For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture

"I look at joy as an act of resistance against despair and its forces. ... Joy in that regard is a work, that can become a state, that can become a way of life." Willie Jennings joins Miroslav Volf to discuss the definition of joy as an act of resistance against despair, the counterintuitive nature of cultivating joy in the midst of suffering, the commercialization of joy in Western culture, joy segregated by racism and slavery, how Jesus expands and corrects our understanding of joy.Support For the Life of the World by making a gift to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu/giveShow NotesClick here to watch the full interview in videoClick here to learn more about the Theology of Joy and the Good Life projectDefining joy—an act of resistance against despair"Resisting all the ways in which life can be strangled and presented to us as not worth living"Singing a song in a strange landMaking productive use of pain, suffering, and the absurd—taking them seriousHow does one cultivate joy? You have to have people who can show you how to sing a song in a strand land, laugh where all you want to do is cry, and how to ride the winds of chaos."In contexts where your energies have to be focused on survival, it doesn’t leave a lot of energy for overt forms of complaint—you’re spending a lot of energy just trying to hold it together."The commercialization of joy in the empire of advertising—contrasting that with the peoples serious work of joyThe work and skill of making something beautiful out of what has been thrown awaySegregated joy—joy in African diaspora communitiesJoy is always embedded in community logicsThe Christological center of joyPentecost joy—joy togetherGeographies of joy: Christians tend not to think spatially, but we shouldPublic rituals bound to real spaceHoping for joyous infection, where the space has claimed you as its ownWhere can joy be found? The church, the hospital room, the barber shop and beauty shops—“things are going to be better"About Willie JenningsWillie Jennings is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Africana Studies, and Religious Studies at Yale University; he is an ordained Baptist minister and is author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race,Acts: A Commentary, The Revolution of the Intimate, and most recently, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging. You can hear him in podcast episodes 7 and 13 of For the Life of the World.

Matt Croasmun honors theologian Willie Jennings and his work in After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging. Willie Jennings is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School.Show NotesWillie Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in BelongingArvo Pärt’s Te Deum“Be ware the hidden curriculum."White, self-sufficient masculinity: "a way of being that conflates knowing with owning, holding up possession, mastery, and control (vices all) as virtues” and “an ideal we cannot achieve"Racial paterfamilias: conflating person and propertyBeyond educationMutual belonging and deep connectionQuote from After Whiteness: The cultivation of belonging should be the goal of all education. Not just any kind of belonging, but a profoundly creaturely belonging that performs the returning of the creature to the creator and a returning to an intimate and erotic energy that drives life together with God. These words, intimacy and eroticism, have been so commodified and sexualized that we, Christians have turned away from them and fear that they irredeemably signify sexual antinomianism, moral chaos, and sin, or at least the need to police, such words and the power of they invoke. But intimacy and eroticism speak of our birthright formed in the body of Jesus and the protocols of braking sharing, touching, tasting, and seeing the goodness of God. There at his body, the spirit joins us in an urgent work, forming a willing spirit in us that is eager to hold and to help, to support and to speak, to touch and to listen, gaining through this work, the deepest truths of creaturely belonging: that we are erotic souls. No body that is not a soul, no soul that is not a body, no being without touching, no touching without being. This is not an exclusive Christian truth, but a truth of the creature that Christian life is intended to witness."About Willie JenningsWillie Jennings is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Africana Studies, and Religious Studies at Yale University; he is an ordained Baptist minister and is author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race,Acts: A Commentary, The Revolution of the Intimate, and most recently, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging. You can hear him in podcast episodes 7 and 13 of For the Life of the World.

"There is no poverty worse than that which takes away work and the dignity of work. In a genuinely developed society, work is an essential dimension of social life, for it is not only a means of earning one’s daily bread, but also of personal growth, the building of healthy relationships, self-expression and the exchange of gifts. Work gives us a sense of shared responsibility for the development of the world, and ultimately, for our life as a people." (Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 162)In the resurgence of worldwide populism, Pope Francis has said that employment is the biggest issue. And because of the global pandemic, work has become a fraught and challenging part of life. In this episode, Father Martin Schlag explores the concept of work in Fratelli Tutti, explaining the Catholic social ethic of the dignity of work and inclusion of all people into the human economy; the Pope’s perspective on private property and the suggestion that “the world exists for us all”; and the relevance of Catholic social thought and Fratelli Tutti for businesspeople, with a vision of work grounded in friendship, responsibility, dignity, justice, and love. Interview by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.Support For the Life of the World by making a gift to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu/give Show NotesRead Fratelli Tutti in its entirety online hereFratelli Tutti is basically a summary of all of Pope Francis’s teaching.Pope Francis on politics and love: “The biggest issue is employment.""Bread and work”Psychological and sociological catastrophe of long term widespread unemploymentPope Francis defines poverty as the exclusion of the dignity of earning one’s own breadLeft and Right are categories that don’t work for the Catholic social tradition.Dignity and Catholic Social Ethics and Anthropology—labor and the common goodHuman dignity is grounded in the Image of God, as a representative of the absolute and unconditional; never as a means, always as an endHuman dignity formulated as friendship or fraternityThe right to work and rights in work: access, just wage, safety, rest, social security (health care, insurance, retirement benefits)Christian perspectives on private property: St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Gregory—“your affluence belongs to the poor"Not communism but generosity and sharingPrivate Property: One of the most striking passages for the outside readerTwo Christian perspectives on private property: (1) Augustinian strand—private property as consequence of original sin and is regulated only by human law; “in paradise there was no private property” / (2) Aristotelian/Thomist tradition—private property is derived from natural law and the common good (this is the dominant Catholic tradition)Absolute vs Derived Rights. Property is a secondary, or derived, right.Property has a social mortgage, creates responsibility Horizontal vs Vertical dimensions of private propertyVertical dimension of private property: “The world exists for us all”; the universal destination of all goods;Horizontal dimension of private property: 7th commandment presupposes private property (“Thou shall not steal”); under human society, private property exists and needs to be protected by laws“We belong to the whole.” Aquinas: Human beings exist as part of a whole, a human being stops being a human being when they leave the polis/community or whole. Aquinas corrects that: Only to God do we belong.Catholic social teaching has four big principles: Human dignity, Common good, Solidarity, SubsidiarityAll people of good will. What two or three big takeaways are available for someone who does own property/business person?No to the idolatry of money. You need money in the world, but it’s only a means to an end, like gas in a carFriendship: How can you create meaningful work for others and yourself, creating variety of tasks, giving significance, give recognition, empowered, autonomously?Oppose elitism and false universalism: does my business have an inclusive mechanism, do we listen, have regular debates, does everyone contribute to decision making?Where societal change comes from: not come from the elites but from the peripheries “The People”What does a fraternal society look like in Pope Francis’ imagination?Consider the French revolution: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”—liberalism built a politics on liberty; socialism built a politics on equality; but who has built a politics on fraternity?“Good politics combines love with hope and with confidence in the reserves of goodness present in human hearts.” (Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 197)'At times, in thinking of the future, we do well to ask ourselves, “Why I am doing this?”, “What is my real aim?” For as time goes on, reflecting on the past, the questions will not be: “How many people endorsed me?”, “How many voted for me?”, “How many had a positive image of me?” The real, and potentially painful, questions will be, “How much love did I put into my work?” “What did I do for the progress of our people?” “What mark did I leave on the life of society?” “What real bonds did I create?” “What positive forces did I unleash?” “How much social peace did I sow?” “What good did I achieve in the position that was entrusted to me?”’ (Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 197)About Father Martin SchlagFather Martin Schlag is Alan W. Moss Endowed Chair for Catholic Social Thought at the University of St. Thomas and is author of The Business Francis Means: Understanding the Pope's Message on the Economy. He studies the nexus of Christian faith with markets, trade and exchange, money, private property, and their net effect on social justice.

"A strange necessity has been laid upon me to devote my life to the central concern that transcends the walls that divide and would achieve in literal fact what is experienced as literal truth: Human life is one and all humans are members of one another" (Howard Thurman, The Luminous Darkness). Sameer Yadav honors Howard Thurman, minister, theologian, philosopher, civil rights activist. Thurman was the author of the influential book, Jesus & the Disinherited, which Martin Luther King, Jr. was known to carry around with him. LinksWho was Howard Thurman?About Jesus & the DisinheritedShow NotesBelonging and connectednessThe trauma of alienation in the Jim Crow segregationVitality of Christian faith and Black Christian resistance to slaveholder Christianity"The humanity we share with Jesus is one that cannot be reduced or dominated, but holds a value in union with God that goes beyond any attempt we can make to manipulate it for our own purposes."Thurman’s ministry and theology represents the bringing together of these three themes: (1) divine common ground with all living things, (2) the devastating effects of social injustice on human personhood, and (3) sharing in the humanity of Jesus uniquely revealed in the history of Black suffering and the resilience of Black joy.Christian mystical traditionInfluenced by Ghandi’s approach to non-violence (soul force)Jesus and the Disinherited—finding the inward strength to stand up to oppressionMysticism and activism belong in vital connection with each otherThurman’s impact on Martin Luther King, Jr. at Boston UniversityMLK was known to carry a copy of Jesus & the Disinherited with him wherever we went.From Preface of Luminous Darkness (1960): "The fact that 25 years of my life were spent in Florida and in Georgia has left deep scars in my spirit and has rendered me terribly sensitive to the churning abyss separating white from black. Living outside of the region, I am aware of the national span of racial prejudice and the virus of segregation that undermines the vitality of American life. Nevertheless, a strange necessity has been laid upon me to devote my life to the central concern that transcends the walls that divide and would achieve in literal fact what is experienced as literal truth: Human life is one and all humans are members of one another. And this insight is spiritual and it its the hard core of religious experience. My roots are deep in the throbbing reality of Negro idiom and from it I draw a full measure of inspiration and vitality. The slaves made a worthless life—the life of chattel property, a mere thing, a body—worth living. They yielded with abiding enthusiasm to a view of life which included all the events of their experience without exhausting themselves in those experiences. To them this quality of life was insistent fact because of that which deeply was within them. They discovered God, who was not or could not be exhausted by any single experience or series of experiences. To know God was to live a life worthy of the loftiest meaning of life. People of all ages and times, slave or free, trained or untutored, who have sensed the same values, are their fellow pilgrims, who journey together with them in increasing self-realization, in quest for the city that has foundations whose builder and maker is God.” About Sameer YadavSameer Yadav (Th.D. Duke Divinity School) is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA. His research areas are in the philosophy and theology of religious experience, race and religion, and the theological interpretation of Scripture. He is the author of The Problem of Perception and the Experience of God: Toward a Theological Empiricism (Fortress Press, 2015), a number of articles published in various journals such as The Journal of Analytic Theology, Faith and Philosophy, and The Journal of Religion among others, as well as a number of chapters in edited volumes.

David Walker was an early 19th-century black abolitionist and activist, who wrote An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. Ryan McAnnally-Linz celebrates his ideas in this influential pamphlet that gave dignity, hope, and courage to slaves and freed black people alike, urging them to continue fighting for their freedom while the United States struggled toward the end of slavery.This episode is part of our celebration of Black History Month; we offer these short reflections in appreciation and gratitude for the black voices who’ve shaped how we experience the world, how we think about it, and how we live in it.Show NotesRead about David Walker here.Read the entire Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World.

Support For the Life of the World, give to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture:  faith.yale.edu/giveShortly after Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis in March 2013, he released an exhortation, very similar to an encyclical, but addressed to a Christian audience. "Evangelii Guadium” or the "Joy of the Gospel,” begins by articulating the most pressing challenges for the contemporary Church. First on his list is the economy of exclusion. What does he mean by that? He writes:Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.  (Evangelii Gaudium)Sister Helen Alford reflects on the economic implications of Pope Francis's Fratelli Tutti, including concerns about unrestrained free markets, the importance of allowing human life and dignity to frame our economic policy, what behavioral economics tells us about human relationality, and how we can understand the big picture of politics, economics, faith, and flourishing operating in Catholic social thought. Interview by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.Show NotesWhat is the goal of Fratelli Tutti? (And understanding it in light of 2015’s Laudato Si: Care of Our Common Home.)Integral ecology: how we relate to each other in our nature environment (ecology) and human environment (economy)Ecology and economy share a common root: oikos (home)An economy that puts life and human dignity at the center, which also means respect for the environmentThe economic donut principle: the inner ring is social minimum to take care of all people, the outer ring is the environmental ceiling for impact. We need to live within the donut!"Fratelli tutti wants to see the economy as situated within a bigger vision of human development"Economy is like the foundation of a house, it’s not built for its own sake, but to support the whole house and the people in it. The economy must serve the common good—for all of us, in an integrated way.The primacy of politics: "We need a political order that’s going to give proper direction to the economy.""We see how difficult it is to make a political system function today."The economy is a good tool but a bad master. It must serve, not rule.The problem with unrestrained free marketsUnderstanding the vision of human flourishing implied in the free market economy"The Ultimatum Game": An experiment in behavioral economicsRelational beings in the economy; relationships really count in economic interactionsBeings in relation; understanding the humanity at the core of economicsHow theology, biology, and economics all suggest cooperation and relationally is built into human beings.Long term ideas that impact our concept of work and the human personRarum novarum and solidarity between workers and owners, and solidarity between workers togetherSolidarity as a strategy for affirming dignity among all humanity"The shape of human flourishing and how to reach it"—Charles Taylor on Fratelli Tutti"Let us dream as a single human family.” Pope FrancisWhat is Pope Francis’s vision for a full and flourishing life? Human rights, human development and resources, moral and spiritual goodsIncreasing diversity, having dialogue with each other and living together in real encounter, loving each other within diversity

“Here we have a splendid secret that shows us how to dream and to turn our life into a wonderful adventure. No one can face life in isolation… We need a community that supports and helps us, in which we can help one another to keep looking ahead. How important it is to dream together… By ourselves, we risk seeing mirages, things that are not there. Dreams, on the other hand, are built together. Let us dream, then, as a single human family, as fellow travelers sharing the same flesh, as children of the same earth which is our common home, each of us bringing the richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of us with his or her own voice, brothers and sisters all." (Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti)Last year, in the midst of a global nightmare, Pope Francis invited the world to dream together of something different. He released Fratelli Tutti in October 2020—a message of friendship, dignity, and solidarity not just to Catholics, but "to all people of good will"—for the whole human community. In this episode, social ethicist Nichole Flores (University of Virginia) explains papal encyclicals and works through the moral vision of Fratelli Tutti, highlighting especially Pope Francis’s views on faith as seeing with the eyes of Christ, the implications of human dignity for discourse, justice and solidarity, and finally the language of dreaming together of a different world.Support For the Life of the World: Give to  the Yale Center for Faith & CultureShow NotesRead the entire text of Fratelli Tutti online hereWhat is a papal encyclical? For “All people of good will”—not just CatholicsExamining the signs of the times, e.g., Fratelli Tutti will always be connected to its global context during a pandemic.What is Fratelli Tutti? What does its title mean?Brothers and Sisters All: Using Italian, a particular language, as a pathway to the universal, rather than traditional Latin titlePope Francis’ roots in Latin America: How his particularity as Latin American gives him a universal message; local and communal belonging; neighborhoods contributing to the common goodSeeing/Gazing: Faith as seeing with the eyes of Christ (Lumen Fidei)Undermining human dignity in social media discourse; the failure of grandstanding rather than encounter Solidarity as a dirty word: conflicts within Catholicism about how to understand and apply justice and solidarity in real lifeSolidarity requires encounter with the otherSocial friendship and fraternityHuman dignity in the tradition of Catholic social ethicsDreaming together: fighting against the temptation to dream alone, inviting us to imagine; cultivating a conversation that forms collective imagination and aesthetic reality. About Nichole FloresNichole Flores is a social ethicist who is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. She studies the constructive contributions of Catholic and Latinx theologies to notions of justice and aesthetics to the life of democracy. Her research in practical ethics addresses issues of democracy, migration, family, gender, economics (labor and consumption), race and ethnicity, and ecology. Visit NicholeMFlores.com for more information.

Philosopher Kent Dunnington exposes the radical roots of Christian humility, exploring the centrality of humility to Christian ethics, the goal of humility in eliminating one’s own self-concern, why humility remains so appealing and so appalling, and how to respond to the abuse and weaponizing of humility to oppress. Interview with Evan Rosa.Join us in taking hold of life that is truly life.Will you partner with us in helping people envision and pursue lives worthy of our shared humanity?Give to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu/give About Kent DunningtonKent Dunnington is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Biola University in La Mirada, CA. He teaches and writes in the areas of virtue ethics and theological ethics. Other research interests include addiction and criminal justice, inspired by his experiences teaching in prison. He is author Addiction and Virtue: Beyond the Models of Disease and Choice and Humility, Pride, and Christian Virtue Theory. He also contributed an essay entitled "How to Be Humble" to The Joy of Humility: The Beginning and End of the Virtues.Show NotesWhat’s so gripping about humility?Radical, entire sanctification and radical expressions of ChristianityThinking about the virtuesVirtues as a way of thinking about Christian influence on cultureWhat makes humility a lightening rod?Self-regard, human weakness and needHumility: Mark of failure, or a trait that marks right relationship with God?How human anthropology and human flourishing influences your views of humilityPagan perspectives on humilityYou’d expect that humility would lose its appeal, but many contemporary thinkers continue to laud itHumility as pro-social, promoting horizontal relationshipsAugustinian humility: Humility as central for vertical relationship with God and the gateway to Christian orientation toward the worldLove and humility: The love of God is an offense to pagan sensibilities.Jesus’s humility as Jesus’s weakness"We often forget just how deep Jesus’s weakness went… it’s almost like Jesus doesn’t have a self apart from the will of the Father.""The striking thing about Jesus is that he seems to be free of this whole project of having a self that could be identified over and against someone else."Definition of radical humility: no-concern about status and entitlements (cf., Roberts and Wood)Humility as a balancing act between excessive pride and excessive servilityThe radical humility of desert mothers and fathers—“they weren’t concerned with defining it, they were concerned with living it."Abba Macarius and the Unwed Mother—“I discovered I had a wife."Humiliation and serious critiques of humility as a cover for patriarchy and lauding servility and denigrationClarifying the horizontal scope of radical humility: Desert mothers and fathers took on radical humility for themselves, not as a guide for leading others.“If you’re someone who thinks Jesus’s life is the shape of the good life, then it becomes a pressing question: How far am I willing to go? Am I really willing to give up myself in love of other people?"“Do I really believe that selfless love is the shape of a good human life?"Resisting the temptation to repackage a safer humility“Pretty much anytime you find yourself espousing the virtue of humility to someone else, you’re on the wrong track."“I don’t think we have to be humble, but we can be. It’s a frightening invitation, but if it’s true it’s incredible that we could be freed from our concern to make ourselves significant enough to merit love."Christianity and power"I’m wary of turning humility into a virtue that can be leveraged for social gain. I still think of it primarily in terms of something that helps find our way into being creatures."

"Cooking is a declaration of love ... food is God’s love made delicious." Theologian Norman Wirzba reflects on the threats of our faulty logic of food and our disordered and disconnected relationship to eating and nourishment, and imagines a theology of food grounded in membership, gift, and hospitality. Interview with Matt Croasmun.Support For the Life of the World: Give to the Yale Center for Faith & CultureAbout Norman WirzbaNorman Wirzba is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology at Duke University. His teaching, research, and writing happens at the intersections of theology and philosophy, and agrarian and environmental studies. He is the author of several books, including Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating (2nd Edition), From Nature to Creation, and The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age, and his most recent book, This Sacred Life: The Place of Humanity in a Wounded World, will be published in 2021. In his spare time he likes to bake, play guitar, and make things with wood. For more information visit his website at normanwirzba.com.Show NotesIntroductionFood and Faith: A Theology of Eating—a picture of what eating can be, connecting us to the world, to each other, to God.When it comes to eating in America these days, how are we doing?Anonymity and ignorance. We are disconnected from food, we’re not encouraged to know where food comes from or how it came to be."Eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables."Good eating is not solely a matter of personal virtue or vice. It’s part of a complicated system, agricultural strategy, and political process we’re involved in.Food is central to human flourishing, but if it’s only a market commodity, we end up with a faulty logic that drives a sinister food industry.You can only sell so much: therefore, preservativesIf food is primarily to be digested, we have foods that are, in principle, indigestible. It tastes good, and never makes you full. It’s the perfect food commodity. The food system is developed to take advantage of you as a unit of consumption. What is eating for?Membership as a eucharistic mode for changing the way we conceive of food and the good. Eating is a daily reminder of our need.Fruits of the spirit that ought to animate our relation to membership.Mutual belonging (Willie Jennings, The Christian Imagination)How disconnection from the land leads to alienation and loneliness.Attention to geography and sources of life; how do we cultivate awareness and proper attention?Robin Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass—the White American presence has always been “this is not home.” Therefore, “The land we live on and are blessed by does not love us.” Think about what kind of compensation must follow to this kind of alienation. Racial components of agriculture and food. "You cannot tell the story of agriculture apart from the story of slavery.” Agricultural labor and the objection to embodiment.Embodiment and food.Essential work, abstraction from bodies, and disembodied labor."We don’t want to know, because to have to know these things implicates us in how we shop for food."God creates a world in which creatures eat.What’s communicated through a meal prepared for you? You matter.God invites us into hospitality, and food and eating can teach us that nurturing welcoming presence.Food as gift. Submitting oneself to "the grace of the world.” "Food is God’s love made delicious.""Life has always proceeded by hospitality."“Eating and cooking … cause us to stop and say, ‘It’s not all vicious. Maybe our living together can also be a celebration.’""All eating involves death.” How do you square the gift of food with the death it entails?The first virtue of humility—because I don’t know, and because I understand vulnerability, I must live in a more humble, patient way.What does policy look like when it comes through the lens of humility, dependence, gift, and vulnerability?The story of a meal—its cultivating, growing, cooking, gathering, eating, enjoying, and nourishing.You can’t homogenize people’s experience of food.Sabbath, time, place: Slowing down to notice the goodness of the world God has given us. Thoughtfulness, intention, attention, presence, honoring each otherWho is invited to the table? Communal living, kinship, and community in a welcoming world. Abraham Heschel’s “an opening for eternity in time."How can we honor the life that feeds us? Start simple. Soup and bread to celebrate the goodness of the world.

Thanks for listening to For the Life of the World. To support the show, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture by clicking here.---This is that time of year when the little demon of self-criticism and self-denigration wakes up and starts nagging you for letting your new year’s resolutions slip a little. Or maybe you’re not there yet. You’re powering through, waking up early, working out hard, eating right, reading more, living your best life. Hey. Good on you. Go get it.But regardless, whether you find yourself nailing it or failing it, do you have the patience and the necessary courage to accept yourself at every moment you try to improve?This week, Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Miroslav Volf discuss an obscure but incredibly timely passage from an old lecture given by the great Karl Rahner, the German Jesuit priest and one of the most notable Catholic theologians of the 20th century—he was instrumental, for instance, in the theological developments of the Second Vatican Council.Miroslav once heard Rahner give a talk about patience, and has passed along the wisdom of that lecture, and now we’re passing it on to you. Miroslav even translated a passage from the German text, and reads it here (you can also find it in our show notes). In this episode, Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz reflect on Karl Rahner's admonition to be patient with oneself. The discussion begins by recognizing the gap between who you are now and who you aspire to be, and proceeds with the need to keep the tension alive, working and bearing with your limitations, and exploring the freedom of a serene patience with oneself. Serenity is not acquiescence to vice or bad habits. But it represents a courageous long-term peace with your imperfections—an effort to recognize oneself as rooted in divine love and grace and acceptance, even as you pursue a vision of a better self.Show NotesNew Year’s Resolutions and the need to be patientKarl Rahner’s “Intellectual Patience with Oneself” (translated from German to English by Miroslav Volf)Minding the gap between who you are and who you aspire to beNarcissism, complacency, and resignationMiroslav’s friend’s motto for graduate school: “Courage to Imperfection!"Patience is not merely a private interior thing—there is a public effect of bearing with oneself that leads to bearing with others.The courage to public imperfectionCultivating a secure sense of self grounded in God’s loveWe can live with imperfection knowing that we are accepted as we areRelease yourself from the grip of the performed, curated selfHow patience with oneself applies to the struggle to improve through New Year’s ResolutionsReflect on which self you want to nurture and don’t give up on the tension between who you are and who you aspire to be.Constant pressure to improve quickly, as opposed to acceptance of limitations and imperfectionsKeep the tension alive, work with your limitations, and explore the freedom of a serene patience with oneself.You cannot do whatever you want, and the lie that you can leaves you exposed to the deep pain of failure and limitation.“You are not at stake.” Limits are there. They are to be worked with rather than hated or abhorred."I’m not divine. I’m human."Karl Rahner, “On Intellectual Patience with Oneself”in Schriften zur Theologie, 15, 303ff.(Abridged version of the first few paragraphs that deal with patience with oneself in general, of which intellectual patience with oneself is one dimension)Translated by Miroslav VolfThat we need … patience with ourselves, seems to me a self-evident thing, in fact one of those self-evident things which in reality turn out to be difficult to achieve.  Perhaps there are people who don’t think they need patience with themselves because they are in full agreement with who they are and with what they do. But I hope that we will not envy the “good fortune” of such simple-minded people.  If we are honest with ourselves, we are [all] the kind of people who, rightly, are not fully finished with ourselves, and also the kind of people who cannot establish the state of their full agreement with ourselves on command or through some psychological trick.  Because a full agreement with ourselves is neither given nor within our power to achieve, we need to have patience with ourselves.  The person in us, who we actually are, greets with pain, the person in us who we want to become… We are now on the way, we live between a past and a future, and both, each in its own way, are out of our full control.  We never have all things together which we need to live; we are always historically conditioned, socially manipulated, biologically threatened—and we are aware of this. We can try to suppress the knowledge of this state of existence; we can try to let things that we cannot change just be there as surd elements of our lives; or we can misuse joyous experiences of life as analgesics against the uncanny tensions between who we are and who we should be; or we can interpret these dissatisfactions as depression which we either have simply to suffer or which we can medicalize ourselves against.But when we muster the courage to face these tensions [between who we are and who we aspire to become], when we acknowledge them and accept them … then we have come to have patience with ourselves, to accept that we are not in pure agreement with ourselves… Many believe that they have patience with themselves and that this patience is the most ordinary of things.  But if we were to look at such people more carefully, we would see that they do not take on patiently the pain of their tensions, that they don’t face them without ether embellishing or hating them, but that they flee from them into the banality of everyday life … that what has triumphed in them [over these tensions] is an unrecognized despair or despairing resignation, that they, in the end, believe that life has no meaning. We would also see that they do not actually have patience as they behold the questionableness of their existence, but are seeking ways to look away and find surrogates for patience, which, they believe, make it possible for them to live.Those who are truly patient endure in reality their existential tensions, take them on, accept the pain they cause… Those who are patient are patient with their impatience; serenely, they let go of the final “agreement” between who they are and what they aspire to become.  They do not know where this serenity, in which they let themselves be, comes from… Those who are patient are serene and therefore free.We will not further explore the question about what it is that we ultimately fall upon when practicing such serene patience.  Some people will think that the stance rests on “Nothing”; resting on “Nothing,” they can be victorious over tense conflicts of finite realities in their own lives.  Others are persuaded, that “Nothing,” when one gives it its proper sense, is of no use, that it can have no power to give peace.  Instead, they believe that when we serenely accept our tensions [between who we are and what we aspire to become], then, whether we are aware or not, we have come to rest on what in everyday use of the word we call God.And when we really understand that word [God], the we see that the letting oneself “fall” into the silent incomprehensibility which is God “succeeds” because God receives in grace those who let themselves fall into serene patience with themselves.