The particular spirituality of the Appalachian Riders For Our Lady is based on our three foundational principles of commitment, continuity and conversation in addition to the general Catholic evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, obedience and stability adapted to a lay context. The Riders strive to promote a conversational culture, proclaiming Christ crucified, authentically Christian and Catholic, in the midst of a world largely lacking culture of any sort.  Our vows of commitment, continuity, and conversation do not necessarily mean that we have any natural inclination or talent in these areas. I’m a member of St George Melkite Greek Catholic parish in Sacramento. My booklist, which is in a way deep in history (each Rider, during their novitiate, settles on at most 24 books of primary importance), is:

• Bible, unabridged Revised Standard Version
• The Trial of Job; Patrick Henry Reardon
• The Greek Plays; various authors
• Vergil’s Aeneid; Sarah Ruden translation
• Ignatius of Antioch; Allen Brent
• Harp of the Spirit; St Ephrem the Syrian
• The Confessions; Saint Augustine
• Commentary on Jeremiah; St Jerome
• Homilies on John; St John Chrysostom
• Dante’s Divine Comedy; Anthony Esolen
• Collected Poems; St Robert Southwell
• Comedies & Tragedies; William Shakespeare
• Complete English Poems; John Donne
• Collected Poetry & Prose; Robert Frost
• Dylan’s Visions of Sin; Christopher Ricks
• Complete Translations; Seamus Heaney
• Pride and Prejudice; Jane Austen novel
• Christianity in the Middle East; Raheb 
• Memoirs of Louis Bouyer; John Pepino
• Deification Through the Cross; K. Anatolios
• Life of the World; Alexander Schmemann
• Compendium to the Catholic Catechism
• Horologion; Melkite Greek Catholic liturgy
• The Liturgy of the Hours; unabridged

The Appalachian Riders For Our Lady have a particular interest in the season of Ascensiontide, which we consider nearly as important as Advent and Lent.  My particular interest is: That ecclesial bodies with very different ecclesiology seem to have very similar Christology.  Emphasis on “seem”. 

Thomas Gwyn and MaryAlice Dunbar

Christian Perspectives

The foundation of everything is Christ Jesus, and him crucified. However, beyond the personal aspects of that, what are the implications for our social relationships?

I want to commend the Catholic perspective to you. Of course, that raises several questions:

• Is it reasonable to speak of THE Catholic perspective?
• Is my characterization of this perspective warranted?
• Can one also speak of THE Protestant perspective, especially given the range of protestant ecclesial bodies?

I propose that the protestant perspective is that the Christian life is best lived and considered from the primary viewpoint of the individual or, at most, the congregation. On the other hand, I commend the Catholic perspective: the Christian life is best lived and considered from the primary viewpoint of the universal Church, the Bride of Christ, extended in spacetime and militantly subsisting in the Catholic Church whose chief steward is the bishop of Rome (for better or worse). Besides addressing those preliminary questions, I intend to commend the Catholic perspective in three aspects:

• better able to cope with adversity
• more resources for spiritual formation
• closer alignment with the scriptural canon

All these points are controversial; however, I intend not to argue for them but rather to chew on them.  The difference between a primarily individual perspective and a primarily ecclesial perspective also has a significant political component since the State desires no competitor to its hegemony (see, for example, Alan Jacobs biography of The Book of Common Prayer which documents how this worked out in England) and hence is inclined to favor an individual perspective which it can divide and conquer.

I’m also assuming that the more alive an entity, the more applicable the principle that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. In addition, whenever possible I’d like to phrase matters sociologically. A major advantage of a perspective more social than individual is that one can “check one’s answers”– the boredom of, for example, discussion about end-time scenarios or sectarian doctrine being that one can not check one’s theory in one’s day to day life and interactions with others as one can, on the other hand, regarding ethics and how to live in community. Somewhat related to this, I prefer to get my history indirectly, via literature.

On a personal level, I think the core of the Protestant error centers on the attempt to place faith above love (see Luther’s commentary on Galatians) contra Saint Paul and the Catholic tradition.

The noted Evangelical scholar Mark Noll, in the book ‘Is the Reformation Over’, argues that Catholic and Protestant disagreements really come down to different understandings of the nature of the Church.  I don’t disagree; however, I very much disagree with the view that “well, maybe so but that’s not important to me..it’s my personal relationship with God that is important.”  The nature of the Church is essentially intertwined with the work of the Holy Spirit, as is reflected in the Nicene creed.  God is able to sustain what was initially established (..I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it) and it is wrong-headed to try to start over on one’s own.

Technology is very important and clearly the most important technology is language. The people who know the most about language are not the philosophers but the poets, broadly defined.

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” (Richard Feynman)

“The Catholic Church is the Church we mean when we say The church.” (Lenny Bruce)

“When I was a boy in Scotland I was fond of everything that was wild, and all my life I’ve been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild creatures. Fortunately around my native town of Dunbar, by the stormy North Sea, there was no lack of wildness, though most of the land lay in smooth cultivation, With red-blooded playmates, wild as myself, I loved to wander in the fields to hear the birds sing, and along the seashore to gaze and wonder at the shells and seaweeds, eels and crabs in the pools among the rocks when the tide was low; and best of all to watch the waves in awful storms thundering on the black headlands and craggy ruins of the old Dunbar Castle when the sea and the sky, the waves and the clouds, were mingled together as one.” (John Muir)

“If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.” (John von Neumann)

“Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.” (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” (William Faulkner)

“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like “religion”, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.” (J.R.R. Tolkien)

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

Cultural Roots

Israel

• Bible, unabridged Revised Standard Version
• The Liturgy of the Hours; unabridged
• Horologion; Melkite Greek Catholic liturgy

Rome

• The Trial of Job; Patrick Henry Reardon
• Vergil’s Aeneid; Sarah Ruden translation
• Ignatius of Antioch; Allen Brent
• Harp of the Spirit; St Ephrem the Syrian
• The Confessions; Saint Augustine
• Commentary on Jeremiah; St Jerome
• Homilies on John; St John Chrysostom
• Dante’s Divine Comedy; Anthony Esolen
• Christianity in the Middle East; Raheb
• Deification Through the Cross; K. Anatolios
• Life of the World; Alexander Schmemann
• Compendium to the Catholic Catechism

Albion

• The Greek Plays; various authors
• Collected Poems; St Robert Southwell
• Comedies & Tragedies; William Shakespeare
• Complete English Poems; John Donne
• Collected Poetry & Prose; Robert Frost
• Dylan’s Visions of Sin; Christopher Ricks
• Complete Translations; Seamus Heaney
• Nature Writings & Essays; John Muir