DEATH AND REBIRTH OF RELIGION

The emphasis on love as due to genes or neurochemical reactions

detracts from love as Omega – the final purpose and meaning

of life and the universe

 

Judy Cannato, author of Radical Amazement: Contemplative Lessons

from Black Holes/Supernovas/and Other Wonders of the Universe

found as she got to know the new sciences

of quantum mechanics and cosmology

they resonated more and more with her experience

of the Holy One –

she believes God’s vision/desire is unity

and this is what the new sciences tell us –

all things are already united –

and this needs to be the root of our own spirituality

 

in Fall/Redemption theology suffering and death

are the wages of sin

but in Creation Spirituality suffering

is due to the birth pangs of a constantly evolving universe

and death is a natural event –

a prelude to recycling and rebirth

 

traditionally, the Institutional Church made heaven and hell

into geographic locations – places in the universe

instead of what is within us and around us

but even someone as conservative as Pope John Paul II

believed heaven and hell

are primordially “states of consciousness” –

similarly, according to Simone Weil:

“God graciously invites all the damned into paradise

but for them paradise is hell”

 

since true religion is about consciousness

and the source of ultimate inner freedom

totalitarian systems feel obligated to attack it

but ironically they attack it with the same values

that religion holds such as communal/brotherly/sisterly love

which religion professed but failed at

 

but religion fails and is born again everywhere

– numerous Japanese Zen teachers criticize corrupt Buddhists

and thus invite non-Buddhists, Catholics in particular

(thanks to Thomas Merton, author of Zen and the Birds of Appetite)

to practice Zen – they felt Zen had a greater future in Catholicism

since it was dying in Japan.