Review

Review: Peter Baylies, The Stay-at-Home Dad Handbook

I’ve just finished reading Peter Baylies’ The Stay-at-Home Dad Handbook. Like every book on fathering, this one’s fairly hit and miss in terms of what I found most useful.

Baylies largely treats fathering as a ‘career move’, and the book is shaped to that end – that is, helping fathers enjoy their ‘new career’. While it’s not the way that I like to think of fathering, there are strengths in this (that will no doubt appeal to other personality types), such as helping new father’s approach their responsibilities thoughtfully, purposely and seriously. Adversely, although the book is clearly set out, and somewhat ‘practical’ (including a somewhat useful appendix of resources), it often lacks the personal warmth, and focus on the parent-child relationship, of many parenting books.

Whether it is just cultural or personality or values (and I suspect it’s all three and more), I found Baylies’ book just too basic. Although much of the ground that he covers is useful (the section on playgroups and networking with others for example), it is difficult to believe that most fathers have not thought through most, if not all, of the issues he raises. If you’re after a ‘Fathering 101’ handbook, this one may well be what you are looking for, though it wouldn’t be my first choice. If you feel that you could skip ‘Fathering 101′ and move up a grade or two, you would be better served to look elsewhere.

One of the strengths of the book, however, is that Baylies has clearly spent much time listening to other fathers. Although at times I was left wondering if he has spent too much time doing this – as the inclusion of copious fathering stories betrays – it does give the book a sort of common-sense, communal wisdom (or ignorance?) feel. Of course, it’s easy enough to navigate your way around the material and jump to the next section if you want.

In talking to at-home dads over the last ten years, Baylies has asked dads what they have changed for themselves that made for a more stress-free family. Here are ten useful things that he lists (pp. 152-3) that one can do to make the household a more pleasant environment:

1. Talk to them and listen to them. When your kids know you are listening to them, it makes them realize their input matters, and gives them a feeling of control and self-worth.

2. Treat them with respect. When you respect them, they will respect you back.

3. Give a lot of hugs and kisses. A feeling of being loved gives your kids a feeling of self-confidence.

4. Show you love your spouse in front of your kids. Seeing Mum and Dad show affection toward each other gives them two role models.

5. Allow kids to be self-reliant. Let them try things for themselves, no matter how foolish it may seem to you (provided it’s safe). For example, my kids liked to do experiments by mixing water with several objects and putting it in the freezer to see what happens. They couldn’t wait to see what it would look like the following day. After a while, when we trusted them with the toaster, we encouraged them to make toast. (My oldest son is twelve and is making a pretty good ham and cheese omelet now.)

6. Communicate with your spouse and agree on parenting styles. To avoid a public argument and mixed messages, make sure you and your wife agree on your children’s behavior.

7. Get to know your kids’ friends. As your children get older and a few neighborhood kids start to visit, listen to them and learn what they are like and how mature they are. This will give you better judgment when they start asking to do more outside the house.

8. Don’t expect too much, but don’t be a pushover. Pick your battles: some disagreements may not be worth the argument. For example, if your children want to walk to school without a raincoat, let them do it, and see if the consequences will help
them make a better decision next time. But if you have a serious issue, stand by it.

9. Avoid yelling at them at all costs. Always discipline with reason, not fear. When you don’t like a decision or action your children are making, calmly ask them why they are making the decision. Have them explain what might happen; sometimes they will see why you might be right.

10. Create as much adventure as possible for your kids. Creating adventure, although it may not be a popular pastime for the mums, is one way that many at-home dads deal with burnout. This does not mean taking the kids skydiving or white water rafting. It is amazing what adventures you can find within a few blocks of your house. In fact, many dads find that every time they take their children out of the house it can be an adventure.

Raising Girls – A Review

I’ve just finished reading Gisela Preuschoff’s Raising Girls. Preuschoff is a psychologist and family therapist. The earlier chapters trace the developmental changes in girls, exploring why girls are different, their emotional world, and offers some thoughts on how parents could go about developing their relationship with their daughter/s in the earliest months and years. Two further chapters explore issues of social conditioning, and education (this was the most disappointing chapter).

In the final two chapters, Preuschoff turns the spotlight onto questions of family dynamics, the teenage years, peer relationships, communication styles, and self-esteem.

One of the real strengths of the book is its discouragement of a one-size-fits-all approach to parenting, an approach all-to-commonly repeated. Rather, Preuschoff encourages parents to really get to know their daughters, identify and encourage their strengths and passions. I most appreciated this.

To be honest, however, I found the book overall a weak compliment to its cousin Raising Boys. My main disappointment with the book (and it is certainly not unique here) is that I felt that it was written to mums rather to dads. Dads, of course, get the obligatory 2-3 pages, but that’s about it. I’d be keen to hear how other dads found this book.

That said, it was worth reading, and I will devote the next few posts to sharing some thoughts/quotations from it.

Shooting Dogs – A Film Review

Recently, I watched one of the most challenging films that I’ve seen in months. Shooting Dogs (entitled Beyond the Gates in the USA where it has shamefully not got a distributor) tells the story of an English priest – Father Christopher (John Hurt) – who heads up a school in Rwanda in 1994. Christopher is caught up in the growing violence between Tutsi and Hutu tribes which escalates into genocide. The film, whose official website is a blog, is based on a story co-written by BBC journalist David Belton who was working in the country at the time of the genocide. The film powerfully accounts the events that took place at the Ecole Technique Officielle school in Kigali between April 6th and April 11th in 1994.

Director Michael Canton-Jones elicits naturalistic performances from the actors, some of whom are survivors of the genocide, as are many of the support crew. The film was shot at the location where the actual events took place. Canton-Jones employs mainly handheld cameras in order to give the film a documentary feel. John Hurt and Hugh Dancy give strong, emotional performances as characters caught up in a series of moral dilemmas as to how they can help the Rwandans – both Hutu and Tutsi . By focusing on the fate of one school, this accomplished film succeeds in giving an overview of the devastating Rwandan genocide and the apathetic paralysis of various governments and organisations in dealing with the growing conflict which claimed the lives of somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 human beings.

I must say that despite watching the film with a bottle of good red (something which in itself requires reflection), it took me hours to get to sleep afterwards – such were the questions that it elicits: questions of justice, sense of call, costly discipleship, human limitation, the sacramentality of incarnational ministry, politics, love, racism, human depravity, hope, the sacrificial love of a parent. Moreover, it drove me to silence … and prayer.

Most reviewers have compared the film with Hotel Rwanda, almost unanimously preferring Shooting Dogs. I’m not sure it’s fair to compare the two films as is usually done. Although the overlap of historical subject matter is obvious enough, the films are attempting to do very different things. Both, I think, do it very well. Another film on the same theme is Sometimes in April, which I also watched recently. It’s also well worth watching.

Though its violent content makes it unsuitable for wee kids, I reckon that Shooting Dogs would be a great flick to watch – and discuss – with your teenagers.

Shooting Dogs – A Review

Last night I watched one of the most challenging films that I’ve seen in months. Shooting Dogs (entitled Beyond the Gates in the USA where it has shamefully not got a distributor) tells the story of an English priest – Father Christopher (John Hurt) – who heads up a school in Rwanda in 1994. Christopher is caught up in the growing violence between Tutsi and Hutu tribes which escalates into genocide. The film, whose official website is a blog, is based on a story co-written by BBC journalist David Belton who was working in the country at the time of the genocide. The film powerfully accounts the events that took place at the Ecole Technique Officielle school in Kigali between April 6th and April 11th in 1994.

The film depicts the experiences of the world-weary school headmaster Father Christopher (John Hurt) and Joe Connor (Hugh Dancy), a charismatic and idealistic young man taking a year out teaching in Africa. When the genocide begins to erupt, the school becomes a refuge for Europeans and Tutsis. A contingent of Belgiant UN soldiers is stationed at the school but as the Hutu government vows to eliminate all Tutsis, the refugees wonder if the UN will protect them from the machete-wielding Hutu militias who start to surround the school. The film paints the UN as spineless, toothless and racist.

Director Michael Canton-Jones elicits naturalistic performances from the actors, some of whom are survivors of the genocide, as are many of the support crew. The film was shot at the location where the actual events took place. Canton-Jones employs mainly handheld cameras in order to give the film a documentary feel. John Hurt and Hugh Dancy give strong, emotional performances as characters caught up in a series of moral dilemmas as to how they can help the Rwandans – both Hutu and Tutsi . By focusing on the fate of one school, this accomplished film succeeds in giving an overview of the devastating Rwandan genocide and the apathetic paralysis of various governments and organisations in dealing with the growing conflict which claimed the lives of somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 human beings.

If I’m ever allowed back into a classroom, the issues wonderfully raised by this film would serve as a great compliment. A must see.

I’m just about to sit down (without a red) and watch another film on the Rwandan genocide. If Sometimes in April is half as good as Shooting Dogs, I’ll post on it sometime too.

Biography in Brief – Calvin

Continuing on with my recent ‘Biographies in Brief’ series (here, here and here), we come in this post to Calvin. It is difficult to think of a theologian (and his ideas) who has been the object of more grotesque distortion than Protestantism’s greatest: Jean Calvin. For all the attention he has rightly received, there is, oddly, a dearth of biographical material available on Calvin. Up until recently, we have had little more than Theodore Beza’s classic, The Life of John Calvin. In 1993, Alister E. McGrath offered his most readable biography, A Life of John Calvin (London: Blackwell, 1993). Even with the recent gem on Calvin by Randall Zachman (anything this guy writes is worth reading!), John Calvin as Teacher, Pastor, and Theologian: The Shape of His Writings and Thought, McGrath’s A Life of John Calvin remains the best biography available. Here’s a taste:

[Calvin’s] importance lies primarily, but by no means exclusively, in his being a religious thinker. To describe him as a ‘theologian’ is proper but misleading, given the modern associations of the term. A theologian is one who is generally seen to be marginalized as an irrelevance by church and academy alike, whose public is limited to a severely restricted circle of fellow theologians, and whose ideas and methods are generally derived from other intellectual disciplines. The originality, power and influence of Calvin’s religious ideas forbid us to speak of him merely as a ‘theologian’ – though that he certainly was – in much the same way it is inadequate to refer to Lenin as a mere political theorist. Through his remarkable ability to master languages, media and ideas, his insights into the importance of organization and social structures, and his intuitive grasp of the religious needs and possibilities of his era, Calvin was able for forge an alliance between religious thought and action which made Calvinism a wonder of its age.

Biography in Brief – Luther

There have been no shortage of biographies written on Luther. Nor should there be. Like his Master, the Augustinian’s life and gospel could never be contained in a book. Furthermore, while there is no biography available in ink to match the fire of Luther’s own words, the Lord has given us some great books to help ignite the flame. While my two favourites on Luther remain Gerhard O. Forde’s On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 and Alister McGrath’s Luther’s Theology of the Cross, probably the most accessible (and cheapest) biography remains Roland H. Bainton’s Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1950). I love this quote:

Katie soon had more than Luther to think about. On October 21, 1525, Luther confided to a friend, “My Katherine is fulfilling Genesis 1:28.” On May 26, 1526, he wrote to another, “There is about to be born a child of a monk and a nun. Such a child must have a great Lord for a godfather. Therefore I am inviting you. I cannot be precise as to the time.” On the eighth of June went out the news, “My dear Katie brought into the world yesterday by God’s grace at two o’clock a little son, Hans Luther. I must stop. Sick Katie calls me.” When the baby was bound in swaddling clothes, Luther said, “Kick, little fellow. That is what the pope did to me, but I got loose.” The next entry in Han’s curriculum vitae was this: “Hans is cutting his teeth and beginning to make a joyous nuisance of himself. These are the joys of marriage of which the pope is not worthy.” On the arrival of a daughter Luther wrote to a perspective godmother, “Dear lady, God has produced from me and my wife a little heathen. We hope you will be willing to become her spiritual mother and help make her a Christian.”

Praise for Forsyth’s Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind

‘It is like the Word of which it speaks so much, ‘living, powerful and piercing. If the first three pages of this book were digested, believed, worked out and acted upon by the men [sic] in all our theological colleges today there would ensue a revolution in the ministry and in the pulpit work of tomorrow’s clergy’. – FD Coggan

‘Master this book and the tone and quality of preaching cannot but be enhanced. Here the author stands out as a greaf diagnostician of the soul, the Church and society, a prophetic seer with an uncanny discernment of spirits’. – WL Leembruggen

And some general praise from James Denney, ‘Forsyth had more true and important things to say than any other man writing theology’.

A reflection on Vincent Donovan

In The Church in the Midst of Creation, Donovan builds on his previous work, Christianity Rediscovered: An Epistle from the Masai, and in many ways it really cannot be appreciated without having first read that book. I was particularly reminded of one part of his earlier work where he writes about what he is observing amongst the Masai, an observation that is pertinent for his later book. He observes:

There is no use arguing that it isn’t true happiness they have, or that they aren’t really happy – because they are, at least in that momentary escape from their loneliness and hopelessness while drinking the rich butterfat milk of their Zebu cattle, or striding across the Masai plains, or dancing the beautiful dances of the nomads. St. Paul says this happiness is a sign of God among them. He was here before we ever got there. It is simply up to us to bring him out so they can recognise him.

Writing from back home in the United States, Donovan, in The Church in the Midst of Creation, has, between the Preface and the Epilogue, nine chapters in which he peruses back and forth across history seeing the way that the Roman Catholic Church has became standardised, specialised, and centralised (he argues largely because of the industrial revolution), with a uniformity imposed by the Vatican and a Christ who has become a European Christ and has shackled the Spirit. Donovan responds by proposing a cosmic, or planetary, Christ.

There are echoes here of a response he offered to a review of his previous book, Christianity Rediscovered, where he wrote that

While we have to admit that Western Christianity has monopolized Christ, and has shackled Christ in the bondage of a single culture to such an extent that the Western Christ has become a stumbling block for the Holy Spirit, Christ will remain, I believe, the point at which Christianity and Hinduism will meet, the point at which Christianity and every religion and culture will meet. It will serve no purpose at all to water down the heart of the Christian message to make it more acceptable to the world of humankind. We must bring the full brunt of the gospel message to the religions and cultures of the world. The understanding of Christ will undoubtedly change, and expand and grow as a result of this process, perhaps even in a frightening and unfamiliar manner, but it should have grown long ago out of the narrow dimensions of the Mediterranean Christ.

He develops this thought further in The Church in the Midst of Creation where he advocates the need for the Western Church to embrace a planetary Christ, a world Christ. He writes:

We have to admit that after all this existence and scientific scholarship, after nearly two thousand years of Christianity, the Christ that is worshipped in our churches, the Christ that is the basis for our church and all its faith life and activity, is no more than a Mediterranean Christ. That is as far as Christ has grown. European and American theologians see nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with the fact that we have not even begun to think of, or search for, the meaning of a planetary Christ, a world Christ. We continue to let all our efforts revolve around a Mediterranean Christ. We of the West have monopolized Christ…. There is surely more to be revealed about the Christ than is already known. But we, trapped in our own culture with its exact and measured scientific view of the world, with our lack of sacramental vision, may not be the ones to discover it. Like Mary Magdelene, we are afraid to let go of Christ, to let Christ out of our grasp, out of our control.

This kind of thinking raises serious questions about how we understand the nature of Church as Incarnational. In what sense are Christ’s people his form in the world? This is a different question than that of whether of not the Church is a continuation of the Incarnation. With Forsyth, I contend that it is not. However, Donovan’s question, one of many raised in his book, is one that I wish to consider in this post, albeit briefly.

I think that we need to respond to this question firstly by seeing the Church as a kenotic community. There is at the heart of reconciliation the solidarity with the world which the Church does not take on as an extra-curricula activity, but which is constituted of its very existence as the kenotic community. The kenosis of Christ is the ‘self-emptying’ (Phil 2) which constitutes the inner movement of condescension and humility which characterises the life of the Son to the Father. As Jesus drew his disciples into his own ‘self-emptying’ life and ministry of obedience and service to the Father on behalf of the world, he formed them into a ‘kenotic community’. As those who bare continuous testimony to the presence of Christ in the world following Pentecost, the Church exists as the community where the world can discover and experience its own participation, reconciliation and salvation in the kenosis of God in Christ. Karl Barth noted that ‘The world does not know itself. It does not know God, nor man, nor the relationship and covenant between God and man. Hence it does not know its own origin, state or goal. It does not know what divides nor what unites. It does not know either its life and salvation or its death and destruction. It is blind to its own reality. Its existence is a groping in the dark.’

All this serves as a sober reminder that the Church does not ‘possess’ Christ as its own. To this end, Bonhoeffer observed that ‘Everything would be ruined if one were to try and reserve Christ for the Church and to allow the world only some kind of law, even if it were a Christian law. Christ dies for the world, and it is only in the midst of the world that Christ is Christ.’ It is not as though the world needs the Church in order to have Christ; the Church also needs the world in order to know Christ. In this sense, Christ’s existence in the world is ‘non-religious’ or ‘worldly’. Thus there is a certain ‘boundary-lessness’ to the Church in the world. Because Christ is the true centre, there are no longer any boundaries by which one can determine or define the existence of God in the world. So there is a need for us to be able to speak freely of the reality of the world for the Church, and of the solidarity between the Church and the world. The latter because the true community of Jesus Christ does not exist esoterically and invisibly but visibly and exoterically, so that it may be noted by the world around. Otto Weber notes,

Seen Christologically, every rejection of the world by the Community would have to place in question “docetically” the incarnation of Jesus Christ. It would have to have been the case that God did not become “true man” in Jesus Christ if the Community were intended not to be “truly” in the world. But above all, the victory of the Resurrected One over the “cosmos” (John 16:33) would have to be disregarded if the Community were supposed to understand the “world” solely as a confusing, alien reality, to be held at a distance and excluded.

The incarnational solidarity between Christ and the world binds the Church to the world and the world to the Church in a critical but positive tension of judgement and reconciliation, of sin and grace. As Barth says,

Solidarity with the world means full commitment to it, unreserved participation in its situation, in the promise given it by creation, in its responsibility for the arrogance, sloth and falsehood which reign within it, in its suffering under the resultant distress, but primarily and supremely in the free grace of God demonstrated and addressed to it in Jesus Christ, and therefore in its hope…. Solidarity with the world means that those who are genuinely pious approach the children of the world as such, that those who are genuinely righteous are not ashamed to sit down with the unrighteous as friends, that those who are genuinely wise do not hesitate to seem to be fools among fools, and that those who are genuinely holy are not too good or irreproachable to go down “into hell” in a very secular fashion…. since Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world, [the Church] can exist in worldly fashion, not unwillingly nor with a bad conscience, but willingly and with a good conscience. It consists in the recognition that its members also bear in themselves and in some way actualise all human possibilities.

Given this, there is an obligation placed upon the Church towards the world. This obligation is the responsibility for the world, or to the world, which Christ assumed in coming to the World as the Word. So one cannot discharge obligation to God and at the same time be irresponsible toward the world.

But at the same time, there is a necessary contradiction which must be borne within the ‘same body’, a contradiction that Donovan, in my opinion, fails to take seriously enough, and which Hauerwas and Willimon bear witness to when they write:

The challenge facing today’s Christians is not the necessity to translate Christian convictions into a modern idiom, but rather to form a community, a colony of resident aliens which is so shaped by our convictions that no one even has to ask what we mean by confessing belief in God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The biggest problem facing Christian theology is not translation but enactment. No doubt, one of the major reasons for the great modern theologians who strove to translate our language for modernity was that the church had become so inept at enactment. Yet no clever theological moves can be substituted for the necessity of the church being a community of people who embody our language about God, where talk about God is used without apology, because our life together does not mock our words. The church is the visible, political enactment of our language of God by a people who can name their sin and accept God’s forgiveness and are thereby enabled to speak the truth in love. Our Sunday worship has a way of reminding us, in the most explicit and ecclesial of ways, of the source of our power, the peculiar nature of our solutions to what ails us.

Returning back now to our earlier discussion regarding that necessary contradiction between Christ and the world, we might deduce that the reconciliation of the world to God produces and sustains the contradiction for the sake of its healing. Thus, the ‘kenotic community’ exposes the contradiction by virtue of its solidarity with the world. Barth discusses the problem between the reconciliation actualised in Christ and the contemporary situation of the Christian in the world as the ‘divine problem’, and says that God takes up this ‘problem’ and solves it in the presence and action of the Holy Spirit.

Thus there remains a ‘difference in solidarity’. ‘In Jesus Christ the community and the rest of humanity constitute a differentiated, yet in this differentiation firmly integrated, whole.’ This leads to a three-part conclusion: (i) the world would be lost without Jesus Christ and his word and work; (ii) the world would not necessarily be lost if there were no Church; and (iii) the Church would be lost if it had no counterpart in the world. The ‘difference’ is the presence of Christ – ‘For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them’ (Matt 18:20).

With this theological horizon, and motivated by his conviction that God is still creating and calling the Church to participate in what is its ontological purpose for being, Donovan appeals for the people to “refound” the Church. His experience with the Masai, and what this experience has helped him to discover in Scripture, has clearly played a significant role in shaping his sense of creation’s direction. Writing out of a post-Vatican II context, he finds Scripture pointing to an ecclesiastical model with increased simplicity in its lifestyle, with less oppressive hierarchy, with less space between leaders and people at all levels, and with a keener awareness of the pressing needs of a close-by world. In his last chapter, he gives us a glimpse at how such a congregation could look. He also espouses an approach to evangelism whereby both parties are changed by God during their communicative interchange. It is with this awareness that he argues for “evangelization of culture” which includes genuinely mutual dialogue with the other major faiths of the world. His argument is interesting: that convert-making is geared to individuals and its success is measured numerically, when what is required is to evangelise the whole culture.

Unfortunately, he falls victim, I believe, to contemporary culture’s addiction to “new age” expectations. Citing as his gurus Sorokin, Rahner and Toffler, he argues that our time (written in 1989) is a time of significant change to the point where we are “an age in the process of breaking up”. His discussion is helpful in that he argues for the need for the Church to ‘grow-up’ to meet these changing conditions, but I wish that his grounding in Scripture reminded him that the new age is God’s gift in Christ and is not a pseudohistorical concept.

In light of this, NT Wright, in a discussion of Romans 9-11, offers some poignant insights into the Church’s ontological nature as that which issues from the Cross – that place/event which serves as the passionate concern of the Church, led by the Spirit, as the loving justice of God to all the world in real space and time. He writes,

And when the church really turns to face this task, as it must if it is to be true to its vocation, it will find (as Paul saw in 2 Corinthians particularly) that its role is Christ-shaped: to bear the pain and shame of the world in its own body, that the world may be healed. And with this we realize (in case it were not already apparent) that there is no room in this hermeneutic for a Christian or ecclesial triumphalism, which is precisely what Paul is opposing in Romans 11. The church is called to do and be for the world what the Messiah was and did for Israel … The church must find out the pain of the world, and must share it and bear it.

Another issue that is raised by Donovan, moreover, raises this issue of the Church community’s place in time and space. In other words, in what sense is the Church an eschatological community? Surely the Church is the community that is determined by its final destiny, the resurrection of the Incarnate Word-Son of God, Jesus Christ. The Church’s ‘now-life’ is lived in this realised sense as Christ’s presence in the Church and world is as the Coming or Last One, and it’s in this sense that his ministry is one of reconciliation, liberation and hope.

Karl Barth wrote that “We must understand that God is the measure of all reality and propriety, understand that eternity exists first and then time, and therefore the future first and then the present.” In this sense the Church is simultaneously the ‘kenotic community’ and the ‘ek-static community’. The ek-static dimension of the Church’s life is its orientation toward the ultimate destiny, by which it ‘stands out’ (ek-stasis) of its existence in solidarity with the world toward the source of its life and being in the Christ who is coming.

A brief story. Imagine that geese could talk, Kierkegaard once said, and that they arranged things so that they too could have their Church services and their worship:

Every Sunday they would assemble together and a gander would preach. The essential content of the sermon was the exalted destiny of the geese, the exalted goal for which the creator had destined geese (and every time his name was named all the geese curtsied and the ganders bowed their heads). With the help of their wings they could fly away to far countries, blessed countries, where they really were at home; for here they were just like exiles. And so every Sunday. Then the gathering broke up, and every goose waddles home. Then the next Sunday off they went to the service again, then home again. That was all. They throve and grew fat, they became plump and tender… that was all. For while the sermon sounded so exalted on Sundays, on Mondays they would tell one another of the fate of the goose who wanted to take his destiny seriously, with the help of the wings the creator had given it. And they spoke of the horrors it had to endure. But they prudently kept this knowledge among themselves. For, of course, to speak of it on Sundays was most unsuitable, for as they said, in that case it would be obvious that our service would be a mockery both of God and of ourselves. There were also among the geese some that looked ill and thin. Of them the others said, “You see, that’s what comes from being serious about wanting to fly. It is because they are always thinking of flying that they get thin and do not thrive, and do not have God’s grace as we do. That is why we get plump and fat and tender, for it is by God’s grace that one gets plump and fat and tender.

So it is with Christians, added Keirkegaard: they conclude that the domesticating grace of God is not meant to take seriously the wings of the Spirit, for to do so emaciates one’s well-being and destroys one’s peace as an earth-bound creature. Whereas, in fact, the wings are meant to be used – humans have Spirit, and thus are destined to live a transcendent life of ek-statis, the content of which is love.