From the Past

In December of this year, the publication “Context” will cease publication after 41 years. It was a monthly collection of thoughts, quotes, readings, etc. compiled by the Martin Marty who is one of the great historians of our time. The monthly publication dealt with religion and culture and was a great source of keeping current with theology, sociology of religion and culture, as well as emerging writers.
For the next 4 months they will be drawing from their past and using various writings from their 41 years. It has been fascinating to read this month’s entries from the early 70’s. I’ll be sharing some of the contents in the next few months. Sometimes with comments and sometimes not – often they are just things that need to ‘sit with us’ and be pondered, something I fear we don’t do enough.
Here’s the first ‘thought to ponder’:

March 15, 1971: G. K. Chesterton, quoted by W. H. Auden: "Tradition means giving votes to that obscurest of classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to surrender to the arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around in it." Auden himself was quoted too: "In the world of prayer we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one. . . . A prayer really begins at the point at which one listens to a voice. I am not going to argue with people about this; I would call it the voice of the Holy Spirit, you could call it the inner light. The only things you cannot call it, you cannot call it reason and you cannot call it the superego, because the superego could never say anything new."