Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now

by Rebecca Ann Parker, Robert Hardies

A remarkable collection of Parker's theological writings on salvation and redemption, now in one volume. Her life's work, so eloquently displayed on these pages, is to expose the lie that violence redeems and to direct us toward the forces that repair broken life. An important and timely contribution to post-September 11 theological reflection.

Genres: Nonfiction, Spirituality, Religion, Theology

184 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2006

Reviews

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found these 14 essays adapted from sermons and lectures to be spine-straightening and spirit-lifting. A friend loaned me his copy and I wanted to treat it with care but its one of those books I need to own---so I can write in the margins, underline and read passages aloud, fold-down corners, and re-read whenever I feel like it.

A favorite essay from this group is titled "What Shall We Do With All This Beauty?" (---named for a quote from James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time"---) in which Rebecca Ann Parker discusses the shamanistic journey, tithing, and Sabbath-keeping as powerful and beautiful means for human beings to access endangered knowledge. In this same essay she says "Prophetic witness keeps our consciousness alert to the realities of history and to the present consequences of that history. It asks us to redeem that history not by washing our hands of it but by searching for a quality of life together in which no one flourishes because of the suffering of another."

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding. this woman has a way of thinking about the world that is absolutely astonishing. The subtitle of this book is What Can Save Us Now. It is a series of brilliant essays in sermonic form. Some of them were in fact sermons. With process theology as her template for most all of the works, she divides the book into three parts:
Finding Our Way, Reconstructing our Faith and Blessing the world.

Under Finding Our Way:

Through the Rubble, she remembers September 11 and suffests our UU penchant for ignoring evil will not redeem us.

After the Aoocalypse she says the religious task is threefold: truth telling, salvaging and choosing our guides.

Not somewhere else but here she confronts racism with a four-step conversation: 1)theological reflection, 2)remedial education 3)soul work, 4)engaged presence

You shall be like a watered Garden - sexuality and love.

Under Reconstructing Our Faith:
Cornerstones
Rebuilding after 9-11

Holy War and Nonviolent Resistance

What they Dreamed is Ours to Do
Something Far More Deeply Interfused
On This Shining Night
Family Values

Under Blessing the World:

What Shall We Do with All This Beauty
Soul Muic
Love First
Choose to Bless the World

And Finally, Benediction

[David Seitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This remarkably accessible and profound book changes me each time I read it. Unitarian Universalist theologian teases and intervenes in the narratives of the apocalypse in our everyday lives and politics. Among other things. We already live in a world ravaged by racism, sexism, colonialism and environmental devastation, she argues. Why do we keep looking to violence as ultimate or final solution, or quotidian solution -- the violence of war, the violence of easy answers, the violence of an alienated mind -- when the apocalypse has already happened/is already happening? What we must do is doubt our doubt of grace, remind each other of it in community, and bless the world...

[missy jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

“We need to face more honestly the conditions of devastation that we are in the midst of, here and now. As we enter the new millennium, we need to see ourselves as people living in the aftermath of cataclysmic violence rather than as people awaiting the overthrow off the present world order and the birth of the new. We must relinquish our innocence and see the world as it is, focusing our attention on the marks of past violence in our personal and collective experience. We must notice the breakdown, sorrow, and legacies of injustice that characterize our current world order. From this place of honesty, we must discover how we can live among the ruins.”

[Nan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parker's religion ain't that old time religion. It's kinder and gentler. She recognizes that the crucified Christ didn't appear in the early stages of Christianity and that the myth of suffering for heaven's sake does no one any good.

Some of the essays do seem to have a superficial Sunday morning sermon quality, but they are all good springboards to deeper thought.

[John Mosman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rebecca Ann Parker provides essays about life, spirituality and our times. As Charles Hartshorne told her. "Be a blessing to the world." So should we!