Category: Way of Love

Putting the Pieces Back Together

Lots of people wring their hands and say the church is broken. The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers explains why and suggests how we can fix it.

If you’ve been spending Sundays watching church on Zoom and hoping that things will just get back to normal, the Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers’ new book The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community will shake you up. Rev. Spellers, who serves as Presiding Bishop Curry’s Canon for Evangelism, Reconciliation, and Creation, realized that the painful social upheavals that boiled over during the summer of 2020 offered the opportunity for the church, and specifically the Episcopal Church, to get away from the empire-oriented, exclusive practices that were alienating people and causing the church to decline and to move towards something more sustaining, more like what Jesus’ first followers experienced. In just two months she wrote this short, direct book that focuses her education and experience on hard truths of the church, past and present, and what they might mean for the future.

Nadia Bolz-Weber explains The Church Cracked Open well: “If you are looking at the landscape of the church and wondering ‘How’d we get here’ and ‘what’s next,’ I invite you to board Rev. Spellers’ plane and take in the big picture with her. Take in the history, the theology, the pain, the beauty and the hope that her view from thirty-thousand feet offers. When she lands the plane, you’ll realize—there’s simply no better guide out there.”

Spellers introduces her powerful treatise with the story in Mark’s gospel about the woman at Bethany who came into the house of Simon the leper with an alabaster jar of nard, costly perfumed ointment, which she broke and poured onto Jesus’ head. Everyone was angry at her for wasting the precious substance and breaking the beautiful jar, but Jesus understood that she recognized something the others didn’t: “she was literally giving up the best of what she had—the alabaster jar and the nard—because he mattered that much to her. He was the holy one, the center of her world, and she had reoriented her life around him as her focus.”

There is no denying that the world as we know it cracked open this past year. And Spellers provides powerful evidence that the church as we know it was in quick and serious decline, cracked and broken even before the pandemic. In eight chapters, she explains why and provides a plan for using the broken pieces of our tradition to orient our lives more truly around Jesus and come closer to creating beloved community. 

She begins by explaining why “Euro-tribal” churches have fallen to the margins. Rather than seeing the crises of the pandemic as the final blows to an ailing church, she says, we should use them as motivation to move away from White empire towards God and God’s dream. Spellers is very direct about how the Episcopal Church historically embraced and often epitomized racism, but her abiding love for the broken church comes through clearly. 

After she names the problems and explains how they evolved, she moves towards imagining a better future, sharing the stories of men and women throughout history who lived better lives and provide hope that we can too. She explores the idea of kenosis, the non-attachment and self-giving that Jesus exemplified, and explains how we need to be brave enough to break our attachment to the alabaster jar of our church. She proposes a life of solidarity, where Christian communities who once identified with empire and establishment walk humbly with the oppressed to find salvation and holiness for all. And she brings these stories and concepts together by explaining the Way of Love —the rule of life for Episcopalians that the presiding bishop has developed —through their lens.

Spellers hopes this book will inspire more than just deeper reflection. “My fervent prayer is that you will examine your life and the life of your church, and the systems and assumptions that shape both. I hope you will become less anxious about how you and your community are cracking open and more curious about how God might remake you as a true community of love.”

The Church Cracked Open packs a wallop. Though it’s short, it’s not an easy read— her deep understanding of the church and its history can get dense for a lay reader, and many of the anecdotes she shares are ugly and uncomfortable to face. But through these hard truths, she weaves poetry, specific hopes, and examples of people who have overcome the ugliness to provide images of what the future might look like. She leaves us not with the broken pieces of the church, but with a clear plan for how they might be put back together to create something truly beautiful and precious, something worthy of honoring God. Whether or not you agree with her diagnosis or her recovery plan for the church, you’ll discover profound new ways of considering what the return to church might look like. And you’ll understand why it can’t just go back to normal.

For a link to join the Episcopal Booksellers Association Authors Series conversation with the Rev. Canon Spellers on Thursday, May 13, at 6:00 p.m. Central, click here.

To purchase The Church Cracked Open from the Cathedral bookstore, click here.

The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community
Stephanie Spellers
Church Publishing 
Paperback: 160 pages
ISBN: 978-1640654242
$16.95

One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies.
~Ursula K. Le Guin 

What is love?

As Bishop Michael Curry explains, love is not a feeling. It is a specific commitment to living for “we” rather than for “me.” And his new book, Love Is the Way, shows us how we can do it.

From the title, it would be easy to write off Bishop Michael Curry’s new book as vague, feel-good musings on love. Of course love is the way — love is the way of Valentine’s Day, and pop radio, and the soft-focus Jesus of Hallmark Easter cards. But that’s not the love that Bishop Curry is talking about. While this memoir-based book has plenty of musings, they are neither vague nor soft-focused.

Written before the pandemic and before the racial and political strife of 2020 came to a head, Love Is the Way provides a series of anecdotes from Bishop Curry’s life that speak so directly to these painful social challenges that it seems prophetic.  When one of his daughters asked him what he was writing about, he said he was sharing some of what he’d learned from “faith, family, community, and ancestors.” The life lessons he shares here get to the heart of his life, “those people and experiences that led to [his] conviction that the way of love can change each of us, and all of us, for the better.” And what better time to change us all for the better than now?

He presents these lessons as stories, beginning with losing his brilliant and loving mother to a devastating stroke, and the many ways his father, his extended family, and their community stepped up to not just show love but to be love. He tells about various churches where he served, and individuals who acted as the hands of Christ and others who were changed by the touch of those hands. He explains experiences in his own life that led him to understand his calling as a priest and that eventually put him on the path to become elected presiding bishop. He laces these stories with threads from the rich fabric of his life—the soul food, spirituals, jazz, theologians, poets, historic figures, and scripture that have influenced and inspired him. 

Each story could stand alone as an interesting anecdote, but he deftly uses them to either define or illustrate his basic premise about what love is. As Bishop Curry explains, love is not a feeling. It is a specific commitment to living in an unselfish way. In the Way of Love teachings that he has shared with the Episcopal Church, he has taught that love is a step-by-step process that replicates the desire of Jesus’s earliest followers to live in a new way, for “we” rather than for “me.” Love is a verb, and it is challenging to do it. Here, he fleshes out what it has looked like in his life.

To those who say that love is not strong enough to form a way of life, Bishop Curry says that the current focus on selfishness is not working. His experiences show that love can be a strong guiding principle, and that those who practice it can be strong, too. He ends with guidelines on how to put love into action—a daily planner, or a rule of life. 

Love Is the Way is engaging and moving, inspiring and prescriptive. In sharing the stories of his heart, Bishop Curry provides clear and specific ways to hold on to hope in these troubling times. Thanks be to God.

Love Is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times
Bishop Michael Curry
Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church
with Sara Grace
Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random House
978-0-525-54303-9
$27.00

To purchase Love Is the Way from the Cathedral Bookstore, click here.

To join Bishop Curry and Bishop Doyle in conversation on Zoom on November 11, purchase a book from Brazos Bookstore here.

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.
~Maya Angelou

Yes, Jesus Loves Me. Now What?

This little handbook shows us how to live in ways that seek the good of God and the well-being of others.

From the time most Episcopalians are little bitty, we’re taught songs like “God is Love,” and “Jesus Loves Me.” As we get older, the hope is that we’ll internalize these concepts and go out into the world and share the love of God with others. But for many of us, there’s a gap there: knowing how to live as spiritual grown-ups can be challenging. Just what does this love look like in practice? How do we move beyond singing kum-ba-ya and learn just how to walk in love?

Several years ago, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry gathered a team to create a blueprint for a way of life that would help Episcopalians live God’s love. They patterned it after the lives of Jesus’ followers in the first century, a community committed to living “the way of God’s unconditional, unselfish, sacrificial, and redemptive love.” Bishop Curry took these ideas and developed The Way of Love, seven steps to order and inform our lives:  Turn – Learn – Pray – Worship – Bless – Go – Rest.

Scott Gunn, a priest and author who is the executive director of Forward Movement, was part of that team which helped develop The Way of Love. Now Gunn has published The Way of Love: A Practical Guide to following Jesus, a small handbook that provides an introduction to The Way of Love and helpful steps for creating a personal rule of life based on it. 

In the introduction, Gunn explains that the type of love we really want to practice is “not a mere sentiment but a real commitment to a way of life that is sacrificial and redemptive, a way that seeks the good of God and the well-being of others. This Way of Love is a game changer.” He proceeds to explain why each step matters, how it relates to the other steps, and how to do it.

In an easy, anecdotal voice, each of the initial chapters provides an explanation of the seven practices. Other Forward Movement team members and Episcopalians from around the country also share their experience with each practice, and these chapters end with reflection questions and journaling and prayer prompts.

Once we’ve spent time getting to know the practices and exploring what they might look like in our own lives, the last chapter is “Developing a Rule of Life.” Gunn explains the concept of a rule of life, an ancient practice that helps monks and nuns organize their daily prayer, work, and service. Not just for monasteries, however, a rule of life can also help us to create patterns in our own lives to help us grow in faith. Gunn suggests starting by reviewing the notes we have taken in the previous chapters and choosing three practices to commit to for a month.

The book includes an appendix of scripture quotes that are used in the main text and resources for further study, both organized by the seven Way of Love practices.

While there is a great deal of information readily available online and in other books about The Way of Love, this book is a good entry point. It provides a balance of explanation and how-to, and it prepares readers to go deeper into the Way of Love.

Like the song says: God is love. No matter how far we may have come in our understanding of the Church since our introduction to it, this little book and the resources it contains can help us to further develop our faith practice and know just how to live that love, every day. 

To purchase the book, click here.

The Way of Love: A Practical Guide to following Jesus 
Scott Gunn
Forward Movement
ISBN: 978-0-88028-486-8 
$15.00

A path is a prior interpretation of the best way to traverse a landscape. 
― Rebecca Solnit

Love is the Way: A Conversation with Bishop Curry

Join readers from across the country to hear two thoughtful, articulate Episcopalian leaders discuss the real possibility of living a life of faith and love in these times.

On October 8, 2020, at 6:00 p.m. Central, The Episcopal Booksellers Association is hosting a conversation with The Most Reverend Michael B. Curry, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Bishop Curry will be discussing his newest book, Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times, which will be published on September 22. The virtual meeting will consist of remarks about the book from Bishop Curry and a question and answer discussion with The Very Reverend Barkley S. Thompson, Dean of Christ Church Cathedral. 

That’s a whole lot of holy wisdom going on in one Zoom meeting, and it promises to be uplifting, thought-provoking, and clarifying about just what the word love really means. And, more importantly, just how we can put it into practice in our lives. In his book Crazy Christians: A Call to Follow Jesus, Bishop Curry said “Being a Christian is not essentially about joining a church or being a nice person, but about following in the footsteps of Jesus, taking his teachings seriously, letting his Spirit take the lead in our lives, and in so doing helping to change the world from our nightmare into God’s dream.” 

If there ever was a time when we felt like we needed to make that transformation from nightmare into dream reality, it’s right now. In this new book, the Bishop explains how the way of love is “essential for addressing the seemingly insurmountable challenges facing the world today: poverty, racism, selfishness, deep ideological divisions, competing claims to speak for God.” He also shares how we can develop the “deep reservoirs of hope and resilience, simple wisdom, the discipline of nonviolence, and unshakable regard for human dignity” that we need in order to meet these challenges. 

Bishop Curry believes that “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” Join the Cathedral Bookstore and readers from other Episcopal bookstores across the country to hear what promises to be a powerful and practical discussion between two wise, articulate Episcopalian leaders about the real possibility of living a life of faith and love in these times. 

To purchase your copy of Bishop Curry’s Love is the Way click here.

To purchase Dean Thompson’s In the Midst of the City: The Gospel and God’s Politics, click here.

To receive a link for the conversation on October 8, email the Cathedral Bookstore at bookstore@christchurchcathedral.org.

 

We are created to follow the Way of love of the Lord Jesus.  When we sacrifice our pride; when we uplift and live into our true nature; when we follow the Way of Jesus, then bonds of grace and community form and strengthen, and our world, that may at first seems like a deserted island cut off from hope, becomes, in the light of love, paradise.
~Barkley S. Thompson