Living Faith Day By Day, by Debra K. Farrington.

Reviewed by Thomas Scarborough.

Debra Farrington, in her book Living Faith Day By Day, briefly surveys the history of monasticism, then describes monastic traditions from which we may derive spiritual benefit today. The book selects from the monastic traditions specific aspects of monastic life, which the author considers to represent a holistic balance for our everyday lives. She proposes, through eight major sections of the book, how the reader might develop, and further sustain, a personal rule of life – that is, a guiding rule which shapes one’s spiritual life from day to day.

What is the justification for following monastic traditions?

Farrington records that monastic traditions appeared relatively late in the Christian Church. She begins with Pachomius, who established a Christian monastic community ca. 270 A.D. Monastic traditions were not new with the Christian Church of course, with e.g. the Essenes and the Therapeutae existing long before the Christian era began. The book does not consider, however, why similar Christian traditions developed, simply noting that men and women “gathered to live in community together”. Nor does it consider why, just as people withdrew from the world to enter monasticism, they withdrew from monasticism to enter the world.

Monastic rules of life come as something foreign to me, having been brought up in the evangelical Congregational tradition, which grudgingly accepts only the shortest of confessions and constitutions, and requires no more than “the sufficiency of Holy Scripture for the spiritual guidance of man”. That is, a rule of life would seem to be both superfluous and reductionist from the Congregational point of view.

Not least, Farrington herself would appear to have the justification for following monastic traditions back to front. She states that if we “maintain [an] imbalance, we lose track of our relationship with God”. Surely the very opposite is true. If we lose track of our relationship with God, we maintain an imbalance. Therefore her very justification for following monastic traditions would appear to have the cart before the horse.

What are Farrington’s theological foundations?

This is important from the point of view of consistency and coherence of thought. If one is to follow someone’s lead, one would be encouraged to know that they have some grasp of the wider foundations on which they stand. In this regard, Living Faith Day By Day is a most remarkable eclectic mix. The following examples may not serve as conclusive proof of any particular theological foundations, but they do, I believe, raise a host of questions about coherence.

Farrington writes, “I am liberal,” as opposed to being “evangelical”. She states that some portions of Scripture are “more to our contemporary tastes” than others, and even that we “recoil” at some. She records without comment a Christian who practices his Christian faith while he “does not attend church”, and another who holds that “movement and play are prayer”. She suggests without further elucidation that one might find a spiritual director with “a background in a particular faith”.

She states that we are “cocreators with God”, that we “participate with God in creating a better world”, and that “our work assists God’s efforts”. Poor God, He needs our assistance. Or perhaps we should say, to use Farrington’s pronoun, “She” needs our assistance. One further wonders about a possible utopian slant in her outlook. She writes that we are “participating in the continuing creation of the world God – and each of us – hopes to see some day”. That is, what we hope to see appears destined to come true. There would seem to be shades of process theology here. At least, Farrington would seem to fall comfortably into some of its categories.

She states that “all people are consecrated to God”, and speaks of “God within everyone”. The closest she seems to come to any notion of sin or need for repentance in one’s spiritual life is her statement that each of us is “complex, frail, and incomplete”.

On what basis were these rules chosen?

One wonders what happened to the traditional monastic rules of life. Perhaps Farrington lost a few sheets on the way to the publishers. Perhaps the best known summary of any rule of life is “chastity, poverty, and obedience”. With regard to chastity, by her own admission she is single with two cats, yet is left “feeling spiritually alive” by making love. Farrington clearly is not living in poverty, but on an elevated level of affluence. And as far as obedience is concerned, this, too, is negotiable. One should “pay attention to what is reasonable”, and “see how you feel”. Since Benedict, individualism was largely ruled out in monastic orders, yet Farrington’s entire book is based on the crafting of an individual rule of life – with, of course, spiritual directors and companions to suit one’s taste.

At a deeper level, the broad definition of monasticism is “the exercise of asceticism and mysticism”. I showed the book to the head of the Franciscan Order in Southern Africa. His opinion was that it showed a remarkable poverty of understanding of the riches of monastic mysticism. This would appear to be a further aspect that Farrington has stripped out in her selective quest.

On what basis did Farrington select the rules that she did? If she suggests that sections of the Bible are “more to our contemporary tastes” than others, it would seem that she would have few qualms with the same attitude towards monastic traditions. Whether Farrington would have been to the contemporary tastes of the monastics is equally doubtful. With reference to the subtitle of the book, she would appear to have selected rules which she personally considered suitable to “the Modern World”.

Synthesis

One wonders about Farrington’s motivation for writing this book. It may be that her motivation was deeply tied up with her personality. To be specific, I wondered whether the book was motivated by her personal need to “create a balanced life”, and be “gentle on yourself” – in short, to withdraw from the world through rationalised self-indulgence. Does the Bible endorse “a balanced life” in the sense that Farrington appears to suggest? This is doubtful.

At the same time, the book does make some valuable suggestions with regard to finding a balance in one’s life. One might describe it as a gentle corrective. It emphasises the benefits of community, the advantages of accountability, the value of simple and unambitious pursuits, the need for inner rest and peace, and the wisdom of not treating our bodies as mere instruments of the will, to mention just a few.

CITATION OF REFERENCES

Farrington, Debra K. Living Faith Day By Day. New York: The Berkeley Publishing Group, 2000.

Thomas Scarborough is the minister of an Evangelical Congregational Church near the centre of Cape Town. During 2004, he was the world’s most widely published electronics writer. He is currently studying for an M.A. in Global Leadership through Fuller Theological Seminary. He may be contacted at