Bethany Leadership Team
Tony Bartlett
Quite a long time ago, when I was in my late twenties, I read a short story. I think it was by a famous author, but I can't remember who. It had a very peculiar effect on me. It communicated both a strange complicity, and a very strong sense that here was some kind of real truth that no one had ever before explained to me. Because no one really knew it, although amazingly the author seemed to. Or, perhaps, having somehow stumbled on it he wanted to leave it at that, as something glimpsed but actually meant to be hidden, just as in the story itself.
A group of wealthy English people are on holiday in some classic setting. One of them knows of a secret location where there is a hint of an ancient ritual, ancient but still in fact alive. He invites others. They go. A woodland grove, darkness and flickering light. The thrill and intense meaning of what happens, without anything fully described. End of story.
I could see the darkness and light, and knew the author had put his finger on something real. It was not until 1991 when I read René Girard's Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World that I understood what the story was about. It's about the killing of the collective victim, the primal event of violence on which human culture is founded. It's about sacrifice of the victim and the way this lies at the core of human existence. But where the author left everything deliberately obscure Girard goes a long step further. He says the Bible is about revealing this truth, the process beginning with Abraham and coming
to a crescendo in the teaching and life of Jesus. Jesus is the collective victim who shines an unambiguous light on the whole terrible business of humanity's violence; and at the same time through his intense love he offers us a way of recreating our humanity.
The story I read was both pagan and Christian. It captured the feeling of the ancient rituals and put the reader in touch with something in the dark roots of our human world. At the same time it could not help but have two thousand years of the Christian story as its backdrop: hence the strange challenged feeling, the way in which the flickering light was itself caught and questioned in another light. A truly pagan experience would not have had this awareness, both of recognition and distance. It would have been as second nature as the ocean depths are for fish who carry their own lights and have never seen the sun.
My calling has always been to teach the understanding of Jesus as the one who shows us our aboriginal violence and offers us a way out from it. Two thousand years of not teaching this message as the core truth of Jesus does not change the deep impact it has had. I wrote something about this impact in my book Virtually Christian. Jesus has become a strand of DNA or code in our collective humanity, both revealing the victim and electrifying a nerve of compassion in our bones, increasingly difficult to silence. What this means for being a Christian is that
our walk of faith is not about getting a ticket to some off-planet heaven, but about being faithful to God's work of transformation of actual human life on the earth. There is a matrix of spiritual truth all around us and its name is God's-nonviolence-in-Christ!
The Syracuse house and center called "Bethany" is the place where this teaching finds a home. My wife,
Linda, and I began a prayer and study journey called Wood Hath Hope sixteen years ago. Our efforts have always been to follow through the consequences of these insights. It's been a long trek, not unlike the wandering of the Israelites in the wilderness. The horizon of a permanent location as recognizable sign and token of the teaching has always seemed out of reach. But now at last we really are arriving! At the same time Bethany is also a beginning, a setting out. Over the past four or five years Whh has grown, numerically and spiritually. It's now a community with its own identity and energy. Bethany has come to birth only at the moment where there is a community to support it and make it happen. Bethany's story is the story of a community, and it will continue to be so.
From stories about an age-old foundation hidden in the darkness, to one of a small seed revealing that foundation, putting out dynamic roots, overturning the old stones. The great thing is that all the stories are connected--once you grasp one little by little you begin to see the others. Is that not the case with all the best stories? You think you are in one, and step by step you discover are actually in an entirely different, much better one!
A group of wealthy English people are on holiday in some classic setting. One of them knows of a secret location where there is a hint of an ancient ritual, ancient but still in fact alive. He invites others. They go. A woodland grove, darkness and flickering light. The thrill and intense meaning of what happens, without anything fully described. End of story.
I could see the darkness and light, and knew the author had put his finger on something real. It was not until 1991 when I read René Girard's Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World that I understood what the story was about. It's about the killing of the collective victim, the primal event of violence on which human culture is founded. It's about sacrifice of the victim and the way this lies at the core of human existence. But where the author left everything deliberately obscure Girard goes a long step further. He says the Bible is about revealing this truth, the process beginning with Abraham and coming
to a crescendo in the teaching and life of Jesus. Jesus is the collective victim who shines an unambiguous light on the whole terrible business of humanity's violence; and at the same time through his intense love he offers us a way of recreating our humanity.
The story I read was both pagan and Christian. It captured the feeling of the ancient rituals and put the reader in touch with something in the dark roots of our human world. At the same time it could not help but have two thousand years of the Christian story as its backdrop: hence the strange challenged feeling, the way in which the flickering light was itself caught and questioned in another light. A truly pagan experience would not have had this awareness, both of recognition and distance. It would have been as second nature as the ocean depths are for fish who carry their own lights and have never seen the sun.
My calling has always been to teach the understanding of Jesus as the one who shows us our aboriginal violence and offers us a way out from it. Two thousand years of not teaching this message as the core truth of Jesus does not change the deep impact it has had. I wrote something about this impact in my book Virtually Christian. Jesus has become a strand of DNA or code in our collective humanity, both revealing the victim and electrifying a nerve of compassion in our bones, increasingly difficult to silence. What this means for being a Christian is that
our walk of faith is not about getting a ticket to some off-planet heaven, but about being faithful to God's work of transformation of actual human life on the earth. There is a matrix of spiritual truth all around us and its name is God's-nonviolence-in-Christ!
The Syracuse house and center called "Bethany" is the place where this teaching finds a home. My wife,
Linda, and I began a prayer and study journey called Wood Hath Hope sixteen years ago. Our efforts have always been to follow through the consequences of these insights. It's been a long trek, not unlike the wandering of the Israelites in the wilderness. The horizon of a permanent location as recognizable sign and token of the teaching has always seemed out of reach. But now at last we really are arriving! At the same time Bethany is also a beginning, a setting out. Over the past four or five years Whh has grown, numerically and spiritually. It's now a community with its own identity and energy. Bethany has come to birth only at the moment where there is a community to support it and make it happen. Bethany's story is the story of a community, and it will continue to be so.
From stories about an age-old foundation hidden in the darkness, to one of a small seed revealing that foundation, putting out dynamic roots, overturning the old stones. The great thing is that all the stories are connected--once you grasp one little by little you begin to see the others. Is that not the case with all the best stories? You think you are in one, and step by step you discover are actually in an entirely different, much better one!
Linda Bartlett
A quick bit of background on me – I was born in Oxford, England and had a secular, non-religious up-bringing. When I was fifteen I moved with my family to London. I attended the closest school to my new home which was a Catholic secondary school. By the time I graduated I had discovered Jesus, had completed the catechumenate (an adult Christian formation program) and was newly baptized. I had planned to study physics at University but made the decision to take a year off before starting college. During that year I worked as a waitress at a local hospital and spent the rest of my time volunteering at my church. I involved myself in everything I could: youth ministry, justice and peace groups, liturgy, retreats and Christian formation. At the end of that year I had changed my plans and began studying theology at London University. I completed a Bachelor’s in Divinity at the Jesuit Heythrop College, graduating in 1985. During that time I was heavily into social and peace activism, including civil disobedience against nuclear weapons and other anti-war protests. With a fellow student I produced a feminist-activist newsletter called “Magnificat”. I had also been introduced to Taize worship and spent some time at a community of the Little Brothers of Jesus in Spello, Italy (very near to Assisi). This community was inspired by St Francis and had a balance of work, prayer and simplicity of lifestyle that has remained meaningful to me as a model of peaceful, prayerful, Jesus-centered community.
At age 22 I joined Tony at Tower Hamlets Mission, a homeless center in London’s East End. Tony had just left the Catholic priesthood and we were trying to work out how we fit in as Christians in a non-Catholic world. We lived and worked there, restructuring a day center that provided meals and other basic care and establishing a residential alcohol rehab unit. It was there that we got married and had our first child, Christopher. It was also my first experience of living in an ecumenical, Christian community. In 1989 we left the Mission and relocated to Norfolk on the East coast shortly after our second child, Susannah, had been born. Our time in Aylsham was a transitional time. I trained as an RN and Tony discovered Girard’s mimetic theory. We began a small prayer and discussion group exploring a Girardian influenced theology called Kainos (which means “new”). Tony made the decision to do a Ph. D. in the United States to continue study in this area. He left for Syracuse a year ahead of the children and me. We followed once I had completed my nurse training.
We lived in the University area of Syracuse for twenty years. Liam our third child was born in 1995, a year after we arrived. We raised our children, and I continued nursing – first in pediatrics, and then in the HIV clinic at Upstate. Later I trained as an NP and I continue to work with HIV/AIDS in that role today. Initially we attended the Episcopal Cathedral (ST. Paul’s) and I coordinated their refugee resettlement program for a few years and ran a youth group there. We had traveled to Washington D.C to visit the School of Discipleship run by Gordon Cosby and, inspired by this, we began a “School of Christian Living” at St. Paul’s which offered many different courses for adult education. Over time it became clear that we were being called away from the established church setting and made the decision to leave St Paul’s and form a Christian group that would meet outside the church structures. We drew on our pervious experiences and, with one or two other committed people, created an intentional community with a focus on prayer, peace, social awareness, bible study and the desire to share things in common. Thus Wood Hath Hope was born.
We have been meeting for over seventeen years. Wood Hath Hope is an evolving community that has at its heart a desire to understand God as compassionate and non-violent through study of the Bible, theological reflection, healing prayer, community and hospitality to any who are seeking peace. We are a small group but people have come to us from many different Christian traditions, more recently those who have felt wounded by religion but are attracted to the person of Jesus. We have also begun to build a relationship with some of our Muslim neighbors based on a shared love of God. We have until now been a moveable feast - meeting at different locations – until last year when we finally had the means to buy and refurbish our first home - Bethany House. We called it Bethany because that is where Jesus stayed with his disciples after his resurrection in Luke’s account. Bethany most likely means “house of the poor” – the home of Mary who sat as a disciple at the feet of Jesus; of Martha who proclaimed “yes Lord I believe” to Jesus as the resurrection and the life; and Lazarus, beloved of Jesus, who rose from the dead. Bethany was a place that welcomed Jesus, a place of teaching, healing and risen life. Bethany house has long been a dream – a place to grow our Wood Hath Hope community and to create a beautiful physical space dedicated to the Lord
.
At age 22 I joined Tony at Tower Hamlets Mission, a homeless center in London’s East End. Tony had just left the Catholic priesthood and we were trying to work out how we fit in as Christians in a non-Catholic world. We lived and worked there, restructuring a day center that provided meals and other basic care and establishing a residential alcohol rehab unit. It was there that we got married and had our first child, Christopher. It was also my first experience of living in an ecumenical, Christian community. In 1989 we left the Mission and relocated to Norfolk on the East coast shortly after our second child, Susannah, had been born. Our time in Aylsham was a transitional time. I trained as an RN and Tony discovered Girard’s mimetic theory. We began a small prayer and discussion group exploring a Girardian influenced theology called Kainos (which means “new”). Tony made the decision to do a Ph. D. in the United States to continue study in this area. He left for Syracuse a year ahead of the children and me. We followed once I had completed my nurse training.
We lived in the University area of Syracuse for twenty years. Liam our third child was born in 1995, a year after we arrived. We raised our children, and I continued nursing – first in pediatrics, and then in the HIV clinic at Upstate. Later I trained as an NP and I continue to work with HIV/AIDS in that role today. Initially we attended the Episcopal Cathedral (ST. Paul’s) and I coordinated their refugee resettlement program for a few years and ran a youth group there. We had traveled to Washington D.C to visit the School of Discipleship run by Gordon Cosby and, inspired by this, we began a “School of Christian Living” at St. Paul’s which offered many different courses for adult education. Over time it became clear that we were being called away from the established church setting and made the decision to leave St Paul’s and form a Christian group that would meet outside the church structures. We drew on our pervious experiences and, with one or two other committed people, created an intentional community with a focus on prayer, peace, social awareness, bible study and the desire to share things in common. Thus Wood Hath Hope was born.
We have been meeting for over seventeen years. Wood Hath Hope is an evolving community that has at its heart a desire to understand God as compassionate and non-violent through study of the Bible, theological reflection, healing prayer, community and hospitality to any who are seeking peace. We are a small group but people have come to us from many different Christian traditions, more recently those who have felt wounded by religion but are attracted to the person of Jesus. We have also begun to build a relationship with some of our Muslim neighbors based on a shared love of God. We have until now been a moveable feast - meeting at different locations – until last year when we finally had the means to buy and refurbish our first home - Bethany House. We called it Bethany because that is where Jesus stayed with his disciples after his resurrection in Luke’s account. Bethany most likely means “house of the poor” – the home of Mary who sat as a disciple at the feet of Jesus; of Martha who proclaimed “yes Lord I believe” to Jesus as the resurrection and the life; and Lazarus, beloved of Jesus, who rose from the dead. Bethany was a place that welcomed Jesus, a place of teaching, healing and risen life. Bethany house has long been a dream – a place to grow our Wood Hath Hope community and to create a beautiful physical space dedicated to the Lord
.
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