 |
| |  |
| |  |
| |  |
| |  |
| |  |
| |  |
| |  |
| |  |
||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Editorial:
Doing what it says on the tin Comment:
Stat crux dum volvitur orbis p.s. Seeing red and feeling blue The
elusiveness of trust on the ethnic frontier Beliefs,
values and spirituality Citizenship Creating
Community Interview
with Jose & Marizete Lara: Laboratory for mission Transforming
Culture That's
not fair! Review:
A Heart to Listen Review:
How to Detox your Spiritual Life in 40 Days Review:
Praying in Exile |
|
|
|
|
|
review: THIS IS NOT a book about the theology of the exile which is good since there are so many important books already published on this subject. Instead, Mursell claims that his ‘book is written out of the discovery that exile is something all of us have to face and out of the conviction that there exist… priceless spiritual resources…’. The main thrust of the book is the idea of praying in exile and this comes about in Mursell’s mind from the role of the torah in Psalm 119. Here the refusal to separate prayer from justice; spiritual life from ethical and moral behaviour sets up a powerful model of prayer which is food for the journey of anyone in exile. Mursell uses the work of Edward Said to support the use of memory and imagination in the stories of exile. Precisely because the Exile is uprooted and forced into a different world, they are capable of envisaging other worlds and able to dream of paradise. Therefore Mursell sees the Exile as being a redemptive figure bringing new creation to birth. Another refreshing concept was viewing the Sabbath as one of the most important resources to the Exile. All Exiles had to learn to seek the welfare of the city which they were in and yet not be conformed to it. The keeping of the Sabbath exhibited this stance. He cites the Babylonian exile as being critical to the development of the Sabbath since the idea of holy place is replaced with the idea of holy time. Images of the sabbatical year and the year of jubilee given in Leviticus help God’s people to anticipate being in the heavenly city which is the ultimate Sabbath. His final analogy is John as an Exile on Patmos choosing to praise instead of allowing evil to triumph over him. Revelation demonstrates the extraordinary capacity of those in exile to subvert the iron bars of their condition and invite others to join them in dreaming of how things could be… ‘without such visions to animate and direct them, the world’s religion will become dull or even dangerous, more interested in perpetuating their own institutions than in making the city of God a reality on earth’. Perhaps one of the weaknesses to Mursell’s work is that there is not a thorough theological undergirding of the concept of the Exile. A point that he continually refers to is that God is a God who created order out of chaos and being in exile is a reversal of that process. Therefore the task of prayer and lament is to wrest hope and new life from chaos in a manner similar to God’s work in creation. Whilst this may be so, there are so many other stronger biblical pictures of the Exile that Mursell has neglected in order to give this one attention. For example, at the very end of his book, he talks of how our faith is centred on the conviction that God embraced exile in the life of Jesus in order to rescue us from ours. It seems a shame this is a final observation rather than a central theological point. Also, more could be made of the rich material in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy dealing with the Exile. However, Mursell’s treatment of praying in exile is creative and imaginative and well worth glancing at to fuel one’s own imagination and prayer life. KAREN CAMPBELL is Assistant Minister of Harmony Hill Presbyterian church and is currently compiling a CD of stories from the stranger in Northern Ireland as a prayer resource for churches. |
||||
 |
|
