Finishing ‘The Spiritual Migration’
From ‘The Great Spiritual Migration’ by Brian McLaren
Read the concluding parts (Afterword and Appendices) of ‘The Great Spiritual Migration’ by Brian McLaren. Read the short reflection below, then comment about the reading or the reflection!
Afterword: We Stepped Forth. The Waters Parted.
McLaren shares a beautiful prayer by Rabbi Stephanie Kolin which uses the example of that moment of trembling, when the people, delivered from Egypt are facing the sea on the one side and Pharaoh’s armies on the other and there is no way forward and no way back. All there is is trust in God to make a way forward. To move where there is no way to move.
It is the perfect image for the migration we are exploring, where returning to the before is impossible and the way forward seems impossible or at the very least we can’t see it. This sense of being trapped before the parting of the sea, before the impossible, the liberation.
Before we know what to do, we know only that there is one way to go and the assurance that God will be there howsoever God will be there. YHWH.
Appendices
I. Charter for a Just and Generous Christianity
II. Fourteen Precepts of Just and Generous Christianity
III. More on Beliefs
In these, McLaren gets specific about practices and preferences for how to organize faith personally and corporately.
Most significantly is the image, shared in Appendix III as a table with four legs:
- A Story
- Saints
- A Practice
- A Vision for the Future
An image which is startlingly simple, beautiful, and evidently Christian. Far more so than the doctrinal obsession of statements of belief. He finishes here (assuming you’ve read to the very end) with a most relatable and revolutionary image. An image which alone can be the impetus for a great spiritual migration from belief that to true belief in.
