Thinking About God’s Creation

May 16, 2012 By Tony Jones 28 Comments

Autumn Evening on Eagle Lake, by Courtney Perry

I’m thinking and reading a lot about creation right now, in preparation for year two of the Christian Spirituality Cohort that I have the great joy of leading for Fuller Seminary’s Doctor of Ministry Program. (Another time I’ll write about what a joy it is to be in community with these 10 students.) In year one, Lauren Winner and I led the class through the history and theology of Christian spirituality; next year, Craig Detweiler and I will be teaching about spirituality, film, and fiction.

This year, my co-teacher is Brian McLaren, and we’re taking the cohort into the far north woods of Minnesota, to canoe in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, outfitted by Boundary Waters Experience. Our subject matter will be Christian Spirituality and the Doctrine of Creation.

One of the things I like most about Fuller’s DMin program is the aggressive amount of reading required of the students: 4,500 pages per year. That’s a ton of reading, especially for people who are working full-time jobs in ministry. It takes an enormous amount of discipline, but I have yet to field a single complaint about the amount from a student.

Just to make you jealous, the required reading list is below. I’ve broken the books into three categories, with Moltmann’s creation theology serving as our ur-text. Every one of these books is worth your time.

[Read more...]

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Forty Days with STILL

February 24, 2012 By Tony Jones Leave a Comment

HarperOne has released a Lenten guide for reading Lauren Winner’s new book, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, about which I blogged last week.

READING AND DISCUSSION GUIDE FOR STILL

In Still, you will find fifty-four meditations on what it looks like to arrive at a middle place in a spiritual journey and how to respond to a feeling of God’s absence. Forty Days with Still can be used in a general way, allowing you to press in closer with the readings, or it can be used specifically as a Lenten guide. If you choose the latter, over each of the forty days of Lent you will be guided to read one to three meditations and then reflect on the question(s) that correspond with that day’s reading. Let this guide deepen your understanding of who God is and how we communicate with God even in the moments when we can’t always feel God near.

FIND IT HERE: Still Reading and Discussion Guide | HarperOne’s Small Group Guides.

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Taking Ash Wednesday to the Streets

February 22, 2012 By Tony Jones 4 Comments

Today Lauren's thumb will be black with ash

Today is Lauren Winner’s first Ash Wednesday as an Episcopal priest, and she’ll be standing on a public street corner, imposing ashes on willing passersby. More interesting, however, than the fact that she’s doing this, is why she’s doing it.

This year, I will be joining many Episcopal priests in taking the public witness of Ash Wednesday one step further. On Wednesday, my colleague Catherine Caimano and I will put on cassocks and surplices, and go to a corner near Duke University Hospital with small containers of ashes and copies of a litany of repentance from the Book of Common Prayer. We will offer “the imposition of ashes” to people in the street.

READ THE REST: Religion News Service | Why Ash Wednesday belongs out of the church and out on the streets.

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Lauren Winner on Doubt, Prayer, and the Eucharist [VIDEO]

February 14, 2012 By Tony Jones 18 Comments

In part two of my interview with Lauren Winner about her book, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis,, we talk about faith, agnosticism, prayer, and why Lauren pursued became an Episcopal priest.

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Lauren Winner on Writing and Regrets [VIDEO]

February 13, 2012 By Tony Jones 1 Comment

In part one of my interview with Lauren Winner about her book, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, we talk about writing, regrets, divorce, and what a memoir really is.

Part two coming tomorrow.

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Lauren Winner’s Faith

February 10, 2012 By Tony Jones 6 Comments


All week, I’ll be posting about Lauren Winner’s new book, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis. I’m doing so because I think it’s an important book, and I hope that you all read it.

Maybe you guessed this is how my series would end. That even through divorce, loneliness, depression, and the occasional bourbon, Lauren has stayed faithful.

Well, that’s not exactly right. It’s not faith, exactly, that has grounded her during her mid-life tumult. It’s religion. She writes, [Read more...]

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Lauren Winner’s Bourbon

February 9, 2012 By Tony Jones 11 Comments


All week, I’ll be posting about Lauren Winner’s new book, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis. I’m doing so because I think it’s an important book, and I hope that you all read it.

In spite of what I’ve already mentioned — divorce, loneliness, and antidepressants — there will be nothing more arresting to some readers than the way in which Lauren speaks of her use of alcohol.

It goes without saying that this is not a Zondervan-Thomas Nelson-Baker book. I’ve had friends told to excise their manuscripts of all mention of alcohol by each of those publishers, showing that consumption of alcohol is still a stigma in evangelical circles. However, this book would not have been published by one of those houses for any number of reasons.

[Read more...]

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Lauren Winner’s Anxiety

February 8, 2012 By Tony Jones 1 Comment


All week, I’ll be posting about Lauren Winner’s new book, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis. I’m doing so because I think it’s an important book, and I hope that you all read it.

In the final months of my marriage, I went to my physician and told him that I was feeling foggy, that I couldn’t concentrate, and that I worried constantly. He prescribed me Wellbutrin for depression, and I took that medication for just shy of two years.

Lauren suffers from anxiety, about which she writes about hilariously. Really, her anxiety is horrible for her, but it’s a treat for her readers because of how she approaches it.

During her divorce, however, it was getting the better of her, so she went to see her doctor:

[Read more...]

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Lauren Winner’s Loneliness

February 7, 2012 By Tony Jones 9 Comments


All week, I’ll be posting about Lauren Winner’s new book, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis. I’m doing so because I think it’s an important book, and I hope that you all read it.

Lauren is a self-confessed introvert, but that doesn’t meant that she doesn’t experience deep and terrifying loneliness, a topic she addresses forthrightly in Still:

I used to say to Ruth, in all those tortured moments before I left my husband, that what I feared most was loneliness. Not being alone, which I often find perfect and peaceful, but loneliness, which makes me want to die, which makes me think I will die, which I will do anything to avoid feeling: call a friend, go shopping; pedal endless, frantic miles on my stationary bike; pour another drink; take another sleeping pill.

What Ruth says is: Maybe I should try to stay in the loneliness, just for five minutes, just for ten minutes. Maybe the loneliness has something for me. Maybe I should see what that something is.

[Read more...]

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Lauren Winner’s Divorce

February 6, 2012 By Tony Jones 10 Comments


All week, I’ll be posting about Lauren Winner’s new book, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis. I’m doing so because I think it’s an important book, and I hope that you all read it.

Although Lauren denies it at the beginning of the book, this is a memoir. It is the sequel to Girl Meets God. And it is, like that book, funny, literary, and honest honest honest. It’s that honesty that is most striking to me in the book

A couple years ago, Lauren got divorced. In fact, we got divorced at about the same time, and we had a couple of late-night phone conversations about our shared experience. I didn’t really know Lauren before that, and we’ve become close friends since.

Back when we first talked about our divorces, we discussed the incredible pain involved. We also wondered about how honest we’d be able to be about our divorces in the Christian community. There is an inevitable — and understandable — stigma attached to divorce in the church, particularly among those of us who are considered Christian “leaders” (authors, speakers, professors, pastors). How honest can we be? we asked each other.

Well, for her part, Lauren answers that question in the preface:

[Read more...]

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