Tag: sex

REVOLUTIONARY WORLDVIEWS

Copernicus (1473-1543) upset two worldviews:

the Earth was not fixed in place but rotated

and the Sun was the center of the cosmos not Earth

Duns Scotus, Franciscan theologian, upset another two:

“Our predestination to glory precedes by nature

our tendency to sin” – we are original blessings

not original sinners – and “The goal of perfect love

is the perfection of love, therefore Christ 

would have come to Earth even if there was no sin

and therefore no need of redemption” 

Meister Eckhart upset a fifth worldview:

God is not “out there,” but rather

“The soul is the deepest/truest part of being human

and the place where we are united with God

who creates us in every moment”

the spiritual and physical are united –

the Father/Son/Holy Spirit are in our heads/hearts/guts

Jacques Ellul’s theology upset both the capitalist and Marxist

world-views: “Christian social action must put the emphasis

on individual humans not the collective masses

nor on the technological means of production –

a human being is not a cog in mass machinery

nor a tool to be used by the professional politician”

another upset of the modern worldview: sex is healthy not “dirty” 

“Evolution continues through humans only to the extent

that we are conscious of the integral wholeness of love

which includes healthy sexuality. In other words

healthy sexuality is a key to evolution’s progress”

– Teilhard de Chardin

but there is a major problem with males and females:

we can see our shadow and the shadow of others

much more easily in our own sex than in the opposite sex

we overlook the shadow of the opposite sex

which means that men see their own shadow

in other men, fight them, and create wars

and women are jealous of other women

overlook the flaws of men

and make seriously bad choices 

in whom they fall in love with and marry.

WAKE UP!

Prayer is the place where much spiritual growth

and struggle can occur

caused by the true self and false self and sinful self

in conflict

 

your false self is not your sinful self

the intentionally self-centred self

that God does not like and you should not like –

the false self is good and necessary as far as it goes –

it is the outer things you think you are –

your name/gender/job/nationality

but it often poses as the true self/soul which it is not

thus it becomes false

 

the essence of spirituality is being aware/seeing/

becoming conscious – that is why Jesus and Buddha

constantly say “Be awake/wake up” –

“Therefore keep awake/be on the alert

for you do not know when your Lord is coming” (Matt 24:42) –

be awake particularly to your sinful self

the subtle self that likes the best spot in the synagogue

to be treated with respect and called “Rabbi”

or “Father”

 

the cure for the false self is what Brother Lawrence calls

“The Practice of the Presence of God” –

the holy habit

of getting used to God’s constant company

and constantly talking/constantly listening

to God in every circumstance –

even while making love

indeed, particularly while making love

that’s why sex feels so heavenly –

God is making love to you

thru your partner – wake up to that!

 

contemplative prayer can occur anytime/anywhere –

it is “a communion in which the Holy Trinity

conforms humans/the image of God/the Imago Dei

to God’s likeness” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2713)

– thru grace we participate in Divinity! Wake up to that!

 

all souls thus owe God everything

and can repay God nothing.

 

BELOVING OUR MOTHER – EARTH

The transition from “faith-as-experience” to “belief as opinion”

came from poor New Testament translations of the Greek:

in Greek “to believe” is a verb meaning “to trust” or “to belove”

in English it is a noun “My belief is that….”

 

Belief as “beloving” involves sexuality

and this involves the Third Buddhist Ethical Precept:

“Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct

I vow to protect individuals/couples/families/society

by not engaging in sexual relations without love

and a long-term commitment”

 

in order to be more beloving, Brother Teasdale renounced sex

and adopted the lifestyle of a Hindu sannyasin (renunciate)

but one engaged in the world –

his book A Monk in the World

explains how he became a “Warrior-Monk”

which is what the world needs right now:

Prophet-Mystics in our midst right here/right now

 

we cannot hope to have a revival

of meaningful sacramental fundamentals

without a re-education about the necessity

in everyone’s life of the importance of myth/symbol/ritual

that crystallizes our purpose on planet Earth

 

the first Earth-rise above a lunar landscape

broke all the old mythology to pieces as we realized:

Earth and heaven are no longer separate:

Earth is floating in the heavens

Earth is a heavenly body

Earth is no longer the center of the universe –

cosmological centers are now everywhere!

 

Therefore, we can surrender

all our anxieties and ambitions

to the God who is everywhere –

God is no longer “Our Father who art in heaven”

but right here/right now

and therefore will provide what we need

right here/right now

to be happy and holy and loving

of this pale blue dot

this goddess, “Our Mother Earth.”

 

REDISCOVERING THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING

Starting with Copernicus and then Galileo,

heliocentrism – the Sun as the center of things

not the Earth – the new cosmology

totally upset the watermelon cart

displaced God’s immutability/hierarchy/

humans as the center of the universe/

our race as the center of God’s care/

the stable relationship between self/cosmos/God

was completely disrupted.

 

No wonder Alan Watts, who embraced eastern mysticism,

noted that modern culture is peculiar:

every other culture, East and West,

from 6000 years ago to the birth of modern science

believed in the Great Chain of Being.

 

However, we can rediscover this Great Chain

by recognizing our bodies, thru sexual intercourse

have been coming out of each other:

male out of female, female out of male

since day one – the whole human race is one –

one flesh/one body/one blood.

 

And now in addition we recognize

that it took the universe 13.7 billion years

to create YOU – from atoms/molecules/cells/

multicellular organisms/vertebrates/

your thousands of ancestors/to YOU –

YOU are 13.7 billion years old –

think about it – YOU are made of the dust of stars –

stardust – and God chose YOU

before the foundation of the universe.

 

Other scientists further disrupted all things –

besides Darwin, the new physics

changed our view of the cosmos

as dynamic and relational not static.

And new quantum laws incorporated chance

and indeterminism. But chance does not change

the cosmos into a lottery –

it is the way the universe explores

and realizes its potential:

the divinized human being –

YOU filled to the full with GOD.

3 Big Ideas for May 15, 2019

  1. Teilhard de Chardin was a Christian mystic who believed that love and energy are the foundation of the cosmos. This “love-energy” is the source of the universe’s intelligibility and therefore the basis of knowledge. This leads philosophy out of the impasse of making matter the basis of all empirical knowledge. Philosophers have traditionally made love secondary to knowledge – you have to first know something before you can love it. But for lovers of God like Teilhard, love is the source and goal of all knowledge.
  2. Christian martyrs were willing to die for their faith because they believed “all is one” – everything, including life and death, is under the care of God. Now we have arrived at a similar state by the reverse process: we no longer believe there is a God, all is passing away, and therefore all is meaningless. Without God, all is not one, it is zero. The martyr was willing to die for God, but would the secular non-believer be willing to die for zero? This is important when you are speaking truth to power and fighting injustice.
  3. Almost everything wrong with the world has to do with the way the “It” of institutions can be misaligned, out of control, and disconnect with the “I” and the “We.” The personal is destroyed by the impersonal when corporations, governments, and religious institutions become out of touch with the people they are meant to serve, and only serve themselves. The result is exploitation of others for money or sex, and rape of the planet’s resources on which we all depend. Unitive thinking, the idea that all is one, keeps the “It” of hierarchies connected to the common good, the “We.”