Archive for March, 2006

Final Words to a Graduating Cohort 2

Friday, March 24th, 2006

To: The Oklahoma City/Kansas City Cohorts

From: Carla Mae Streeter, OP

You are nearing the end of this formal educational jouney. You have searched into areas of belief and practice that have changed your life. I offer you here just a few thoughts on the state of affairs we find ourselves in…the state of tension between faith and culture, and the state of being torn at times between being an American and being a deeply committed Catholic in these times.

Faith is a kind of knowing that comes from loving. Culture is the collected meanings and values of a group of people. They are not opposed…especially if you are in-love with God, with people, with the world.

I begin by reminding us all that we have two eyes…interesting, isn’t it? We have two eyes in our heads, but we have a singleness of vision. In fact, if we see double, we go to the doctor pronto. This image is helpful as we reflect on religion and culture in today’s world.

There are those who see double. There is the secular world with all its demands: taxes, and trade, food and fashion, economics and entertainment. Then there is the world of faith: the parish and the youth group, worship and RCIA, celebration and counseling, doctrine and devotion. Many keep one eye on one world and one eye on the other.

Then there are those with a singleness of vision. Culture with its daily demands and ethnic richness is the skin of faith, the lantern for the light. Faith and religion shine through the culture or are smothered by it, like the light under a bushel. Here there is no double-eyed vision of two worlds. There is but one world: faith in the midst of culture.

Why do we need to have this wholeness of vision? Because the incarnate Word stands before us, God in human skin, and when we look, we see a marriage, a wholeness, one united reality, integrated and integral. God is in love with the world. God grieves over it like a parent grieving over the brokenness of a child. This is what we have learned in our study.

Those we serve will not all have this integrated view. They will be seeing double, and so they will contribute to the ongoing decline of culture. They will make decisions that will dehumanize themselves and possibly the rest of us. But then there are those who long to be whole and holy. They want to learn and see clearly. They are open to the truth, no matter from where it may come. These folks will hear you. Their very presence and openness will augment the progress of culture, because the human will flourish in their presence.

And so, the progress and decline of culture will ebb and flow with the progress of its very soul: the deepening of faith and religious meaning. You have completed this formal part of your journey. But now the time has come for you to help heal the double vision of others. As you enter your roles as mentors and guides, as teachers and healers, remember to regularly keep company with that One who lays hands on your own eyes saying, “Receive your sight…” It is time now to intentionally wash feet with your new towel. Your degree is your foot-washing towel with a special monogram in the corner. You will foot-wash with your intelligence. You are among your brothers and sisters as one who serves. Blessings!

Carla Mae Streeter, OP

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Final Words to a Graduating Cohort

Monday, March 6th, 2006

From: Carla Mae Streeter, OP\r\n
To: The Colorado Springs Cohort\r\n
Aquinas Institute of Theology\r\n
Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry Program\r\n
Dear All of you,\r\n
As you proceed along in your Integrative Seminar, I send just a few thoughts along to recap our journey into the course dealing with where you as Christians and as ministers are with God. The course called The Doctrine of God: One and Triune, I hope, was a type of centering experience for you as it always is for me. The history part of the course was heavy stuff, and you bravely plunged into it because you believed you had to have some idea of why are where we are with this belief.\r\n
The abstract distance many Christians feel in relation to this doctrine is due, we learned, to the fact that up to now we haven’t gone back behind the formulation. So we went back, you and I, and made some rather remarkable discoveries. We learned that we know next to nothing about the Triunity of God except for Jesus cluing us in on it. We learned that Jesus himself is the key to knowing God - and without him we have a pretty good chance of creating some god-awful image in our own likeness. We learned that keeping our eyes on his sacred humanity, especially on the cross, shows us the Father and the Spirit in a way we will never grasp through abstract theorizing. We learned that God is one, and when we call God “Father” we refer to the most hidden, mysterious aspect of God. When we call God “Son” we mean that same God now self-expressing in a God-Word, and it is this Word or son who married our humble humanness. When we refer to the “Spirit” we mean the dynamic self-gift of that same God. The bottom line is that God is one - in a threeness that is totally unified.\r\n
If Jesus in his human union with us is the key to this mystery, then our humanness is key to it too. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, Paul tells us. We reflected on the fact that we are a mystery to ourselves in many ways; we express ourselves, and we act out of who we are. We considered the fact that on the cross Jesus reveals the Triune Mystery best: his Hidden Abba supporting him even in deepest darkness, his very wounds speaking when his voice was stilled, and his body pouring out its life-blood in a self-giving that released the Spirit upon the world. The Christ then reveals who God is to us through his sacred humanity, and invites us to come to know this God by reverencing our own.\r\n
We used the humble image Eastern Orthodoxy give us as an analogy of all this - the burning candle. The flame is made known to us by the light we are able to see, and the heat of the flame is one with the flame itself and its light. You wrestled with various other images that might express this great mystery to help others reclaim it in their lives. Recall them. Reclaim them as you complete your formal studies. It is from this Mystery that it all begins - and ends.\r\n
Carla Mae Streeter, OP
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