The methodology for the Duke Summer Institute is “Word Made Flesh,” as they say it here–“that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (II Cor 5:17). Because God in Christ shows us that a new reality is possible, we can both lament the tragic divisions that claim to be “just the way things are” and live in hope that another world is possible. But all of this hits the ground in bodies. Unless it is an enfleshened reality,... Read more
I am teaching this week at the Duke Center for Reconciliation’s Summer Institute, a gathering I’ve delighted to be a part of since it began four years ago. We began the morning today with an intro to reconciliation in the epistles by New Testament scholar Richard Hays, followed by a testimony about the power of Paul’s vision of the gospel by civil rights veteran and Christian Community Development pioneer John Perkins. During our time of worship, I offered this meditation... Read more
This past Saturday, the alleluias of Easter still resounding in our ears, we got up early for a work day at Rutba House. These things do not happen without some prep work. Two years ago, we noticed that the house next door to ours on Onslow Street was falling down. The hole in the roof had gone unattended for months. We wondered how Marie, our neighbor, continued to live there. Then, one day, she was gone. We walked through the... Read more
Every week, I hear from people throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand who are longing for genuine Christian community. They’ve heard a story or read a book about the new monasticism, and they want to know where it’s happening, what it looks like in practice, and how they might be part of it. Several years ago, we launched an online directory to help folks connect to communities close to them. Our School for Conversion hosts weekend visits... Read more
In my freshman “Intro to Christian Spirituality” course at Eastern College, I was assigned Athanasius’ Life of Saint Antony as the first in a series of ancient Christian writers who would introduce me to a new language for my faith–a language, as it turned out, that was so old it looked like new. Thanks in large part to the teaching of Chris Hall, I became captivated by these ancient Christians and their faith. For me, at least, the seeds of... Read more
I love to tell the story about how, in the 1930’s, when Dietrich Bonhoeffer was resisting the Nazis in Germany and praying for a “new monasticism that has in common with the old a strict adherence to the Sermon on the Mount,” a little community of believers, calling themselves the “Bruderhof,” gathered around a simple mission: to live out Jesus’ instructions in the Sermon on the Mount. They were run out by the Nazis for being pacifists, then by the... Read more
The weather was kind this year as SUV’s with license plates from New York and Massachusetts started showing up around town, driving slowly with their turn signals on, trying desperately not to look lost. The sun shone bright and the humidity staid low and the local restaurants were packed with mothers in sun dresses, hugging their children, saying that they couldn’t think of a better gift than seeing their child graduate from college. Such is Mother’s Day in this city... Read more
When Caroline Stevenson’s son began to struggle with mental health issues, she did what any mother would do: she starting asking where he could get help. When she found in the 1970’s that there wasn’t much help available, she started asking why. Caroline became an activist the same way lots of mothers do–by seeing her own child’s need and realizing that lots of other children are in the same situation. After joining the Alliance for the Mentally Ill, Caroline began... Read more
It’s Saturday, and I’m in Little Rock, Arkansas, at the invitation of local Episcopalians to give a retreat on Saint Benedict and the vocation of peacemaking in community. We’ve started the morning with some attention to the desert mothers and fathers, to the practices of community that Benedict lays out in his Rule, to the long, slow work that peacemaking is if we do it in the way of Jesus. But now, after sitting together and tending to history, we’re... Read more
One year ago this week, as the birds were hatching on our porch and the rose bush was in full bloom, our friend George was shot, just four blocks up the street. The bullet that hit his neck lodged in his C-7 and paralyzed him from the chest down. For eight months, George lay on his back in a hospital bed. Most of the medical and social work professionals who worked with him said George would never live outside of... Read more
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
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