Five Encounters with Wisdom
By Charles Hoffacker
2022 marks the 40th anniversary of my Nashotah House commencement, my ordination as a deacon, and my ordination as a priest. Since these important transitions, during a period as long as the biblical Exodus, I believe that I have been gifted with various encounters with wisdom, and I hope that I have taken respectful advantage of them. Some of these encounters came through the medium of books. Recalling several of them may be of value to other readers of The Chapter.
My experience with The Baptizing Community by A. Theodore Eastman occurred around my time at Nashotah House, in the early years of the 1979 Prayer Book. Bishop Eastman took the ascendant baptismal theology in a direction that to my knowledge no one else made so explicit: recognizing that a parish was not simply a community of the baptized, but a community that baptized. Doing so required constant references in parish life to four interlocking and far from watertight themes: death and resurrection, incorporation, commissioning, and inaugurated eschatology. This was an eye-opener for me and many others. Eastman’s book seems not to have received the attention it deserved. Perhaps a reprint is in order. Certainly many Episcopal parishes need to live more deeply into their identity as baptizing communities. This book is a useful tool for doing so.
Reginald Fuller is perhaps best remembered for his one-volume commentary on the lectionary. However, it was an earlier work of his, Liturgical Preaching, that provided me with a memorable encounter with wisdom. By this time, it had become widely acknowledged that a sermon should build on one or more of the readings presented earlier at the same service. What Fuller claimed was that the sermon must also have some explicit or implicit connection with what followed it, assuming that the service was a Eucharist. Homiletical proclamation should lead somehow to eucharistic action. This was an energizing discovery at a time when some of us experienced all of the Eucharist before the Liturgy of the Table as a series of preliminaries, and when many celebrations, especially early on Sunday morning, lacked any attempt at a sermon.
Growing up under the previous Prayer Book, I rejoiced from the start in the current Prayer Book’s generous license for the selecting and crafting of the Prayers of the People. However, it was Ormonde Plater’s Intercession: A Theological & Practical Guide that provided me with a wisdom experience in this area. It became a central volume in a small library of resources I gathered to help me construct weekly prayers of the people in several parishes I served. For me it was an encounter with wisdom to discover new categories for intercession as well as how to express traditional categories in fresh ways. Today seminaries, dioceses, and deaneries could provide a valuable service by offering workshops in the art of crafting intercessory prayers for congregational use. After a certain point, routine forms can amount to pastoral malpractice.
Early in my years as a priest, I participated with other campus ministers in an enjoyable discussion group based on what was then a new book: Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality Presented in Four Paths, Twenty-Six Themes, and Two Questions by Matthew Fox. This was the first book by Fox that I read and remains my favorite. While Fox begins with creation (as do the Bible and the Creeds) and never sets it aside, he does not neglect sin and redemption, but instead places them in a setting that amplifies our understanding of them: the four paths of the Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via Creativa, and Via Transformativa. He makes refreshing use of a wide variety of sources, many of them contemporary, many from earlier centuries. One need not endorse everything in the vast Fox corpus to find much of it of great value, including this comprehensive framework.
Robert Ellsberg’s All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time, a widely praised best seller, provides short yet comprehensive biographies of 365 saints and spiritual exemplars from Christianity and other faith traditions. Ellsberg’s style in presenting these life stories seemed to strike the right note every time, so that I have given away more copies of this book than any other. Through All Saints I have enjoyed many encounters with wisdom and grown in my enthusiasm for the project undertaken by contemporary Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and others of recognizing more diverse models of holiness in the world and celebrating the people who exemplify them. Subsequent Ellsberg titles include Blessed Among All Women: Women Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time and Blessed Among Us: Day by Day with Saintly Witnesses.
Over the decades since 1982, I have found these five books—and others—to provide encounters with wisdom. They have widened my vision for what is possible and imperative. They have ignited my enthusiasm time and again.
Alan Jacobs, author of Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind, recently said this in an interview with Plough: “The wonderful thing about books is how patient they are with us; they’re always there. You can pick them up and start reading them – they are very receptive to that. But if you put them down and walk away, they won’t complain. They’ll just wait. Then when you come back, they’re ready again.”
The five books I have identified as providing me with wisdom encounters over the long haul remain patient. They are accessible, willing to wait for readers both old and new. They still offer what they provided before: encounters with wisdom.
The Rev. Charles Hoffacker (‘82) is a priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington who lives in Greenbelt, Maryland. Now enjoying an active retirement, he ministers in a variety of ways , including as a writer, independent scholar, and board member of the Frances Perkins Center.
