AEF-Frederica Matthews-Green

These are some thoughts from my notes on Frederica Matthews-Green’s presentation on Friday morning. Her presentation was entitled “The Call and Christian Spiritual Formation”.

Frederica used various icons throughout her presentation that were used to highlight the points she was making. She explained that one of the most important parts of early Christian art was to express a certain attitude displayed by the saints’ faces. Many early Christians could not read but they could gain a wealth of knowledge just by viewing the postures and faces of the great Christians who traveled the journey before them. She explained that experiments show that from birth we are designed to read faces and the early Christians were providing that opportunity for those who were illiterate.

Frederica briefly explained the Christian disciplines of prayer, fasting and alms giving. She explained that of the three, alms giving (charity, love for other) is the antidote for the sin of narcissism.

She also brought up the idea of viewing sin as infection rather than infraction. This later lead to a great comment by Brian McLaren who stated that all too often we as ministers of the Gospel offer a transaction for the infraction rather than healing for the infection. Good stuff.

Frederica showed us the picture of the Christ of Sinai. As soon as the image was displayed I was arrested by his eyes and couldn’t really focus on anything else in the picture. Luckily for me she drew attention to the eyes quickly and explained that she believe this painting is showing the dual nature of Christ as physician and healer. If you cover the left half of the picture you see a Christ who nearly looks through you and exposes the infection of sin within you. If you cover the right half of the picture you see a merciful Lord who heals and gives peace.

As you can see these thoughts are slowly making their way to my blog. During the six hour drive home today I spent probably four hours in silence thinking about what all of what I heard means for me and my involvement in the church. There is still much to unpack in mind and there will probably be many more posts about this conference and it’s impact. I look forward to sharing those thoughts, and what is put into practice, with all who read this.

I listened to Midlake’s “The Trials of Van Occupanther” several times during my travels and it just gets better every time I hear it. I also need to mention my untitled playlist that included: Bob Dylan’s “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”, Damien Rice’s “O”, Iron & Wine’s “Live Session (iTunes exclusive), Rocky Votolato’s “Suicide Medicine” and Sufjan Steven’s “Seven Swans”. I don’t know why I picked these specific artists or albums but I needed to listen to them all during my journey to and from Chicago.