There's been alot of talk in the emerging "Blogosphere" lately about a new monasticism. The discussions have centered around doing church as a community instead of as a meeting or a worship service. There is a discontent (for very good reasons) with the way we currently "church" and a desire to move towards a model of sharing life with other believers -- realizing that this "life-sharing" is church. It's not a seclusion from the world, but a modeling of the kingdom of God as a community within the world. Engaging the world not as individuals but as a community of faith.
Anyway, the idea intrigues and excites me. So I thought I'd throw out some links to get the two people who actually read this blog into the conversation.
Tall Skinny Kiwi has an abundance of links here and Will Samson offers some here as well.
Or you can check out the New Monasticism site, or an article from a Vineyard Newsletter here, or the Northumbria Community here.
Here's one of the most intriguing sites that I've come across thus far.
That should get you started. If you find more sights of interest put them in the comments section.
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2 comments:
The "Old Monasticism" is even more intriguing-er:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3664/is_200404/ai_n9374344
SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM": Orthodox Monasticism and Its Service to the World
Theology Today, Apr 2004 by Ware, Bishop Kallistos
SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM": Orthodox Monasticism and Its Service to the World
by Bishop Kallistos Ware
Theology Today
April 2004
ABSTRACT
This essay examines the varied contributions to the wider church of Orthodox Christianity's three kinds of monastics: solitaries, those living in community, and those of the middle path (partly in community and partly solitary). Unlike western monastics, eastern monks never specialized in intellectual pursuits, instead supporting themselves by manual labor and dedicating themselves to prayer and spiritual struggle, a struggle whose benefits extend not only to each individual monk but to the whole body of the church. While monastics seek to live out their baptismal covenants in an ultimate commitment to God, monastic spirituality nonetheless represents the same Christian life to which all the baptized are called.
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...but I must admit that the Order of the Mustard Seed was the most intriguing ad for a silver ring that I have seen in awhile!
I'm very curious about this "New Monasticism" that seems to be emerging from the Emerging/Emergent Church.
There seems to be a movement coalescing around some guy called Count Zinzendorf and "The Order of the Mustard Seed" as if Count Z has the keys to the kingdom to "nu monasticism" and "intentional community."
Can it be that The New Monastics have EMERGED as born-again Zinzendorfians?
This uncritical acceptance of Zinzendorf's teachings does not bode well for The New Monasticism.
Has anyone actually checked out what Count Z actually believed?
For instance, here is an explanation of his teaching on the Holy Spirit from www.zinzendorf.com:
Zinzendorf explicated his doctrine of the Holy Spirit, proclaiming that she is a mother in three distinct ways.
First, it was the Spirit, not Mary, who was the true mother of Jesus, since she "prepared him in the womb, hovered over him, and finally brought him into the light. She [the Spirit] gave him [Jesus] certainly into the arms of his mother, but with invisible hands carried him more than his mother did."
Second, the Spirit is the mother of all living things because she has a special role in the on-going creation of the world. "It is known that the Holy Spirit brings everything to life, and when the man was made from a clump of earth ... the Holy Spirit was very close through the breathing of the breath of God into the man." Thus, the Holy Spirit is the mother of all living souls in a general way.
The Holy Spirit is also the Mother in a third and most important sense. She is the Mother of the church and all those who have been reborn. "The Holy Spirit is the only Mother of those souls who have been once born out of the side hole of Jesus, as the true womb of all blessed souls."
Zinzendorf bases this understanding of the Spirit giving birth to converted souls in large part on Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John 3. Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born again, not from his mother’s womb, but from God. Nicodemus knew that we are born from a mother, not a father, but he did not know who this mother was.
Zinzendorf has Jesus reply, "There is another Mother, not the one who physically gave you birth, that one doesn’t matter: you must have another Mother who will give you birth."
Ultimately, then, the Holy Spirit is the Mother of the Christian in the sense that she is the active agent in conversion. Human actors are only agents of the Holy Spirit, and in some cases are not even necessary for conversion.
"I could not speak about it [the Holy Spirit], since I did not know how I should define it. I simply believed that she is the third person of the Godhead, but I could not say how this was properly so. Instead I thought of her abstractly. ... The Holy Spirit had known me well, but I did not know her before the year 1738. That is why I carefully avoided entering in the matter until the Mother Office of the Holy Spirit had been so clearly opened up for me."
"God [Christ] is even our dear husband, his Father is our dear Father, and the Holy Spirit is our dear Mother, with that we are finished, with that the family-idea, the oldest, the simplest, the most respectable, the most endearing idea among all human ideas, the true biblical idea, is established with us in the application of the holy Trinity, for no one is nearer to one than Father, Mother, and Husband."
"When the dear Savior at the end of his life wanted to comfort his disciples (at that time the language was not as rich as ours is); by that time the Savior, who was a very great bible student, had doubtlessly read the verse in the Bible "I will comfort you as a mother comforts one." Then the dear Savior thought, "If I should say to my disciples that I am going away, then I must give them some comfort. I must say to them that they will receive someone who will comfort them over my departure. It will not be strange to them, for they have already read it in the Bible. ...There it reads, they shall have a Mother: "I will leave you my Spirit." Now no theologian is irritated if the word comfort is taken out of the passage and applied to the Holy Spirit, for they call her the Comforter. But if we take out the word Mother and signify it to the Holy Spirit, then people are opposed to it. I can find no cause for such bickering and arbitrariness, and therefore I pay no attention to it. For if the activity in a passage is proper to the Holy Spirit, then the title also goes to the Holy Spirit."
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