Comments on: Busted: Mary Gordon

By: Dave Draine

Dave Draine — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:49:25 +0000

I particularly am in tune with Ms. Gordon’s view of eternal life as depicted near the end of Reading Jesus. It comes close to St. Paul’s views and simply speaks of being with God forever.

By: Helen

Helen — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:10:13 +0000

Great to read of someone else who feels the way I do. Plus my father was a Jew and although I am not accepted as Jew within the faith, I feel as much Jewish as Christian – well you can’t have one without the other can you?

So thanks Mary for sharing your journey – it pretty well matches mine.

By: Dan

Dan — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:00:21 +0000

GK,

My reason for not currently being in a religious community IS because I don’t agree with all the tenets of (fill in the blank). For instance, I love Jesus… but I don’t believe he’s the Messiah, so, I’m not Catholic. I love Buddha’s teachings as well… buuuuut I believe in God and don’t believe it’s necessary to shun the world in order to be enlightened…. I could go on all day with all faiths.

As a result, I say I’m spiritual; I believe the whole world is my community and I revere all faiths as expressions of God. Just because you and I don’t agree on the particulars doesn’t mean we aren’t linked to the same God.

There are people who are very isolated (with or without crystals) from any sense of community. And I agree with Mary that the Gospels are a communal work. All great spiritual writing is. However, before she’s too worried by “spiritual” people, she would do well to observe how they move in the world. Do they have a capacity for love and caring for others or do they merely talk a good game and turn from the world in order to save themselves? That’s a far better yardstick than whether the person is of a specific faith (or faith community) or not. (I do not say any of this as if to imply that I don’t struggle with it myself. I believe we all do on occasion; we live in a time where it’s possible to be with your own friends and family and feel utterly alone.)

By: Sheila S. Conrads

Sheila S. Conrads — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:51:10 +0000

As a convert to the Catholic Church – I read the story of Jewish scripture as a child, I was hooked. In my early thirties I read all the Bible every morning before my children woke. Tell Mary that Genesis thru Esther (Catholic Bible) is a really great read. The roots of Mary Gordon’s father, and my main man Jesus.

By: Kathy Hidy

Kathy Hidy — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:10:25 +0000

This is a compelling interview of what looks to be a beautiful book by Mary Gordon.

Thank you Mary Gordon and Bill McGarvey!

By: Bill McGarvey

Bill McGarvey — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:21:36 +0000

BustedHalo appreciates all your comments we simply ask that all those who wish to comment here do so using their real names instead of anonymous screen names.
Thank you.
Bill McGarvey
Editor-in-Chief
BustedHalo.com

By: G.K. Thursday

G.K. Thursday — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:06:37 +0000

This reminded me that even a stopped clock … Stating that “… it seems to me that if you base your life solely on a text, first of all you‚Äôre basing your life on a text from which you are quite culturally removed and you probably do need a little interpretation,” will drive the sola scriptura folks crazy. But Mary is the most naive of intellectuals if she thinks that she can disembed herself from her own Enlightenment prejudices and stay away from “me and God and my crystals”. Looking to a community is fine, as long as one genuinely accepts the demands of membership in that community. As a sacramental community, we listen to Jesus saying “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,” (Jn 15:10). which when taken truly to heart as the ordering dynamic of the Catholic community, means that if Jesus is “a little hard on divorce” the community doesn’t decide to ditch Jesus, but keeps his commands. Poor Mary Gordon wants to have it both ways: her own way in which she can unilaterally canonize someone “on my own”; and the Catholic community way which faces down the simpleminded fundamentalists. Alas for her, being part of a sacramental community means conversion of self to the goals and ways of the sacraments which constitute it, not to my own way.

By: mairie

mairie — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:14:23 +0000

I agree with Mary, sometimes the worst thing you can do is rely on studying the Gospel text to make sense of it in an intellectual way – something many people do to perhaps justify their faith. But it isn’t a text of ‘reason’ it’s a text of life and Love. Something to be experienced or in relationship to experience of the world and community. Maybe that’s why the Gospel grows on you, as you grow older- it’s a living thing. The divisions that are related to sex and/or money are about human limitations and judgments – never about the Gospel Jesus lives. But we do like being critical of each other – having the higher moral and perhaps intellectual ground – again not the Gospel Jesus teaches.