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| Christine Aroney-Sine |
Christine Aroney-Sine is the founder and facilitator for Godspace, which grew out of her passion for creative spirituality, gardening and sustainability. Together with her husband, Tom, she is also co-Founder of Mustard Seed Associates but recently retired to make time available for writing and speaking. She describes herself as a contemplative activist, passionate gardener, author, and liturgist. She loves messing with church traditions and inspiring followers of Jesus to develop creative approaches to spirituality that intertwine the sacred through all of life. She facilitates workshops on spirituality and gardening, simplicity and sustainability and how to develop a more spiritual rhythm for our lives. Christine is inspired by Celtic Christian spirituality, which has opened her eyes to the God who is present in every moment, every experience and every place. She is open to learning from everyone and everything around.
You trained as an M.D. in Australia, and then spent time serving on a missionary vessel, the Mercy Ship Anastasis. What was that like?
It was both wonderful and challenging. I tell some of the stories of those early days in my book Tales of a Seasick Doctor. When I started on the Anastasis none of us had any experience and there were few others who had ever built a hospital on a ship to do surgery and medical work so it was hard to get advice on how to proceed. We also had very little money so it took us a long time to renovate the ship and build the hospital. We had lots of people tell us “it can’t be done”. I am sure that none of us realized that we were planting seeds that would impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
However, this was a time of deep spiritual learning and growth as we brought all our challenges to God in prayer. It was a very diverse community with people from all over the world but it was just that - a community that looked out for each other. My best friends are still people from those early days.
You have also served in a missionary capacity as an M.D. along the Thailand-Cambodian border. What drew you to that particular ministry? And what was it like inside a refugee camp?
I worked in the refugee camp with a team that was sent from the Anastasis. It was the first time that Youth with A Mission (which Mercy Ships was a part of at that stage), had worked in refugee camps so it was a high learning curve for all of us. I was only there for six weeks but they were some of the most influential weeks of my life. The devastation of peoples’ lives, watching kids die in our arms hearing stories of the atrocities that many had suffered was overwhelming.
These images are still seared on my brain and the experiences turned my faith, and my life upside down as I questioned everything I had learned in the past. I was devastated by the poverty and suffering that I encountered and wondered in the midst of it: “Does God care for people in situations like this and if so what is my responsibility towards them?”
In many ways, this was the pivotal experience of my life. Out of which I made a lifetime commitment to missions and advocacy for the poor.
In THE GIFT OF WONDER, you write: “Jesus’ stories, as well as his miracles, transformed his followers’ perception of life, faith and God as they reinterpreted their history and imagined a new world of justice, peace and abundance.” What do you think needs reinterpreting in our world today? What are your thoughts regarding the Church serving as an agent of reinterpretation?
Wow, that is a hard question to answer as I think so much needs to be reinterpreted. Primarily we need to reinterpret our lives to see ourselves not as vehicles of consumption but as stewards of creation, a global family that is meant to care for each other and for the beautiful world that God has placed us in.
I think that in the face of disaster or terminal illness, asking questions like “why did God allow this to happen?” demotivate us as we will never be able to answer them satisfactorily. We should instead ask questions that prepare us for the work that needs to be done in the face of these challenging situations. If we start from the premise that God is a God of love then we realize that no matter what happens we need to respond in the most loving way possible. That moves us from passive observers to active participants in the work that God is doing around the world.
You note that “When we admit we don’t know something, we open ourselves to new revelations.” Which (sort of) begs the question: How does a person balance this reality with a belief in an organized, structured religion?
We need to be constantly working for Biblically literacy, learning not just from the prompting of the spirit but also from reading of scripture and of theologians, not theologians that come only from our own stream of Christianity however. I have been stretched and guided by African, Asian and Native American theologians who have invited me to move beyond my comfort zones and ask new questions about faith and life.
How about this quote from your book: “Whatever my fears, I need to confront them, and questions are a good and often non-threatening way to do that.” From your own observations, why do we seem to be living in such a fear-driven time? And what sorts of questions should we be asking to help confront and overcome those fears?
Fear and anxiety seem to be the foundation of our society, partly I think because we are too busy and too distracted to admit our fear and use the tools that can move us out of it. We are discouraged from being reflective and using contemplative practices as well as creative tools like the ones I talk about in The Gift of Wonder, that don’t just calm our fears but also teach us new things in the midst of those fears.
You mention Psalm 62:1-2 (“My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from God; God alone is my rock and my salvation; God is my fortress, I will never be shaken.”) You refer to The Message version of this verse that uses the term ‘breathing space.’ Why does intimacy require breathing space?
To become intimate with someone we need to draw close and relax in their presence. We need to take time and allow ourselves to fully focus on that person. That I think is what breathing space makes possible in our relationship with God.
Gratitude seems to be one of the major focal points of THE GIFT OF WONDER. You write: “Gratitude is meant to be central to our faith and spiritual practices.” I’m curious, why isn’t gratitude the natural response of humans, at least in Western culture today?
I think that the consumer culture in which we are immersed has a vested interest in keeping us dissatisfied and ungrateful. It buries gratitude inside us so that we need to relearn the practice and build it into our lives.
There’s a great quote from Fr. Greg Boyle about brokenness in your book. “Standing in the margins with the broken reminds us not of our own superiority but of our own brokenness…The embrace of our own suffering helps us to land on a spiritual intimacy with ourselves and with others.” You go on to observe that “I don’t think anything rejoices the heart of God more than when we show compassion to the most vulnerable and neglected in our society.” Recently, in the US, there was a man put on trial after being arrested for providing water and food to undocumented immigrants coming across the southwestern border we share with Mexico. What are your thoughts about this?
I think it is tragic when we penalize people for acts of compassion. It dehumanizes us and the society in which we live. When we are not able to or. don’t want to reach out with compassion to those at the margins we do often do so out of feelings of superiority. I think this is a lot of what we see in the demonization of those wanting to cross the US/Mexican border as well as our treatment of the homeless and of the LBGTQI community.
Towards the end of THE GIFT OF WONDER, you include mention of St. Lydia’s Lutheran Church in Brooklyn whose members share a meal together as part of their liturgy. You and your husband live in a small community. Could you name a couple of benefits you’ve found from living this way?
Living in community has been so enriching for us. It encourages a life of hospitality. It also exposes us to other perspectives and theological viewpoints and encourages generosity, compassion and gratitude.
You write about “a God who is vulnerable enough to come as a human child and dwell among us, in spite of knowing this child, this beloved Son, would be persecuted, rejected and crucified. Throughout the biblical story, our vulnerable God is exposed to rejection and pain, revealing a trustworthiness to human welfare and flourishing that is astounding.” I’m curious, what got you thinking about God being vulnerable? And why is it important to understand God in this way?
I think working with the marginalized and the vulnerable in our world was the place that I started thinking about this. Then I was impacted by art by vulnerable people who saw the story of God from different perspectives. Finally, it was the theology of Kenneth Bailey in his book Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes that opened me to a much more human view of Jesus. Finally, the Me Too movement and thinking about Mary the mother of Jesus and how vulnerable she must have been in a society that could have stoned her to death were very impacting aspects for me. God came as a vulnerable child in a poor village to an unwed mother. What could be more vulnerable than that?
Is there anything else you’d like to mention?
A lot of what we have talked about here is very heavy and I think we need to be careful that we don’t get caught up in the weightiness of the Gospel story. The Gift of Wonder was written to connect people to a fun-loving, joy-filled God who loves to dance and enjoy life and invites us to join the fun. We need tools that help us lighten up and recognize that God delights in us and wants us to enter into the delight of this joy-filled God.
For more information on Godspace, please click here
For more information on THE GIFT OF WONDER, click here
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