The medieval view: Earth is stable/central/unmoving
and God created the whole Creation
to reflect God’s beauty/wisdom/goodness.
Thru the Creation we can know God:
Creation mirrors Creator.
When the Enlightenment questioned this stability
Christianity became oppositional and rational.
Christianity became rational to oppose rationalism
and in the process lost contemplation and wisdom
the vehicles of authentic enlightenment.
Western theology split itself off
from prayer and spirituality
whereas Eastern Orthodoxy was always mystical
involving constant prayer/contemplation/sacred icons.
Meister Eckhart bridged west and east
and was consistently misunderstood
because of “ascetic theology” – rational theologians
who could not grasp Eckhart’s love
of nature/the body/music/art
as well as compassion/contemplation/justice.
In Eckhart’s mind, the purpose of prayer and religion
is to pierce thru to the foundation of Reality
which is always goodness and love.
Therefore, the soul is never satisfied
with surface level/marketplace/buying/selling.
Life is always complex/ambiguous/mysterious
and so Thomas Merton thought a lot of people
followed him because he was not so sure of himself
did not claim to have all the answers
but tried over and over to identify the right questions.
We are all called to be spiritual warriors
and the central question of a warrior’s training
is not “How do I avoid uncertainty and fear?”
but “How do live with discomfort and difficulty
in an unpredictable/unstable/ever-evolving/
non-medieval world?”
Intelligent Christian Spirituality 