I just watched the first episode of a tv programme called 'Extreme Pilgrim'. It was interesting; centring on a Church of England priest going to China to experience Buddhism courtesy of Zen and martial arts. I could imagine the voices of friends, family and Church members warning against syncretism, even ready to exorcise the man, and definitely dubious of him as a representative of the Christian faith. However, the overall conclusion of the show, at least as far as I was concerned, was that there is inherent spirituality in simple community living and in stilling your soul.
In terms of stilling one's soul, I was put in mind of a talk I heard by Peter Scazzero, who champions the daily office as an important and healthy discipline, and of a talk entitled '5 Pagan values Christians hold dear' by the late Mike Yaconelli, in which he attacks busy-ness as a Christian value. As a naturally low energy (we could say lazy but I prefer to blame genetics) person this has always resonnated with me(!), if simply because I have at times tried to maintain a typically busy Christian lifestyle and have lost myself in it, become ridiculously stressed, and as a result got ill and emotionally unstable. Maybe this in itself is an indication of my lack of spiritual stamina, but I object to that evalution. Much as I do believe that Christians should be deeply involved in community and environmental work etc, we should not be judged by our busy-ness. In fact, it would be preferable not to be judged at all, which, although we talk about it, still seems an alien concept to most Christians.
I'm very attatched to the idea of community living, although I'm sure that I unduly romanticise it. Me and a close friend, being quite 'hippy' and environmental in our tendencies, always dream about creating a more environmentally sustainable female semi-monastic community after university. We aren't quite sure if this will involve compulsory singleness, it must be admitted that this depends on how pessimistic we feel as the time. Much as I'm a loner by nature, and may end up single for long periods if not permanently, I feel that it's quite important to live, or at least closely share our lives, with others. The creation of this community culture is a key function of church as far as I'm concerned, although it will always be a struggle, as Western society has become so individualist.
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Claire, I love that you are interested in what we can learn from other spiritual traditions. I think it's unfortunate that many Christians are closed to the idea that other people might be doing anything better than they are, thinking 'if it's not Christian, it's against God'. It seems to me that's unnecessarily paranoid and guarantees that Christians will be stuck where they're at because they refuse to learn from other people.
There are some Christians who value stillness but as you pointed out, there is much in the Christian subculture which opposes it. Even though Christianity claims to be all about 'faith' and a person's relationship with God, in practice it's often all about looking the part, which means you have to do a lot of 'good works'.
I think you'd appreciate what Karen Sloan has to say. In college she and her friends set up communal living and currently (last I heard) she's 'homeless' - she put her things in storage and is traveling around, staying with friends and speaking to Christians about 'new monasticism'.
If you listen to podcasts there's one with her here.
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