THE SAINT SAVIOUR’S BOOK CLUB             

 For All That Has Been, THANKS

 - Rowan Williams and Joan Chittister OSB

Published earlier this year this relatively short book explores the theme of gratitude and why it is the proper attitude of the Christian in the world, no matter what. The Church has a unique word for this quality of thankfulness: ‘Alleluia’. It is an ancient Hebrew term and the ultimate expression of thanksgiving and praise to God that we use most of all at Easter as an expression of celebration at Christ’s resurrection. The authors explore the challenge of how it is possible for us to say ‘Alleluia’ to the whole of life – to doubt as well as faith, to sorrow as well as joy, and how it is a  word appropriate for sinners and saints alike. The book challenges the reader to recognize that our immediate perceptions are limited and there is a greater reality outside our own preoccupations. Beyond the limits of our vision, beyond our habitual efforts to control what goes on in our lives, there is an invitation to trust what we cannot yet see and to discern the hidden, loving face of God in all things.

Joan Chittister, the co-author, is American and a Benedictine sister. Her starting point for this reflective and thought provoking book is the attack on New York’s World Trade Center on 11^th September, 2001. She writes ‘As the Twin Towers came crashing down, the historical notion of the role of religion in the modern world crashed with them.’ She goes on to say that any amount of morality then became moral for the sake of preserving ‘the Christian world’ from Muslim attackers.  She warns of making God a tribal God and that faith is not the human political agenda writ large. As one medieval theologian put it God, faith tells is, is God – ‘than which nothing greater can be thought.’ She further writes that the Abrahamic tradition requires us to be keepers of an open tent in the desert should a stranger happen to come by without water in the summer sun of the globe. God is holding all of us responsible for the other and that faith, amongst other things, is the willingness to see God at work in others.

It is a challenging book that provoked some animated discussion in the way that it questioned some of our assumptions and enabled us to look reflectively at some crucial issues in the Christian life. For example, doubt is described as something to be grateful for, something about which to sing an alleluia. Without doubt, life would simply be a series of packaged assumptions resulting in the complacency of untested faith. Doubt therefore is the mother of conviction, reduces complacency and leaves us open to larger and better explanations than the mythical ones we give to children. There are similar brief chapters on issues that face us all such as differences, poverty, wealth, suffering, darkness, death and God. It is a reflective book that tackles many controversial issues head on and concludes by saying ‘the alleluia we sing to the God of creation is like the Israelites praising God for giving them the law. We will see, too, that it is the very fact that this God allows us to respond to evil that brings out the best in us. Alleluia to the God who requires us to become marble out of clay, to bring everything we can be out of the breath of nothingness.’    CP