Category: spirituality

LIVING IN BABYLON

Major structural injustices in which we

live/move/have our being

create haves/have-nots

and are hugely immoral – but most religions

while preaching personal and interpersonal ethics

ignore systemic evil and most believers accept

massive injustice as “the way things are” never asking

“How can individuals be moral in an immoral culture?”

 

The typical response of Christians living in

our Babylonian culture, in exile, is:

try to be faithful husbands and wives

raise virtuous children who are

compassionate/contemplative/seek justice

and who kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.

 

Catholics adopt Protestant practices:

daily Bible reading/speaking in tongues

and Protestants adopt Catholic practices:

praying the Divine Office and trying out

Benedictine/Franciscan/Ignatian prayer styles

and perhaps this is the Holy Spirit

weaving the entire Church together

so we all may be one

or maybe this is just rearranging

the deck chairs on the Titanic

as long as the structural injustices persist.

 

Hopefully, the Contemplative Way

will save and transform us:

because sometimes contemplatives

as they are liberated from all addictions/attachments

gain psychic powers/siddhis such as

telepathy and clairvoyance – genuine contemplatives

always hide these super-powers

but maybe they could use them to fight injustice?

 

In any case, the ultimate secret of the spiritual life:

“ever-present divine awareness” is not hard to attain

for anyone and is impossible to avoid

according to Lao Tzu/Shankara/Paul/Augustine/

Plotinus/and Teresa of Avila because it is always there

and awareness of the divine is the only thing

that makes living in Babylon bearable.

FALLING (SUPER-SPIRITUAL) STARS

Many people have a multi-faith identity:

Catholic/Protestant; Buddhist/Jewish;

Baptist/Episcopalian; Christian/Hindu.

 

People are called in many different ways

but if you refuse God’s call

you turn the adventure/your true life

into meaningless boredom/a wasteland/

death.

 

Our only true greatness lies in

the humility of living faithfully.

The purer our faith, the closer we come to God.

The one who desires to exalt herself/himself

with extraordinary sexual or mystical experiences

becomes less/not more in the eyes of God.

 

If you can abandon all desire 

for the fruits of your actions/results

you can perform freely/without attachment

your duty – to love.

 

One’s duty may be to be a good spouse –

the intimate partnership of married life and love

has been established by the Creator

and is defined/qualified/bounded

by the Creator’s laws/thou-shalt-nots –

THOU SHALT NOT: lie/steal/covet thy neighbour’s

wife/husband/commit adultery.

 

Like Ravi Zacharias, Jean Vanier was a super-saint –

his work with the developmentally delayed

in L’Arche/the Ark became world-wide

group homes for those rejected by society

and his book Becoming Human

helped us discover our common humanity

the journey from loneliness to belonging

and to a love that includes all –

people of multiple faiths and no faith

people able/differently abled/disabled –

Vanier was a saint until the MeTooMovement

caught him with his pants down

with multiple women. Another spiritual superstar

had fallen – to everyone’s utter dismay.

RETURNING TO RADICAL AMAZEMENT

The sexual/social/self-preservation drives

are the raw material of who we are as humans

and so cannot be killed off

although ascetics try their hardest.

 

According to Rohr/Rolheiser/Fox

these drives are all good and just need to be

harnessed/channeled/integrated not killed off

so they give energy to our spiritual endeavours

and serve us not destroy us – they are good

not evil monsters/dragons/demons.

 

According to Immanuel Kant as you move morally

from being biocentric (sex and survival) to egocentric

to ethnocentric to worldcentric (universal compassion)

you also discover your higher/truer/deeper self.

 

If you expand your heart and mind infinitely

you come to God’s Infinite Love, the “Ultimate Thou”

and to your self as the “Ultimate I”

culminating in the “Ultimate I-Thou Relationship.”

 

But as we take on jobs/get married/join religions

everyone pressures us to do

in order for us to live up to their ideals

and as we shove more and more stuff

into our shadow-bag

by midlife we are a mere slice

of the 360-degree-self we started with.

 

We become fraught with “sins of omission”

including: not living lives of justice/

not being transformed/being ‘born again’

only once instead of many times/

leaving creativity/divinization/original blessing/

the cosmos out of our theology.

 

Radical Amazement by Judy Cannato

invites us back into contemplative awe/awareness

of black holes/supernovas/the wonders of the universe

 which are the key to self-transformation

and transformation of the world.

 

OVERCOMING OUR SHADOW AND OUR SUFFERING

Theologians try to make Christianity relevant

by showing theology follows scientific methods

or correlating it to some current philosophy

or urgent need: racism, nuclear war, climate change

but the problem behind all problems

is dualistic non-unitive thinking in the form of individualism.

 

Individualism, the triumph of the individual

the foundation of American culture, is ironically false freedom:

separation from others and therefore separation from God

who in Jesus exhorted us to “love others as our self”

and “love our enemies.”

 

America is ironically “Land of the free and home of the slave”

according to the artist formerly known as “Prince.”

Ironically too, America will only overcome its shadow history

by embracing it: “Taking up your cross today

means owning your own shadow

which is the essence of ethics/

integrity/spirituality/religion.” – Carl Jung

First recognize the log in your own eye

before trying to take out the speck in your neighbour’s eye.

Otherwise, you project your shadow onto others

and force them to carry your darkness.

 

We can use everything that happens in us

and that happens to us, to wake up:

Buddhism exhorts us to resolve the dualistic struggle

by embracing difficulties (our crosses)

and by meditating day and night.

“Seek in reading and you will find in meditating;

knock in verbal prayer and it will be opened to you

in contemplation” – Guigo the Carthusian.

 

But contemplation is always beyond us:

beyond art/philosophy/theology

even beyond discussion or explanation –

the language of God

is silence.

 

But the language of the blind and deaf Helen Keller is

“Life is full of suffering

and it is also full of the overcoming of suffering.”

REDISCOVERING THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING

Starting with Copernicus and then Galileo,

heliocentrism – the Sun as the center of things

not the Earth – the new cosmology

totally upset the watermelon cart

displaced God’s immutability/hierarchy/

humans as the center of the universe/

our race as the center of God’s care/

the stable relationship between self/cosmos/God

was completely disrupted.

 

No wonder Alan Watts, who embraced eastern mysticism,

noted that modern culture is peculiar:

every other culture, East and West,

from 6000 years ago to the birth of modern science

believed in the Great Chain of Being.

 

However, we can rediscover this Great Chain

by recognizing our bodies, thru sexual intercourse

have been coming out of each other:

male out of female, female out of male

since day one – the whole human race is one –

one flesh/one body/one blood.

 

And now in addition we recognize

that it took the universe 13.7 billion years

to create YOU – from atoms/molecules/cells/

multicellular organisms/vertebrates/

your thousands of ancestors/to YOU –

YOU are 13.7 billion years old –

think about it – YOU are made of the dust of stars –

stardust – and God chose YOU

before the foundation of the universe.

 

Other scientists further disrupted all things –

besides Darwin, the new physics

changed our view of the cosmos

as dynamic and relational not static.

And new quantum laws incorporated chance

and indeterminism. But chance does not change

the cosmos into a lottery –

it is the way the universe explores

and realizes its potential:

the divinized human being –

YOU filled to the full with GOD.

REDEEMING TECHNOLOGY

If we are going to save humanity from technology

we need to emphasize the human need for

love/friendship/meaning/freedom.

This is where religion can be extremely valuable –

in humanizing technology.

 

On the positive side of technology,

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest

envisioned technology gathering human energy

deepening love/global consciousness

and an awareness of ‘interbeing’ –

we are all part of an interweaving body

of life/love/motion we call the Uni-verse –

the One Cosmic Poem.

 

The problem with our contemporary world

is dissociating art/morals/technology

from each other and from religion:

not only pre-rational mythic spirituality

was rightly rejected

but also rational postmodern spirituality –

postmodern/liberal/intellectual humans

were left to answer the deepest question

“What is of ultimate concern?”

with only art/morals/technology

allowed to give an answer –

progressive religion was excluded from the debate.

 

In spite of this we have made moral progress –

we now recognize systems of injustice

rather than individuals cause immoral behaviour –

we have lifted the burden of responsibility off each person

and placed it squarely on the shoulders of corrupt systems

the individual is inevitably enmeshed in.

 

In any case, Truth cannot impose itself on our hearts

except by virtue of it being true.

Religions therefore must be free to speak their truth

without trying to coerce civil society.

 

Healthy spirituality could be an anchor for civilization

preventing it from being swept away by the current –

the overwhelming flood of technology.

TRANSFORMING GLOBALIZATION AND THE UNIVERSE

The Interspiritual Age believes the spreading

of world religions as an offshoot of globalization

will create a global spirituality.

 

People need to remember how

the ancient religions of the East

thru the deepest longings/joys/sorrows of civilizations

strengthened and expressed the nobility of humans

how their temples have been home to

contemplation and prayer

how they shaped Eastern history and culture

and have been doorways to God

thru the Universal Christ –

the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

 

All people become contemplative

whenever God discovers God thru them.

Contemplation is God contemplating God thru us.

 

When people of any religion abandon themselves to God

God takes away everything they have

and returns it to them in a new form –

God takes away all natural objects

and returns them all as supernatural gifts.

 

In a previous generation ‘supernatural’

was a banned word in theology

but Baron Friedrich von Hugel recovered it

because humans need both the Transcendent Wholly Other

as well as the Immanent Wholly Here and Now –

but monism and pantheism both leave one or the other out.

 

The Universal Christ as exemplar/model of the universe

teaches us two things about created reality:

Divine Love is integrated into the Creation

and the destiny of the universe is not destruction

but resurrection/transformation/glorification

in God.

 

 

 

DIVESTING DOMINANT PARADIGMS

Gospel love means divesting oneself for God

of all that is not God – all earthly attachments –

particularly to the self, but even to the Church.

 

Conservative Christians believe the Church

is the Kingdom of God in the world.

Liberal Christians believe the Queendom/Kingdom of God

is to be built outside the Church in the World.

However, one needs humility and detachment to see

that both are transient. The Church and the World are not God.

If one arrogantly makes the Church or the World eternal

one ends in idolatry. Like everything, the Church and the World

had a beginning and so will have an end.

 

Theology is an attempt to integrate God/Church/World

without reducing one to the others.

When theologians stop asking questions

and start making dogmatic statements

the spiritual search ends.

 

Artists can break through the captivity

of our dominant paradigm – idolatry

by exposing the dysfunction/pain/terror

covered up and denied.

Then healing may begin.

 

A similar dominant paradigm is insularism –

self-protection, like idolatry, takes many forms:

individualism (me first)

tribalism (my family or tribe first)

nationalism (my country before other countries/the planet)

historicism (ignoring human history – 1000s of years

or the history of the universe – billions of years).

Insularism loves sexism/racism/ageism/ablism –

people with disabilities are often terribly lonely

and show us our own loneliness

and how we all have a deep need to break out of insularism

and find community/friends/love.

 

A Christian woman and man, who thru the marriage covenant

of conjugal love are one flesh, render mutual service

to one another through this intimate union

and show us how the Church and the World ought to be –

united in Christ and reaching out to help everyone.

THE PURPOSE OF ALL THINGS

The only purpose of God in creating the universe

was that it be a communion of souls in love.

Christ is the center/goal/perfection/paradigm of communion

so the meaning of Christ extends to

all people/all civilizations/all planets/all universes.

 

The only purpose of all spiritual practice

is to help you become an awakened human being –

a loving/contemplative sage full of God here and now –

which is the true nature of who you already are anyway –

so the end of the journey is its beginning.

 

Discovering your True Self can be a great relief –

you no longer have to protect/project/promote

an ideal self-image – your False Self.

Your True Self was always there and always will be

so you can relax and be yourself – flaws and all.

 

Awareness that life is flawed is the beginning of wisdom

and the beginning of anxiety is when a flawed being

becomes aware of its future non-being.

 

Today, the “Way of the Cross” involves

becoming aware of our flaws/limitations/sins

abandoning perfectionism/pursuing wholeness/

dying to our ego and finding our True Self

which may be exquisitely painful

but it focuses on growth not transient happiness.

 

Today we are blessed with tools like the Enneagram

which helps us understand

the depths of our darkness

and paradoxically allows us to grasp

the heights of our True Self

the divine image and likeness of God within

which longs to go without

and join others in forming

a communion of souls in love.

THE PROTESTANT PRINCIPLE AND PARADOX

Life is always the tension/balance between opposing forces:

dark energy makes up 70% of the universe, dark matter 25% –

the visible universe is only 5% of what we know!

Dark energy keeps the universe expanding

and dark matter is a vast invisible ocean

that causes clustering of galaxies

and keeps the universe together.

 

More tensions of life:

Paradox I: salvation is freely given

but requires effort on our part.

Paradox II: Salvation is absolute liberation and joy

but to get there you normally go thru

absolute chaos/confusion/suffering.

 

Peter, James, John and Paul were saints just like us

who brought their brokenness to Christ

so that God’s strength might be glorified

in the transformation of their weakness.

 

The New Testament word for “heart” – “kardea”

means “our innermost thoughts/feelings/judgements”

that Jesus said must be purified –

he is quite clear – we must go beyond

superficial practice of the Law

to inner purification of our heart.

 

The Protestant Principle of iconoclasm –

the anti-idolatry that smashes idols – purifies things.

Paul Tillich turned the Protestant Principle

on Catholicism for believing it is God

on Karl Barth for his ‘supernaturalism’

and not taking modern culture seriously

on Carl Jung for reducing religion

to a private subjective realm

on himself for absolutizing Christianity

and not dialoguing with world religions

earlier in his theology.

 

Spiritual growth is to get rid of the clutter

to purify your self. The hero’s journey is one of

rediscovery not discovery – you learn that you were

a daughter/son of God all along – the heir of the universe:

the universe, in all its darkness and light, is yours, forever!