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St Lucia Spirituality Group
Newsletter November 2023
Greetings
Our paper “From Co-dependency to an Adult Faith” and November meeting attracted considerable interest and a very well attended meeting with several new faces. We changed the format of our meeting to allow everyone the opportunity to briefly offer their reflections on the paper so that we could all benefit from the collective wisdom. That process worked well.
Co-dependency occurs when one places an excessive reliance on another at the expense of their own mature development. We distinguish co-dependency, which can be problematic, from collaboration and inter-dependency which are desirable skills. The difficulty with co-dependent relationships is that they are not apparent, requiring reflection and self-awareness. We were also able to distinguish co-dependency on the church from co-dependency on God, recognising they are different, requiring a more nuanced discussion than we had time available to consider.
In his book “What to Believe”, John Caputo writes: God is not an agent-doer of mighty deeds, who does things for us, like save us from our enemies, clear all plastic bottles out of the ocean, and put an end to carbon emissions, just so long as we pray hard enough and give up our favourite treats for Lent. If that is how you think of God, then you should give up God for Lent. The agency is our responsibility.
That requires a mature adult faith. Understanding the impact of co-dependency leads us to re-evaluate our understanding of God and our expectations of our own behaviour. Consequently, our expectations of church might also change.
As one correspondent noted: Thanks for that. You have packed a lot into those pages, I will have to reread a few more times, and ‘ if Jesus was in Australia right now, what would he do? Expect of us?’
Website
As our community continues to grow, it is time to design and launch a web site. Our Facebook page offers only limited access but has an increasing amount of material that could be accessed more widely. We are seeking to identify a person with professional web site design experience (or a highly skilled amateur) who would be willing to assist us for a reasonable fee. If you know such a person, could you please provide their contact details to us slsg4067@gmail.com?
Butterfly Series – Next Meeting
Our next meeting will consider an extract from Come Forth, a new book by James Martin SJ. It is the chapter titled Not Enoughness. It begins:
Loving oneself is a struggle for an astonishing number of people. Over the past thirty years as a Jesuit and especially in my ministry as a spiritual director, I’ve met dozens of people who face crippling doubts about their own value and worth. This happens even to people who would be considered by many as “successful.” It is a contemporary disease that plagues almost everyone—feelings of what one professionally successful man in his thirties described as “not enoughness.”
This paper is available on our Facebook page or upon request.
Our Episode 25 meeting will be held on Zoom at 6:00pm AEST on Tuesday 12 December 2023. Come early to meet the others there. Use this link to join the meeting. The zoom meeting will open at 5:45pm.
To register your attendance, please email John at jscoble@hradvantage.com.au.
Coffee anyone?
Our objective for this group is to promote the discussion of ideas, building a community of seekers. Is there anyone in your local area you could meet for coffee or breakfast as part of your journey? John and Robert meet with a few others for breakfast each month, but their group started with the two of them meeting for coffee and chatting. Who could you invite?
We are aware of some members looking for groups to join, do you have one? Please let us know. We believe the future of our churches lies in these small groups.
Our Newsletters & Facebook Page
- Do you know anyone who might like to receive these newsletters too? They can easily subscribe for our newsletters and other news by clicking on this link.
- We invite you to find our Facebook group by clicking on this link, it will take you to our page where you will be able to apply to join.
- Our Facebook page has all past newsletters and discussion papers available under “Files” for viewing and download.
- You can also contact us by email slsg4067@gmail.com.
Go well…
John Scoble & Robert van Mourik oOo
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From a participant perspective, truly the most engaged SLSG gathering I’ve attended! It was heartening to see so many women there, the ones I know of enormous substance, who made powerful contributions to a reflective exchange that has tended because of an unintentional gender-imbalance to be a bit of a boys’ pow-wow. The ‘spirituality’ clause in our process makes this an enticing engagement for those participating because so much of the sub fusc of faith attachment is still incredibly formal & structured – in some official Church contexts, like the Catholic one that has claimed from birth, with the added impediment of a built-in, formalised clericalism as its institutional backbone.
In this regard, I always find the contributions of non-Catholics insightful & helpful, such as those offered by the (Anglican) Rector of St Lucia and, as ever, the shared wisdom of Brigid Limerick from the Uniting tradition of our ecumenical Christian gathering. Brigid issued a challenging invitation for a greater presence from her ‘side of the faith family’, who may be missing something in the focus on spirituality that SLSG offers. I might comment on this because one of the features I love about the Uniting Church is its focus, particularly within Merthyr Explorers, on a Christian engagement with the contemporary world in terms of its high – AND NECESSARY! – investment in social activism.
At some stage I would love to see our group focus a bit on the spiritual sources of that activism and our wellbeing. From the Roman Catholic tradition I am reminded of the wise & challenging words of Joseph Bernardin, a former archbishop of Chicago, which has the most progressive outreach within the US Catholic Church, a branch fraught with fundamentalist dissent from other, including conservative Republican Catholic quarters. Joseph Bernardin famously used a terminology that good Protestants might find quaint if not alarming, but its all that I can find to illustrate how important it was to securing the unity of his vast & highly diverse diocese. Citing the traditional Catholic reverence for Veronica’s Shroud of Turin, he likened the complexity of Christian witness, highly-divided these days between those who subscribe to a ministry of charity and others committed to the witness of justice, as the ‘two sides of Christ’s Indivisible Shroud’.
I think Bernardin’s use of this imagery perfectly illustrates the dilemma facing all those who claim a slice of Jesus (and who have hitherto tended to pursue an ‘other-worldly’ escapist spirituality) and social justice practitioners, like me, who incline towards preferring a church that commits to combatting social injustice. Thanks for listening & your responses. Michael