Uncategorized – Page 4 – Intelligent Christian Spirituality

Repentance and Glory: Transformative Christian Values

Making room for not knowing

is more important than certainty –

we think something is going to bring us pleasure

or misery/be a disaster or a great adventure

but we really don’t know

one thing we do know for certain:

inferior goods such as silver and gold/

temporal honors and power

have their temporary delights

but they are nothing compared to God

who made them all –

true delight and joy rests in God

“Ultimate Reality is at hand –

change your mind and believe such good news!”

– Richard Rohr’s translation of

“The kingdom of God is at hand

repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15)

to repent is to change your mind –

to be baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection

means that you have died to the values

of the Roman or American Empire

and been born into Christian values

of peace/charity/justice/nonviolence

which sometimes involves suffering like Christ

who said to Francis of Assisi

“I have given you the stigmata

the five wounds in my feet/hands/side

the emblems of my Passion

so that you may be my Standard-Bearer”

but Francis tried to hide these wounds

which in truth were his glory

but then again, God hides God’s glory:

“God’s glory is to be in all God’s creatures

giving them their being/breath/everything

living in their midst as unknown

for if we could see how unlike our glory

is to God’s glory

we would die for love of God.”

– Thomas Merton

Three Truths of Wisdom: Confucianism and Christianity Explored

Confucian wisdom has three components:

cultivation of the person

meaningful action nourished by heavenly splendor

harmony of one’s wisdom with the wisdom of others

Christian wisdom knows the soul needs three truths:

knowledge of God’s goodness

knowledge of self

cure for the world’s woes in constant/humble/prayer

in Confucianism, filial piety

does not equal blind obedience/subservience

to age and authority –

a son will correct his father

when he knows his father is wrong

similarly, the minister will correct the prince

when the prince is wrong

in Christianity the beginning of wisdom

and nondual consciousness

involves seeing not only the goodness of things

but also their weakness/failure/dark side

the ‘prosperity gospel’ on the other hand

tries to see only the good side of things

and divides everything into either/or

good/bad – there is no realism/

no middle ground

and so the ‘prosperity gospel’ weaves

Christianity and the American dream of wealth together

breeding fanaticism and unbalance

the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965)

recognized that the institutions/laws/

modes of thinking of earlier generations

were not well adapted to contemporary realities

but the Council Fathers/Bishops/Archbishops

wanted to aid those trying to preserve three truths:

the holiness/natural dignity/greatness

of ordinary life and its superlative value

much as Confucianism does.

Spiritual Warriors: Beyond Patriarchy and Pleasure

In medieval royal courts, the joker/jester

was seen as a symbol of Christ –

pricking the balloon of patriarchal pomposity

overturning people’s applecarts

and worldviews –

Christ was and still is the glittering joker

dancing in the dragon’s jaws –

laughing at the precariousness of life

when Eternity is at hand

when we let go of patriarchy

we do not abandon ourselves to evil

we come home to a relational God

who created relational human beings

who enjoy pleasure

but “If we abandon ourselves to pleasure alone

the pleasure principle leads to despair

since life becomes meaningless”

– Seneca, Stoic philosopher

we also need to reclaim the warrior archetype

from the military

we need to fight against the war machine and injustice

for the true warrior is spiritual –

true mystics and prophets are spiritual warriors

Mohammed was a spiritual warrior

and, by the grace of God, a genius of literature –

it is not just the message

but the fusion of poetry and prose

that makes the Quran a masterpiece

Mohammed, like Moses and Jesus

created not just a ‘revival’ but also an ‘awakening’ –

revivals are personal/emotional conversions

of individuals –

awakenings are cultural revitalizations

that restructure not only social institutions

but also the very purposes and goals

of civilizations.

The Cosmic Christ: Love as the Universe’s Creative Force

“Passion is the true stuff of the universe –

erotic attraction is the primary creative force in the universe –

the universe itself is erotic” – Teilhard de Chardin

the reason for the Incarnation was love not sin –

the primacy of Christ comes before the primacy of sin –

“All things have been created through and for the Cosmic Christ –

he is before all things and in him all things hold together” – Col. 1:16-17

– particularly in Eastern Orthodoxy

many theologians disagree with Anselm’s notion

that sin is the primary reason for the Incarnation

“Jesus, the Cosmic Christ incarnate

is our only source of information about divinity –

if anyone wants to know what God is like

or what God might do, they can look at Jesus

this is what it means to accept Jesus as our God” – Albert Nolan

love and wisdom are gifts of the Spirit of God –

the love of God is poured into us by the Holy Spirit

and love leads to wisdom

which transcends reason –

“The heart has reasons of its own” – Blaise Pascal

the spiritual journey means moving

from unconscious to conscious loving –

the Christian ‘Way’ (Tao) as Christ showed us

is loving others in our daily lives

and to the degree that we love

God makes us whole/healed/holy

Rumi said “Make friends with your emotions”

this simply means give negative emotions

your whole-hearted attention

rather than being ignorant of them

denying or struggling against them

feeling guilty or ashamed of them

which gives them power –

once you give them your full attention

you discover their insubstantial nature

and dissolve their power over you –

you are free to fully love the Whole Creation.

Understanding Spirituality Through Great Thinkers

Martin Buber was the great spiritual interpreter of relationships

Gustavo Gutierrez of liberation

Karl Rahner of ordinary experience

Paul Tillich of cultural trends

Ken Wilber of everything

Wilber and Tillich:

everyone has a spirituality: an ultimate concern:

– archaic spirituality (food/sex/survival)

– magic spirituality (rituals/voodoo/Santeria)

– mythic spirituality (fundamentalism/literalism/exclusivism)

– rational spirituality (reason/materialism/science)

– pluralist spirituality (postmodernism/relativism/skepticism)

– systems spirituality (deep ecology/Gaiaism/interconnectedness)

– integral spirituality (inclusivism/developmentalism/

inner and communal transformation)

Buber: “Spirituality and life is about community

not the lone individual”

in a Christian society, people produce goods and services

for the good of all/the common good

not for the profits of the owners

all work is done for a transcendent purpose:

building the kingdom/queendom/kindom of God

where all people and creatures are taken care of

However, Christianity is not the only place of God’s rule:

Chakravartin, the universal Hindu king in India

Ashoka, the first Buddhist monarch in Buddhism

Shih Tuang Hi, the first Taoist emperor of a united kingdom in China

all governed by Heaven’s Mandate

under Heaven’s Law

so Mother Teresa taught her sisters

never to try to convert a Muslim/Hindu/Buddhist

by talking about Jesus

or promoting Christianity

but rather by being Jesus to them.

Unity Consciousness in Spiritual Experience

If you are spiritual you cannot ignore the flesh

you cannot pretend we don’t need the body

to live/breathe/move/see/hear/think/contemplate God

without the body and its senses there would be no spirituality

contemplation allows us to connect scriptures to life

to see how the God who liberated the Israelites

from slavery

wants to liberate us

from slavery

to addictions/codependency/consumerism/victimhood

however, “Shame and aggression are central

in the human psyche, particularly men –

and these are the universal ‘original wounds’

not ‘original sins’ – and they are hard to shake”

– Otto Rank

but prayer heals

and translates religion/doctrines/dogma

into vital spirituality

and we pray in the first person

subject-to-subject

our soul to God’s soul

we say, “Lord, I am sad/joyful”

not “Lord, he/she/it is sad/joyful”

Carl Jung’s personal myth of meaning

which he also found expressed in the Western Mystics

was the myth that God needs us

to become more and more conscious

so that God can become conscious of the whole

which is what the Spirit is leading us to

the core of spiritual experience

is the same in all religions:

unity consciousness

which is not a phantasmagoric mystical experience

but rather a life-changing sense

of the unity of all things –

no more separation

we are all one

with God/others/ourselves

the whole Creation.

The Messy God in All Things

Raimon Pannikar and Paul Tillich support Teilhard’s view

that a new perspective of God is rising out of the old one –

a God more comfortable with the messiness of evolution

than with the order and structure of Greek metaphysics

the direction of evolution is now seen as

towards the maximization of goodness

and thus towards the incarnation of God –

if Christ is the Divine Word as Creator

and if Christ is the Word Incarnate as Jesus

Christ Jesus is also the Redeemer –

what is created in Love is redeemed in Love

through prayer Love is received

and through miracles Love is expressed

prayer is the medium for miracles

our night dreams show us

we contain in our unconscious

the miracle of secret Aladdin caves

a mythological world of jewels and ‘jinn’ –

spirits within that invite us into

the desire and dread of the human adventure –

to have our secure inner world dismantled/

deconstructed but also reconstructed

into a broader/more compassionate/

more fully human space

in general, it is better to approach God

through the Holy Spirit, as a living reality

than through theology as an abstract concept

self-abandonment to Divine Providence

in the present moment

begets faith

which helps us to see

God hides God’s Self

so we develop a pure faith

that can see God in everything –

in all life

and all evolution.

Unveiling Mysticism: The Journey to Unitive Life and the Pursuit of Truth

Salvation does not equal ‘piety’ or ‘ethical propriety’

salvation has to do with God’s love

for our deepest metaphysical nature –

our true self/the human person

which is beyond description/comprehension –

salvation is God’s ineffable love

and our ineffable love of God

and responsibility for our future

has now passed from God to us

“Our life and death are in our own hands

salvation is the realization and integration of this”

– Don Cupitt

“All history is a struggle against good and evil”

– Gaudium Et Spes (The Pastoral Constitution

on the Church in the Modern World, Vatican II)

Christ thus exhorts us to be holy

as God is holy

and God loves everyone

so to be holy is to love everyone

as God loves everyone – good or evil –

God allows sun and rain to fall on the just and unjust

Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism has two parts:

1. The Mystic Fact: how mysticism relates

to Henri Bergson’s Elan Vital

and to modern psychology

2. The Mystic Way: the awakening/purification/training

of the self in the ascent to the blessedness

of the Unitive Life

“A God-fearing person must follow the Truth

regardless of the consequences

even though it endangers their life –

they must trust that a good deed

will have a good result –

they know it is better to die in the way of God

than to live in the way of Satan.”

– Gandhi

SCIENCE/STOICS/FEAR/LOVE

What the ancients called the ‘soul’

or the essence of personhood

emerged thru billions of years

of converging and complex evolution

giving rise to ever greater consciousness:

matter/plants/animals/humans/

religions/sciences/Internet/smart phones/AI

but some religious people ignore common sense/

empirical science and develop utopian visions

and some scientists ignore the direction of evolution/

personal experience/religious wisdom

reducing humans to objects or machines

and some humanists in their quest

for self-fulfillment ignore the communal dimension/

traditional teachings about human nature –

dialogue between religion/science/humanism

is necessary for all of us to avoid our delusions

for everyone new knowledge can seem like an assault

on our cherished idolatrous concepts –

even Einstein resisted the new knowledge

his own theories pointed to

however, he later admitted his resistance

to God playing dice with the universe

was his biggest mistake

Einstein claimed time and space are mental constructs –

its all going on in our minds, therefore

the only thing that makes things fearful is the fear itself –

the fearfulness of things is in us not in them

as Seneca the Roman Stoic philosopher claimed

“Nothing is terrible in things except fear itself”

and Epictetus the Greek Stoic philosopher claimed

“It is not death or hardship that is a fearful thing

but the fear of death and hardship”

and Henri Nouwen the Roman Catholic mystic claimed

“Our greatest fear is intimacy with ourselves

and the greatest paradox is:

the heart is where we are most ourselves

and most alienated from ourselves

and since God is beyond even paradox

and cannot be thought but only loved

we can approach God only in a cloud of unknowing.”

COMMON THREADS IN WORLD RELIGIONS

The world’s great religions, diverse as they are

share a common existential thread:

self-reflection and self-transcendence

to St. Paul baptism means you transcend/die

to the Roman Empire’s violence

maintaining its patriarchy/hierarchy/slavery

hierarchical and biblical authority

the mainstays of Catholicism and Protestantism

have been problematic for feminist theologians

because there are many ‘terror texts’

hard to believe as ‘inspired by God’

because they maintain subjugation/exclusion/

violence against women –

by seeing biblical texts as interactive with the reader

feminist theologians reclaimed the Bible for women

by biblical criticism prioritizing the life-giving/

political/ethical/nonviolent texts

but the vision of the hierarchical Fathers

of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965)

was to help the Church be evermore true

to its divinely-inspired mission:

to effectively serve all people

both men and women

with generosity/empathy/love

and in Buddhism the Three Jewels:

the Buddhist Trinity of Buddha/Dharma/Sangha

(Teacher/Teaching/Community)

are all meant to sow seeds

of love/peace/understanding

throughout the world

and in Taoism the sage Lao Tzu teaches us all

how to accomplish much

without effort

by allowing the Tao, the Hidden Force

motivating the universe

to act in and through us

spreading wisdom and joy everywhere

Spirit hides in all these traditions.