So, let's consider the left hand side of the eschatological rollercoaster. Presence describes this movement, from the top left to bottom of their U model, 'sensing'. To me the U model as a whole seems to bear some resemblance to the pastoral cycle. They argue that 'Most change efforts ... don't move very far "down the U" because little deeper sensing occurs' (page 88).
The point Presence is making is that it is easy to gather information without challenging our habitual ideas; that 'confirms preexisting assumptions'. We will see only what we are prepared to see. The aim is to get beyond that, to suspend our expectations and even then we might not see our own connection to what is there.
If I am right and the U model owes something to the Philippians hymn, it will be because the hymn has been present in Western culture for 2000 years. In my last post I pointed out that in the downward movement, Jesus lets go of everything from being God, through being human, to slavery, to death, to the cross. It is impossible to get any lower.
Why do this? It is learning through humility, by abandoning what we hold dear we are forced to face our own responsibility for the mess we find ourselves in. This is the path of humility, of setting aside our power and encountering the raw situation we are in. It is embracing our own complicity in the human condition. And Jesus did this too. He lost everything, even God. On the cross he hit rock bottom, there was nowhere else to go.
This is of course the doctrine of incarnation (and of course Wesley's doctrine of original sin or prevenient grace - but more of that later). We encounter it in some teachings about prayer. This is not the sort of prayer that asks for things, but the sort of prayer that incarnates the one who prays, in the sense that they see things as they are.
Remember high church, Tory John Wesley who was radicalised as he traveled up and down the country and saw the reality of the industrial poor for himself. Remember, the ways in which most Christian traditions seem to find their way into the inner city. From Catholic or Anglo-Catholic retreat houses through to small intentional communities, associated with the Urban Theology Unit in the 1970s and 80s, and with evangelical fresh expressions in the 2000s.
You cannot see this if you are an academic theologian because theology is about the specific, as soon as you start to generalise it becomes effectively irrelevant to the majority of Christians. This is the big problem ecumenists in formal talks face, or perhaps too often do not face. I will write much more about this.
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