By Dr Charles Leyman Kachitsa
The experience of nearness is a vicarious moment one. A near deal done, a near life threatening situation, a near miss, a near win, a near loss, a near victory, a near possession; all point to situations of being there yet not.
A near life eternal experience is something that is talked of as a reality in future. Something that man has always looked forward to and thriving in attaining. The meaning may be different but all are looking for the same thing, to be continuously there, being present without fading away. Others will say we are gone but nearly not disappearing for we will reappear at some point.
One would argue that man’s unsettling behaviour is in search of that experience which is near to a feeling of control. A feeling that we are in control of life, a near experience that often is felt but never realised. For man is only but a visitor on this earth, always getting back to near where it all began.
The quotes this week are an extraction from a book which back cover says that throughout its history, the church has faced crises of meaning and identity in all kinds of changing contexts. I am sure the selected quotations from the book listed below will enlighten you to one or two life lessons, read and enjoy:
PRACTICES FOR THE REFOUNDING OF GOD’S PEOPLE – The Missional Challenge of the West by Alan J. Roxburgh and Martin Robinson
“The West and its Euro-tribal churches have entered a time of unraveling that questions the nature of Christian identity and the meaning of the West. This is more than a description of historical fact or a nostalgic longing for what once was. Far more is at stake. With the loss of the Christian narrative and the ascendance of modernity’s wager, the West has lost its way to the extent that many of its citizens feel unmoored and cast adrift. Modernity’s promises have lost their power to deliver. Questions of a missiological engagement with the West are not parochial; they are not primarily about the churches and their survival. The questions are about Christian vocation in the restoration and healing of all creation. This is the core vocational challenge confronting Christians. …..”
“The metaphors of journey and passage are far richer and evocative. They suggest invitation, discovery, discernment, and experimenting. They invite us to see that the location of hope is out on a road; it is neither predictable nor within our means to control. It is, however, in exactly this kind of place where we will see the work God has for us. Passage and journey are not about inner feelings. They are about actions; the decision and choice to go in a particular direction, to embrace a vocation that takes us beyond fixing. We live, to borrow George Steiner’s memorable phrase, in the ‘age of the afterward.’ It’s the time after where we can’t go back to what was. …….”
“The idea of the modern is not new. It emerged as the medieval synthesis broke apart starting in thirteenth -century Europe and into the fifteenth-century reformations. The notion of the West emerges in the nineteenth century. The word modern was part of a spiritual and intellectual struggle around the identity of Christendom that would, from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries, change the very basis upon which the West had been formed. As such, it is a word that expresses the ending of the Christendom that began with the Germanic peoples and the formation of the Frankish kingdoms. The notion of the modern is formed around a conflict between the ancients and the moderns, and an intellectual movement known as nominalism. Only in the nineteenth century did the notions of the modern and the West came together to form the powerful, ideological imagination that has shaped our world over the last two centuries.”
“Ockham made a sharp distinction between things as they existed in reality and the ideas, words, and signs we use to make connections betwwen these real substances. To oversimplify, for Ockham, Mary and Tom really existed, whereas, human being was only a construct in our minds that people used to order the world. For Ockham and the nominalists, things in the world, to be real, had to be simple, unique, and distinct (there was only one Mary and no other Mary in the world). Neither man, woman, or human being were, therefore, a real thing. Universals might be helpful generalisations, but they were not real. …….”
