Across the Threshold, Into the Questions: Discovering Jesus, Finding Self
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Across the Threshold, Into the Questions: Discovering Jesus, Finding Self
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Overview
Offers reflections on how the words of a first-century Jew can offer meaning, hope, and wholeness to readers today.
Across the Threshold, into the Questions includes new encounters with Jesus and his parables and teachings from the Gospel stories in Mark, Matthew and Luke. This volume continues to build the strong foundation needed for another volume that uses Goldman and William Dols' method to explore the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819226716 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Morehouse Publishing |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2008 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 165 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Caren Goldman is an award-winning author, retreat leader, consultant, and journalist who specializes in writing about spirituality, psychology, health, religion, and the arts and humanities. Across the Threshold, Into the Questions: Discovering Jesus, Finding Self was cowritten with her husband, Ted Voorhees, an Episcopal priest and also a professional writer and retreat leader. She lives in Florida and North Carolina.
Ted Voorhees, an ordained minister, has served congregations in North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, and Massachusetts. He has written for Forward Day-By-Day and is an associate editor and regular contributor to The Bible Workbench. He lives in Elkton, Florida.
Read an Excerpt
Across the Threshold, Into the Questions
Discovering Jesus, Finding self
By CAREN GOLDMAN, TED VOORHEES
Church Publishing Incorporated
Copyright © 2008 Caren Goldman and Ted VoorheesAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2671-6
CHAPTER 1
SEARCHING SELF
Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" And they answered him, "John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets." He asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Messiah." And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. (Mark 8:27–30)
Reflections
BY CAREN
One day between my fifty-first and fifty-sixth birthdays, I looked in the magnifying mirror suction cupped to my medicine cabinet and had no idea who stared back. The shape of what I assumed was still my face had changed. I noticed an eyetooth, carefully flossed, brushed, and otherwise maintained over many years, had shifted. It now pointed east instead of south. Moreover, when that tooth decided to go awry many others foolishly followed like chained links. And what about that itsy-bitsy mole that the black rim of my glasses used to hide? "Not so tiny anymore," I mumbled to myself while frowning at the large, amorphous blob of brown silly putty permanently stuck to my face. "How many people stare at that," I wondered. Beyond the glasses—a necessary concession to failing to read the phone book font during my late forties—sat my right eye. Now stronger progressive bifocal lenses enhanced not only the miniscule tag of skin that began growing on the upper lid between fifty-four and fifty-five but also a dark crater under the lower. A similar circle under my other eye gave new meaning to the expression "mirror image." While turning my face to see whether nose hairs had sprouted and upper lip stubble needed plucking, sunlight poured through the window. Did it brighten my day? Hardly. Instead, it revealed the mysterious overnight development of peach-like fuzz on my right jowl. In despair and disgust, I risked turning the other cheek. As I looked straight ahead with a faux Pollyanna attitude that somehow I would find myself looking at a glass of lemonade half-full, I felt another whack: "Dammit. This stuff is taking over this side also."
For the next half hour, the mug in the mirror taunted me. Like one monkey picking nits off another, I searched every inch of those foreign features for forensic findings that could help me identify and eradicate the source of a liver spot, neck creases destined to become wrinkles and other crimes against my former face. For the first time—or was it the twenty-first?—I harbored thoughts of coloring my curly, wavy, often frizzy salt and pepper hair, buying age-defying creams, and even—for what I now consider a complete loss of sensibility—investing in cosmetic surgery, contact lenses, and bright white porcelain caps.
To set the record straight, I have done none of the above except the following. On the advice of my dentist, a saint with a talent for overriding my genetic disposition to loosing teeth, I periodically consign savings to restoring thirty-year-old crowns on real molars that would otherwise be replaced with false ones. I occasionally pluck unwanted hairs growing where they ought not (to date my ears remain free and clear—although a constant whistle and hearing loss is another story). And I regularly check that the ever-growing silly putty doesn't meet suspicious mole criteria. And that's all. To make any of the other changes pondered would be totally out of character, I tell myself. "It's just not who I am."
Of course today, as I stand before that same truth-telling mirror bemoaning the fact that my sixtieth birthday is history, my seasoned answers to the question, "Who am I?" no longer feel honest. And if that's true, who do I now say I am or am not?
Such questions prompt list making even among those of us who are not anal and will never admit to being old enough to find them necessary for navigating the day. But what kind of lists? Lists of relatives? Schools? Vocations? Avocations? Marriages? Friendships? Disassociations? Residences? Organizations? Affiliations? Triumphs? Tragedies? Failures? Beliefs? Disbeliefs? Regrets? Illnesses? Beginnings? Endings? All of the above? More to come?
Six decades into the process, the tasks of trying to nail down who I am still confound me. Asking my spouse, children, relatives, friends, a mentor, casual acquaintances, professional peers, e-mail correspondents, and even reconnecting with a classmate passing through after forty years doesn't help. They only know who I was before I took my last really good look in the mirror just an hour ago. To the question, "Who do you say I am?" they offer answers built on ancient data, solitary events, psychobabble, first impressions, projections, and those times they heard me say something nice or naughty or nothing at all. They construct who I am based on what they want, need, expect, believe, love, remember, regret, forget, hate, and fear. They answer as though the question is rhetorical and so each time I must consider whether it was.
The last time my mother visited me before she died, I stood with her as she looked in a mirror pointing at her reflection. "Caren. I don't know who that person is," she said. "I don't feel like the seventy-four-year-old staring back at me. Inside I still feel like I'm twenty-five. Okay, maybe forty-five."
"I know just what you mean," I said honestly. "I'm having the same experiences when I look in the mirror."
Standing in the silence that held our shared moment and looking straight ahead, both of us could see a bit more of an answer. I touched the reflection of my nose and then the reflection of hers. Other comparisons followed. I pointed out what was on her face and what would probably appear on mine some day. She touched what was on my face and then showed me where I could find it on hers. We both had a lifelong blemish we couldn't stand in the same place. She had it removed several times, but it always grew back. For me it was a childhood lesson learned and relearned. I never tried getting rid of it. Then there was that way we both tilted our heads. There—before our eyes—right then—we were doing it.
For a few more minutes, we giggled like preteen girls as the game played itself out. We never told anyone about our silliness, and the next time those moments came to mind was the afternoon I delivered the eulogy at my mother's funeral. "Let me tell you about Muriel Oglesby," I said, knowing that the best I could do was to hold up snapshots of her life for those gathered to recall or view them for the first time.
Afterwards, when people came up to express condolences, they said ever so kindly that I had captured who she was. I think not. Indeed, the hours, days, and years that have followed redevelop and enlarge the pictures of her that I cropped into snippets that day. Standing in silence and looking in the mirror alone, I reach out and touch my face while still asking who that mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, wife, ex-wife, friend, cousin, aunt, sister, and neighbor was.
Wonderings and Wanderings
Reread the passage from Mark 8. As it opens, we meet Jesus and the disciples as they are about to enter the villages of Caesarea Philippi. This is a literal and figurative turning point in the story of Jesus' journey from Nazareth in Galilee. These villages are as far north as his ministry of healing, teaching, and preaching will take him before he changes direction and sets his face south toward Jerusalem.
Enter into the story by seeing yourself among those on the road with Jesus. You see him turn to his disciples and hear him ask, "Who do people say I am?"
You begin pondering the reasons why Jesus might ask this question about what people say. The disciples answer that people say Jesus is John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the prophets. Take time to explore images, memories, thoughts that may come to mind if you remember stories and information about these biblical characters.
• According to the disciples, what are people not saying in response to Jesus' question?
Next, Jesus asks his disciples, "But who do you say I am?" You notice that only Peter responds.
• What might be reasons and possibilities for the others' silence?
Stay in character as one traveling with Jesus and draw a line down the middle of a blank piece of paper. On one side, record nouns and phrases to answer the question: "Who do I say Jesus is?" On the other side, write down who, in your eyes, he is not.
In ancient times, Jews believed that the role of the messiah—an anointed one—would be to usher in a messianic age that would change the world. In those days, prophets, priests, and kings were anointed. But rather than endowing one with divinity, anointing was a call to take on a mantle of responsibility and receive the authority to be heard and to even make things happen that would result in "sight for all who were blind" and the "release of all who were captive."
• In your own words, how would you reword Peter's answer to Jesus?
As soon as Peter answers, Jesus "sternly" orders all the disciples not to tell anyone. Definitions of the word sternly include rigid, strict, and uncompromising as well as severe and allowing no leeway. Synonyms for the word sternly include strictly, harshly, firmly, hardheartedly, unsympathetically, and austerely. The definitions and synonyms just mentioned are for the word sternly in English. The original Greek epitimao is stronger and means rebuke, sternly admonish, censure, and warn.
• Why do you think Jesus might have reacted this way?
• Jesus responds with neither a yes nor a no. Why?
• If you were to imagine Jesus asking himself the question, "Who do I say I am?" how might he answer his own question?
Go back through the chapters of your life.
• Who along the way in your family, among friends, and in other personal and professional relationships helped to define who you were and who you are?
• Are there ones who never understood who you were, who you aspired to be, who you've become, and who you are becoming?
Stop whatever you are doing and sit quietly, or look in the mirror, or go stand in the midst of a crowded room, mall, or a place away from home and ask yourself, "Who do I say I am?"
Mirrors
I am a victim of my biography.
—Barack Obama
In the world to come I shall not be asked, "Why were you not Moses?" I shall be asked, "Why were you not Zusya?"
—Rabbi Zusya
Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance.
—Herman Melville
I am what I am and that's all that I am. I'm Popeye the Sailor Man.
—Popeye
The Idea of Ancestry (I)
by Etheridge Knight
Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black faces: my father, mother, grandmothers(1 dead), grandfathers (both dead), brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins (1st and 2nd), nieces, and nephews. They stare across the space at me sprawling on my bunk. I know their dark eyes, they know mine. I know their style, they know mine. I am all of them, they are all of me; they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee.
I have at one time or another been in love with my mother, 1 grandmother, 2 sisters, 2 aunts (1 went to the asylum), and 5 cousins. I am now in love with a 7-yr-old niece (she sends me letters in large block print, and her picture is the only one that smiles at me).
I have the same name as 1 grandfather, 3 cousins, 3 nephews, and 1 uncle. The uncle disappeared when he was 15, just took off and caught a freight (they say). He's discussed each year when the family has a reunion, he causes uneasiness in the clan, he is an empty space. My father's mother, who is 93 and who keeps the Family Bible with everybody's birth dates (and death dates) in it, always mentions him. There is no place in her Bible for "whereabouts unknown."
Ticket
by Charles O. Hartman
I love the moment at the ticket window—he says— when you are to say the name of your destination, and realize that you could say anything, the man at the counter will believe you, the woman at the counter would never say No, that isn't where you're going, you could buy a ticket for one place and go to another, less far along the same line. Suddenly you would find yourself —he says—in a locality you've never seen before, where no one has ever seen you and you could say your name was anything you like, nobody would say No, that isn't you, this is who you are. It thrills me every time.
Self Portrait
by Edward Hirsch
I lived between my heart and my head, like a married couple who can't get along.
I lived between my left arm, which is swift and sinister, and my right, which is righteous.
I lived between a laugh and a scowl, and voted against myself, a two-party system.
My left leg dawdled or danced along, my right cleaved to the straight and narrow.
My left shoulder was like a stripper on vacation, my right stood upright as a Roman soldier.
Let's just say that my left side was the organ donor and leave my private parts alone,
but as for my eyes, which are two shades of brown, well, Dionysus, meet Apollo.
Look at Eve raising her left eyebrow while Adam puts his right foot down.
No one expected it to survive, but divorce seemed out of the question.
I suppose my left hand and my right hand will be clasped over my chest in the coffin
and I'll be reconciled at last, I'll be whole again.
From A Doll's House
by Henrik Ibsen
Nora: ... [W]hen I was at home with papa, he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it. He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls. And when I came to live with you ...
I mean that I was simply transferred from papa's hands into yours. You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as you or else I pretended to, I am really not quite sure which—I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other. When I look back on it, it seems to me as if I had been living here like a poor woman—just from hand to mouth. I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and papa have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life.
Helmer: How unreasonable and how ungrateful you are, Nora! Have you not been happy here?
Nora: No, I have never been happy. I thought I was, but it has never really been so ... only merry. And you have always been so kind to me. But our home has been nothing but a playroom. I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was papa's doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls. I thought it great fun when you played with me, just as they thought it great fun when I played with them. That is what our marriage has been, Torvald.
Helmer: There is some truth in what you sav—exaggerated and strained as your view of it is. But for the future it shall be different. Playtime shall be over, and lesson-time shall begin....
Nora: Alas, Torvald, you are not the man to educate me into being a proper wife for you.
Helmer: And you can say that!
Nora: And I—how am I fitted to bring up the children?
Helmer: Nora!
Nora: Didn't you say so yourself a little while ago—that you dare not trust me to bring them up?
Helmer: In a moment of anger! Why do you pay any heed to that?
Nora: Indeed, you were perfectly right. I am not fit for the task. There is another task I must undertake first. I must try and educate myself—you are not the man to help me in that. I must do that for myself. And that is why I am going to leave you now.... I must stand quite alone, if I am to understand myself and everything about me. It is for that reason that I cannot remain with you any longer....
Helmer: To desert your home, your husband and your children! And you don't consider what people will say!
Nora: I cannot consider that at all. I only know that it is necessary for me.
Helmer: It's shocking. This is how you would neglect your most sacred duties.
Nora: What do you consider my most sacred duties?
Helmer: Do I need to tell you that? Are they not your duties to your husband and your children?
Nora: I have other duties just as sacred.
Helmer: That you have not. What duties could those be?
Nora: Duties to myself.
Helmer: Before all else, you are a wife and a mother.
Nora: I don't believe that any longer. I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are—or, at all events, that I must try and become one. I know quite well, Torvald, that most people would think you right, and that views of that kind are to he found in books; but I can no longer content myself with what most people say, or with what is found in books. I must think over things for myself and get to understand them....
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Across the Threshold, Into the Questions by CAREN GOLDMAN, TED VOORHEES. Copyright © 2008 Caren Goldman and Ted Voorhees. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
About the Authors
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
Suggestions for Using This Book
1. Searching Self
2. Living Questions
3. Facing Fear
4. Paying Attention
5. Discerning Intentions
6. Becoming Well
7. Resisting Not Evil
8. Reconciling the Past
9. Needing Help
10. Being Poor
11. Seeing Everything
12. Crossing Thresholds
13. Knowing One's Will
14. Denying Truth
15. Unpacking Words
16. Epilogue: Bringing Forth
Notes
Resources
Permissions
Index
What People are Saying About This
"Jesus: loving to outsiders, hard on insiders. A poet of existence, a visionary of God's plan for the world, a lover, a nose-thumber, a party-lover, a life-laugher, hard-driven, to the point, clear-eyed, kept his goal before him, did not compromise with the System, but exposed it for what it was, walking into its maw, sure that by swallowing him the System would poison itself, dying from a surfeit of health. Ready to die for truth, to set people free. Care to explore?"--(Walter Wink, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Interpretation,
Auburn Theological Seminary)
"The trouble with Jesus is that he refuses to stay where you put him. Just when you thought he was safely confined to the pages of Scripture, Goldman and Voorhees have gone and let him out. In Across the Threshold and Into the Questions, this freed Jesus will walk across the threshold of your life and make his stories become your stories."--(Rev. Anne Robertson, Executive Director, Massachusetts Bible Society)
"The trouble with Jesus is that he refuses to stay where you put him. Just when you thought he was safely confined to the pages of Scripture, Goldman and Vorhees have gone and let him out. In Across the Threshold and Into the Questions, this freed Jesus will walk across the threshold of your life and make his stories become your stories. Then your life won't stay where you put it either. Open this book at your own risk!"
—Rev. Anne Robertson, Executive Director Massachusetts Bible Society
"Across the Threshold, Into the Questions by Caren Goldman and Ted Voorhees is a thought-provoking book. From the first words of the first chapter – indeed from the introduction – I found myself underlining insightful sentences and scribbling notes to myself of things I wanted to think about more deeply. The authors’ penetrating open-ended questions are an invitation to interact with the gospel characters in a new and deeper way. Their personal stories show how the age-old tales are relevant today, and their choices of quotations allow the reader to see how people through history have engaged these same questions. I love this book. It will be excellent for discussion groups as well as individual reading and thought."
—Karen L. Oberst, author of But I Tell You, Jesus Introduces a Better Way to Live
“Jesus: loving to outsiders, hard on insiders. A poet of existence, a visionary of God’s plan for the world, a lover, a nose-thumber, a party-lover, a life-laugher, hard-driven, to the point, clear-eyed, kept his goal before him, did not compromise with the System, but exposed it for what it was, walking into its maw, sure that by swallowing him the System would poison itself, dying from a surfeit of health. Ready to die for truth, to set people free. Care to explore?”
—Walter Wink, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Interpretation, Auburn Theological Seminary
“The readings, questions, and reflections on every page invite the reader to cross that inner threshold, inviting serious self-discovery, and opening new possibilities for transformation.”
—Rev. D. Andrew Kille, PhD, editor of The Bible Workbench and co-editor of Psychological Insight into the Bible: Texts and Readings
“Rewards the reader who is willing to go deeper into questions about Jesus and about oneself…can open a world of spiritual dynamic.”
—The Rt. Rev. William E. Swing, Episcopal Bishop of California, retired, and President of United Religions Initiative
“For believer, non-believer, and skeptic, a wonderful companion for the journey…I will turn to this book over and over again in sermon and class preparation, as well as for my own prayer and contemplation.”
—The Very Rev. Tracey Lind, Dean of Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland, and author of Interrupted by God: Glimpses from the Edge
“This book is packed with possibilities, so take your time with it: no rush! Wander through it, savor it, have a mirror handy, and expect surprises.” —John Beverley Butcher, author of The Tao of Jesus and Telling the Untold Stories