “self-loathing” and anxiety from a childhood shaped by trauma, hellfire preaching, and the strain of being “a brown girl in a white society.” But in Lawrence’s writing she finds someone who experienced real Love amid real pain.
In Practice of the Presence, Acevedo Butcher’s new English translation of Brother Lawrence, she emphasizes his embodied joy and his “original welcoming spirit,” which she sees in his frequent use of tout le monde — “for everybody.” Drawing on Lawrence’s deeply trinitarian theology, Acevedo Butcher uses they/them pronouns for God, a move she hopes will communicate Lawrence’s kind, inclusive understanding of Love to a wide audience. Acevedo Butcher spoke with Sojourners’ Betsy Shirley about translation, mysticism, and how Brother Lawrence’s practice connects to the work of social justice today.
Illustration by Ricardo Santos
EVANGELICALS AND OTHER Christians involved in adoption and “orphan care” ministries have often evoked Paul’s use of adoption as a metaphor: God “adopts” us into the family of God, so we should adopt children as a manifestation of the gospel.
But New Testament scholar Erin Heim, a U.S. domestic adoptee herself, has raised questions about Pauline adoption metaphors. “The thing that always gets said — ‘contemporary adoption is a horizontal expression of God’s vertical adoption of us’ — there’s something at face value that is a little bit comforting about it, but that doesn’t sit very well for very long,” Heim said in a podcast about her research on these metaphors.
Adoption by nature is a vertical relationship, Heim explained, referring to power inequities between parents and children and between cultures. “There’s no such thing as horizontal adoption,” she said. “When we make mini vertical things that [try to] look like what God does in the Bible, it’s idolatry.”
Christians were pioneers in the establishment of international adoption to the United States in the 1950s and later spurred an orphan care movement during the peak of international adoption in the early 2000s. Since 1948, roughly 1 million children globally have been placed in new families, far from their original families and culture, through intercountry adoption, according to demographer Peter Selman — more than 380,000 of them between 2000 and 2009.
While faith has guided Christians in promoting adoption, religious narratives also have upheld harmful power structures and practices. “White saviorism” and racial hierarchies have led to the separation of children from their cultures of origin. Adoptees who are now adults have shared stories of struggle within families and societies that deny or misunderstand these dynamics.
From P-Valley
P-VALLEY IS A DRAMA about employees of a fictional strip club in Mississippi called The Pynk. Watching the show, which Starz has renewed for a third season, gives me déjà vu. In the opening minutes of the first episode, we see a neighborhood overtaken by a flood, the camera eventually focusing on a floating suitcase — which a woman who looks like she just survived a hurricane grabs. I’m reminded of Toni Morrison’s titular character Beloved, who “walked out of the water”; it’s all instantly reminiscent of the Southern, sin-filled aura of stories by Flannery O’Connor. A few minutes later, I’m hit with production design as colorful as that of the TV show Pose — unabashed theatricality.
This description should feel as dizzying as twirling around a stripper pole — that’s the inevitable impact of the artistic and spiritual heft P-Valley wields. The show, which is an adaptation of a play by Pulitzer Prize winner and Tony Award nominee Katori Hall, is about nothing less than free will. Hall explores complex topics such as sex work, abuse by men, abortion, and homophobia. Here in the Mississippi Delta, viewers get to know a mostly Black community trying to live as freely as the Constitution of their nation built by slaves declares white men should.
Charismatic leaders such as Jean Vanier can inspire and transform us. But when these leaders commit abuse, how do the movements they ignite pick up the pieces?
A voter casts a ballot for the midterm primary election in Grove City, Ohio on May 3, 2022. REUTERS/Gaelen Morse
Yet, in this charged atmosphere, Jesus calls us to be peacemakers — regardless of our political leanings or party affiliation. So, what does peacemaking look like during the upcoming midterms?
A voter fills out a provisional ballot authorisation form for the presidential primary elections at the Franklin County Board of Election office in Columbus, Ohio. April 28, 2020. REUTERS/Paul Vernon
We believe all human beings are made in the “imago dei,” the image and likeness of God — it’s a core tenet of ours and many other faiths. Just as the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how injustices in our health care and safety net systems stand in stark contrast to that core ideal, so too does any strategy that would negate a people’s votes because of the color of their skin. It is not just a partisan tactic, but rather a denial of their imago dei, a theological, biblical, and spiritual offense to God. Protecting the right to vote affirms the divine imprint and inherent value of all of God’s children.
THE OLDEST mystics that we have in organized religious expression ... all have similar parabolic insights into contemplation. There is a story about the master saying to the disciples, “Tell me how you know when it is dawn.” And one disciple says, “Master, is it when we can tell the fig tree from the lemon tree at 100 paces?” And the master says to the disciple, “No, that is not how you will know it is dawn.”
So a second disciple says, “Well then, master, is it when you can tell the sheep from the goats at 50 paces?” And the master says, “No, that is not how we shall know when it is dawn.” Then the third disciple says, “Well then, master, how do we know that we have seen the dawn?” And the master says, “We will know that we have seen the dawn when we can see the face of Christ in the face of any brother or sister, no matter how near or how far.”
That’s contemplation. That’s the fruit of the contemplative life.
And unless you’re putting on the mind of Christ, I don’t know if you’ll ever see the face of the Christ in the other, or the face of the cosmic, or the face of the people of God in the other. You may be a highly efficient social worker or a marvelously compassionate do-gooder, but you will not necessarily be a Christian contemplative.
This is an excerpt of an article that originally appeared in the June 1987 issue of Sojourners. Read the full article here.
If our fasting from food does not compel us to consider and improve the circumstances of those who are hungry and fast involuntarily, then what purpose does it serve? If our abstaining from shopping for clothes does not cause us to consider and provide for the naked, and if our desire to improve our interpersonal relationships doesn’t catalyze our engagement with those on the margins, how does this season of sacrifice serve the building of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven?
Image via studiostoks/Shutterstock.com
So as I sit here and eat my low-calorie string cheese, I feel compelled to stop and contemplate for a moment what it means for me to bear God’s image.
Image via REUTERS/Charles Mostoller/RNS
What criteria do we use to pick a president?
We hear the daily stats and buzz, but presidential elections are about the big picture — where we want to go and the best way to get there. This means looking not only at political options but also at the way we humans are set up — how we’re wired. When public policies don’t account for that, we have reduced horizons, diminished resources, and polarization.
Image via "LEMONADE" trailer/YouTube
Since Beyoncé released "Formation," white, mainstream outlets have been referring to her evolution as "militant." But Bey is an entertainer and artist. She is not in anyone's home to decide who turns off the TV or internet. She is not militant. She is defiant. But America is so used to demanding the compliance of black women that defiance is often confused for being militant.
But when others don't understand who we are or how we are shaping the world, Beyoncé has already told us how to respond: "I ain't sorry. I ain't sorry. I ain't sorry. I ain't thinkin' bout you."
I'm not either, Bey. Now, where is Serena so I can twerk with her and drink this chilled lemonade?
Syrian refugees at the Slovenian border in September. Photoman29 / Shutterstock.com
God’s been telling the story of restoration since Genesis when we were created selem Elohim, in the image of God. We were created into perfect communion with God. From Genesis 3 until the end of the Old Testament, we see a narrative of a people in exile and God giving opportunities for reconciliation and restoration of relationship that humanity is incapable of accepting. Reconciliation is an exchange of something worthless (our condition of sin) for something immeasurably worthy (communion with God).
In the New Testament we see a biblical narrative through Jesus of now-but-not-yet restoration. In Jesus we see the coming of the Kingdom of God and get to be reconciled back to God. We even get a glimpse of an eternity where there is no more death or mourning or crying or pain.
If we truly believe we are the image of God, it changes how we approach the image of God in the world. Our call then is to actively partner with God in taking the world somewhere.
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Sometimes we dehumanize people by speaking, thinking, or imagining about them in generalizations, by covering their true identity with generic labels and terms that are impersonal, cold, and less meaningful. For example, you can refer to your brother as “someone that I know” or your best friend as “this one guy.”
We often do this when we want to create separation or disassociate from others — often in order to protect ourselves, make ourselves look better, or attack others. Thus, we refer to our spouse as “this person I know” when we’re agreeing with a coworker about people who hold an opposing political belief we disagree with, or offhandedly use the phrase “this guy I know” about our dad when talking about annoying habits that we can’t stand.
We see Peter do the same thing in the Bible, referring to Jesus — his savior, closest friend, companion, teacher, and leader — as simply “him” when being accused of knowing Jesus right before the crucifixion.
Luke 22: 56-57: Then a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely at him, said, “This man also was with him.” But he denied it, saying, “Woman, I do not know him.”
I don’t know “him.”
One word: him.
No harm done, right? It’s just a simple pronoun.
We do the same thing all of the time.
Him, her, she, he, them, those people, etc.
As innocent as this practice may seem, the ideas behind them are more cynical, and it becomes much more serious for Christians when we use terms, thoughts, and ideas as a way to disconnect people from God.
Pope Francis. JeffyBruno / Flickr
Pope Francis on Tuesday released his first apostolic exhortation since his election in March. The message, “Evangelii Gaudium” (“The Joy of the Gospel”), challenges Catholics — both laity and clergy — to pay more attention to evangelizing the world.
While most American evangelicals do not usually read papal pronouncements, it would be a shame if we did not familiarize ourselves with Francis’ newest document, for there is much in it that evangelicals could embrace:
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer speaks to reporters in 2010. Photo via Getty Images.
When our parents teach us at a very young age to say the magic words — please and thank you — they give us our first lessons in morality. Manners are the first step to morality. Etiquette is the first gesture of ethics. Manner and morals derive from the mores of a society. Etiquette derives from the ethos and ethics of a society.
When Arizona Governor Jan Brewer wagged her finger in President Obama’s face upon his arrival in her state, she demonstrated not only a disregard for the Office of the President, but she simply displayed bad manners.
In the United States, we do not have a monarch that embodies the state in his or her person. In the United States, that person is the president of the United States. He and the vice president are the only two elected officials who are elected nationwide. Thus, the president is not only the head of the executive branch of government, but he is the representative of the entire country.
Governor Brewer’s demeanor toward the president was inappropriate. However, the deeper question is why would this woman think it is appropriate to put her finger in anyone’s face, president or not?
The issues surrounding immigration are politically complex and emotionally charged, especially at a time when many Americans are experiencing severe economic distress.