Susan Pitchford

“Q: What are the seven Christian virtues?
“A: Respectability; childishness; mental timidity; dullness; sentimentality; censoriousness; and depression of the spirits…

“Whenever an average Christian is represented in a novel or a play, he is pretty sure to be shown practicing one or all of the Seven Deadly Virtues listed above, and I am afraid that this is the impression made by the average Christian upon the world at large.

“Perhaps we are not following Christ all the way or in quite the right spirit. We are apt, for example, to be a little sparing of the palms and the hosannas. We are chary of wielding the scourge of small cords, lest we should offend somebody or interfere with trade. We do not furbish up our wits to disentangle knotty questions about Sunday observance and tribute-money, nor hasten to sit at the feet of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. We pass hastily over disquieting jests about making friends with the mammon of unrighteousness and alarming observations about bringing not peace but a sword; nor do we distinguish ourselves by the graciousness with which we sit at meat with publicans and sinners.

“Somehow or other, and with the best intentions, we have shown the world the typical Christian in the likeness of a crashing and rather ill-natured bore – and this in the Name of One who assuredly never bored a soul in those thirty-three years during which He passed through this world like a flame.” Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Dogma Is the Drama”

I once heard Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, say that if we Christians are not attracting people to Christ, it's because when we look at him, we don't seem to be seeing anything very special. I think much of the time we are so complacent in our little religious routines, or swept up in our petty church dramas, that we lose touch altogether with who Jesus is. Miss Sayers is right: no one who knew Jesus when he walked this earth thought he was boring, and no one who's caught so much of a glimpse of him since could ever make that mistake.

Elaine A. Heath’s book "The Mystic Way of Evangelism" is a radical challenge to a complacent, compromised American church, which is wasting away as the era of “Christendom” comes to an end. First, a couple of definitions:

“Mystics are irresistibly drawn to become one with God and God’s purposes in the world…God’s presence is both immanent and transcendent, transforming the mystic inwardly while compelling him or her to an outward life of increasing love and compassion.”

For Heath, evangelism is not ambushing unsuspecting people and force-feeding them the gospel. “Evangelism includes all aspects of the initiation of persons into the holy life, including catechesis, individual and corporate spiritual disciplines, participation in the sacraments (or ordinances, in some communions), and active membership in the life and mission of a local faith community.”

Now for Heath’s thesis about the contemporary American church. She argues that, as Christendom (the church in power) withers away (evident in the decline of numbers, recurring sex scandals, loss of relevance, etc.), a “dark night of the soul” is descending on the church. Such nights are always purgative, and draw those subjected to them into a deeper, more honest relationship with God. (more…)

"It has been said that sanctity is inimitable. While I can think, and probably you can as well, of some very holy people who cry out for imitation because of all their quirks of behaviour, the imitability in question is not of that kind. I cannot become holy by copying another's path. Like the novice in the desert, I must watch the elders and learn the shape and the rhythm of being Christian from those who have walked further and worked harder; but then I have to take my own steps, and create a life that has never been lived before. At the Day of Judgment, as we are often reminded, the question will not be about why we failed to be someone else; I shall not be asked why I wasn't Martin Luther King or Mother Teresa, but why I wasn't Rowan Williams."

Rowan Williams, "Silance and Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert"

I would be very sorry indeed to be asked why I wasn't Rowan Williams, but then, that's exactly his point. He does make me wonder, though, about the self I'm supposed to be: What is she like? How distant am I from her, and do I have any hope of living up to her?

I suspect that the path that leads us to our whole selves is the same one that leads to all good things: prayer and action. In prayer, Jesus' gaze beomes a mirror in which I see myself transfigured. Just as Christ's transfiguration showed his true identity, in this mirror I see my own. This is the gift of contemplation: a self so transformed that it knows it is loved by God, and it has the power to love others in turn: strangers, enemies, friends - even myself.