Finding a Language for Faith: Liturgy and Worship

The sacramental and liturgical texts in The Annotated Luther series (volumes 1 and 3) reflect Luther's ongoing concern for the faith life of the people. They also give us an insight into Luther's own struggle to find words (and, of course, practices) that reflect the fundamental insight of the Reformation: justification by faith alone. Luther refused to abandon ritual or a strict liturgical order even though it can so easily become, in the minds and hearts of believers, a work they must do. The freedom of the gospel does not dispense us from a liturgical order or from participation; in fact, for Luther, that freedom compels us to worship! This tension can be found within these writings as Luther searches for new words and redefines and/or reorients other words to express a spirituality of justification.     

Notes from a Visit to Several Zapatista Communities: Toward Practices of Nomadic Identity and Hybridity

Reflections on meeting members of the Zapatista movement and visiting two Zapatista autonomous zones in Chiapas, Mexico inform an American liberation psychologist’s reflections on how to engage psychology students (and herself) in community and ecological fieldwork, community practice, and participatory research. The importance of community psychologists’ exploration of their own subjectivity as they encounter communities outside their own is underlined, as is critical inquiry on the impact of our social locations on the communities with whom we partner. Zapatistas’ conceptualization of autonomous zones where people can work together to create forms of shared leadership, decision-making through consensus, communal economics, empowerment of women, and liberatory arts and education inspire the creation of public homeplaces throughout the world.     

Icons,Liturgy, Saints: Ecological insights from Orthodox spirituality1

The technical language and specific images that we adopt when we speak about preservation of the natural environment depend on values and images that we promote and even presume in our daily behaviour and lifestyle. In Orthodox Christian spirituality, such language and images certainly play a crucial role. This presentation considers the central importance of: 1) the world of icons as the way we view and perceive creation; 2) the beauty of liturgy as the way we celebrate and respond to creation; and 3) asceticism in the lives of the saints as the way we respect and treat creation. It draws on classic Orthodox Christian texts as well as contemporary literature to provide fundamental spiritual insights into the way we comprehend God's creation and the way we should confront its exploitation in modern times.     

Friendship,the Family and Liturgy: A Rite for Blessing Friendship in Traditional Christianity

Abstract

In this paper Alan Bray takes us back to the work of John Boswell on the liturgical marking of friendship in the Greek Church during the Middle Ages. He begins by noting the work that has also been undertaken on the equivalent rite in the Latin west. Much of this work, however, leaves open the question of the purpose of the rite and its use within mediaeval society. Alan Bray looks at a number of theories which have been put forward and then suggests that we cannot read back into the historical situation our own contemporary concerns. He ends the paper by proposing that we need to look at the theological context of the rite and by doing this, he shows that a theological reading allows us to work around the ethical issues. Finally, he proposes this theological approach as a way of linking the mediaeval past with the contemporary situation.     

Restructuring Interreligious Dialogue from the Bottom Up through the Lenses of Deep Solidarity and the Multitude

Social movements and liberation theologies have addressed various forms of oppression and exploitation along the lines of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and other factors, not without tensions. What might bring them closer together without erasing differences? Addressing this question has important implications for fresh approaches to interreligious dialogue. In this contribution, notions of deep solidarity and of the multitude point the way toward restructured interreligious engagements.     

Narrative Ideas for Consulting with Communities and Organizations: Ripples from the Gatherings

This paper reviews Michael White's early work with communities and extends ideas and practices from that work into the realm of consulting with organizations. We draw on Michael's writing and the records of two specific projects, as well as the recollections of team members in those projects, to describe how ideas and practices that were originally developed in working with individuals and families came to be applied in community settings. Specifically, we show how the central intention of the work is to use narrative ideas and practices in ways that allow communities to articulate, appreciate, document, utilize, and share their own knowledges of life and skills of living. We discuss the basic narrative ideas of stories, double listening, telling and retelling, making documents, and linking lives through shared purposes. For these projects, the teams developed structures that made it possible to use the basic idea with whole communities. We show how this work with communities has offered inspiration and ideas for our work in consulting to organizations. Finally, we describe and illustrate a particular way of working with organizations that carries the spirit of Michael's community work into situations requiring shorter blocks of time and more limited commitments than the original community contexts.     

Schizotypy: An Organizing Framework for Schizophrenia Research

ABSTRACT— Schizophrenia is the most devastating form of psychopathology known to humankind, and it has been slow to yield clues to its origins. Meehl's (1962, 1990) model detailed the nature of the latent liability for schizophrenia known as schizotypy and provided a major organizing function for research on schizophrenia. The schizotypy model integrates genetic and environmental contributions to liability as well as accounting for a range of clinical outcomes, all deriving from a genuine liability for the illness. Schizotypy, as a latent personality organization that harbors the liability for schizophrenia, provides a framework for detecting fundamental features of liability to schizophrenia prior to the onset of clinical illness. The schizotypy model is reviewed, the strategic benefits of it are discussed, and methods for detecting schizotypy are presented. A focus on perceptual aberrations—a schizotypic feature—in individuals unaffected by schizophrenia has yielded valuable clues to preclinical disturbances in neurocognitive processes, risk for schizophrenia among biological relatives, and genomic substrates, all of which are of interest to schizophrenia researchers.