The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture [Paperback]

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (Author), Kathleen Norris (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2010

“In whatever place you live, do not easily leave it.” –Abba Anthony

In an age where we might email a friend in Africa, skype a co-worker in Brazil, and

teleconference with people in different time zones–all in one day–the sheer speed of life can be dizzying. Like children stumbling off a merry-go-round, says Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, we are grasping for something to anchor our lives in a sea of constant change.

 

In The Wisdom of Stability, Wilson-Hartgrove illuminates the biblical and monastic understanding of why staying in one place is both a virtue, and good for you. “For the Christian tradition,” he writes, “the heart’s true home is a life rooted in the love of God.” When we cultivate an inner stability of heart – by rooting ourselves in the places where we live, engaging the people we are with, and by the simple rhythms of tending to body and soul – true growth can happen. The Wisdom of Stability is a must-read for pastors, leaders, and anyone seeking an authentic path of Christian transformation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Although commitment to the traditional Christian virtue of stability isn't easy, it is the best way to encounter both the God who invites humans into community -- and, for the faithful, to do battle with the personal and societal demons that keep them from deeper faith. Cofounder of the "new monastic" community Rutba House in Durham, N.C., and author of God's Economy, Wilson-Hartgrove argues candidly that his aim is to persuade readers to "reprogram your default settings" from mobility to stability. Drawing deeply upon the work and witness of Benedictines both ancient and modern, the writer also roots his argument in Scripture and snapshots taken from the economically poor community where he and his family have chosen to live. In a fortunate coincidence, this slim volume advocating the virtue of "growing where you are planted" appears at a time when more are inclined to challenge the necessity and advantage of multitasking. Wilson-Hartgrove tends to repeat his main point, but he does it in such an engaging and passionate way that readers will go away well-informed, if not converted.
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From Booklist

In contemporary culture, staying put—actively maintaining stability—is often looked down upon. Stability is the antithesis, according to this viewpoint, of progress and innovation. Wilson-Hartgrove disagrees and sets out to persuade his readers to reconsider their busy lifestyles. He suggests that by paying attention, we can recover the “wisdom of stability.” Thus, he refers back to the wisdom literature of various cultures, from Lao-tzu and the Bible to the desert monastics and Thomas Merton. He refers to specific traditions, such as Benedictine spirituality, while at the same time insisting that stability can be looked on as a craft, as a rhythm to fall into—and something that can be learned by anyone. “To practice stability,” he writes, “is to learn to love both a place and its people.” He comments on lessons he has learned from the Bible as well as stories shared by family members, friends, and colleagues and concludes with a series of quotations on stability from famous saints and scholars, including Augustine of Hippo, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Sister Joan Chittister. An appealing combination of personal experience and reflection. --June Sawyers

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Product Details

• Paperback: 164 pages
• Publisher: Paraclete Press; Original edition (May 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557256233
• ISBN-13: 978-1557256232
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #76,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an author, New Monastic, and sought-after speaker. A native of North Carolina, he is a graduate of Eastern University and Duke Divinity School.

Shortly before the United States began bombing Iraq in 2003, Jonathan and his wife, Leah, traveled there as members of a Christian Peacemaker Team determined to tell Iraqis that American Christians did not all support the war. Their experiences became the subject of To Baghdad and Beyond (Cascade Books: 2005), which describes the couple's conversion to the "new monasticism."

Jonathan is an Associate Minister at the historically black St. Johns Baptist Church, and is engaged in peacemaking and reconciliation efforts in Durham, North Carolina. The Rutba House, where Jonathan lives with his family and other friends, is a new monastic community that prays, eats, and lives together, welcoming neighbors and the homeless.

Jonathan directs the School for Conversion, an alternative seminary that hosts courses around the country. He is Editor of the New Monastic Library Series (Cascade Books) and Associate Editor of the Resources for Reconciliation Series (InterVarsity Press).

An evangelical who connects with the broad Christian tradition and its monastic witnesses, Jonathan is a leader in the new monastic movement and conversations about Christianity in the 21st century. He speaks often to churches and conferences of the "new evangelicals," but also connects with Mainline and Catholic audiences who are interested in reconnecting with ancient Christian practices. Writing as both a grassroots intellectual and popular theologian, Jonathan connects with a broad audience, engaging them personally on a wide spectrum of challenges facing the church today.

Connect with Jonathan at www.jonathanwilsonhartgrove.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "A Vibrant Contrast to the Madness of our Hypermobile Culture", May 4, 2010

By 

C. Christopher Smith "Englewood Review of Books" (Indianapolis) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture (Paperback)

[ This review originally appeared in
THE ENGLEWOOD REVIEW OF BOOKS - 30 April 2010 ]

Transience is a major curse of our age. From those who are always on the move to avoid their creditors to the upwardly mobile who are always seeking greener pastures, it seems that everyone is on the move. In our urban neighborhood, it is a fairly common practice for renters to move into a new place, paying the first month's rent, and then forego paying the second month's rent, and then at the end of the second month when their account is 30 days past due, the eviction process is started and the renter then has 30 days until they are evicted. Thus, crafty renters can get three months worth of housing for the price of one month, and force themselves into a cycle of moving every three months (or more if they are able to scrape together more than a single month's rent). These habits have larger cultural implications; I have heard of a public school in our neighborhood that has turnover rates as high as 95% from one year to the next (i.e., only 5 % of the students who started in a grade one year were still at the school a year later). Lest I get too critical, it occurred to me recently that I myself have, in the last 15 years (since the summer before my senior year of college), lived at a staggering twelve addresses in four different states! Thankfully, I have been fortunate to live in the same house for the last six years, and have no intention of moving any time soon, and am slowly learning here about the historic Christian practice of stability.

Given the great mobility of American culture, it is not surprising that stability is virtually unknown in our churches today. In the historically Black Walltown neighborhood of Durham, North Carolina, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and the Rutba House community have been growing roots over the last decade in that place and re-learning the practice of stability. Hartgrove has reflected on these experiences and on the Christian tradition of stability in his excellent new book, The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture. This new volume features a foreword by Kathleen Norris, who herself has reflected eloquently on stability in her most recent book Acedia and Me (which was our 2008 Book of the Year). The book also features narrative "Front Porch" reflections interspersed between the chapters, in which Wilson-Hartgrove captures vignettes from his own life that cut to the heart of the "craft" of stability.

Wilson-Hartgrove launches into the book with the bold assertion that "I hope to reprogram your default setting. As participants in a mobile culture, our default is to move. ...But I am convinced that we lose something essential to our existence as creatures if we do no recognize our fundamental need for stability" (5). In spite of the overwhelming changes in society around us, Wilson-Hartgrove observes, we have deep longings for something solid to which we can cling. And yet, we as individuals can not find stability on our own, we have been created to be part of communities that are deeply rooted in a place. In addition to immersing ourselves in a community, Wilson-Hartgrove also observes that the practice of stability means "unlearning the habits of a culture that tells us the answer to our problems is always somewhere else" (40). We need to slow down and begin to reinterpret our hopes and dreams through the community of people that God has gathered for the purpose of tangibly embodying Christ to our neighbors around us in this place. The Wisdom of Stability is filled with stories from Jonathan's encounters with the Benedictines, both historical and contemporary. Perhaps one of the most striking Benedictine images that Wilson-Hartgrove explores here is that stability in a Christian community -- church, monastery or otherwise -- is a sort of workshop where we learn the craft of a life with God. In this workshop, we learn the practices of the way of Christ, but this learning process is full of temptations, particularly the temptation to give up on others or on oneself. Instead of constantly running away from our problems, by staying put and wrestling with them, we begin to see the transformative power of God at work in our lives -- teaching us practices like patience, peacemaking and forgiveness. This stability of a life shared in Christian community in a particular place creates an environment that Wilson-Hartgrove, and many others before him, describe as a "school for prayer" in which we learn what it means to dwell in unending conversation with God.

Stability is not only our teacher, but also our sustenance when the storms of life rain down upon us. A tree is a wonderfully fitting image: through our stability God grows our roots, and though the storms of life may bend us or break us, we remain unmoved. Furthermore, the deeper our roots reach, the greater the possibility of healing and continued growth after the storms. Wilson-Hartgrove, however, also notes that "the people closest to us are not only our connection points in a support system that we depend on for our very lives... but they are also mirrors who reflect the hidden shadows of our souls" (94). Wilson-Hartgrove thus reminds us in some of the book's finest writing that stability is not a magic solution for all the problems of life, but rather brings its own set of challenges. Drawing on the rich tradition of our ancestors in the faith and especially the monastics, Wilson-Hartgrove speaks clearly and bluntly about the psychological experience of growing in stability. Indeed, his chapter on the demons that assail us as the adventure of committing to a place wears off and we grow in the practice of stability is perhaps the finest chapter in this volume. Ambition, Boredom, Vainglory; there is much here that rings true from our own struggles to learn the practice of stability as a church community here at Englewood Christian Church. Indeed, some of Wilson-Hartgrove's words here probably hit a little too close to home.

Thankfully, however, we have hope beyond the ceaseless wrestling with these demons. We are not called to perish in the desert of our temptations but rather, as Wilson-Hartgrove notes to bloom there, and this blossoming will ultimately bear fruit. He says: "If God is faith in exile and present in human flesh, then everything -- every place -- is now holy. We learn to enjoy the fruit of stability as we embrace God's mission where we are" (139). Stability is essential to our faithfulness as we share life together in our church communities, and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's The Wisdom of Stability is the finest reflection on stability in the contemporary world. Through stability, we learn to mature together in a place toward the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4), becoming, by the grace of God, a vibrant contrast to the madness of our hypermobile culture. In The Wisdom of Stability, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove orchestrates the voices of those before us who have set out to cultivate the practice of stability and poignantly calls us to the threshold of this journey of growing into stability. May we have the courage to heed his call and set out together on this journey and the even greater courage needed to weather the many demons that will assail us as we continue to be faithful in our place, day by day and year by year.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Wisdom of Stability couldn't be more timely, April 20, 2010

By 

Christopher Heuertz (Omaha, Nebraska) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture (Paperback)

The Wisdom of Stability is thick with story and packed with real-life practical application. It's grounded in the ancient practice of stability, embodied and legitimized by monastic and cloistered communities that lived the value of staying put. At the same time, Jonathan avoids a formulaic tendency to reduce stability to merely staying put in a specific location, and he re-narrates a fuller vision of stability as an orientation--one grounded in faith, vocation and community.

The book is well thought through and brilliantly organized. Jonathan's reflections meander through the complexities of rooting in a time and cultural context that seems to avoid making commitments. It's confessional, inquisitive and beautifully honest. The book is an invitation into a conversation that we must find the courage to engage.

I've appreciated this book more than any other I've read this year. The Wisdom of Stability couldn't be more timely.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A good book for those of us with spiritual ADD, May 5, 2010

By 

Jamye E. Wilson "flower child" (Kunming, China) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture (Paperback)

from the book: "This is a hard word for disciples who are eager to follow Jesus anywhere, so long as we don't have to stay put"

AIDS in Africa? Let's go there! Help the Homeless? Great, let's do it! Be a foster parent? Break out the diapers!

As a self-proclaimed nomad and someone who is always looking at the NEXT thing and who wants to do EVERYthing, this book was disturbing, challenging, and just what I needed.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove has done it again, putting his finger on an area that most of us need to consider, but are far too busy to notice.

Wilson-Hartgrove draws on the rich and lengthy history of the lessons of monastic ancestors and previous monastic movements to examine and explore how these seemingly distant and isolated people can speak into our modern lives. He shows how we are not so very far removed from the Desert mothers and fathers in the issues they grappled with both externally and internally.

What have we lost that they discovered?
How can we regain what has been lost?
How can we apply it to the time and place and culture in which we find ourselves?

The many urgent issues of today DO need addressing (Aids, homelessness, foster children) but do we render ourselves less effective or even ineffective by always looking to the OTHER thing or wanting to go to the OTHER place? Do we live life with the roots of daisies (which withers in a day and is thrown into the fire tomorrow) when we need to be more like an oak?

This is the book for those of us who are willing to be anywhere but HERE.
It says that before we go OUT we need to go DEEP.
It teaches us that instead of seeking Christ's PURPOSE for our lives. We need to seek CHRIST who has a purpose for our lives.

If we want to have an impact, play a part in transforming the world into "on earth as it is in heaven" then we must ask the Lord and ourselves where are we called to go AND where are we called to stay?

Jamye