Streams of Living Water: Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith Book

While this wasn't my favorite of the (two) books that I've read of Richard Foster so far, it--like his other writing--still has his wonderful writing style that always seems inspiring and transcendent. I find it hard to describe, but maybe it's best likened to fresh, warm, hearty bread, although it's less earthy than that, so not the perfect metaphor. However, it's similar in that it feels at once comforting and heartening, rich and wholesome, and too-soon finished.

In this book, Foster discusses six "streams," or traditions, of Christian faith: contemplative, holiness, charismatic, social justice, evangelical, and incarnational. In order to more fully flesh out each, he gives us a vivid sketch of how Biblical personalities and then saints or Christians ancient and more contemporary have embodied these traditions in their lives. For me, I felt that his descriptions of these different personalities were more vivid and enduring than what I learned of the traditions themselves, though he detailed each one in a very clear, charitable manner. (I still can't quite nail down what holiness is/how it is different from the rest, but that's probably more of a reflection on me as a reader rather than on Foster as a writer). Reading through about the different people, though, made me both feel incredibly ignorant about church history (maybe even history in general). Luckily for people like me (or maybe not since I felt obligated to read it because of my cluelessness?), he included at the end a basic outline of church history, and then short paragraphs about many notable people who exemplified the traditions throughout history, which were informative and pretty well interesting considering the fact that it was basically like reading through an encyclopedia. Still, despite the revelation that I know so little about anything, I was also grateful to now be introduced to so many amazing people. Among the ones that particularly stuck out to me:

St. Antony (Contemplative), who sold all that he had and went out into the Egyptian desert for twenty years to discover God. Foster tells about a few of the very vividly-detailed confrontations he had with demons/temptations, his miracles and healings, and his peace-making. I feel like I probably didn't know much about him since I know very little of saints and such having not grown up in the Catholic church, but was very... impressed, I guess you would say, at the supernatural character of his life.

Frank Laubach: (Contemplative) As someone who's interested in adult literacy/education, I could hardly not be attracted to Laubach, who did absolutely incredible work: his "each one teach one" campaign to try to spread literacy all over the developing world, his forming the World Literacy Committee, and his work on developing ways to teach people to read in dozens of different countries and cultures is almost overwhelming. For me, the part that is almost even more amazing is that he did all this while (because of?) doing things like his "Game of Minutes," where he tried to have God in mind every minute of the day, and ora et labora, a manner of working while praying from the Benedictine monks that makes work a true collaboration with God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Holiness): The German professor, theologian, double agent who worked to assassinate Hitler, and then ultimately prisoner and martyr after the plot failed. He sought to truly follow Jesus, "[leading:] him to an uneasy pacifism: desiring to be obedient to the peace commandment of Jesus while at the same time standing in firm resistance to the tyranny of Hitler," and developing the concepts of costly vs. cheap grace: ""Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ"" vs. the cheap grace of ""the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession"" (or, I guess in my opinion, many of the things that the modern church is accused of being hypocritical for). He spoke out against the beginnings of mistreatment of Jewish people during their deportation in a way that is admirable in its boldness: ""An expulsion of the Jews from the West must necessarily bring with it the expulsion of Christ."" He insisted, in a speech that many of his colleagues were furious at and walked out on, that the Church has an obligation to all members of society whether they are Christians or not. Maybe he wasn't the first to develop this concept, but it also seems like he very much was aware of the idea of multiple histories/the history of the oppressed, and tried to structure his life accordingly, trying to ""see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled--in short, from the perspective of those who suffer.""

William Joseph Seymour (Charismatic): I pretty much had no idea what the Asuza Street revival was/why it was significant, so I didn't know that Seymour was the one who lead it. Seymour left his Southern beginnings as a self-educated man and went to California after a time working with a white preacher, only to start church meetings three times a day for several years in the early 1900s, with consistent crowds of 800 inside the building, and 400-500 outside. Most amazing, in a time when blacks and whites rarely mixed, Seymour--a black preacher--was drawing crowds of every race and social status and giving women authority roles, gathering huge amounts of people with no choir, no church organizing behind what he was doing, no offerings taken, and no advertising. Behind it all was his vision of love (the primary evidence of the Holy Spirit, rather than speaking in tongues, as later Pentecostals would make it) and of uniting one common family, undivided by race, gender, class, or nation.

Dorothy Day (Social Justice): I had heard of her before and knew that the Catholic Worker movement grew from her, but had no idea how revolutionary she was in terms of campaigning for the poor, the homeless, and for workers, how she set up so many houses of hospitality to feed and give a place for the poor to sleep (but also to meet with them and truly know them and listen to them), and how she was an uncompromising pacifist, even after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Her bravery and willingness to serve perfect strangers and her unswerving commitment to what she believed in are astonishing.

Dag Hammarskjold (Incarnational): Secretary-General of the United Nations who served for eight years and was killed in a plane crash in Africa, who "transformed the UN from a forum for conference and controversy into an agency of creative action for peace." He, like Frank Laubach, absolutely amazes me because despite being the Secretary-General of the UN, he had a very deep and rich spiritual life. Upon his death, his secretary found a 175-page book that he had written called "Markings" that is an in-depth exploration "with merciless scrutiny and absolute honesty" of his personal and spiritual state that never directly mentions anything about the UN or his professional life. After helping resolve the Suez Crisis, he wrote: "Your own efforts 'did not bring it to pass,' only God--but rejoice if God found a use for your efforts in his work." Wow.

I feel very grateful to this book for again making me aware of the incredible richness there is in the lives of so many people who have gone on before, and I hope that it will help me to get around to reading some of their works. More than that, though, it has also been an inspiration and also, in a way, devotional: it is hard not to feel uplifted, thankful, and moved by these people, these acts, and these evidences of God's work in the world, especially in the beautiful way that Richard Foster describes them.