Spirituality Shoppe

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Spirituality Shoppe

We blend prayer, study, experience and communication as we explore the relationship of people to God through Jesus Christ.

Affiliations and Accountability within the Christian Tradition

Spirituality Shoppe is ecumenical in its structure and purpose, yet seeks to give special place to the tradition of “evangelical” Protestantism. In doing so it maintains affiliation and accountable relationships with the scholarly and popular communities of evangelicalism as well as with the community of scholars in Christian spiritua

lity. Spirituality Shoppe is one of the few centers in the nation devoted to the study of Christian spirituality from an evangelical perspective. Primary Center Activities

In keeping with the purpose of the Center, we desire the atmosphere and life of Spirituality Shoppe itself to be a primary source of its study. We believe that our best fruit of service to the Church will come from the well-watered tree of semi-monastic living, ecumenical experience, and academic pursuit. For this reason a balanced rhythm of life, interdenominational sharing, prayerful reflection, and careful research are critical elements of the Center. We hope that from this tree the following fruits may be offered to the Church:

07/08/2023

Quote: (p. 22) “When I first came to faith in Christ in the early 1970s, I thought I could avoid politics. No, I thought I should avoid politics. People in my circles believed that in the near future Christians would be snatched up to heaven in the Rapture and that the world, which was already headed downhill, would enter a cultural and political chaos known as “The Great Tribulation.””

Question: What sense of the relationship between Christianity and politics did you grow up with?

07/01/2023

Quote (p. 19): “Sometimes socio-political engagement is something we choose. We select who to vote for . . . . At other times socio-political engagement is nearly unavoidable. We are Jewish in 1940s Germany . . . . But there are other times when socio-political engagement is something we fall into. Take for example, St. Columbanus. . . .”

Question: When have you chosen socio-political engagement? When has socio-political engagment been nearly unavoidable? When have you fallen into socio-political engagement?

06/24/2023

Quote: (pp. 16--17) "I tend to explore topics by reading widely, talking to others, and thinking about my own life. I like to talk to people from a variety of geographic locations and political viewpoints. . . . I will quote people these people even if I have problems with other aspects of their lives or their views. So be forewarned, I *will* quote someone you don't like."
Question: How do you respond when you read something from someone you don't like?

06/16/2023

Quote (p. 16), “I pray for socio-political things on Tuesdays (it’s just the way I work my schedule). I stand in front of this cross and see Jesus looking at me and at all the socio-political situations surrounding us today. I see him suffering, eyes open, embracing us all even in the midst of our political disagreements [often I think of this or that issue], suffering for us all, offering the benefits of his life and death both deep and wide.”
Question: Is there an image that guides your own prayer for socio-political matters?

06/10/2023

Quote (p. 13–14) “My hope in this book is to help individuals and communities: to engage in the socio-political arena free from guilt and drivenness and for appropriate action.
Question(s) – What do you think it might be like to engage in socio-political things free from guilt or drivenness? Have you ever seen this?

06/03/2023

Quote (p. 10) -- I have been studying and writing about Christian monasticism for over twenty years and I am still trying to figure our how best to define it."
Question(s) -- How do you define "monasticism"? Have you ever had any encounter with nuns, monks, friars, or anything like that? Stories?

05/26/2023

Deep and Wide is now out. I will be posting a quote from this book along with a question each Friday to stimulate a little discussion.
This week the quote and question are the same: "Hmmm. "Justice seems to call us to action. "Monasticism" seems to call us away from action. Was the idea of redesigning a life of prayer community, and formation by employing the wisdom of old holy people actually opening a path (perhaps unintentionally) toward political passivity?"

04/02/2022

Thomas Merton 1961-63 (Week forty – not to count for those weeks that I did not post a quote). This is my final Merton quote, even though there are SO MANY good ones I did not post. The fact is, that I have finished my book. This afternoon. Yes, there are administrative activities to perform, but the writing of the text is complete. I told myself on February 27, 2021 that I would keep posting Merton quotes each week until I was done with the book. In light of the flood of refugees that has spread throughout the globe since I started this post I will post a note from Merton’s journal May 19, 1962 and then excerpts from a poem he wrote in response and published in Emblems of a Season of Fury (1963 - note the sentences and paragraphs are as Merton wrote them):

“Heartbreaking picture of a Chinese refugee girl collapsed in sorrow at the borders of Hong Kong, where hundreds of thousands are now refused and turned back into Red China by the British. Mass for refugees this morning.”

She wears old clothes she holds a borrowed handkerchief and her sorrow shows us the papers have bad news again today Lee Ying only 19 has to return to China
Days on foot with little or no food the last six days on water alone now she must turn back
Three hundred thousand like her must turn back to China there is no room say the officials in Hong Kong you must go back to where you came from
“Point of no return” is the caption but this is meaningless she must return that is the story
She would weep if she had reached a point of no return what she wants is not to return
There is no place for her and no point for thousands like here there is no point
You have our sympathy Miss Lee Ying you must go where we are sorry for your future
Too bad some people get all the rough breaks the authorities regret
Refugees from China have caused alarm
When the authorities are alarmed what can you do
You can return to China
Their alarm is worse than your sorrow
Please do not look only at the dark side in private life these are kind men
They are only obeying orders
As a tribute to your sorrow we resolve to spend more money on nuclear weapons there is always a bright side
This is the first and last time we will see you in our papers
When you are back home remember us we will be having a good time.

03/24/2022

Thomas Merton 1961-63 (Week Thirty-nine) – traveling the past couple of weeks and I leave tomorrow for Denver. I was able to write the first quarter of the final chapter but it was difficult doing research and writing while riding in the passenger seat in a truck. I think I will close out this exploration of Merton with a few of my favorites. Here is one I personally resonate with in my own small way. In August of 1961 Merton finished reading Christopher Dawson’s Understanding Europe, which talks about secularism and the importance of “Christian culture.” Merton reflects on his reading in his journal and states, “In any case I have a clear obligation to participate, as long as I can and to the extent of my abilities, in every effort to help a spiritual and cultural renewal of our time. This is the task that has been given me, and hitherto I have not been clear about it, in all its aspects and dimensions. To emphasize, clarify the living content of spiritual traditions, especially the Christian, but also the Oriental, by entering myself deeply into their disciplines and experience, not for myself but for all my contemporaries who may be interested and inclined to listen. This for the restoration of man’s sanity and balance, that he may return to the ways of freedom and of peace, if not in my time, at least some day soon.”

03/01/2022

Thomas Merton 1961-63 (Week Thirty-Nine). Late again this week. Chapter seven is finished and tomorrow I leave to speak on alternative economics in monasticism(s) old and new. When I return I will write the final chapter in the book. In the meantime, and in light of present circumstances, here is Merton writing in his journal March 2, 1962. “Several from the Catholic Worker spent the week here. Jim Forest, Bob Kaye, Nelson Born, Alex Marchant. Very good and comforting to see the spiritual awareness and aliveness of these kids who have prayed, fasted, in vigil outside the UN, the AEC etc. for Peace. The new generation of the sit-ins. They are the most hopeful of signs and a great consolation. The truth is in them and they are simple and good and have nothing to do with anybody’s official nonsense, certainly God is in them and guiding them – they are something of a faithful remnant in this eschatological time. . . . And now, at the end of their retreat, news comes that Kennedy will announce the resumption of Atomic Testing. They will go back to fasting and sleeping on sidewalks.”

02/13/2022

Thomas Merton 1961-63 (Week Thirty-eight). Finishing up chapter seven “We Pray” this coming week. Part of my writing this week includes a special “answered prayer” by Thomas Merton. Earlier I wrote from Merton’s “Cold War Letter” #1 written October 25, 1961. These comments, written in December of 1961 to Ethel Kennedy [wife of Robert Kennedy whose mother and father were benefactors to Gethsemani monastery], while not exactly about prayer per se, are part of an answered prayer I will describe in the chapter I am writing. You will have to buy the book to get the whole story :) “The President can certainly do more than any one man to counteract this [pressure toward war] by word and example, by doing everything that can help salvage the life of reason, by maintaining respect for intelligence and humanist principles without which freedom is only a word. . . . I personally wish the Church in America and everywhere were more articulate and definite about nuclear war. Statements of Pius XII have left us some terribly clear principles about this. We cannot go on indefinitely relying on the kind of provisional framework of a balance of terror. If as Christians we were more certain of our duty, it might put us in a very tight spot politically but it would also merit for us special graces from God, and these we need badly.”

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62421 Rabbit Trail
Montrose, CO
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http://spiritualityshoppe.org/

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