Abstracts of Presentations for the Symposium ‘The Once and Future Reformation : The Way of the Spirit’.

DAY ONE Thursday the 25^th of May

Welcome 10.30 am

Ken Petersen

Dialogue Today and Tomorrow

This presentation addresses a key point of Renewal for the future which is a factor in understanding the Second Vatican Council and the ministry of Pope Francis i.e. Dialogue and particularly the issue of Inter-Religious Dialogue. There will be some emphasis on Buddhism and Christianity.

Dialogue Today and Tomorrow

Session One 11.30-1.00 pm

David Moore

Mysticism of Teilhard de Chardin: A Solution to the Modern Religious Crisis.

Carol McDonough

Voices Choices : Seeking the Way of the Spirit : Living Jesus’ Commands to Love : Learning from our past for our future hope through Love in our present.

Session Two 2.30-4.00 pm

Glenn Loughrey

The Way of the Heart: One with the Heavens and the Earth

We all have to return to the beginning at some point in our lives, be it our faith lives or ordinary lives, to go back to where we first commenced our journey and take the time to recalibrate our compass to ensure we are in touch with the Source of all being.

This paper suggests this is where the church is today– reclaiming the future through a return to its beginnings in the form of a human shaped God walking boldly and courageously into a problematic future. Like the disciples who have to go back to the place where they first made that connection, the church is being challenged to leave aside the accretions of the centuries, undo the violence of law and guilt, to let go have of well worn doctrines and decrees and pulled down the fences of exclusion. It is time for the church to return to the uncertainty of an incarnated life and to reclaim the future as a humble, fallible and vulnerable presence, not unlike that of the Christ of Galilee.

This paper then makes some suggestions as to what a future claiming church, a church of the heart, might look like.

Ruth Harrison

Ancient roots, new expressions: How the spirituality and praxis of Christian contemplatives are being reshaped by the demands of living in an evolving universe and a planet in ecological crisis.

Like the movement of Christian seekers in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine and Syria in the third and fourth centuries CE, there is a movement towards similar, yet different, forms of contemplative living today. To live such a life with integrity in the 21st century there must be an integration of new knowledge, new paradigms and new experiences.

In his groundbreaking work on intra-religious dialogue, on the Trinity, and on the cosmotheandric experience, Raimon Panikkar has opened a way for contemplatives to integrate both scientific discoveries at the cosmic, planetary and micro levels which were unknown to theologians  and mystics in earlier centuries; and the insights and practices of other faiths, including the wisdom and integrated lifestyles of indigenous cultures. These insights can assist those exploring new forms of community, monastic, and solitary living, as they seek to contribute to the needs of both church and world.

Session Three 4.30-6.00 pm

Talitha Fraser

Street, Seminary and Sacred: Expressions of Theological Animation and Activism in Victoria

Thirty years on from the publication of Ched Myers’ Mark-as-manifesto text ‘Binding The Strongman’ this session will introduce some local current and legacy-influenced expressions of alternative radical discipleship and explore what this model has already and could yet offer for personal discipleship and broader church renewal through photos, stories, liturgy and lectionary.

David Buller

Holy Disruption : A Quaker Experience of Reformation Then and Now

Quakers, at times contrarian, at other times conforming to the dominant culture. From the mystical to the practical engagement with the issues of the day. From the Christocentric to the Universalist in spiritual formation and practice. From the ministry of all believers to the prophetic and the fallible. Often overlooked in Christian thinking and writing. While experiencing persecution and ridicule this diverse faith community experience has proven resilient. Quakers have been trail blazers in areas such as industrial and social innovation, peace research and peace building, in education and collective discernment. Today let us look at that which unites us, not so much seeking intellectual agreement but rather being united in love, and in our response to the call of the Spirit in a world that needs united voices for truth with compassion, with holy obedience reflected in working together for Kingdom Values.

Session Four 7.30-9.30 pm

Keynote speaker: Francis Moloney

Reform: Spirituality and the Person of Jesus: Christian Holiness as Deification (Theiosis)

A talk which points to the strength of the Lutheran (and others) return to the Word of God and the person of Jesus, and ask where we can go from there in terms of a spirituality.

DAY TWO Friday the 26^th of May

Session Five 9.30-11 am

Marlene Marburg

Becoming a Real Presence to Each Other: Beyond Resistance to Co-creation

Our technological and arguably rational global society irrationally exploits resources and living creatures, and violates people, turning them into instruments of wealth  production and distributing resources according to self-interest in the pursuit of ‘more’.  This is in sharp contrast with the Ignatian magis in which ‘the more’ is understood in the context of reaching beyond oneself for what is better. 

At deeper levels of consciousness where all things are experienced as neither good nor bad except that they are in consonance with the Mystery of Creation, ‘Becoming present',  is the most affirming, loving and 'reformative' gift we can offer one another.  ‘Becoming Present’ or 'Real Presence' is the magis of the present 21^st century.   Presence to languaged and unlanguaged life is exciting, awe-inspiring and invitational.   Can we know and incarnate our desires in creative resonance with the soul of the Universe? 

Bernadette Miles

Strengthening Spirit -  Releasing Potential: spiritual formation for the New Axial Age

The Axial Age (800 – 200 BCE) marks the time when human consciousness made a deep spiritual evolutionary change from tribal consciousness to individual consciousness.  It was a time when the great religions of Taoism, Confucianism, Monotheism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Greek philosophy emerged, laying the spiritual foundations of humanity simultaneously and independently. 

Technological advances, the development of the Internet and mass communication, are drawing humanity into a second Axial Age, calling forth a new consciousness to the interconnectedness of all creation.  The difficulty for individuals and groups who wish to take religious belief seriously in the 21^st Century is that many institutional religions are stuck within the first Axial Age consciousness, where an individual’s personal salvation remains as the central purpose of religion. 

What impact does the new axial period have on our understanding of Call and the way in which we provide spiritual formation for the 21^st Century.  How do we strengthen spiritual vocations and release the potential that lies within?

Session Six 11.30-1.00 pm

Jan Morgan & Graeme Garrett

‘And they couldn’t even read Eggplant!’: a New Pentecost? Or, on being Monoglots in a Speaking World

At Pentecost we are told ‘all of them … began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.’ (Acts 2.4) The other languages here were other human tongues. We are in a different situation. Again the Spirit is calling us to new languages. But this time languages that are other than human. Indigenous peoples of our land have nurtured their amazing polyglot abilities across thousands of years. But we settler people are (by and large) monoglots. We speak ‘human’, period. But a new spirit is abroad. Scientists (Peter Wohlleben), writers (Ursula Le Guin), poets (Mary Oliver), artists (Fred Williams), philosophers (Jean-Louis Chrétien) are calling us to a New Pentecost. We live in a communicating world. In an amazing speech ‘from the whirlwind’, God shakes Job loose from the endless human talk that has filled the previous chapters. Human voices are one small part of a stupendous chorus of other creatures that constitute God’s world. – ‘And we can’t even read Eggplant’.

Simon Moyle

Monasticism, New and Old

The New Monasticism movement has been gaining traction across the Western world, particularly among evangelical Christians who are dissatisfied with their experience of church. This paper will present a critical reflection of the New Monasticism movement, its positive and negative edges, and some thoughts on how New Monasticism and traditional monasticism might learn from one another. 

Session Seven 2.30-4.00 pm

Lynne Reeder

New and Old Treasures: Wonder, Awe, and Creativity in Today’s Spirituality

The Reformation of the 16th century was not unprecedented. Reformers within the medieval church such as St. Francis of Assisi addressed abuses in the life of the church in the centuries before 1517. A major component of St Francis’ spirituality and activism was his focus on wonder and creativity. His approach to a spirituality of interdependence provides a timely opportunity to reflect on the significance of awe and wonder from the Reformation until now. Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world. Early in human history, awe was reserved for feelings toward divine beings, like the spirits that Greek families believed were guarding over their fates. But the newly developed science of awe, being developed in universities such as Stanford, suggests is that opportunities for awe surround us, and that their benefits are profound, that momentary experiences of awe stimulate wonder and curiosity. This finding would not have been anything new to mystics such as St Francis, but it does have some key implications for approaches to spirituality in today’s global and fractious world.    

Sherry Balcombe & Robyn Reynolds

Spirituality and Land: Let's hear Aboriginal Voices

The first and major part of the presentation draws on the speech given to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in 1986 by Pope John Paul 11. Sherry Balcombe’s paper on Aboriginal Spirituality follows and this in turn leads into the final part of the presentation which addresses issues relating specifically to land, ‘treaty’ and Christian spirituality.

DAY THREE Saturday the 27^th of May

Retreat in the morning with Bernadette Micallef

The Saturday Retreat will look at the Way of the Spirit through the life stories of some well-known people, such as Thomas Merton, and also some less well-known people. We’ll reflect on our own life story through various visual images and seek to deepen awareness of our personal experience of the Way of the Spirit.

'The Once and Future Reformation'

Philip Harvey’s words of welcome at the Carmelite Centre Symposium 'The Once and Future Reformation' on Thursday morning, the 25^th of May 2017

It is 500 years this coming October that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door of Wittenberg.

Actually at least two things in the sentence I just read are still under dispute. It may have been November, not October. It was in October that Luther posted his theses to the Archbishop of Mainz and it is this action, rather than nailing them to a door, that is regarded as the start of the European Reformation.  Luther is taking his cause to a higher authority.

Also, he probably did not nail the theses so much as affix them: nailed sounds so much more dramatic to posterity. It looks good in a movie. The reason he is affixing them to the door is to invite people to a symposium at the university, where the various propositions can be openly debated. If Luther were alive today he would probably use blue-tack to fix his theses to the door, and would circulate them via his online e-list. 

And it is in this spirit of invitation that we are here today to conduct our own symposium on reform, in the church and in the world, and possibly even in ourselves. 

Ponder the fact that there were 95 theses. When Luther invites discussion about reforms in the church, he is talking about repentance, which he views as personal and guided by the Gospel, and he is being thorough. He challenges assumptions that drive something that is international, huge and socially powerful, the Western Church of the 16th century. Suddenly many other issues were at stake: the language of the liturgy, obedience to a primatial bishop, how we read the Bible and even should we read the Bible, marriage, religious vows, the power of the state. 

Indeed, in raising discussion today in our own symposium, there has been the problem of being able to include many, but not by any means all, of the issues facing us in the modern world. I am sure issues will be raised in the next three days that have not been directly addressed in the program and it is necessary to acknowledge these omissions, which are not deliberate on our part, from the start. Given the thankless task of identifying everything that seems mistaken or wrong and in need of reform today, I’m sure some of us here could come up with our own set of 95 theses fairly rapidly. We trust though we don't end up being sent to our own personal Diet of Worms. I stand here, I can do no other.

As we know, the thesis or complaint of Luther’s that really shook up the church authorities was his questioning of indulgences, the racket whereby the church raised revenue from the faithful by receiving money for the remission of sins, especially of the faithful departed. This commercialisation of the practice of repentance and forgiveness helped finance the vast operations of Rome. It should not be surprising that money has not gone away, that it continues to be root cause of many of the modern world’s problems, and that the churches are as compromised as everyone else by the use and misuse of money. We may well hear more about economics in the next two days.   

    

Luther was an insider, an Augustinian monk. He was also a professor at the university, so someone who garnered respect for his authority. His call to reformation was not coming from outside but inside the church.

Furthermore, Luther’s behaviour was not new. The call to reformation within the church, the need to acknowledge and correct errors and abuses, had a history within the Western Church going back centuries, some would say back to the very start of the Christian churches themselves. We think of Saint Francis of Assisi and others, many of them also saints in fact, who initiated reforms. We think of the Apostle Paul, who is already telling the far flung churches of the Roman Empire to get their act together. And we think of Jesus himself, as reported in the Gospels, getting his disciples to figure out that arguments about who gets the best seats in the house is, frankly, to have missed the point completely. Jesus calls people first to undergo complete personal reform: some task.

‘Ecclesia semper reformanda est’. This Latin tag is sometimes treated as a timeless truth coined by Saint Augustine or John Calvin. In fact it is as recent as the twentieth century, invented by the Protestant theologian Karl Barth. 'The church must always be reformed'. 'In the church there is always much to reform'. 'The church is always being reformed.' Translations vary to suit the argument. It was used by Hans Küng and others when trying to explain the spirit of the Second Vatican Council. It has meaning while pushing us to think anew, is a problem once it becomes the default setting.

The church lives with the constant challenge of Scripture and Tradition. Luther and the Protestants privileged Scripture while the Catholic reformers rethought and asserted Tradition. It will be worth listening to the speakers in our Symposium to recognise the rich sources of their thoughts.

We live in a different world to the Apostle Paul, Saint Augustine, Martin Luther, and even Karl Barth. In the context of our searching, based in prayer and reflection, this Symposium is an opportunity to talk about the current need for renewal and reformation today, in the churches and in the world. Our Symposium will be diverse, ecumenical, and imaginative. Our emphasis is on spirituality, on the works of the spirit and what the spirit is telling each one of us. You are invited to listen to many different kinds of thoughtful voices, to join us for three days of lectures, reflections and discussion on ways of learning from the past, of living in the present and of looking to the future.

The Once and Future Reformation

The Carmelite Centre Melbourne 2017 SYMPOSIUM: The Once and Future Reformation: The Way of the Spirit. Thursday 25th May to Saturday 27th May

A full schedule of events appears below and is available for booking.  The trybooking link is https://www.trybooking.com/273099 An opportunity to talk about the current need for renewal and reformation today, in the churches and in the world. Our Symposium will be diverse, ecumenical, and imaginative. Join us for three days of lectures, reflections and discussion on ways of learning from the past, of living in the present and of looking to the future. Keynote speaker: Francis Moloney SDB, AM, STD, D. Phil. (Oxon), D. Univ. (ACU), FAHA   Thursday evening 7.30-9.30 he will speak on "Reform: Spirituality and the Person of Jesus: Christian Holiness as Deification (Theiosis)." A talk which points to the strength of the Lutheran (and others) return to the Word of God and the person of Jesus, and ask where we can go from there in terms of a spirituality. Full Program: ‘The Once and Future Reformation : The Way of the Spirit’. The Carmelite Centre Symposium DAY ONE Thursday 25th of May Welcome 10.30 am Philip Harvey - Welcome Ken Petersen O.Carm: Dialogue Today and Tomorrow Session One 11.30-1.00 pm David Moore: Mysticism of Teilhard de Chardin: A Solution to the Modern Religious Crisis Carol McDonough: Seeking the Way of the Spirit living Jesus' commands to love: for Christians, our church in our world, learning from our past, for our future hope through Love in our present Session Two 2.30-4.00 pm Glenn Loughrey: The Way of the Heart: One with the Heavens and the Earth Ruth Harrison: Ancient Roots, New Expressions: How the Spirituality and Praxis of Christian Contemplatives are being reshaped by the demands of living in an Evolving Universe and a Planet in ecological crisis Session Three 4.30-6.00 pm Talitha Fraser: Street, Seminary and Sacred: Expressions of Theological Animation and Activism in Victoria David Buller: Holy Disruption : A Quaker Experience of Reformation Then and Now Session Four 7.30-9.30 pm Keynote speaker: Francis Moloney  "Reform: Spirituality and the Person of Jesus: Christian Holiness as Deification (Theiosis)."  A talk which points to the strength of the Lutheran (and others) return to the Word of God and the person of Jesus, and ask where we can go from there in terms of a spirituality. DAY TWO Friday 26th of May Session Five 9.30-11 am Marlene Marburg: Becoming a Real Presence to Each Other: Beyond Resistance to Co-creation Bernadette Miles: Strengthening Spirit – Releasing Potential: spiritual formation for the New Axial Age Session Six 11.30-1.00 pm Jan Morgan & Graeme Garrett: ‘And they couldn’t even read Eggplant!’: a New Pentecost? Or, on being Monoglots in a Speaking world Simon Moyle: Monasticism, New and Old Session Seven 2.30-4.00 pm Lynne Reeder: New and Old Treasures: Wonder, Awe, and Creativity in Today’s Spirituality Sherry Balcombe & Robyn Reynolds: Spirituality and Land: Let's hear Aboriginal Voices DAY THREE Saturday 27th of May Retreat morning 10.00-noon Bernadette Micallef: The Way of the Spirit: Personal Experience. Go to the website for booking.