Now please share some closing insights and reflections.
- What would you say you gained from this exercise?
- Does any new or revised insight stand out for you?
- How would you rate Adult Faith? Would you recommend it to others? Why or why not?
- What else you would like to add?
G wrote:
ReplyDeleteWhat I gained/my insights:
1. Personality matters! How you express yourself and come across directly impacts your ability to lead and inspire. Try as I might, I couldn't warm up to O'Murchu because his writing felt like a rant.
2. I value the opportunity to read, blog and hear from others and I think it is vitally important for a spiritual community to be able to talk about ideas, even if members disagree. Therefore I was willing to continue participating though I found O'Murchu somewhat unpalatable. I sensed that others were also making an effort to be constructive. I am grateful to the other participants and often longed for even deeper exchanges with them. So, I hope we will continue these on-line options.
Rating the Book:
1. This book wasn't sufficiently inspiring or informative for me to recommend it to others. Most of the thinking has been expressed elsewhere and the prose needs serious editing.
What else?
1. Thanks again everyone for sharing insights and thoughts. I look forward to your wrap up comments.
bjp said
ReplyDelete1. Cannot think of anything gained that could not more easily, happily gained without this book. Unfortunately, O'M pressed all my buttons with his style of scholarship, which reminded me all too readily of some (all too much) bad social science I have read over the past 40 some years: find an (the) answer, criticize everything in the past which does not agree with that answer, assume that criticism justifies the worth/validity of one's answer, present the answer as the solution of our problems. My anger and frustration with this style of scholarship has been a huge barrier to appreciating any insights.
2. The part I liked best was his presentation of Fowler's schema (116-117) which unfortunately he did not use subsequently. Although I agree that the important as is process, not stages, theses stages might provide a useful platform from which, and framework through which to explore that process more fully, as O'M did not. It is something I would be interested in.
3. Adult Faith gets a low rating from me (see #1). A friend who has a more positive attitude to O'Murchu than I do, told me the book was not written for me, but for those, either unchurched or having serious issues with the institutional church, who were, nevertheless seeking answers. I still would not recommend this book,(see question 1) although I can see its attraction in its sever criticism of past institutions.
4. If I had not committed to this exercise, I would not have lasted past the first couple of chapters. I did/do appreciate, however, the comments of other bloggers, and would like many of those points further discussed.
EWL comments
ReplyDeleteI have put the book on the shelf for a month and let my thoughts rest a while.
My interest in this book was hinged on two issues that spoke to me.
First the issue of adult faith that just by the nature of the word adult assumes that faith is not static. Growth therefore is a focus of the book and O’Murchu uses his own life experiences to illustrate such growth. Depending on how far you are along on your life and faith journey will in some ways define the relevance of this book. For myself I found that time was required, or at least I choose to take time, to digest and reflect on what O’Murchu was saying. I’m not the type of person who communicates immediate thunderbolts of thought and therefore I found the medium of a blog beneficial in establishing and presenting my thoughts.
The second issue is the reality of codependency. O’Murchu defines codependency as “a set of dynamics – often subtle and sometimes invisible – through which people have been kept in subjugation.” Each chapter in the book is structured on three summary statements. (a) Conventional inherited wisdom (b) Embedded codependency (c) Adult empowerment. This is the framework that he uses to establish the journey from subjugation to being “mutually responsible adults”. I found this framework very beneficial as O’Murchu covered a spectrum of topics. I must admit however that there were a number of occasions where I lost his train of thought. Perhaps this is just an illustration of how individual journeys may overlap but are not equal. Perhaps that’s why I value the comments of fellow bloggers.
As a closing comment I will use the words of O’Murchu, “A new kind of adult is coming to birth, with novel questions and a desire for wisdom that conventional learning often is unable to provide.” You may want to check out my slide show Derelict Church at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl_YOLBJ4m8