SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY

Art/morals/religion could not stand up to the steam engine

of science

only God could –

but God and spirituality had been repressed

and so the differentiation of art/morals/religion/ (1600-1800)

was followed by their dissociation (1800-1900)

and western intellectuals knew this would be a cultural catastrophe

but could not fix it

 

now, secular media sees only two types of religious people:

fundamentalist nutcases

who believe in myth

and New Age nutcases

who believe in magic

but both are “pre-rational”

and any “trans-rational” people

who have seen the limits of reason

and include reason while transcending it

are lumped in with the nutcases

 

the challenge of institutional religion

is to lead everyone to the supreme wisdom

of being one in God

this is the task of everyone in the church/synagogue/mosque

not just the priest/rabbi/imam

 

in any case, spiritual authority now resides

less in religious organizations/ordained clergy/traditional creeds

than in direct experience and friendship with God –

the source of all religious organizations in the first place

 

answers and authority come now from the Voice of God/

from voices of others (if we form a spiritual community)/

from our own voice

 

the current appeal of Meister Eckhart –

the truly mystical element in his writing –

is that he helps people cut thru

the distractions of life

so they can find

their essential grounding in God.