The Wisdom of Stabilitystar rating 5ron coleJune 4, 2010The old proverb, " A rolling stone gathers no moss " is credited to Publilius Syrus from the 1st century BC. It could be the mantra of the life in the West. Transient living is a major curse of our age. People who are always moving, with no roots in one place, avoid responsibilities and cares...and are at a loss when it comes to deep relationship of community. We miss the reality of cultivating a communal life through a shared experience of life together. The flip side is the myth that moss equates to " stagnation ", that people who are in a state of fluid transient living never lack ideas or creativity. Maybe the idea of constant change being a catalyst for evolutionary change. We may change but is it for the better? Given the great motion in North American culture, it's not surprising that stability is virtually unknown in many churches today. We will drive for miles outside of our own neighborhoods to consume the best religious products the city has to offer. When we tire of that diet, we look for something else on the menu in the religious food court. We hunger for something, but it does not appear to be the stability of deep community. Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove and the Rutba House community have been putting down roots in the historic Black Walltown neighborhood of Durham North Carolina for the past decade re-learning the practice of stability. Jonathon reflects on these experiences and on the Christian tradition of stability in his timely, and challenging book, " The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture." The book is a journey re-capturing the profound wisdom of stability, in the midst of the theological refection, Jonathon weaves narrative " Front Porch " reflections interspersed between the chapters...vignettes, glimpses of his own life that cut deep into the heart of the practice of stability. Jonathon launches into the book with the bold assertion that. " I hope to reprogram your default setting. As participants in a mobile culture, our default is to move. ...But I am convinced that we lose something essential to our existence as humans if we don't recognize our fundamental need for stability. ( pg-5 ) In spite of the overwhelming change that surrounds and fills our lives, Wilson-Hartgrove observes we have deep longings for something solid we can hang on to. Yet, try as we might, we can not find stability on our own, we have been created to be part of communities that are deeply rooted in place. He also reminds us the part of the practice of stability means, " unlearning the habits of a culture that tells us that the answer to our problems is somewhere else." ( pg-40 ) I love his suggestion that we need to slow down and reinterpret...what Christian community really is. To often in our mentality of consumption, it becomes fragmented into a plug and play mentality. Programs and groups that cater to needs may attract people, but it may be missing the truth of real Christian Community. The bigger picture of reinterpreting hopes and dreams through the community of people God has gathered for the purpose of tangibly embodying Christ to our neighbors, and the neighborhood that surrounds us. It's the transformation into Kingdom people, revealing, building the Kingdom in the midst of our neighborhoods. The Wisdom of Stability is filled with stories from Jonathon's encounters with the Benedictines, both historical and contemporary. One senses Rutba House community has gleaned wisdom from the Benedictine practice of monasticism, that they have been able to import it into an urban monasticism...finding stability in communal living with God. I sensed from Jonathon's experience that " stability " must become almost a community vow, or rule. The practice of stability is not easy. Practicing community in the way of Christ, stability is not giving up on others. Instead of constantly running from problems, we stay put and wrestle with them in the context of community. It is tough but this is the reaction chamber in which transformation takes place, both on a personal and community level. The community learns patience, peacemaking and forgiveness. Jonathon also reminds us the stability is not only a teacher, but is also sustenance when the storms of life rain down on the community. The tree on the cover of the book is a profound image and metaphor for stability. It is said, in most trees there is more growth below ground in the roots. Storms, may bend or even break the community, but in the stability found in deep roots, it will remain unmoved. There is also the reality of healing, new growth and deeper growth in the process. Jonathon reminds us on ( pg-94 ) that, " the people closest to us are not only our connection points in a support system that we depend on for our very lives...but they are also mirrors who reflect the hidden shadows of our souls." Stability is not a magic solution for life in community, it brings challenges. Are we up to the challenge of seeking to practice stability? Stability is a season in which we fight the temptations of ambition, boredom, vainglory. There is part of us that wants to see tangible growth, to see the fruit. It is a season in which much of the growth is underground, in the depth and the earth of community living. Jonathon reminds us, " If God is faith in exile and present in human flesh, then everything, every place, is now holy. We learn to enjoy the fruit of stability as we embrace God's mission where we are ", (pg-139). Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove's " the Wisdom of Stability " is timely, encouraging and wisdom greatly needed for the Church today. He has seeked the wisdom of faith who have journied before us, with their voices, and experiences Jonathon encourages us all to cultivate the practice of stability.
The Wisdom of Stabilitystar rating 5Dan StricklandMay 8, 2010Very insightful. In an age where people can't even put down their cell phones during dinner, I found this book of great help and hope. Many thanks Jonathan.
The Wisdom of Stabilitystar rating 5Tom Johnson-MedlandApril 9, 2010The Wisdom of Stability is the latest book by Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove. Kathleen Norris paints a wonderful landscape in the book's forward, showing us the contrast between our ever-chaotic need to improve, be relevant, and be appreciated and the less frenetic gift of being rooted in place, in relationships, and in God. It is a gift that is given, long before we know we need what it holds inside. This sets the stage for the power of Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove's wrestlings and wanderings in the interior notions and exterior realities of staying in one place and processing "what is" happening right now. You have got to love when an author exhibits such playful candor at the outset of a book. Wilson-Hartgrove let's us know right away that he is on a mission to reset our internal default. He wants to help us to consider the value and nourishment that comes from staying put. Sending roots down in the loam of God's love and faithfulness challenges us to move beyond moving beyond. His challenge is bold and fresh, giving the heart something to keen about and the spirit a chance to soar in place. Wilson-Hartgrove swerves in and out of stories about our homes in a comforting rhythm and a settled prose that is familiar and sacred at the same time. He reminds us that nesting in our houses, our relationships, our earth, our finances and all of life is something gracious that is pitted against the progressive call to change and upgrade lest we shrivel up and die. Constant change feels anything but gracious. We are a culture that is tired of always moving. Wilson-Hartgrove reminds us that there is an interior life that drives the desires and yearnings we have. This interior landscape can only be truly known when we stop long enough to make love to the life it affords us; when we settle into a romance with mundanaity. This stillness proves not only a strong foundation for life, but a worthy place to live. Once there, we have found a center. And yet, our stability can morph into stagnation. We strive against stability because we fear the treasures of sameness. Would we ever know awe if we did not see how changing comes full circle to changelessness. We learn something by noting the rebirth of the snowdrops in the field by our house - year after year. Jonathon teaches us to look and listen for the gifts of a stationary life - inside and out. This freshness will bathe us in a renewal that becomes a momentum of the heart - a growing sense of expansion. Digging deep can teach us the true freedom beyond the illusions of change: the detachment of apatheia. We can never be set free from attachment to place until we root down deep enough within to the source of life that nourishes us to rise above one place and be in God in all places at once. Staying put can enable us to understand and relinquish the hold that space can have on our psyches and on our hearts. Longing for motionlessness reveals that our only stillness is in God, not simply in our soma. We cease all movement when we enter into the only thing that is truly immovable: God and God's immeasurable love. We are revisited with the tales of Jacob and the Psalmist as they wrestle with the notion of dwelling with a God that tabernacles with His people right where they are, amid the tatters of their lives and cracks in their walls. God gifts His people with relationship in space and time. God dwells with His children in order to transform their lives, not their space and time that He has peacefully thundered into. We are lead by the author into a pathway landscaped with questions about where we find our home and how we gauge our meaning. Can we get passed the urge for newness and settle into a life of community that has no glitzy diversions and adorable notions to purchase? When we find God in our angst, despair, and boredom we have grown beyond the shifting trendy fashion of pop-theology and smile-ology. Can we find strength in wrestling with God amid struggles and trouble, and not simply in the glory of denial and change. It is tough making a home in God, it demands we face things again and again. The ambling Jonathon does in the ideas of what it means to be home, to find rest, and abide are as familiar as our own ancient lurking passion to belong. You cannot help but feel like you are living the old Hasidic tale of the humble seeker who has a dream that a treasure is out there for him, under a bridge in a far away village. When he awakes and takes to the road to find his treasure, he happens on a guard who mumbles to him that he has just had a dream that a poor beggar is wandering the earth looking for a treasure that is buried behind the wood stove in his own home. He scurries home to find his wealth where he had been all along. While making HOME is something we long for desperately, it does not come easy. It takes work to be set free into the wisdom of stability and rootedness. But, we can gather around us practices and people that point us in - that help us uncover the hidden riches. We can find this in the repetition of our own hugger mugger, but we must be intentional about looking. Jonathon has set up chairs on his front porch and is asking us to sit with him, have sweet tea, and look at the stories about movement and stillness, about being called out and being called to stay. Whether it is Jesus and the possessed man, Levi, Saint Benedict, Saint Anthony, or the man and woman next door or around the corner, it does not matter, Wilson-Hartgrove is a master storyteller who invites us in to his tales, his community, and his life. He asks us to look at our lives through the eyes of the wise Fathers and Mothers from Church history. This lens is critical to the current need in the church for grass-root rebuilding of the early church and house-church models of celebrating God's Presence with us. This book is a must read. And, it is a must read for small groups, house-churches, communities, new monastic devotees, and folks who are hungering to find out what the Spirit of God is calling the Church to in a Post-Denominational day and age. Don't wait too long, the hour is now! Watch a short trailer by the author himself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4KBRL8NjJk Ciao! Tom+