The two trees in Eden
are metaphors for two minds:
dualistic and unitive.
The Tree of Knowledge
splits everything into either/or
(God forbids us to eat from this Tree).
The Tree of Life
symbolizes unitive contemplation
and promises access to eternity.
Separation of things by the Church
into sacred (Church)
and secular (world)
meant the Church treated the world
with contemptus mundi.
The Church thought it had everything
to teach the world
and nothing
to learn from it.
Scripture and tradition
not philosophy or science
are indeed the final norms
for revealing what is truly human.
The philosophy of non-being
in Heidegger, Sartre, Dostoevsky and Berdyaev
viewed religiously
simply speak
to the transitoriness of all things
and to the power of the demonic
in souls and history.
But atheism
is not religion’s worst enemy –
indifference is.
In the New Age
there is passion
because God is only within/immanent.
But to conservative religion
God is only without/transcendent.
First find the Inner Authority
of your True Self in God
then balance/integrate it
with the Outer Authority
of Scripture and Tradition.
Balance/integrate God totally within
with God totally without
and voilà
you have stable yet creative religion.
Totalitarian regimes
dominate with Outer Authority
and hate the passion of artists
who break people out of slavery
by waking them up
to imperial ideology.
Totalitarians rule by power and money
but human reality is constituted
by meaning not matter.
Meaning not money
is the foundational reality.
It is a spiritual universe.
John of the Cross
put it all together
as a mystic, theologian, and spiritual explorer
who discovered Treasure Island:
that in Christ are buried all treasures
of wisdom and meaning.
Mindfulness of Christ brings
joy, peace, and happiness.
In distress consciously breathe in
the peace of Christ
and consciously breathe out
the healing of Christ.
Catherine of Siena heard Jesus say
“I want people to meditate
on the greatness of my mercy
before contemplating their shortcomings.
Self-knowledge of sin
must be tempered by and subordinated to
knowledge of God-alive-in-you.”
Intelligent Christian Spirituality 