An Introduction to the Book Study

In Bishop Alan Scarfe's February column in Iowa Connections, he called for members of the Episcopal Diocese of Iowa to join him in a Lenten book study of Parker Palmer's The Company of Strangers.  Here's Bishop Scarfe's reflection:

With Lent coming quickly upon us, I wonder if we could not do something special together this year?

We all have different ways of using this time for our inner spiritual renewal. It may be attending to a more regular worship or prayer schedule; it may mean participating in a local study group or deepening your Christian formation through group work or personal reading. But what if this year we took up the idea from the Diocesan Lifelong Learning Oversight Committee and shared one book across the Diocese for the forty days?

They called it “a Bishop’s book”, something suggested by me for us all.  I have such a book, and think it fits precisely with our theme of “Being God’s Witnesses in Iowa”.

It is probably no surprise to those of you who have been reading my writing recently because I have mentioned it several times, particularly in relation to the public violence of late. I refer of course to Parker Palmer’s The Company of Strangers.

Palmer writing in 1981 manages to outline the dangers of losing our vision of the public. Public is where the company of strangers encounter one another, and learn from our differences and our strangeness to one another. He contrasts this with a society bent on fear and flight, everyone retreating to their own private corners and creating a resultant objectification which sees the stranger more often as enemy or threat. He depicts how this is a vicious cycle that actually leads to real danger and vulnerability. Religion and government are privatized along with our social lives, and our communities are just a private as any other part of us. Intimacy is a good goal in our personal lives, but when this is also expected of our  institutions as well, we limit our boundaries and erode our capacity to engage the other with respect and openness.

To my mind he makes a lot of sense about our current social dynamics. His challenge is to the Church as one institution to regain its public place, a place which has always had from Old and New Testament witness a place for the gathering of strangers, and the recognition that even enemies are to be loved. So I invite you to read along with me as Lent begins. Will you join me? I am sure our communications people on staff can find a way for us to engage publicly in conversation together as we go along.

It so happens that I will be beginning my re-reading in South Sudan as we prepare to come home after a week’s visit to Nzara.

A small team from Iowa forms this first official visit of our new companionship. It is made up of my wife Donna, our Standing Committee Chair, Kathleen Milligan, and Torey Lightcap, chair of the Lifelong  Learning Committee of which I spoke.

Bishop Peni sees one benefit of the companionship to be our potential for mutual education. So he has asked us to share in his Lenten study for the clergy – the meaning of the imposition of ashes, and other resources for understanding the season of Lent. In turn of course, I realize that I am asking us to study what he and his people have not lost – that sense of public role as the people of God. I ask for your prayers for our journey, both to the South Sudan, and to our own public place and our company of strangers.  + Alan

Each week during Lent we will have a guest blogger, discussing sections of the book.  We encourage you to read along and add your own comments.

Look for the first post on Ash Wednesday, February 13.