One of the most-quoted literary works of the twentieth-century is not a novel, a poem, or a play, but something that wasn’t supposed to be ‘literature’ at all. I'm talking about the collection of personal letters written by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, published in 1929 as Letters to a Young Poet. In these letters, … Continue reading Sound Advice: A Reflection on 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (2017) has described her Anishinaabe culture as “nationhood based on a series of radiating responsibilities.”* It’s hard to imagine any Western person describing our own culture in such terms, especially today. While traditional Western society was very community-focused, to the point of an often extreme anti-individualism, and Western liberal (i.e., constitutional, rights-based) … Continue reading Responsibility
In Sunday’s post on Thanksgiving, I talked about a constellation of closely related ideas —gratitude, respect, reciprocity, and generosity — in terms of their close relationship in Indigenous belief systems and how they connect to Christian teachings. All of these ideas are grounded in understanding one’s place in the world. If the world is a … Continue reading Walk Humbly
Here in Canada, today is Thanksgiving Sunday. It’s a commemoration that, depending on how one chooses to interpret it, can be either a tremendous ally or barrier to decolonizing Christian theology here. In the churches in which I grew up, it was unmistakably a harvest celebration, thanking God for the land as the source of … Continue reading In Everything Give Thanks: On Gratitude, Respect, Reciprocity, and Generosity
So far in this series, I’ve explored the possibility of using shalom, peace, as a guiding metaphor for Christian theology and life, and how this would frame ‘faith’ as a peace-making lifestyle. I showed how these ideas are both profoundly biblical and also resonate with common Indigenous ideas about right living, and so could provide … Continue reading ‘All Our Relations’: Christianity and the ‘Community of Creation’
Matthew Root 