3 Big Ideas for April 23, 2019

  1. In the Jewish Book of Wisdom it says that Wisdom was there in the beginning, co-creating everything with God. Wisdom is an early intuition of the Cosmic Christ or the Holy Spirit. In the Christian scriptures Christ is seen as the wisdom and power of God. By applying themselves to philosophy, history, science and the arts, people are enlightened by that Wisdom or the Cosmic Christ who is all around us and was there from the beginning.
  2. Christian praxis (practice) is meant to spread the kingdom of love, the reign of God, by transforming social structures and laws that oppress people. The classic example would be the Jim Crow laws in the United States that kept everything segregated even though slavery had officially ended. Blacks got the worst schools, medical care, etc. The great Protestant theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, wrote that “Justice is the proper distribution of love throughout society. Only love can transform us while uniting us to everything. Love is the opposite of segregation.
  3. In 1998, two independent teams of scientists discovered “dark energy,” an anti-gravitational force that is causing the universe to accelerate its expansion. 70% of the universe is dark energy, 25% is dark matter, only 5% of the universe is visible. Science keeps revealing how mysterious God is. Einstein said that it is not that one thing is a miracle, everything is a miracle!


3 Big Ideas for April 18, 2019

  1. Every spiritual path begins with a founder who experiences a deep spiritual conversion. Then his followers turn this I-THOU relationship between the founder and God into an I-IT relationship by developing beliefs, creeds, rituals, and institutions. And the gap grows between the founder’s experience and his disciples’ lives as the founder fades away in historical time. We need to constantly try to recapture the founder’s original experience.
  2. D. H. Lawrence, mostly known for his erotic novels, was also a spiritual man who wrote that our deepest religious urge is to come into direct contact with the deep elemental life of the cosmos and to derive energy and life from it. He believed that erotic energy underlies everything in the universe, and that God is not only “agape” (suffering love) but also “eros” (the power of attraction) which expresses itself most fully in human sexuality. When the masculine energy of the universe meets the feminine energy, fire happens.
  3. In his “Discourse on Mindful Breathing,” the Buddha taught “Breathing in, I recognize my feeling. Breathing out, I calm my feeling.” Christian monks teach similar spiritual practices. Medical science has now proven them both right: when you inhale and then slowly let your breath out, the breathing out activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which has a calming effect on your whole body. Science is gradually catching up with and proving wisdom taught by ancient religion.

3 Big Ideas for April 10, 2019

  1. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s notion of “cosmic personalization” means that the entire cosmos is headed towards wholeness, complexification, consciousness, and love.
  2. In 1961 at a General Assembly of the World Council of Churches, James Sittler, a Lutheran theologian, reminded the gathering that, according to Colossians 1:15-17, the Cosmic Christ is the foundation of all things and all things are united in the Cosmic Christ. If this is true, Christians have nothing to fear from other religions, philosophy and modern science since all these things are “in Christ” whether they acknowledge it or not. In fact, the values of materialistic scientists and philosophers such as the search for truth,could be a preparation for the acceptance of the gospel.
  3. Since all institutions are relative and provisional, including churches, synagogues, mosques and temples, we must put our hope in the living God who alone can fulfill history. We must hope in God, not any religious institution.

3 Big Ideas for April 3, 2019

  1. The reason I am not an atheist: that the universe exists at all, that it obeys laws, that out of those laws come galaxies, stars and planets, that on one planet life and consciousness has evolved (and probably on many others), are all one wonder after another. It requires more gullibility to believe this all just happened by accident than to believe there is a Supreme Omnipotent Intelligence behind it all. Faith in God is not irrational at all.
  2. Contemplation does not free you from conflict, anguish and doubt. Rather it creates serious questions about the whole status quo of everyday injustices we constantly see all around us and accept as if they were unquestionable dogmas. True contemplation leads one to social justice which is the proper distribution of love throughout society.
  3. The Body of Christ is not bound to any one race, nation, tradition, culture or theology but can learn from them all new ways of expressing the truth of the message of Jesus the Christ. Churches can enrich, and be enriched by, many different cultures.

3 Big Ideas for March 28, 2019

  1. The codependent person is often a chronic worrier, a compulsive helper, suffers from a wounded inner child, and feels shamed in his or her essence. Surrendering to the grace of God in the intimacy of prayer can heal and transform these four maladies of codependents.
  2. The very first liberal Protestant, Friedrich Schleiermacher, wrote in the 1800s that “Religion does not come from fear of death or fear of God, as philosophers previously thought. Religion is neither a metaphysic (a grand philosophy of what is beyond the material world) nor a morality. In its essence, religion is an intuition, feeling, or direct experience of God. Even dogmas are not religion. Dogmas derive from religious experiences.” Religions that do not give people direct experiences of God, in spite of being strong on metaphysics, dogmas and morality, will gradually lose followers. This is what has happened most mainline churches.
  3. The Fourth Precept of Buddhism is about mindful speech. Accordingly, when it comes to conversation, we need to avoid four things: lying/exaggeration/’forked tongue’ (telling one person one thing and another person something different about the same event)/and ‘filthy talk’ (insulting or abusing others). Things haven’t changed much: politicians, lawyers, and athletes could learn a lot from Buddhism.

3 Big Ideas for March 18, 2019

  1. Henri Nouwen saw Christian life as in three stages: communion, community, and commission. That is, life apart from others (in solitude with self and in communion with God), life shared with others (with kindred hearts in community), life given for others (in ministry).
  2. The very essence of the New Spirituality (spirituality outside the church) is freedom to follow your own inner light without any pressure from dogma, teachers, leaders or institutions. As Oprah says “You are your own authority.” The only problem with this is that you are putting a lot of pressure on the one short life you have, and ignoring the accumulated wisdom of centuries of religion and the tried and true experience of millions of people.
  3. Jonathan Edwards, a 19th century Protestant theologian, wrote that “The Holy Scriptures everywhere place religion in the affections: love, hate, fear, joy, sorrow, hope.” Religion in his opinion, is a matter of feeling and emotion not intellect. This may be true, but Holy Scripture also says we should have “reasons for the hope that is in us.” (1Peter 3:15). This is particularly necessary in an age of science and the New Atheism.

3 Big Thoughts for March 12, 2019

  1. The more one pursues spirituality in the teachings of world religious leaders like Jesus, Mohammed, Lao Tzu and Buddha, the more one experiences oneness, interconnectedness and less separation.
  2. The new cosmology (the story of the origin and development of the universe and our place in it) that science is showing us: – things develop from matter (big bang, galaxies, planets) to life (plants) to sensitivity (animals) to thought (humans) – demonstrates that the whole universe is heading in a spiritual direction – the whole universe is moving inexorably towards more life and consciousness. This new cosmology can heal the former split between science and religion. Matter intrinsically moves toward spirit. The whole universe is bound for enlightenment!
  3. Contemplation does not kill your pain and anguish. In fact it increases your awareness of the false faith in things that most “normal” people put their trust in: money and possessions. Once you start to grasp the folly of this – the cultural trance or sleepwalking that is the status quo – it increases your grief for the all those who are trapped in it. You shed tears of compassion for your fellow human beings. “Compassion” means “to suffer with.” Contemplation leads to suffering with and for others.

3 Big Ideas for March 4, 2019

  1. This is what God wants to say to you. Imagine yourself being full-immersion baptized like Jesus, the heavens parting and God saying to you “You are my beloved in whom I take great delight.” Let God’s voice resonate deep within you and heal all your emptiness and pain.
  2. The point of both the Councils of Chalcedon and Nicaea is that only God can save us from destroying ourselves. And God can only save us humans through a fully human life, the life of Jesus.
  3. According to St. Francis de Sales, God placed you in the world not because God needs you in any way, but just to exercise God’s own goodness by giving you God’s grace and glory.

3 Big Thoughts for February 25, 2019

  1. The Cosmic Christ was already in the world before Jesus of Nazareth came along. The Cosmic Christ is the light that enlightens everyone who pursues goodness, truth, and beauty in any discipline. This includes non-believers, since the Cosmic Christ is goodness, truth and beauty.
  2. Spiritual seekers went to India in the 1960s and 70s thinking they could become mystics through drugs, sex, or ‘siddhis’ (psychic powers). However the true test of mysticism is becoming merciful as God is merciful.
  3. It is the imperfections in our universe, the wrinkles in space-time, that creates the galaxies, stars, and planets. If space-time was perfectly smooth, nothing would now exist. It is our imperfections that make us human, sensitive creatures. If we were all perfect, life would be perfectly boring.

3 Big Thoughts for February 19, 2019

  1. The journey of enlightenment in any religion involves shedding not collecting; it is a constant process of letting go of more and more defences until you are spiritually naked.
  2. The cure for anyone’s sense of emptiness, loneliness, and shame is to feel God’s unconditional love and acceptance.
  3. Overall, evolution’s direction is from pre-personal to personal to transpersonal; from pre-rational to rational to trans-rational; from id to ego to spirit. For example: from subconscious (dog) to conscious (human) to superconscious (divinized human).