Exploring the Divine Connection: A Christian Perspective on Ally Work
What does ally work look like from a Christian perspective?
The Imaginative Conservative is described as “an on-line journal for those who seek the True, the Good, and the Beautiful….The Imaginative Conservative offers to our families, our communities, and the Republic, a conservatism of hope, grace, charity, gratitude and prayer.”
In the article “‘Besieged’: Incarnational History”, Dr. Bradley J. Birzer, professor and Fellow of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, reflects on the role of the Logos in Christianity—a passage which for me reflects the essence of ally work:
From the Roman Catholic perspective, the Logos is the beginning, the middle, and the end of time and history, and history itself is a reflection of the Logos. Each person—from Adam to the last person—is a finite reflection of the Infinite, a bearer of the Image of God, an incarnate soul. In the stunningly poetic prologue to his gospel, St. John assures us the Logos is that which enlightens every man. The logos is, then, divine reason. It is not, however, a synonym of rationality. Instead, its closest synonym would be “imagination,” stemming from the image implanted in our soul by the divine. As imagination, the soul balances rationality (or the monarchical part of the human person) of the brain and the passions (or the democratic part of the human) of the stomach. To rely only on rationality is to become an automaton; to rely only on passion is to become an animal. The aristocratic soul balances these things—through the image of the Word—in the republic of our person. Paradoxically, that which makes us most human is that which is the least human part about us.
I find this to be a beautifully meaningful description of the landscape we are exploring in the practice of ally work.
I believe that engaging with “the image of the Word—in the republic of our person” is an exact description of our activity in the practice of ally work.
It is one thing—a beautiful thing—to understand this in theory. Ally work as a personal practice is a way to bring this from theory to practice—to our direct experience.
In our Practice of Ally Work sessions at AllyWork.org, we are exploring a group structure in which each of our individual engagements with “the image of the Word” is brought into shared reflection and dialogue.
In this way ally work can function as both a practice and a shared language to connect us vertically and horizontally. Ally work functions vertically by directly connecting us to logos as “divine reason.”
Ally work functions horizontally by offering us a shared language to dialogue together about “that which makes us most human.” In Practice of Ally Work sessions we do this with an implicit honoring of our diverse perspectives, cultural contexts, and spiritual backgrounds.
In this way we can experience both a deep interconnectedness—and feeling of mutual belonging—while valuing and learning from our differences—as integral to our connection.
What liberating possibilities does the practice of ally work offer us? Birzer speaks of this beautifully from his perspective:
When enlightened by the Word, the soul allows us to see and think beyond our five senses and our subjective logic, no matter how rigorous our intellectual faculties might be. It allows us to see the world as it is and as it was meant to be; it allows us to live as a member of the City of God as we sojourn through the City of Man; it allows us to create and, to use Tolkien’s term, sub-create art and not propaganda; and it allows us, very importantly, to speak with another person not through the lens of this or that prejudice (i.e. that is, shaped by biology, politics, or ideology) but as a soul to a soul—each a reflection of all that is true, good, and beautiful—as one bearer of the Imago Dei to another bearer of the Imago Dei.