Tag: myth

THE STRAWBERRY OF GOD’S EYE

A Fourth Awakening of Christianity may be coming –

postmodern Christianity started in the 1960s and is more

pluralistic/egalitarian/experimental/environmental.

Harvey Cox, a Harvard sociologist/theologian thought

a 1500 year “Age of Belief” was ending

and an “Age of Spirituality” was beginning.

Some think the 300-year-old “Enlightenment” has fizzled:

people no longer trust science for all the answers.

Phyllis Tickle described an ongoing “Christian rummage sale:”

every 500 years or so everything changes –

500 AD Christianity became the Holy Roman Empire

1000 AD the Western and Eastern Churches split

1500 AD the Protestant Reformation

20th Century: the Second Vatican Council.

 

“In the monomyth of the Hero’s Journey

the normal rites of passage are magnified: you separate

from ordinary life and enter a world of supernatural wonders/

overcome fabulous challenges/return with boons

for all mankind.” – Joseph Campbell

 

After the first millennium, the “wandering ascetic”

was abolished – monks were ordered to “leave the world”

and live in monasteries. However, now we see

that ordinary, everyday life abounds with fabulous challenges:

opportunities to practice holiness/honesty/commitment/

trust/compassion/patience/forgiveness – we used to think

holiness consists of heroic deeds somewhere else

but it is all right here/right now.

 

Canadian folk music legend Bruce Cockburn:

“If you don’t see beyond normal sight

you can get trapped forever in the fraying-rope/

uneasy/anxious treadmill our culture is on.

You never see that the whole world is full

of the Spirit’s light/life/love.”

 

It is true that in the cosmic scale you are nothing

but “Do you not know that your name

is written in heaven?” (Luke 10:20) –

to God you are everything – the apple

of God’s eye – the strawberry of God’s “I.”

 

 

 

TRUE RELIGION

True religion involves basing our beliefs

on our own direct experience of reality

not on concepts someone else taught us –

after a while those concepts no longer work

and plunge us into darkness.

 

Religions steeped in creeds and doctrines alone

offer people a magic-mythic view of reality:

Abraham asked Allah to show him

how Allah raises from the dead.

Allah said “Slaughter four birds

place their pieces on the hills

in the four directions

then call them

and they will fly to you.”

 

The constant movement towards greater consciousness –

the history of evolution on Planet Earth

from matter to life to thought to spirit – continues

and leads believers beyond magic and myth/

and gives us a rational/spiritual explanation

for the development of the universe.

 

Ramon Panikkar, the Catholic/Hindu scholar

is a worthy guide to the New Axial Era

when he proclaims that our first task

is to discover the Cosmic Christ within us

then also in others

and then in Creation itself.

True religion is to be seized by the Love

at the heart of life/the heart of Creation

and to find ways to let that Love evolve

into a global wholeness – a wholeness

of unity/compassion/justice/peacemaking.

 

3 Big Ideas for May 1, 2019

  1. The modern worldview is that because our universe is so old and so vast, humans are totally insignificant. A more helpful and meaningful approach is that because of our intelligence and creativity, which it took the universe so long to produce – 13.7 billion years – we can say again, as people did before astrophysics, that humans are not only significant but central to the entire universe.
  2. Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian physicist and priest, first postulated that, as in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, there must have been a beginning to the universe. Then George Isamow, an American-Russian physicist, postulated the Big Bang Theory, the current view among scientists. Since scientists have proven that everything is expanding outward, if you go back in time far enough, it must have all begun from a single point. Science has to be materially based, it can’t start with spirit, and therefore Isamow further theorized that the universe came from a tiny particle. However, this idea that all the matter of the universe as we now know it was somehow packed into an infinitely small particle seems absurd and is an untestable hypothesis. As such it is a myth. I am not anti-science, in fact I think science is an incredible tool that reveals even more of God’s glory. But I also believe it is important to understand that science is based on this myth. It is just as logical, in fact I believe more logical, to say that the whole universe came from an Almighty Creator.
  3. Ignatius of Loyola invented the prayer method of inserting yourself imaginatively right into scenes from the Bible. For example, you are in a boat with the disciples in a raging sea. You feel the rocking of the boat, the spray of the waves, and then you see someone walking on the water. You feel the fear of the disciples who didn’t recognize it was Jesus and thought they were seeing a ghost. You feel amazement and relief when Jesus calms the wind and sea and gets into the boat with them. Many people have found that this method of imaginative contemplation leads them beyond “head-knowledge” to “heart-knowledge” of God and emotionally transforms them through a direct experience of God.