Eugene Peterson is one of my favorite authors. Because I went the route of academic post-graduate work instead of going to seminary, I missed a lot in the way of the "older, wiser, more experienced fathers of the faith" teaching me as a young, brash, intense person what being a pastor really looks like. You can probably just imagine what was "unleashed" at Naperville Pres. when I first started working there!
In the introduction to newest book, an extended meditation on growing up in Christ via the Epistle to Ephesians, Peterson talks about the the need to "practice resurrection":
The resurrection of Jesus establishes the conditions in which we live and mature in the Christian life and carry on this conversation: Jesus alive and present. A lively sense of Jesus' resurrection, which took place without any help or comment from us, keeps us from attempting to take charge of our own development and growth. Frequent meditation on Jesus' resurrection--the huge mystery of it, the unprecedented energies flowing from it--prevents us from reducing the language of our conversation to what we can define or control. "Practice resurrection," a phrase I got from Wendell Berry, strikes just the right note. We live our lives in the practice of what we do not originate and cannot anticipate. When we practice resurrection, we continuously enter into what is more than we are. When we practice resurrection, we keep company with Jesus, alive and present, who knows where we are going better than we do, which is always "from glory to glory."
Eugene Peterson, Practice Ressurection
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1 comment:
I still find Peterson to be incredibly grounding, and loved Working the Angles and The Unnecessary Pastor.
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