Tag: Moses

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.

YOUR TRUE CALLING

Rosemary Radford Ruether, the great feminist theologian

was one of the first to see patriarchal/dualistic thinking –

that things are divided not one –

causes not only sexism but also racism and environmental destruction

 

theology itself can be patriarchal/dualistic

if it does not paradoxically give up

what it has always asked other disciplines to give up: supremacy –

like all sciences it must submit to the greater wisdom

of evolutionary cosmology – the blueprint of the universe –

the unrelenting progress from atoms to humans to divinized humans –

astronomy blesses us with a scientific revelation of God’s Plan

 

whereas classical thermodynamics said closed systems dissipate energy

and thus the whole cosmos is winding down –

which breeds nihilism – we are ultimately doomed so why care about anything?

but biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy, inventor of General Systems Theory

revealed that open systems do not run down

because they get new energy from their environment

 

but systems are not The System that wants to fool us and rule us –

the culture we live in is deceptive and hegemonic –

“We need Christ and the poet/artist/mystic to give us liberated vision –

new ways to see” – Canadian folk legend Bruce Cockburn

 

the journey to find new ways to see

the departure of the hero on the Hero’s Journey – has sub-stages:

The Call

The Refusal of the Call (and the folly/futility of resistance)

Supernatural Aid

Descent into the Night:

God calls Moses to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt

Moses says “No way, I cannot go, who am I to challenge Pharaoh?”

God says “I will be with you”

Moses leaves for Egypt and the rest is history

 

“The True Calling for all of us is the Present Moment –

that’s why they call it the “Present” – the “Gift from God” –

the bigger miracle is not for one person to walk on water

but for all of us to walk on our blue/green planet

in the Eternal Now”

– Thich Nhat Hanh

 

if you live in the One and the Now

dualistic thinking has no power over your True Calling.