Monday, 18 November, 2002

This week we will begin with selections from "A Story-Formed Community:Reflections on Watership Down in The Hauerwas Reader.



For several years, I have been throwing out onto the floor the notion that we are followers of Jesus in the reign of God...and this following is "an adventure for life." The word "adventure" is a very deliberate choice for our life as followers of Jesus. This is one small piece of Hauerwas' work that has a similar feel to it to me.

...Watership Down is primarily a novel about the various forms of courage and hope necessary for the formation of a good community. Adventure requires courage to keep us faithful to the struggle, since by its very nature adventure means that the future is always in doubt. And just to the extent that the future is in doubt, hope is required, as there can be no adventure if we despair of our goal. Such hope does no necessarily take the form of excessive confidence; rather, it involves the simple willingness to take the next step.



Gandhi once wrote about the courage that was necessary to be someone whose life was nonviolent. The discipline of nonviolence is not a way of disengagement. Rather it is shaped by engagement. We must be brave and have a story that we use to help define our actions and pull us into an engagement with all the powers of the day...even when we are not sure of what the outcome may be of such engagements. Hauerwas seems to use the word adventure when we are pulled into such engagement in the world. His comment "by its very nature adventure means that the future is always in doubt" leaves us in a place that may demand our complete trust in a story that is willing to face the possibility of non-being...death...harm...loss of all things. When we engage the day unsure of how the day will come to completion we can only engage it one step at a time. Each step become the adventure of new life and I would hope...a step within the domain of God's reign. Yes, as Douglas John Hall may write, God reigns: all contrary evidence not withstanding, but we must step out into the contrary evidence holding onto a story of promise from the Lord of all Hopefulness.



Connection: Take the next step.



Lord of all Hopefulness, grasp us and breathe into us this breath of new life that is available to all of your beloved. Grant us courage to step into our lives trusting in the vision of your promised eternal reign as it comes among us even now. Amen