Spiritual Numbness

The prophet must speak with passion because the community is in a coma. Or to shift the metaphor, we are numb. To be numb is to be without passion; it is the absence of pathos; it is apathy. We are so numb that we don't even realise what has happened to us. Our numbness denies us of a spiritually renewed imagination. We are numb, we don't notice the perverse abnormality of affluence. We are numb to the precariousness of our times, numb to the danger of the earth, to the pain of the poor, to the impossibility of our present affluent lifestyles. We are numb to our own pain, and we want to remain numb to the pain of homosexuals in our communities and to the victims of abuse and incest. And, yes, we are numbed out by the irrelevance of the church to our present cultural malaise.

Brian Walsh in Subversive Christianity

Community

We do not undertake the spiritual quest alone. We need communities which nurture and hold us, communities which keep traditions and charisms alive and which hand them on to the next generation.... Thus an individual, privatized or purely personal spirituality is an oxymoron. Authentic spirituality can never be an isolated, privatized or an individual affair. It is always located in a particular community from which it derives flavour, character and efficacy.


Marie McCarthy
"Sprituality in a Postmodern Era"
in The Blackwell Reader in Pastoral and Practical Theology

Being deep people

Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.

Richard Foster
Celebration of Discipline