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More Wisdom on Trust from
Fred Shuttlesworth & Others 05/20/2023 |
Yesterday we meditated on Fred Shuttlesworth and where courage comes from: “It comes from trust,” he told me. Indeed, he preferred the word trust to “courage” because for him it is the source of
courage. |
Notice too that his consciousness—like that of courageous people in the Amazon—was about the movement, the collective, the people. Holiness is not an individualistic thing; it is about grace
alive in people, communities, movements. “You can kill the individual but not the movement,” he said. | “Remembering Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.” WCPO 9 |
So far, we have considered how Joy and Courage are signs of holiness in our time and now we can add the word trust because Fred, a person of demonstrable courage, has instructed us that trust is the way to courage. He is not alone. Other mystics and saints have had much to say about trust and in my Original Blessing book I dedicate a chapter to “Trust: A Psychology of Trust and Expansion.” I like that title because trust is the root meaning of faith and is another way to expand the heart and thus birth courage—coeur large,
big-heart. |
“Statue of Shuttlesworth in front of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute by sculptor John Walter Rhoden.” Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain | Following are others who speak on trust: Gerhard Von Rad, a scholar of wisdom literature in the Bible, says that the world of wisdom literature in the Scriptures “is a world that is thoroughly worthy of trust.” Hildegard of Bingen: “Trust shows the way.” The psalmist: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart….” “Happy is she who trusts in the Lord….” (Notice the link between trust and joy.) “He who trusts in the Lord will be enriched.” (Ps. 3.5; 16.20; 28.25) Meister Eckhart: “You can never trust God too much. Why is it that some |
people do not bear fruit? It is because they have no trust either in God or in themselves.” Julian of Norwich: “Often our trust is not full. We are not certain that God hears us because we consider ourselves worthless and as nothing.
This is ridiculous and the very cause of our weakness. I have felt this way myself.” |
Trust, once learned, leads to entrustment also. Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann: “What God does first and best and most is to trust his people with their moment in history. He trusts them to do what must be done for the sake of his whole community.” Are we being entrusted | Human rights attorney, Amal Clooney, speaks about how courage is needed today, more than ever. AP
Archive |
today with our moment in history like King, Shuttlesworth, Dorothy Stang and others were in theirs? |
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Original Blessing, pp. 81f. Banner image: Images of Freedom Riders who bravely rode integrated buses into the volatile South as part of the Civil Rights Movement. From an exhibit in Atlanta, Georgia at The Center for Civil and Human Rights. Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons. |
Queries for Contemplation
What is the role of trust in your spiritual journey? Do you recognize a connection between trust and entrustment? |
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Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and
Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way. “Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great
Work; co-author, The Universe Story | |
See Matthew Fox's full calendar
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