Dissident Reflections: Tenacious Serenity

(PRT 4 of Augsburger’s book)  When you think of the words “serenity” and “tenacity” are they different from one another?  I would say that if we think through it we might realize they are two sides to one nature.  Augsburger uses the moment in Gethsemane to make this point when Jesus is feeling the full weight of human anxiety and vulnerability. Jesus tells his disciples to pray fervently that they may not come into trial, while he himself withdrawals from them to ask God if it is at all possible that he not have to suffer what is about to happen.  But, we can almost see the fear turn to serenity and tenacity in the question and the resolution of his following words, “yet, not what I want, but what you want” and then “Get up, let us go forward” (Mt. 36:39; 46). 

Serenity

Human existence is characteristically anxious (anti-serene) because we are self-aware creatures.  One’s self-awareness has ways of overwhelming and trapping our center, but peace is crucial to our ability to move forward.  To simplify this notion, serenity becomes the surrendering of self-centeredness: this is willfully giving up personal rights, renouncing claims of self-survival as “divine” and ultimately letting go of our self-preoccupation.[1]  So what is so serene about this? 

We tend to alleviate our anxieties by trusting in temporary distractions--- wealth, power, security, material things, or anything that helps up us forget about our humanness and limitations--- but true serenity begins to emerge when we can accept and confess our finitude.  It is also at this place where we can become intimately aware of God to the point of obtaining a peace that allows us to let go, let come what may come, and most importantly, let God.  Freedom of the soul is to surrender both our need to control and to demand so that we can welcome God’s shalom.

Tenacity

On the other side of this is tenacity.  True tenacity is a yieldedness that is not will-less or willful, but surrenders self-will in exchange for a higher will. When we willingly make such a commitment to seek, serve and surrender to God’s will we can have the tenacity to pray things like: your way Lord, not mine.  This is as Augsburger defines an existential tenacity that has the audacity to risk all and accept harsh punishments, even unto death, if that is the consequence for holding true to Christ.[2]  This is a radical expression that if really understood will extend into every facet of one’s life (politically, economically, socially, relationally and so on) but it is because God is then sustaining and leading us.

Tenacious Serenity

Augsburger offers a fuller expression in saying:

Serenity finds courage in asking, ‘If it be possible, let this pain pass’; it finds peace in, ‘Not my will but Thine’ and tenacious endurance in resolving, ‘Enough get up, get on with it’…  Serenity is not the brother of ambition, child of greed, sister of competition, but it may be the father of service and mother of surprising success.  Serenity may be found in accepting grace and accepting ourselves as a gift of grace; we are now what shall be and in it is enough. At other times serenity is claiming courage and risking what it is we shall become.  It is not yet apparent what we shall be, but we do know that when Christ appears we shall be like him (1 Jn. 3:2).[3]

This signals a call to reorient and reprioritize what is important to us and how to measure one’s success.  It is not by being purpose driven, healthy, wealthy or prosperous; it is not by being better, bigger, faster, stronger, more successful, or admired; it is just not something that can be quantified or qualified by our means.

However, it can be quantified by the same God that did not measure Jesus’ success by victoriously defeating accusers, betrayers and Roman authoritarians either.  His success was in being obedient to the point of laying down his life.  Through surrender and stubborn commitment to stay the course we too can prize the will of God no matter how seemingly insignificant, important or detrimental because God gives eternal content.

[1] David Augsburger Dissident Discipleship (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazo Press 2006), 89-90.

[2] ibid, 91-92.

[3] ibid, 95-96.

Dissident Reflections: Practice of Stubborn Loyalty

(A continued discussion on David Augsburger’s Dissident Discipleship)  This chapter, in some sense, is actually an extension of “radical attachment”. What Augsburger aims to show is that one’s attachment to God can only form an attachment and stubborn loyalty to one another.  Moreover, it must be seen as an aspect in human spirituality… and I rather like this idea. 

People Knitted into a New Community

            We might define community, in the general sense, as an intersecting of lives, establishing of relationships and mutual commitments.  The whole of the people will almost instinctively find itself, shape itself (as a group and individually), create agreeable boundaries and for a time it usually works.  This web of community linking person to person is nothing new.

            The distinctiveness of Christian community however is not this alone, but rather is defined by a shared radical attachment to Christ.  When we share this attachment Augsburger shows it gives way to a loyalty toward one another and that loyalty takes a unique shape:

·         Stubborn Loyalty informs stubborn attentiveness:  When attached to Christ we can listen attentively to one another and expect to hear his voice as another speaks or expect to see his face in the other as we come to bear his likeness.

·         Loyalty allows stubborn vulnerability: This means that a community where free conversation is allowed creates openness to the point of willingly exposing personal struggles and vulnerabilities and finds others to be sensitive and responsive to such self-disclosures.

·         Stubborn inwardness opened outward: The community then becomes a place where one can speak honestly about innermost feelings about what is precious and deeply valued.

·         Allowing difference: We should recognize that community is the setting for clearly confronting “unity and discord, positive attachments and negative repulsions, concord and conflict…”  This is a community that faithfully and stubbornly accepts and integrates discord, not be a people that excludes all discord.

·         Stubborn support, confrontation and mutual growth: We should be community that fosters healing, growth and maturation for all members.  No person is an island who is expected to go it alone, but we band together to provide connections, correctives and support when people fragment and boundaries fall apart. Because of Christ we too can bind up what is broken. 

·         Stubbornly including friends and enemies: Community should be place where friends and frustrators are present, valued, respected, needed, incorporated and invited into dialogue.  We don’t give up on or dehumanize or tear down the character of the irritating nor withdraw into conforming, but welcome all.[1]

Not one aspect of this ceases to be spirituality. It is formed by Christ at the heart of a community and encompasses people from every age, gender, caste, culture and ethnic group.

Misconceptions

Nevertheless, this Christ-like community also has had many misconceptions inflicted upon it which usually revolves around some idea of guaranteed security, survival or satisfaction.  To name a few:

There is the idea that community is a luxurious consumer item waiting to be bought into through retreats, seminars, or something equaling membership dues; Sorry, but it is not so much a commodity.  Rather it is a “common struggle for integrity, shared commitment to justice, joint covenants to work toward wholeness and mutual respect.”[2]

Community is a utopian gated-society where we will find unconditional acceptance when meeting the “right” kind of people with similar views and lifestyles; Actually it is more of a “collision of egos, a furnace for welding steel-hard opinions, a crucible for melting hard ores of self-interest into common goals” but nice try.[3]  

Community is an extension of our egos where individual goals are met and people just like ourselves are there to confirm our coveted (and partial) view of reality; Well wouldn’t that be convenient if we got o choose the people we co-travel with, but we do not get to “sort, select or assemble our kind of people.”[4]  In reality, sameness creates fakeness and blocks us from having to face any challenge which ultimately diminishes our growth… so the ones (good and bad) we get stuck are more a gift of grace than anyone wants to admit.

Well then community is the place where I will finally get the nurturing from others my home-life refused to provide; Wrong again! It is not the place for “familial perfection of solidarity or supportive parental permissiveness.” Rather, “it is a network of fallible individuals and flawed families seeking together to learn how to work through the various issues they carry with them” via the willing Yentas of your group.[5]

Summation

When we think of community as it should be (stubborn loyalty) in contrast with the community that we know where many are quick to speak, slow to listen and prone to fail, many tend to reject it.  Community is intrusive, messy and at times difficult because it is formed by people just as messed up as the newly formed community who stands outside condemning it, but to reject it is to reject dealing with real living people. 

I think it is precisely because we are willing to enter into this that something real is eventually forged through history, testing, growth, continuity, affirmation, acceptance, mutuality, receiving, giving and so on.  From this emerges a community of virtue and character that all began with the common ground being radically attached to Christ.

·         Do you agree or is this too intrusive? 

·         Were we ever meant to be such close knit communities like wanderers of a desert, or since times have changed should our involvement with each other be limited to Sundays and sometimes other days, but the important stuff left private? 

·         However, if you do agree, what things would have to change currently before seeing a church of individuals who really know each other and are known by each other? 

  

[1] David Augsburger Dissident Discipleship (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazo Press 2006), 61-62.

[2] Ibid, 65.

[3] Ibid, 65-66.

[4] Ibid. 66.

[5] Ibid.