Living Spirituality
We live in a time when spirituality seems to include everything and mean nothing.
Dr. Gregory J. Laughery offers us a fresh perspective rooted in Scripture and shaped by his own experiences as Director of the L'Abri community in Switzerland. As he develops an authentic biblical interpretation of spirituality, Laughery draws from a wealth of memorable conversations at L'Abri on topics such as: God's character in light of suffering, the problems of good and evil, the importance of love, our search for identity, and the significance of redemption.
This book confronts preconceptions, challenges cultural definitions, and opens up new possibilities for living spirituality.
Dr. Gregory J. Laughery lives and teaches at the L'Abri community in Switzerland. He is the author of Living Spiritual Rhythms; Living Apocalypse: A Revelation Reader; and Living Reflections: Theology, Philosophy, and Hermeneutics.
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The biblical text is full of worlds. I suggest that there are pertinent signs and resolute traces of God, making himself known in a polyphonic manner. Think of the Garden in Genesis, the burning bush in Exodus, the throne theophaines in Isaiah and Ezekiel, and the resurrection of Jesus. These writings manifest the truth that God is there. Expressed through the language and material context of our world, they also go far beyond it. Therefore, to understand more about God, it is essential to imaginatively enter these worlds as we read about them, and then to inhabit them through our actions.
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In our Western cultural context there is a profound loss of faith in our capacity to be, to know, and to trust. Marginalizing God and adopting the pretentious capital ‘I’ created this woeful state. This ‘I’ functions as an authority of its own. When suspicion has become absolute, and an end in and of itself, it cripples our ability to be deeply committed to anything or anyone. Left in a supposed glorious dimension of suspension, floating from one experience to another, and snatching at everything, ‘I’ embraces nothing, but ‘I’. Thankfully, God has set a rescue operation in motion through Jesus Christ, which has the power to renew being, knowing, and trusting, while it reshapes suspicion and gives a truer and situated self in exchange for the deceptive ‘I.’
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This visceral longing to be cleansed from our own faults, those perpetrated by others against us, and the burdens of the world, leaves us in a state of searching for redemption. These deep etchings carved into our flesh are like a flow chart leading directly to our battered hearts. Living takes its toll. The challenge before us is to continue the dialogue between the “in spite of” and the “because of” that concerns all of reality and truth. We are followers of the Crucified and Risen One, who are suffering, yet committed to a journey of renewal.
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Encountering the infinite mystery of another human being is a sacramental invitation and a sacred adventure towards convergence. This coming alongside or together phenomenon will take place at different levels of familiarity. It is never nothing or total. That is, to be unaffected by or irredeemably lost in another is an expression of inappropriate selfhood. Unadulterated oneness is not desirable. We are always to be intensely touched by our engagements with the other, while remaining ourselves.
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Being captive to the ideologies of certainty or uncertainty is like being pulled into a vortex that leads nowhere. Certainty aims to insure us that we have it all together and that everything is straight forward, while uncertainty attempts to illustrate that we don’t have anything together and that nothing is clear. We can become so addicted to polarizations, that moving into the middle seems highly unsatisfactory. Yet, withdrawal symptoms are required and sometimes painful, as uncovering that which binds us and leads us astray is so deeply entrenched in every perspective and dimension of our identities. Letting go will be extremely difficult. Release, however, comes from learning to follow in the footsteps of Christ, which is not least to discover the hidden ideological trends and currents in our lives, and in so doing, to open us up to the possibility of a refigured destiny, culminating in transformation.
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Real relationships offer us dynamic possibilities to take part in a productive spiral towards mutuality—the narrative drama of a shared space to be and be with the other. Being enmeshed in the beauty of mutuality does not undermine individual freedom, but enhances it. For where responsible trust increases and unreliable suspicion diminishes, within the theater of a redemptive life, we discover a poetics of loving and being loved is a marvel. Sameness and separation, which both happen in a perpetual moment of embrace and release are located in, yet transcend words and actions, as we draw ever closer to who we were meant to be.
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There is a marvelous wonder and a profound mystery in committed relationships. The hope of beauty and fear of danger encircle our hearts and challenge us to move forward in love. We wrestle with “letting go” or “holding on,” with “form” or “freedom,” with “suspicion” or “trust.” On the way from an individual to a mutuality of space—shared lives together at different levels of intensity—we are invited into new ways of being, seeing, and living, where the drama of inoffensive possession neither stifles, nor disdains the narrative of oneself or the other.
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