{"id":451,"date":"2014-01-17T03:27:39","date_gmt":"2014-01-17T03:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=451"},"modified":"2014-08-12T23:45:34","modified_gmt":"2014-08-12T23:45:34","slug":"the-end-of-the-book-and-a-look-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-end-of-the-book-and-a-look-back\/","title":{"rendered":"The End of the Book and a Look Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you ever read the end of a book whilst you are reading the same book? \u00a0Reading Modern Social Imaginaries <\/em>by Charles Taylor I did just that. \u00a0Recently those of us in this DMin (Doctor of Ministry) program were asked to reflect on how we would accomplish our mission and vision.\u00a0 Rather than approach it from the present and planning for the future, we were challenged to apply the Merlin exercise.\u00a0 To see the present from the future as Merlin did in King Arthur\u2019s Court.\u00a0 The process captivated me anew.\u00a0 I am in the final third of life.\u00a0 The time before me is much less than the years behind me.\u00a0 Chronos <\/em>time feels more condensed, I feel a greater awareness to make time count, because it does.\u00a0 All the while I want to abide in kairos time \u2013 the right time to act.<\/p>\n

Reading the end of Modern Social Imaginaries <\/em>I knew I needed to pay attention to the past, my past and my history just as Taylor sought to tell the modern forms of social imaginary by focusing on Western history.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Taylor ended the book where he began.\u00a0 His \u201cfoundational hunch is that we have to speak of \u2018multiple modernities,\u2019 different ways of erecting and animating the institutional forms that are becoming inescapable.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 How does this correlate?\u00a0 What are my impressions?<\/p>\n

By choice I am reading one of the textbooks for a George Fox Seminary course I facilitate.\u00a0 I was surprised (and pleased) to discover that one of the authors for A Many Colored Kingdom <\/em>is someone I knew from church many years before, Gary Parrett. \u00a0Reading Gary\u2019s story from the late 1970\u2019s and early 80\u2019s was sobering.\u00a0 He was describing our church.\u00a0 He was describing me. \u201cHaving seen, for the first time, expressions of the faith in other cultures, I began to see how the faith had taken root in my own cultural context.\u00a0 My home church was made up of people who were white, suburban or rural Americans, and, almost uniformly, politically conservative.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0 My perspective, shaped as it was by modernity had put God into a box that was quite American-centric.\u00a0 Relating this to Taylor, Parrett described the way in which we imagined our surroundings, how we viewed self and others.\u00a0 Family was paramount. \u201cWe had wrapped God up in the red, white, and blue and weekly served him up with a slice of mom\u2019s apple pie.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

This formed my sense of moral order and informed my lens through which I understood my world.\u00a0 Unbeknownst at the time this portion of my history included practices that were both material and self-conceptional modes of understanding.[5]<\/a>\u00a0 Looking back from the present I recognize a gradual and persistent movement.\u00a0 Taylor referred to social embeddedness as a related to identity, \u201cthe inability to imagine oneself outside a certain matrix.\u201d[6]<\/a> My sense of identity was reinforced in the church community Parrett described.\u00a0 Reflecting on a women\u2019s prayer group his Korean wife attended (one I am pretty certain I was involved with) he wrote, \u201cMembers of the group assumed that wherever the United States was involved around the globe, it was always and invariably in the right.\u00a0 Its interests were, apparently, always noble and pure.\u00a0 Americans could be sure that God is on our side.\u201d \u00a0As an individual my identity and my social imaginary were truthfully recognized. \u00a0Taylor\u2019s reflection on the emerging and changing perspective of civility was ringing in my ears.\u00a0 Yet in some way I know now that our conception of civility was somehow tied to \u201cspiritual recovery and the rescue of civil order.\u201d[7]<\/a>\u00a0 Rather than stay within the confines of my then church community I now have a sense not only what I would have been like if I had stayed, I also know what I am like because I did not.\u00a0 This did not come quickly, nor did it come easily.<\/p>\n

As an intuitive[8]<\/a> others shaped my identity in a very real sense through perception and dialogue.\u00a0 Through the years I have become a self-differentiated individual, one who has her own opinions, attained a relationship with God and knows her conversion experience.[9]<\/a>\u00a0 I have had to learn to rethink and have my framework re-ordered.\u00a0 The re-framing began when I stepped into the work world and re-encountered the \u201cworld.\u201d\u00a0 I went from having all Christian friends to spending a majority of my day with people outside my church circle.\u00a0 In time I had the opportunity to come to George Fox Seminary.\u00a0 In one of my first classes I was given a new perspective, one that saw American Christianity from outside the U.S.\u00a0 My social imaginary was rocked.<\/em><\/p>\n

We are, as Taylor referenced, founding and refounding.[10]<\/a>\u00a0 I find myself recognizing the progression, the development and in moments the circular aspects of our social imaginaries.\u00a0 Each aspect he identifies is a springboard for thought and writing, whether it is understanding the underpinnings and progression of economics, the evolving public sphere, or our understanding of sovereign self.\u00a0 Reading Modern Social Imaginaries <\/em>has provided deepening comprehension to my own actions and what has influenced me over time.\u00a0 I would like things to be clear and linear.\u00a0 Taylor strategically started and ended with an assertion that there are multiple modernities.[11]<\/a> If I had not read these words early on I doubt I would have been attune to the words I read about my home church.\u00a0 I might not have reflected on where I was and where I am.\u00a0 \u201cWith the realization that these differences matter comes the humbling insight that there is a lot that we don\u2019t understand, that we lack even the adequate language to describe these differences.\u201d[12]<\/a>\u00a0 It seems we are bound to strive for moral order, the evolving of individual rights and freedom.\u00a0 Yet within the complexities of multi-modernities it seems that somehow embedded within humanity is this desire, one Taylor described almost against all hope, a multi-form world will \u201cemerge in order and peace.\u00a0 Then the real positive work, of building mutual understanding can begin.\u201d[13]<\/a>\u00a0 My transition to learn from others, to endeavor to not be American-centric in my posture invites me to glean from our reading.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [1] Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries. <\/em>(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 2.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[2] Ibid., 185.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[3] Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, S. Steve Kang & Gary A. Parrett, A Many Colored Kingdom: Multicultural Dynamics for Spiritual Formation. <\/em>(Grand Rapids, MI: BakerAcademic, 2004), 45.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[4] Ibid.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[5] Taylor, 31.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[6] Ibid., 55.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[7] Ibid., 40.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[8] Myer-Briggs MBTI Personality Types.\u00a0 I am an INFP (Introvert Intuitive Feeling Perceptive).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[9] Taylor, 65.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[10] Ibid., 106.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[11] Ibid., 195.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[12] \u00a0Ibid., 196.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[13] Ibid., 196.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you ever read the end of a book whilst you are reading the same book? \u00a0Reading Modern Social Imaginaries by Charles Taylor I did just that. \u00a0Recently those of us in this DMin (Doctor of Ministry) program were asked to reflect on how we would accomplish our mission and vision.\u00a0 Rather than approach it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[190],"class_list":["post-451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp-lgp4-taylor-imaginaries","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1779,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions\/1779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}