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Book Review: A
Hopeful Vision Of Beatitude Community
a review of Aaron
White's book ‘RECOVERING’
by Major
Stephen Court
Aaron White’s ‘RECOVERING’: From
Brokenness and Addiction to Blessedness and Community, is a
profound explication of a comprehensive but disregarded
scaffolding for Salvation Life, the blessings of Matthew
5:1-12 in Jesus’ teaching known as the ‘Sermon on the Mount.’
The title suggests the context in which Jesus’
blessings can be operationalized – Beatitudes evinced in an
addiction ecosphere (however, as you read, you’ll likely test
the flexibility of this concept and find it mind-blowingly
reversible, that recovering communities epitomize beatitude!).
Even before many review readers can
dismiss the subject matter by the title – RECOVERING – the
target audience is instantly expanded, in the introduction, to
about 7.8 billion book readers: “What is at stake is not just
recovery from drugs, alcohol, and other attachments, but the
recovery of full humanity, which is the recovery of the image
of the divine in each person. (6)
This means ‘everybody’.
And through full-bodied teaching
interwoven with gut-wrenching illustrations the author crafts
a vision of Jesus’ ideal for living life together, a concept
christened Beatitude Community.
White explains, “Recovery communities understand that a
wholesale renewal of heart, mind, lifestyle, and relationships
is necessary for those addicted to drugs and alcohol.
The Beatitudes show that a complete reorientation of
life is no less necessary for those who have been conformed to
the dislocation of the world.” (34)
Readers of Recovering are treated to an
ecumenical primer of Christian thought from Saint Macarius the
Great, Elder Ephraim, and Abba Isaac the Syrian to Annie
Dillard, Dallas Willard, and Rebekah Eklund.
To establish his case, White leans on a term coined by
Gregory of Nazianzus – theosis - and argues:
“Union with Christ makes sense of the
Beatitudes. Who embodies the Beatitudes more than Jesus? Who
is poorer of spirit, more mournful, meeker, hungering and
thirsting more for righteousness, more merciful, purer of
heart, more of a peacemaker, and more persecuted for the sake
of righteousness? Christ does not just bless the broken; he is
the broken. And Christ is also the exemplar of the “blessed”:
the inheritor of heaven and earth, the son of God, the
comforted, the fulfilled. He is the perfect picture of what it
means to be fully human in our brokenness and blessedness.”
(38)
“One of the key ways for us to create
and sustain Beatitude Communities is through intentional
friendship with those who can lead is further down the road of
vulnerability.” (62) What does that look like with your corps
on your local front?
Who are the most fragile people in your community, the
most marginalized?
How can you, individually and as a corps, befriend
these people well enough to be granted the privilege of
honesty about resentment and guilt and regret?
Being confronted with such raw
brokenness can be immobilizing.
White talks us out of motivational paralysis,
counseling, “Rather than trying to transform the world, focus
on transforming your table so that you can start making peace
on your block.” (150)
This will be a stretch for many, but it
is more plausible and practical than ‘world peace’.
And, maybe in the process of transforming your table,
you’ll participate in the transformation of your block.
And from there?
God knows.
“This is the purpose of the Beatitudes:
not to bring us sobriety, progressive politics, good morals,
or full churches, but to guide us toward the recovery of
Jesus’ divine image in us and in one another.”
And White’s RECOVERING will accelerate the advance
toward this goal. (171)
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