Tag: spirit

Seeing God and Humans at Work in All Avoids Pitfalls

If you understand that God works with, in, and through things without violating their essential nature, you can avoid many contemporary pitfalls. 

    To begin at the beginning, God created laws of nature, such as the law of complexity/consciousness, which means God and nature constantly co-create more complex, conscious, and free creatures. 

    John Polkinghorne, a physicist and Anglican priest, stated in his “free-process defence” of the existence of God in spite of evil: God allows nature a certain amount of freedom because it is better to have a creative world free to make mistakes than a mechanical world ruled by a cosmic tyrant.

    Evolution is so full of false starts that it would be easy to conclude it is just a random process. However, it is a divine/natural process that, overall, is heading in a spiritual direction: from matter to life to thought to spirit. We can see this in the movement from our planet’s original chemical soup to plants, animals, humans, and religions. Sri Aurobindo (Hindu), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Christian), and Ken Wilber (Buddhist) all agree about spiritual evolution.

    The increasingly free natural world co-created with God free human beings. God made humans with free will because it is better to have a world with people who make mistakes than one of perfectly programmed machines. Robots cannot love. For love, you need freedom. This is the “free-will defence” of God’s existence despite evil.

    With nature, God co-created humans with the intrinsic law of love: a deep desire for absolute goodness, truth, beauty, and love. In other words, what everyone wants is God, whether they know it or not. It would be easy to get so caught up with all the sins of humans that you miss our overall goodness: most people want to love and be good. On the other hand, you could get so caught up with the goodness of humans, as the human potential movement often does, that you could naively miss our sins and need of God.

    Similarly, the writing of scripture is a divine/human process. God co-created the scriptures with the human authors without violating their freedom. On the one hand, you could get so caught up with all the scientific and historical errors in scripture that it would be easy to conclude it is all a human fabrication, as John Spong and Marcus Borg have done.         

    On the other hand, you could get so caught up with the divine inspiration of scripture that you make it infallible in all things and fail to see that, while it may be inerrant on matters of faith and morals, it is not a science or history textbook, it is a faith document. Believing in the absolute infallibility of scripture closes people off from science, makes them fundamentalists, and contributes to the rise of scientific atheism in our culture.

    Similarly, Jesus was and is a divine/human person. The Spirit never violated the essential human and divine nature of Jesus but co-created his life, death, and resurrection with him. It would be easy to get so caught up searching for the historical Jesus that you miss his overall divinity. On the other hand, it would be easy to get so caught up in his divinity that you miss his humanity and his message of social justice, as Christians have largely done until the last hundred years or so.

    Churches are also divine/human co-creations. No church, synagogue, or mosque is a society of the perfect. Even Christian saints, such as Peter and Paul, and Jewish heroes, such as Abraham and Moses, were as full of human foibles as present-day imams. You could get so caught up in church scandals that it would be easy to miss the overall goodness of churches and conclude they are just an all-too-human enterprise. Most of the time, churches quietly go about doing good, but this rarely gets in the news. 

    On the other hand, you could focus so fully on the divine side of churches that you become triumphalist and believe the church has all the answers and doesn’t need to learn from science, psychology, history, and other religions. God works with churches, letting them make mistakes, but also guiding churches, other religions, and people who are “spiritual but not religious” towards the reign of Spirit. 

    At this crucial time in human history, in spite of all the doomsday predictions about the climate and economy there also seems to be a massive outpouring of Spirit going on in peoples’ hearts and souls. So, we need to avoid the pitfall of despair, as if God was not involved with and through the whole process. Again, God does not violate our freedom to make mistakes and wise decisions. God draws and invites us rather than forcing and driving us. 

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

SECRET SOCIETIES

Spirit is not something that goes on in time forever

but rather is a Timeless Moment, an Eternal Now

a Pure Present that never ends

and is timeless yet holds all time in its hands

across the aeons, the Holy Spirit

who John MacQuarrie refers to as “Unitive Being”

has been the principle linking the macro and micro –

the Cosmic Christ and Jesus of Nazareth

Karl Marx would criticize the above as just religious philosophy

since he criticized philosophers as a group

that just interprets the world but never changes it

changing the world takes courage and persistence

which is why boys who want to become men

must go through rituals of initiation

be separated from the Mother

experience an ordeal of pain such as circumcision

in order to be admitted 

into the Secret/Sacred Society of Men

girls on the other hand are naturally initiated

into the Secret/Sacred Society of Women

through the pain of childbirth

philosophy may seem useless to some

but Integral Theory gets its hands dirty with Earth

by linking the three main schools of environmental ethics:

– the bioequality school: all creatures have equal value

– the animal rights/Whiteheadian school: not all creatures

have equal intrinsic value – there exists a hierarchy of values

– the stewardship school: those with a higher intrinsic value

have greater responsibility for taking care of all creatures

but right-wing Christians would think this was too “communal”

too close to “communism” – acting like a community of care

so, our biggest threat comes not from secular atheists 

but from fundamentalists, Protestant or Catholic

whose absolute certainty about their beliefs

based on their belief in the infallibility of scripture or the pope

has made them into a Secret Society of Religious Atheists

so secret they don’t realize what they have done 

and what they have become

because they have stripped God of all mystery.

IMAGINING GOD

How we image God makes all the difference –

it impacts how we relate to God/others/ourselves –

Karl Rahner imagined God as “Incomprehensible Holy Mystery”

not concretely definable yet concretely involved

in all aspects of life

the ancient Greeks imagined God as Zeus –

 a god cleverly involved in human destruction –

not just by throwing lightning bolts

but also curing human lust for power 

by increasing our power at the expense of wisdom

until us mortals destroy ourselves –

what today we are on the verge of doing 

with artificial intelligence

in the past we made God and spirituality

the Great Escape from reality –

the holiest thing was to be holed up in a monastery

or in the monastery of your heart

never seeking restorative justice

but the True God and true spirituality

are not dead to the body/sex/nature/beauty/

justice/humor/and excellence

previously we cut God and Spirit off from all that

but God’s Spirit excludes nothing and no one

the Holy Spirit as the Breath of Divine Life 

is the Source of all life

in fact, aliveness is the best witness of God’s Presence –

when Francis of Assisi said to the almond tree

“Speak to me of God’s Presence”

the tree blossomed

similarly, we mortals blossom when we practice 

the Presence of God

for “while I am with God, I fear nothing”

“The Paschal Mystery is now grafted 

onto the tree of humanity and the history 

of each individual” – John Paul II

so, Ramakrishna (1836-1886), the great Hindu saint

may have met Jesus in his heart since Jesus said

“I have other flocks that are not of this sheep pen –

they will listen to my voice” (John 10:16).

SCIENCE VERSUS RELIGION AND MEANING?

Forty percent of chemists/physicists/astronomers

have a religious affiliation 

but forty percent of Americans believe 

science and religion are incompatible/in conflict

science is about objective truth about Nature

but Spirit first of all goes out of itself as Nature

so Nature is objective Spirit/

unselfconscious Spirit/slumbering Spirit

Plato’s “visible/sensible God”

and Nature is a dynamic god

not an inert background for Mind

as the ancient Egyptians thought

to Dietrich Bonhoeffer “religion”

is the “garment of Christianity”

its outward form not its essence

and when essence is lost

religious institutions like churches die 

and are reborn as something new

death and rebirth is a pattern

in all major religions:

life/death/resurrection/reincarnation

the Moon is the great symbol of this –

religion is about symbolism 

the source of meaning

and humans by Nature are meaning-seekers:

even so-called “primitive” tribes

believe the Moon 

is the abode of souls 

awaiting reincarnation

and the Moon expands with souls as it waxes

and releases souls as it wanes

the Moon dies/resurrects/

reincarnates as something new

it may not be a scientific fact 

science is all about facts

but the Moon-belief

is objectively and truly meaningful

and soul-satisfying.

FLOWING WITH THE DIVINE

The cure for fear is to keep your eyes on God:

when Peter looked at Jesus

and trusted

he walked on water

when he looked at the storm/wind/waves

he feared

and sank

 

with the help of Spirit and prayer

we can face reality

and the symbolic crosses of life

squarely

 

the difference between a shaman and a schizophrenic:

the shaman on his/her visionary journey

meets symbols that match reality

their inner and outer worlds jive –

with the schizophrenic there is a break

between the inner world and outer world

they struggle

with wild/psychic/symbolic forces

that do not match reality

 

people who try to control everything

set up resistance:

one foot on the gas

one foot on the brake

like those who burn out

do not overwork, their heart is divided

going forward and resisting going forward

at the same time

 

much easier to keep your eyes on God

surrender control

and go with Divine Flow –

you can achieve much more

without tiring or sinking

 

worry about money creates resistance to Spirit –

let go of money

don’t resist the River –

let God’s Spirit Current

carry you away!

 

KNOCKING ON THE PEARLY GATES

On all the key issues in spirituality:

the equality of men and women/

the harmony of body and soul/

the holiness of being/the goodness of humans/

the compatibility of mysticism and prophecy

Meister Eckhart exceeded the Aristotelian Thomas Aquinas

and so Eckhart was definitely not a Neo-Platonist

as he is often portrayed – he sought the unity of opposites –

the unity of Heaven and Earth.

 

But Newtonian physics separated all things –

and thinking of matter composed of     hard     separate     atoms

impacted our view of self – the individual against community

and our view of Spirit – as somehow opposed to material science

and our view of nature – as a product to be exploited for gain –

the result has been massive alienation

from self/God/nature.

 

The Jewish world of Jesus thought of all things

as created/hierarchical/anthropocentric/

governed by fixed laws with a fixed beginning and fixed end.

But modern evolutionary physics sees reality

as a dynamic interplay of chance/law/interconnection –

Aristotle’s fixed reality of matter and form

has been deconstructed by relativity and quantum mechanics

into a never-ending/interconnected/flow

of energy and information.

 

The creative union of God and matter

is not a metaphysical doctrine as much as a

pragmatic explanation of the universe –

the religious paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

had an innate tendency/power to see God

not apart from the physical world

but in it/through it/as it.

 

The Kingdom/Queendom/Kindom/Presence of God

is within us and all around us

so we do not have to die

to get to the Pearly Gates

(owned, conspirists claim, by Bill Gates –

therefore the “Gates of Heaven”)

we only have to be fully alive with God

in this present spiritual/material world.

LIVING CHRIST/LIVING BUDDHA

A cosmic Christology is the only adequate one.

If Christ is “first-born from the dead”

the resurrection is not only for humanity

but the whole Creation.

 

Christ’s resurrection renews the whole universe –

“in Christ all things are made new” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

including other world religions.

 

After all – to reverse engineer things –

Zoroastrian/Persian thought definitely influenced

the writers of the Book of Daniel

and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In the last century before Christ, the Essenes

who had roots in Zoroastrianism

expected a World Savior.

God the Holy Spirit influenced Zoroastrians and Essenes

even before Christ appeared.

 

For Plato/Plotinus/Meister Eckhart/Ralph Waldo Emerson

Spirit transcends/includes/gives rise to mind/body.

Similarly, in Buddhism, Spirit (Dharmakaya)

gives rise to mind (Sambogyakaya)

which gives rise to body/form/Nature (Mismanakaya).

 

We can therefore help the Living Christ and the Living Buddha

continue their compassionate work by realizing our body

is first of all a member of the Mystical Body of Christ

but also the body of Buddha.

Therefore, if you are Buddhist, you should love your body

as if it were the Buddha

and if you are Christian, you should love your body

as if it were Jesus the Christ

because Christ is living in you/over you/thru you/as you.

 

“The mystery of Christ within you

is your hope of glory!” (Colossians 1:27).

 

“My deepest me is God!”

– Saint Catherine of Genoa

 

“I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.”

– Saint Paul in Galatians 2:20

 

ONE COSMIC FAMILY

According to Heidegger’s

approach to Being

God is not a concept

not a transcendent 

Creator-God

but an activity in the world

a Self-Giving Presence.

All mystics agree

there is no magical/mythical Being 

who transcends the world

but there is Infinite Consciousness 

in the world.

According to Augustine

the wicked try to flee from God

but God is everywhere

God never abandons the wicked.

In particular

God, Infinite Consciousness

is meant to Be

“I Am” in the Church

the Beloved Community

born of Spirit, born of people

a Sacrament of Divine Liberation.

Although the anti-Paul 

author of Timothy I and II

wrote that women 

were to be silent, silenced in church

St. Thecla, second century celibate-ascetic

and Church-Leader

was more popular than the Virgin. 

Dualistic, black-and-white thinking

separating soul (good) from body (bad)

always made men uncomfortable

with women’s bodies and sexuality

but feminist theologians now

have reappropriated Wisdom

as Co-Creator at work in human bodies

to create right relationships

and they see God desires

daily intimacy, daily communion

with God’s Beloved People

and daily intimacy with Beloved God

and Beloved Community

is the foundation of spiritual life.

Christians and Buddhists

mindlessly practicing rituals 

find little joy because

humans are meant to be

evolution becoming aware of itself,

Infinite Consciousness 

becoming mindful.

Like Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist mystics

scientists now see the universe

as a unified web.

Like a spider’s web 

shimmering in the sun after rain

God has caught scientists 

in God’s web of life.

No longer pure observers

they now see everything

not as objects or idols

but as icons

of God’s Infinite Consciousness.

They now can see

Brother Sun and Sister Moon 

and all things as 

One Cosmic Family.