church – Page 2 – Intelligent Christian Spirituality

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.

Authentic Spirituality

Spirituality should move people from

mortality to immortality/

sin to salvation/

law to grace/

bondage to freedom/

ignorance to enlightenment/

suffering to fullness of life

without transformation religion is merely

the institutionalization of spirituality –

a belief and belonging system –

there is no change of consciousness/motivation –

conversion means moving from outer to inner authority

– from “the Church says”

to “given what the Church says

what also does the Holy Spirit/my conscience/

my experience say?” –

inner authority leads to the True Self/God within

true piety is not turning our face from West to East

true piety gives of its substance:

alms to the needy/strangers/travellers

ransoming of slaves

when I seek God, every event/moment/

sows God’s seeds in my will

and eventually Bibles burst out of my mouth

we are paradoxically both empty and full

full of emptiness/empty of fullness

and there is satisfaction in being empty

if we let God come in and fill us up

the divine/human encounter

in the Sacraments

is with my own True Self/the Church/God

and therefore should change

planetary/cosmic consciousness

transform the small/egoic self/the Church/

and the world’s cosmic messiness.

TEACHINGS OF THE LIVING CHRIST

The birthing of the universe is miraculous:

one-trillionth of a % faster = universe flies apart

one-trillionth of a % slower = universe collapses into itself

only God could pull this off

only God is able to do all things

including bringing life out of death

as with Christ

according to the Buddhist saint Thich Nhat Hahn

“After Buddha’s death devotion turned

from the Dharmakaya (the teaching)

to the Eternal Buddha (the Teacher)

Buddha became in Mahayana Buddhism

the Buddha of Faith/the Living Buddha

like the Christ of Faith/the Living Christ”

(Living Buddha, Living Christ)

Jesus taught thru the Bible that love takes place

in personal care for:

children: “Let the little children come to me,

and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven

belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14)

parents: “Honor your father and mother

that your days may be long in the land

that the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12)

the sick and poor: “Come to me, all you who are weary

and burdened, and I will give you rest –

take my yoke upon you and learn from me

for I am gentle and humble in heart” (Matthew 11: 28-30)

Jesus also taught thru the Church

“Contemplative prayer is a gift/a grace

that can only be accepted in humility and poverty”

(Catechism of the Catholic Church)

and he taught thru the saints

like Teresa of Avila

that “If you get to the fifth inner mansion

there is absolute certainty

that God has planted Godself

in the center of your soul

and at that point your only desire

is to do God’s will”

(The Interior Castle).

LONELINESS IN A FRANTIC WORLD

All beings have a propensity to unite with other beings

without this internal propensity which some call “gravity”

from atoms to galaxies

love would not appear at higher levels –

this propensity to unite, this gravity, is “attraction”

the primordial beginning of love

“Love/conviction/service not theology

are the keys to the Great Awakening –

it is not ‘what’ we believe but ‘how’ we believe

what is ‘actionable’ that counts”

– Diana Butler Bass

if God made you with this internal propensity to love

and made you intrinsically important to God

why would God change her mind in the next life?

God’s Love is the one eternal thing that takes away

our foundational fear of death/annihilation

so we never need to feel alone

God is always with us

but loneliness is not the same as being alone or solitude

loneliness is a feeling of not being a part of anything/

being cut off from others and life/

being intrinsically unworthy of love/

a feeling of guilt/a taste of death

but Love is stronger than death

we can be alone and be happy

if we feel we are still part of a loving family/community –

Church was originally meant to be the Beloved Community

but people try to fill the hole in their soul –

their loneliness – with work

but a distinction exists

between sound/healthy/meaningful/life-giving work

and frantic work

done out of loneliness/fear/greed/

our sins/society’s sins

Love and our recognition of that Love

are the only answers

to our frantic lives in a frantic society

in a frantic world.

CURING INDIVIDUALISM

Scripture says Satan, the Father of Lies

loves to deceive mortals

and so all private revelations/claims of visions/voices

are subjected to rigorous discernment

by Vatican authorities

Teresa of Avila had a private revelation

a vision of an Interior Mansion inside everyone

and we progress from one inner mansion to another

and riches/treasures/joys are in the fifth mansion

and the majority of people gain admittance there

and the devil is kept out

and the Vatican approved this vision

as far as visions go, believers cannot trust society

to tell us the ways of God and Satan

because society is confused/blown about

by constant winds of change/

only concerned with pragmatism/and immediate consequences

and so, believers must somehow learn

to trust God again

and there is objective good/objective truth

society cannot save us for

“It has become normal to feel ill-at-ease

as we watch the fraying rope

of our culture unravel strand by strand

and slowly break” – Bruce Cockburn

families tie society together but individualism unravels them

curing individualism comes from recognizing

we are essentially social beings

we are all subjects before God

we are interdependent

and called to unity/accountability for others/the world/ourselves

the best way to be accountable is thru contemplation

for the essence of contemplation

is to experience God’s “I AM” which:

illumines your own “i am”

ties us all together as one family of daughters/sons of God

being loved by one Eternal Mother/Father

being mindful of the Holy Spirit/the Present Moment/

healing of all our mental/physical wounds/

awareness of Jesus the Great Healer/the healing of the Trinity.

HUMAN PURPOSE LOST AND FOUND

The new cosmology resonates with Christian faith –

God cannot be reduced to the creation event –

something must have come before Creation –

God is not reducible to the universe –

even though people pray to the universe

or ask the universe to do things for them

“the universe” is a code name for “God”

but people are afraid to admit God into their life

because it is not cool these days to be religious –

God is not the universe nor separate from it

but God’s Presence is in and flows thru ongoing creation

modern atheism did not arise with science

but atheism got a kickstart with Copernicus’ heliocentrism –

humans kicked out of the center of the universe

to the periphery of a vast impersonal cosmos

humans irrelevant to the cosmic story –

humans no longer the perfection of the universe

but an accidental side show

gave birth to existentialism – we have no god-ordained purpose –

we create our own purpose by what we do

Gandhi retrieved and the West lost a religious view of reality –

a view of the importance of being and truth

the West reduced the human purpose to practical efficiency –

concerned with means not ends –

no longer aware of the intrinsic God-given value

of being human – we only focus on what humans

can do for other humans – particularly the rich

our only purpose: producing and consuming things

only religion kept a notion of our intrinsic value –

the Church’s mission to discover honest-to-goodness truth

through open dialogue between humans

requires reverence and respect for lawful diversity

“The Church’s purpose is to keep unity in essentials

freedom in non-essentials, and charity in all things”

– Pope John XXIII

but the Church cannot brag about any of this –

it is the work of the Holy Spirit

to call forth many religious – hermits/monks/nuns

who have consecrated their lives to prayer –

praising God and interceding for God’s People –

this has gone on since the Desert Mothers/Fathers

and is the living source of the spiritual life of the Church.

“ENLIGHTENMENT”

The new cosmology does not contradict Christian faith

but resonates with it –

God is neither reduced to the creation event

nor to the universe

nor is separate from the universe

but God’s Presence is in and flows through ongoing creation –

God is in the world but not entirely of it –

everything is made of the same stuff as God – divinity

but is not the fullness of Divinity

God flows thru the universe

and thru the progressive stages of human ethics:

ego-centric care (for me)/ethno-centric care (for my group)/

world-centric care (for all humans)/universe-centric (care for all beings) –

each stage has a higher compassion

so not all hierarchies are bad

the more mature religious mind has developed

an alternative/wider way of seeing –

Buddhism/Hinduism/the Gospel of John

call it “enlightenment” –

“you are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14) –

the light of Christ shines thru all who belong to him

and is meant to shine into every dark corner of the world –

Christians call enlightenment “conversion”

Jesus calls it “salvation” or “the kingdom of God”

which is not a place or only exists in the afterlife

but is a new way of seeing and thinking

here and now

“In the early church ‘believe’

meant to ‘belove’ something –

to give your heart/soul/trust to it –

but now society has become so ‘enlightened’

that to ‘believe’ something means

‘to hold an opinion about it’

so formerly ‘to believe in God’ meant

you gave your whole self/heart/soul to God

now, ‘to believe in God’ is to be of the opinion

that God may exist”

– Wilfred Cantwell Smith

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.

RELIGION/SCIENCE/POST-TRUTH

A major mistake for atheism and science advocates

is the massive fallacy of freezing all religion

at the pre-rational/mythic level

and believing modern science and culture

are purely rational

which war and science-used-for-war disproves

to some scientists evolution is a meaningless process

controlled by blind chance

whereas to some Christians evolution can give new depth

and richness to our view of God –

God works thru chaos and does not impose design

but gives nature the chance

to participate in its own creation

the universe intended life from the beginning –

if the Big Bang had happened a trillionth of a second

slower or faster the universe would have imploded

or flung apart into nothingness

whereas North American and European theologians

address the non-believer –

how can you speak of God in a scientific age? –

Latin and African liberation theologians

address the non-person –

how can you speak of God to the poor/marginalized?

over the course of centuries the Church

has worked out a body of principles based on the Gospel

regarding communal justice and equality –

and Vatican Council II in the 1960s

wanted to reinforce/enlarge these principles

particularly regarding communal economic development

as our culture turns in the “post-truth” era

towards the authority of experience

rather than the authority of religion or reason

it is good to remember that religion and reason

are part of human experience

and to be spiritual and religious

is to stitch human experience and wisdom together

so experience renews reason

with awe.

GRATITUDE, A COUNTERCULTURAL RESPONSE TO THE WORLD’S DESPAIR

The best thing you can do for yourself, others, and the planet is: be grateful.

Gratitude is a countercultural response to the scarcity mentality we are brainwashed into in subtle ways every day.

While I realize that capitalism, business, and advertising underlie our whole culture, they seem to thrive on keeping us unhappy with whatever we presently have so we are in a constant state of dissatisfaction.

Mary Jo Leddy, a Catholic theologian, social activist, and Order of Canada recipient, noted in her 2002 book Radical Gratitude that the hidden message that drives our culture is “you do not have enough, you do not do enough, you are not enough.”

Gratitude gives you the strength to combat this message because it shows you how abundant your life already is. By teaching you to appreciate what you already have, gratitude prevents the feeling you must frantically get, do, and be more.

It could be argued that this constant desire for more is causing the over-consumption of the world’s resources such as land, forests and fuel that underlies climate change. And many wars have started because some political leader thought he needed more. A case in point is Vladimir Putin, who although he is the president of Russia, the largest country in the world, decided that was not enough, he needed Ukraine.

I have found that keeping a daily gratitude journal can be revolutionary. Writing down things I am grateful for from each day has gradually positively shifted my awareness.

I used to be like Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts cartoon, who once quipped “I have learned to dread one day at a time.” Now, before I get out of bed, I anticipate the blessings of the day because I know I will be recording them that evening before bed.

There are so many things one can be grateful for: births, birthdays, graduations, work, promotions, having a spouse or partner, children, groups you belong to, friends, health, education, travel, a place to stay, movies, sports, the list is endless.

There are lots of both common and unusual things we could be thankful for: butterflies in our garden, hummingbirds at our feeder, podcasts that shed new light, fixing a computer glitch, learning a smartphone trick, our pets, books, receiving a drawing from a grandchild or funny card in the mail, documentaries about whales or fungi, a walk in the woods, learning a new way of exercising, and on and on.

As an abundance mentality, gratitude tends to loosen up peoples’ purse strings: when they realize their life is already overflowing with things to be thankful for, they more easily give to those who are in dire straits caused by war or poverty.

Scripture is full of verses calling us to gratitude: “In everything give thanks, for this is God’s will for you” (I Thessalonians 5:18). “O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever” (Psalm 30:12). God has created a world of abundance not scarcity, but as Jesus said, it is “for those who have eyes to see” – seeing abundance or scarcity are choices we can make, for better or worse.

At this time of year, despite all the emphasis on consumption of physical gifts, churches try to help people be grateful for the greatest gift of all, given to us out of God’s infinite abundance: “For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

The greatest thing to be grateful for is God’s overflowing love, manifested in a physical way we can understand, God in the form of a human being, Jesus the Christ.

With political chaos. climate problems, and wars, the world seems dark and depressing right now, but let’s open our eyes this Christmas season and choose to see how abundant our lives already are, be grateful, and open our hearts to God and others.

Bruce Tallman is a London religious educator of adults and spiritual director. http://www.brucetallman.com