Selving : linking work to spirituality

149 Pages·2000·0.524 MB·English

by  Cleary, William

Selving

Selving
Linking Work To Spirituality
William Cleary
Editor
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Selving : linking work to spirituality / William Cleary, editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-87462-007-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Work—Religious aspects—Catholic Church. 2.
Spirituality—Catholic Church. 3. Catholic Church—Doctrines. I.
Cleary, William.
BX1795.W67 S45 2000
248.8'8—dc21
00-008319
All rights reserved. Published DATE.
Marquette University Press
© 2000 by Marquette University Press
Milwaukee Wisconsin
United States of America
Printed in the United States of America
for Marquette University Press
by Thomson-Shore, Dexter, Michigan, USA
“The problem of self-identity is not just
a problem for the young. It is a problem
for all time. Perhaps the problem. It
should haunt old age. . . .”
Norman Maclean
“How does identity emerge if not
through work?”
Andrew Krivak
(from Chapter One)

Contents
Prelude...................................................................................9
Andrew Krivak
1. Finding Work .........................................................................11
Andrew Greeley
2. Forced To Become a Storyteller...............................................20
Rodney J. Hunter
3. Work As Quest.......................................................................23
Rosemary Ruether
4. From Private Struggle To Public Thought...............................32
Sarah Maitland
Intermezzo I............................................................................35
Raymond A. Schroth
5. Teaching the Self.....................................................................36
Thomas E. Ambrogi
6. Pilgrim Person On the Road...................................................48
Donna Myers Ambrogi
7. Journeying..............................................................................57
Rowan Williams
Intermezzo II..........................................................................64
Charles E. Curran
8. A Spirituality Catholic and Communitarian...........................65
8 Selving
Robert Blair Kaiser
9. Providence Wore a Jesuit Cassock...........................................77
James Torrens
10. Two Roads Diverged.............................................................86
James Carroll
Intermezzo III .........................................................................94
Wendy Farley
11. Teaching ‘Great Books’ As Spiritual Practice.........................95
David R. Blumenthal
12. From Wissenschaft To Theology.........................................102
William F. Powers
13. Journey Without Maps.......................................................113
Rumi
Intermezzo IV .......................................................................122
John Coleman
14. What I Do Is Me................................................................123
William Cleary
15. Dreaming Up a Self............................................................136
Finale ....................................................................................144
Postscript: Honoring Eugene Bianchi .......................................146
Prelude 9
Prelude
Selving
The act of “selving” is poet G.M. Hopkins’ idea of—and invented
word for—the crucial human act. The whimisical image on this book’s
cover is of the twenty-year old Hopkins looking at himself in a lake,
wondering, no doubt, about what kind of man he saw down there,
never dreaming he might be sketching a poet to be memorialized by
a floor plaque in Westminster Abbey next to Shakespeare, Milton,
and Wordsworth. Eighteen years after the cover sketch, he put the
same puzzlement into words in the octet of his 1882 sonnet.
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name:
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same,
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells:
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came. . . .
This book flows from these words. Hopkins claims that birds, stones,
musical instruments—and humans—“deal out that being indoors
each one dwells, selves. . . ,” and concludes “What I do is me.”
The book carries out this “selving” theme. For each of our fifteen
narrators, it is an exercise in story theology, working from their own
story. They write about their work experiences—their teaching, their
writing, their relationships—and identify explicitly or implicitly the
10 Selving
tasks that were the most enlivening, the most meaningful—even if
they did not succeed. The meaning, the spirituality, proceeded from
the work.
We had asked the contributors: write about the thing you’ve done
which you feel came from your inmost self. Identify the times you
felt most yourself, most vitalized. What might be your “unique niche
of belonging” in the great scheme of things?
Chapter One strikes our keynote. Thereafter, the contributors are
all colleagues in some way of Prof. Eugene Bianchi who is now retir-
ing after a lifetime of selving. They add their stories to his in an
attempt to celebrate here what, over the years, made their kingfisher
selves catch fire.
William Cleary
Winter, l999