The news that Mother Teresa doubted the existence of God gave atheists grist for their mill. But I insist that atheists and many Christians share an image of God that leads both groups astray and cannot be sustained in deep reflection—an external deity, a humanlike individual, a separate being. Theist belief in such a god is rightly denigrated by atheists.
Mystics, who experience what is called God more closely than the rest of us, tell us that It is not to be described as any thing or any person. I’ve not seen a better description of It than the one Huston Smith passes on from the yogas of Hinduism. He writes that the “only literally accurate description of the Unsearchable” is to say, “not this . . . not this,” of everything in the universe. “What remains will be God.”
This realization is common among mystic seers, whatever their tradition. In Christianity, apophatic mysticism says God is no thing and every thing. The Tao de Ching begins with the words, “The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.” In other words, It’s unknowable, indescribable. Those who experience It and try to find words for It fail, but they can’t stop trying.
Mystics experience this mysterious something, but they are conditioned by background, by language and culture. So Christian mystics usually begin with the Jesus image but their meditation transcends this image.
Thomas Merton converted from communism to Catholicism and became a Trappist monk. Toward the end of his life he also became a Zen Buddhist, like Thich Nhât Hanh mingling Buddhism with Christianity. In one of Merton’s works on Zen Buddhism, he expressed astonishment that he had more in common with Zen Buddhists than with members of his own religion. Since Merton, Catholic monastics follow his example of merging traditions.
I wish Mother Teresa had strayed from literal Christian belief. She would not have written, "Jesus has a very special love for you,” and then been assailed with “darkness,” “loneliness,” and “torture” when she looked for God. She would have known that a human figure can lead us to what we call God, but cannot be It.
What I wish for theists like Mother Teresa I also wish for atheists—the direct experience of the something that is the Ground and Source of all that is or could be. I finish with a mystic’s statement I like very much: “It is best to have an intimate relationship with God and best not to insist that she exists.”
Friday, August 29, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Reign & Kingdom again
The range of responses to the prior post delight me. A person who emailed me numbered them from 1 to 9 and said this:
"Some of these I probably would agree with (3, 5, 6, 7). A couple I don't know what you mean at all (1, 2, 8, 9) and would need an explanation. # 4, I really don't know what you mean."
Books would be needed to adequately answer Tule's comment question and this email set of questions, but I hope to partially answer them here , and I invite further questions. It's clear that, in my zeal to speak to the full spectrum of spiritual beliefs, I assume too large a degree of common understanding.
Here goes.
The historical Jesus often spoke about something that usually is translated “Kingdom of God” and traditionally is envisioned as a heaven reserved for people whom Jesus judged worthy at a cataclysmic end of the world. A respected theologian believed that Jesus preached “a sudden, final eruption of God’s rule into this present world.” Many Christians still imagine this “Kingdom” to be so exclusive that only believers in Jesus get in. This and other exclusive Christian claims are the target of my effort to bridge Christianity with other ways of imagining spiritual reality, religious and non-religious.
As I imagine the Reign that the Nazarene spoke of, it is the cosmic field of consciousness that mystics experience in deep meditation and people like Eckhart Tolle discuss. Mysticism is the direct experience of what’s called “God,” a term that unfortunately conjures up a god. Included in the mystic experience is union with this indefinable Ground of being or Source of all that is or could be. “Eternity” could be another term for it (no words do it justice), because Einstein’s discovery of the space/time continuum separates the timeless Source from timed creation.
I believe Jesus to have been one of the great mystic seers of history, but we don’t have to be mystics to have some experience of the Eternal Source. It is an experience of consciousness that transcends rationality and transcends the physical brain, although instruments can detect something happening. Actually all thought, all consciousness transcends physical activity. Apparently Tule disagrees with this.
Another email comment came from Vincent Smiles, the Professor of Theology who read my manuscript and whose expertise in scripture I depend on.
Dr. Smiles cautions against attributing to Jesus our modern consciousness and separating Jesus too much from his own time, which was saturated with apocalyptic expectation. That makes sense. I reach the conclusion that, whatever the man in Palestine meant 2000 years ago, we have to translate its meaning for us at this stage in the evolution of human consciousness. And Vincent says something similar but much more completely and more nuanced:
"In general, of course, I like and agree with what you are suggesting here, but there are a number of complications. We have to keep clearly in mind the distinction between the ancient voices as enshrined in the texts, and our modern sensitivities and interpretations. This means that we cannot in any sense replace “end of the world,” for instance, with “ground of being,” since the NT (almost certainly including Jesus himself) did understand the “kingdom” (or “reign”) to involve God’s imminent closure of history-as-usual. That is why there is a distinctively political edge to the NT, for all that politics as such was neither Jesus’ nor the early church’s primary concern.
"We, by contrast, have essentially given up on “imminent coming,” even though we still profess “the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” When Jesus preached that “the reign of God is at hand,” he was not saying, “the eternal field of consciousness is timeless” (or the like); the evidence suggests that, in line with the tradition of OT prophecy, he had in mind some definitive action by God to interrupt the current flow of history and to bring it to fulfillment in accordance with the ancient promises to Israel.
"There was an inclusiveness in his vision that was, and remains, of decisive importance, which is why I mostly agree with what you are suggesting, but the issue of the “translation” of the ancient preaching and actions into present meanings is quite complex, I think. I think there has to be some negotiation between the “revelations” enshrined in the Bible, which are articulated in ancient idioms, and those same “revelations” as we receive and understand them in the context of our times and cultures. There is danger, in my view, in allowing either one to dominate the other.
"Specifically, I think it is important to strive for an understanding of God as active in human history not merely in a universal sense (“eternal field” etc) but also in particular times and places. “The Word became flesh” in a specific time, place and culture; if we view God only in terms of an “eternal field,” then, as I see it, we - very ironically - shrink God; she becomes just an amorphous idea, a concept, perhaps even just a “God of the philosophers.” Personally, I’d be just as happy with atheism. So, while I agree with the thrust toward inclusiveness, I think we need to strive for that in ways that do not compromise the specificity of Jesus – or, for that matter, of Buddha, Mohammed and so on."
I look forward to Vincent’s forthcoming book on science and spirituality.
"Some of these I probably would agree with (3, 5, 6, 7). A couple I don't know what you mean at all (1, 2, 8, 9) and would need an explanation. # 4, I really don't know what you mean."
Books would be needed to adequately answer Tule's comment question and this email set of questions, but I hope to partially answer them here , and I invite further questions. It's clear that, in my zeal to speak to the full spectrum of spiritual beliefs, I assume too large a degree of common understanding.
Here goes.
The historical Jesus often spoke about something that usually is translated “Kingdom of God” and traditionally is envisioned as a heaven reserved for people whom Jesus judged worthy at a cataclysmic end of the world. A respected theologian believed that Jesus preached “a sudden, final eruption of God’s rule into this present world.” Many Christians still imagine this “Kingdom” to be so exclusive that only believers in Jesus get in. This and other exclusive Christian claims are the target of my effort to bridge Christianity with other ways of imagining spiritual reality, religious and non-religious.
As I imagine the Reign that the Nazarene spoke of, it is the cosmic field of consciousness that mystics experience in deep meditation and people like Eckhart Tolle discuss. Mysticism is the direct experience of what’s called “God,” a term that unfortunately conjures up a god. Included in the mystic experience is union with this indefinable Ground of being or Source of all that is or could be. “Eternity” could be another term for it (no words do it justice), because Einstein’s discovery of the space/time continuum separates the timeless Source from timed creation.
I believe Jesus to have been one of the great mystic seers of history, but we don’t have to be mystics to have some experience of the Eternal Source. It is an experience of consciousness that transcends rationality and transcends the physical brain, although instruments can detect something happening. Actually all thought, all consciousness transcends physical activity. Apparently Tule disagrees with this.
Another email comment came from Vincent Smiles, the Professor of Theology who read my manuscript and whose expertise in scripture I depend on.
Dr. Smiles cautions against attributing to Jesus our modern consciousness and separating Jesus too much from his own time, which was saturated with apocalyptic expectation. That makes sense. I reach the conclusion that, whatever the man in Palestine meant 2000 years ago, we have to translate its meaning for us at this stage in the evolution of human consciousness. And Vincent says something similar but much more completely and more nuanced:
"In general, of course, I like and agree with what you are suggesting here, but there are a number of complications. We have to keep clearly in mind the distinction between the ancient voices as enshrined in the texts, and our modern sensitivities and interpretations. This means that we cannot in any sense replace “end of the world,” for instance, with “ground of being,” since the NT (almost certainly including Jesus himself) did understand the “kingdom” (or “reign”) to involve God’s imminent closure of history-as-usual. That is why there is a distinctively political edge to the NT, for all that politics as such was neither Jesus’ nor the early church’s primary concern.
"We, by contrast, have essentially given up on “imminent coming,” even though we still profess “the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” When Jesus preached that “the reign of God is at hand,” he was not saying, “the eternal field of consciousness is timeless” (or the like); the evidence suggests that, in line with the tradition of OT prophecy, he had in mind some definitive action by God to interrupt the current flow of history and to bring it to fulfillment in accordance with the ancient promises to Israel.
"There was an inclusiveness in his vision that was, and remains, of decisive importance, which is why I mostly agree with what you are suggesting, but the issue of the “translation” of the ancient preaching and actions into present meanings is quite complex, I think. I think there has to be some negotiation between the “revelations” enshrined in the Bible, which are articulated in ancient idioms, and those same “revelations” as we receive and understand them in the context of our times and cultures. There is danger, in my view, in allowing either one to dominate the other.
"Specifically, I think it is important to strive for an understanding of God as active in human history not merely in a universal sense (“eternal field” etc) but also in particular times and places. “The Word became flesh” in a specific time, place and culture; if we view God only in terms of an “eternal field,” then, as I see it, we - very ironically - shrink God; she becomes just an amorphous idea, a concept, perhaps even just a “God of the philosophers.” Personally, I’d be just as happy with atheism. So, while I agree with the thrust toward inclusiveness, I think we need to strive for that in ways that do not compromise the specificity of Jesus – or, for that matter, of Buddha, Mohammed and so on."
I look forward to Vincent’s forthcoming book on science and spirituality.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Reign of God vs. Kingdom
In God Is Not Three Guys in the Sky, I interpret Christian doctrine inclusively. Because distinctions are a good way of helping us to “get” new concepts, I’ve fashioned this table to contrast the inclusive idea of the Reign of God from the exclusive Kingdom idea.
Exclusive Kingdom of God --- Inclusive Reign of God
“Sudden eruption of God’s rule” (end of the world)--- Eternal Field of consciousness (Ground of being)
Literal interpretation --- Symbolic interpretation
Coming in linear time ---Eternal, timeless
Jesus judge and savior ---Universal ideal in each person
Access limited ---Accessible to all
Inconsistent with science; end of world, of physical law --- Consistent with science, with findings about space/time & consciousness
Territory of a male monarch with power over subjects --- Inner dimension with equal dignity of all
Christian frame of ideas --- Universal frame of ideas
Exclusive Kingdom of God --- Inclusive Reign of God
“Sudden eruption of God’s rule” (end of the world)--- Eternal Field of consciousness (Ground of being)
Literal interpretation --- Symbolic interpretation
Coming in linear time ---Eternal, timeless
Jesus judge and savior ---Universal ideal in each person
Access limited ---Accessible to all
Inconsistent with science; end of world, of physical law --- Consistent with science, with findings about space/time & consciousness
Territory of a male monarch with power over subjects --- Inner dimension with equal dignity of all
Christian frame of ideas --- Universal frame of ideas
Friday, August 22, 2008
Victoria Moran
Mistake! My events calendar says:
August 22, 2008
Conversation with Victoria Moran Radio show,
"A Charmed Life," at www.healthylife.net 1:00 p.m.
Well, instead, the conversation will take place on
Wednesday, August 27 at 11:00 a.m.
August 22, 2008
Conversation with Victoria Moran Radio show,
"A Charmed Life," at www.healthylife.net 1:00 p.m.
Well, instead, the conversation will take place on
Wednesday, August 27 at 11:00 a.m.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Womenpriests again & abortion again
At http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/1565 you can read about “Peace activist priest assists at women's ordination ceremony.
Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois, long associated with the cause of Christian non-violence and attempts to close the international school for military training at Fort Benning, Ga., earlier this month staked his conscience to a different cause: the ordination of women in the Catholic Church.”
A reader emailed me a comment (not submitted for publication), naming Nancy Pelosi as evidence that woman power is not shared power. Her crafty wielding of power does not come close to accomplishing the harm done by other powerful women, past and present, that I could name. That the acts of individual women who managed to rise in the male system proved consistent with the values of that system does not invalidate our conviction that woman power is needed and rising.
But the email ended with this relevant and telling statement that gives us pause: “Woman power has created the most abhorrent violent massacre—of those who can't talk—that ever existed.”
Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois, long associated with the cause of Christian non-violence and attempts to close the international school for military training at Fort Benning, Ga., earlier this month staked his conscience to a different cause: the ordination of women in the Catholic Church.”
A reader emailed me a comment (not submitted for publication), naming Nancy Pelosi as evidence that woman power is not shared power. Her crafty wielding of power does not come close to accomplishing the harm done by other powerful women, past and present, that I could name. That the acts of individual women who managed to rise in the male system proved consistent with the values of that system does not invalidate our conviction that woman power is needed and rising.
But the email ended with this relevant and telling statement that gives us pause: “Woman power has created the most abhorrent violent massacre—of those who can't talk—that ever existed.”
Friday, August 15, 2008
Fear
One of my aims in book and blog is to affirm and encourage those who wrestle with the discrepancy between their inner convictions and what the world wants them to think.
In a previous post I mentioned the wariness of religious persons who have moved beyond literal interpretations of Church doctrine but do not want openly to break with the Church. Lay people like me have a similar challenge, and not only those who feel attached to the Church. A person I’ll call Bruce asked not to be quoted and identified, afraid that his “name attached to the Catholic quotes” might bring negative reactions to his family.
Beth Blevins, on the other hand, accepts the challenge of expressing spiritual convictions that our exterior culture scorns. She identifies herself as a “technical writer and editor by trade, which requires very linear, logical thinking.” So far, nothing that startles. But her self-description goes on: “I have been a medium since I was a child: seeing angels, spirit guides, and spirits of loved ones who have made their transition.”
About two years ago she started having visions, a further step into the non-ordinary. “One morning during prayer and meditation I was guided to stop using my psychic abilities for individuals (giving readings) and begin working on a global level with energy/patterns in the ethers, or the ‘morphic fields,’ as Rupert Sheldrake names them. This meant to spend more time in meditation, ‘holding’ peace and awakening for the planet. As if to emphasize the point, my psychic abilities suddenly stopped! Shortly thereafter the visions commenced.”
Her family were Protestant fundamentalists, but her engineer father was psychic also and taught her “early on not to talk about it outside the family. My parents eventually started exploring metaphysics and expanding their view on ‘paranormal’ experiences. In fact, a couple of years before he died, my father confided to me that the Virgin Mary had appeared to him several times!
“So, I might say I’m a paradox of ‘far-left’ brain functioning and ‘far-right,’ or heart-centered, functioning! . . . Now you might understand why I hesitated for more than a year to put the visions up on the web! First, I’ve never experienced anything like them before and they’re pretty ‘out there!’ Second, they require a very different style of writing than I’m skilled at! But it is my assignment (you know how that goes), and procrastination aside, I’m making them available for people to experience!”
To read about the visions, go to http://sacredweb.blogspot.com/
In a previous post I mentioned the wariness of religious persons who have moved beyond literal interpretations of Church doctrine but do not want openly to break with the Church. Lay people like me have a similar challenge, and not only those who feel attached to the Church. A person I’ll call Bruce asked not to be quoted and identified, afraid that his “name attached to the Catholic quotes” might bring negative reactions to his family.
Beth Blevins, on the other hand, accepts the challenge of expressing spiritual convictions that our exterior culture scorns. She identifies herself as a “technical writer and editor by trade, which requires very linear, logical thinking.” So far, nothing that startles. But her self-description goes on: “I have been a medium since I was a child: seeing angels, spirit guides, and spirits of loved ones who have made their transition.”
About two years ago she started having visions, a further step into the non-ordinary. “One morning during prayer and meditation I was guided to stop using my psychic abilities for individuals (giving readings) and begin working on a global level with energy/patterns in the ethers, or the ‘morphic fields,’ as Rupert Sheldrake names them. This meant to spend more time in meditation, ‘holding’ peace and awakening for the planet. As if to emphasize the point, my psychic abilities suddenly stopped! Shortly thereafter the visions commenced.”
Her family were Protestant fundamentalists, but her engineer father was psychic also and taught her “early on not to talk about it outside the family. My parents eventually started exploring metaphysics and expanding their view on ‘paranormal’ experiences. In fact, a couple of years before he died, my father confided to me that the Virgin Mary had appeared to him several times!
“So, I might say I’m a paradox of ‘far-left’ brain functioning and ‘far-right,’ or heart-centered, functioning! . . . Now you might understand why I hesitated for more than a year to put the visions up on the web! First, I’ve never experienced anything like them before and they’re pretty ‘out there!’ Second, they require a very different style of writing than I’m skilled at! But it is my assignment (you know how that goes), and procrastination aside, I’m making them available for people to experience!”
To read about the visions, go to http://sacredweb.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Lincoln on myth
Abraham Lincoln was no mythologist or theologian but he understood the human need for myth. During a discussion questioning whether George Washington was perfect, Lincoln said there was merit in having people believe it. “It makes human nature better to believe that one human being was perfect, that human perfection is possible.”
I haven’t seen a better explanation of the need for and power in the mythical Jesus.
I’m reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Reading the book has become a spiritual exercise as I follow Lincoln and his contemporaries combining politics with their moral revulsion over slavery. Lincoln was an astute as well as compassionate politician and, while he advanced the realization of his ambition with canny skill, he absorbed defeats with magnanimity, despite the hurt.
He was not religious; he could not believe there is anything that survives death except being held in memory by others. But he supported his wife’s faith and remains a spiritual model for Americans and the world, prompting Edwin M. Stanton to proclaim at his death, “Now he belongs to the ages.” Lincoln is a clear example of the difference between religion and spirituality.
I haven’t seen a better explanation of the need for and power in the mythical Jesus.
I’m reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Reading the book has become a spiritual exercise as I follow Lincoln and his contemporaries combining politics with their moral revulsion over slavery. Lincoln was an astute as well as compassionate politician and, while he advanced the realization of his ambition with canny skill, he absorbed defeats with magnanimity, despite the hurt.
He was not religious; he could not believe there is anything that survives death except being held in memory by others. But he supported his wife’s faith and remains a spiritual model for Americans and the world, prompting Edwin M. Stanton to proclaim at his death, “Now he belongs to the ages.” Lincoln is a clear example of the difference between religion and spirituality.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Woman power again
I'm responding to comments after Goddess Mary.
The gleeful “ha, you want power” opens up thoughts about power. Someone once suggested I run for office but I said I’d be spectacularly unsuccessful as a politician. I’m no leader in that sense and don’t want to be. My “assignment” is to prod deeper reflection than most people are willing to engage in. If I wanted external power, I would not risk dislike by debunking cherished notions.
But the world needs women to collectively acquire more power and it is happening. Called “soft power” in popular parlance, a more feminine kind of power is now promoted as the preferred way to do foreign policy. It encourages agreement with one’s own position without using violence.
Woman power, however, is power WITH instead of power OVER. It is shared power, symbolized by and carried out in circles. A circle of shared power, in contrast to hierarchical power, values the contributed wisdom of EVERYone equally. To do foreign policy or church governance with this model, would require leaders to relinquish their patriarchal role of forcing their own view on others and instead coax out the view from those at the bottom of influence.
Woman power is democracy at its best. Ironically, while the current Bush administration claims to spread democracy around the world, it tramples on democracy at home. Strong resistance from both conservatives and liberals rises from disgust over its underhanded endorsement of torture and its efforts to control public discussion. Its disdain for the views of others resulted in disastrous foreign policy that Condoleezza Rice is now gamely trying to reverse.
Leaders cannot impose their views for long anyhow. Observe the futile efforts of the Catholic hierarchy to squelch discussion about women priests. Relentlessly, historical facts refuting their cherished position that women have never been Church leaders keep surfacing—evidence from New Testament letters, evidence in the catacombs, evidence from monasteries in Ireland, and the list goes on. Burgeoning respect for womanly wisdom can’t be squelched.
The statement “God's masculinity is part of the Christian revelation” in Florian’s second rant would be denied today by every respectable Christian theologian, Catholic or otherwise. But Florian is right in assuming the importance of sexual symbolism in the Christian myth—what he calls its “revelation”—and in its denial of ordination to women.
I’ll refer again to Sex, Priests, and Power by A.W. Richard Sipe, retired priest, psychotherapist for abuser-priests around the country, and a board director of the Collegeville Sexual Trauma Institute. He analyzes the culture of the celibate priesthood and its pathological loathing of women, quoting a treatise as recent as 1909:
“If he is going to treat her as she wishes, he must have intercourse with her, for she desires it; he must beat her, for she likes to be hurt . . . [she] has no desire to be respected for herself.”
Sipe comments, “Although Weininger’s verbalization would be consciously rejected, the essence of his message and logic is alive and well within the celibate/sexual structure of power. One has only to analyze the operation of that system in Rome, in any diocese, or in official documents that deal with issues of gender or celibacy to validate the appeal to nature and God’s will for the place of men and women in the order of things.”
For a healthy priesthood, says Sipe, we must “divorce it from the denigration of women and the arrogance of religious superiority.”
I will accept no more comments to that post. I publish submitted comments if they have points worth discussing, but I have to take the whole or nothing. Unable to edit submissions, I have to subject us all to empty words, words, words. It's the reason I used the word "rant." Please edit your comments for economy and spare us all the clutter. And please stop the ad hominem attacks.
The gleeful “ha, you want power” opens up thoughts about power. Someone once suggested I run for office but I said I’d be spectacularly unsuccessful as a politician. I’m no leader in that sense and don’t want to be. My “assignment” is to prod deeper reflection than most people are willing to engage in. If I wanted external power, I would not risk dislike by debunking cherished notions.
But the world needs women to collectively acquire more power and it is happening. Called “soft power” in popular parlance, a more feminine kind of power is now promoted as the preferred way to do foreign policy. It encourages agreement with one’s own position without using violence.
Woman power, however, is power WITH instead of power OVER. It is shared power, symbolized by and carried out in circles. A circle of shared power, in contrast to hierarchical power, values the contributed wisdom of EVERYone equally. To do foreign policy or church governance with this model, would require leaders to relinquish their patriarchal role of forcing their own view on others and instead coax out the view from those at the bottom of influence.
Woman power is democracy at its best. Ironically, while the current Bush administration claims to spread democracy around the world, it tramples on democracy at home. Strong resistance from both conservatives and liberals rises from disgust over its underhanded endorsement of torture and its efforts to control public discussion. Its disdain for the views of others resulted in disastrous foreign policy that Condoleezza Rice is now gamely trying to reverse.
Leaders cannot impose their views for long anyhow. Observe the futile efforts of the Catholic hierarchy to squelch discussion about women priests. Relentlessly, historical facts refuting their cherished position that women have never been Church leaders keep surfacing—evidence from New Testament letters, evidence in the catacombs, evidence from monasteries in Ireland, and the list goes on. Burgeoning respect for womanly wisdom can’t be squelched.
The statement “God's masculinity is part of the Christian revelation” in Florian’s second rant would be denied today by every respectable Christian theologian, Catholic or otherwise. But Florian is right in assuming the importance of sexual symbolism in the Christian myth—what he calls its “revelation”—and in its denial of ordination to women.
I’ll refer again to Sex, Priests, and Power by A.W. Richard Sipe, retired priest, psychotherapist for abuser-priests around the country, and a board director of the Collegeville Sexual Trauma Institute. He analyzes the culture of the celibate priesthood and its pathological loathing of women, quoting a treatise as recent as 1909:
“If he is going to treat her as she wishes, he must have intercourse with her, for she desires it; he must beat her, for she likes to be hurt . . . [she] has no desire to be respected for herself.”
Sipe comments, “Although Weininger’s verbalization would be consciously rejected, the essence of his message and logic is alive and well within the celibate/sexual structure of power. One has only to analyze the operation of that system in Rome, in any diocese, or in official documents that deal with issues of gender or celibacy to validate the appeal to nature and God’s will for the place of men and women in the order of things.”
For a healthy priesthood, says Sipe, we must “divorce it from the denigration of women and the arrogance of religious superiority.”
I will accept no more comments to that post. I publish submitted comments if they have points worth discussing, but I have to take the whole or nothing. Unable to edit submissions, I have to subject us all to empty words, words, words. It's the reason I used the word "rant." Please edit your comments for economy and spare us all the clutter. And please stop the ad hominem attacks.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Divinity in all
My purpose being to bridge Christianity with other spiritual traditions, I’m always happy to see common themes. One such is the idea that individual consciousness is part of the One consciousness.
First a word about “consciousness.” For me “Consciousness” can be a synonym for God, similar to Mind or Thought, and I believe Consciousness/Mind/Thought is prior to the material universe.
I’ve read and listened to more than one kind of atheist. Some only disbelieve in the god I don’t believe in either—the humanlike individual. But some atheists apparently don’t believe in immaterial reality, and that makes no sense at all.
We think, and our thoughts cannot be tracked by the brain or attributed to brain processes. They are more than movements of molecules. Furthermore, our scattered and contradictory thoughts are unified by our minds into a unified sense of self. I know that I am I, no matter how the various feelings and ideas in me conflict. Where does this self in me come from? Ken Wilber explores this mystery:
“What in you right now is looking at all these objects—looking at nature and its sights, looking at the body and its sensations, looking at the mind and its thoughts? . . . As you push back into this pure Subjectivity, this pure Seer, you won’t see it as an object—you can’t see it as an object, because it’s not an object! . . . the “Seer” in you that is witnessing all these objects is itself just a vast Emptiness.”
This is the Void that Buddhists talk about and the Formlessness I talk about in God Is Not Three Guys in the Sky. It is infinitely greater than us but not separate from us. Thich Nhât Hanh, a Buddhist monk living in the West, likens our connection with God to a wave’s relation to the whole ocean.
Yann Martell in Life of Pi says “The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the same thing. The finite within the infinite, the infinite within the finite.”
The fourteenth century German mystic Meister Eckhart approached this mystery with Christian language: ““The Father gives birth to me his Son. . . . "When the Father begets his Son in me, I am that Son and no other. . . . Thus, we are all in the Son and are the Son. . . . The Father gives birth to his Son without cease, and I say more: he gives birth to me his Son and the same Son. . . . God and I we are one.”
If we translate Eckhart’s patriarchal symbolism—his father/son language—to apply it universally, we hear him saying that the Source is continually begetting and each of us is equally an offspring of the Source called God. Eckhart essentially says, “I’m just as divine as Jesus is.”
His insight is that of all mystics. Whatever their tradition, mystics are transported into a state of communion with the One so complete that they lose their separateness from It, realizing full union with Divinity. I believe Jesus attained this state, but I do not believe his communion with what we call God was unique and unrepeatable.
Eckhart was excommunicated shortly after he died, but since then his preaching has been received with awe and gratitude by Catholics and others on a spiritual quest, whatever their tradition. One Christian writer said, “To go where Eckhart went is to come close to Lao Tzu [author of the Tao te Ching] and Buddha, and certainly Jesus Christ.”
Now to the breathtaking revision in Connie’s comment to my post “God is not supernatural.” An extraordinary ordinary Catholic, she wrote, “I reverse the consecration prayer at Mass by saying, "in ME, through ME, and with ME." The penetrating insight and courage in that!
My final quotation addresses the consequences of this insight. Andrew Cohen in What Is Enlightenment? writes, “You realize ‘I am the creator’ in the midst of the fact that there are six or seven billion other creators. . . . It means within my own means, I’m going to take absolute responsibility for creating the future. It means we’re no longer deferring responsibility, no longer making excuses.”
This theme implicitly gives an answer to one reader’s comment that I cannot “claim to be a Catholic Christian and then reject the divinity of Christ.” I do not reject the divinity of Christ but, as I say in God Is Not Three Guys in the Sky, the term "Christ" does not refer exclusively to one man who lived two thousand years ago. Divinity infuses the entire universe. Doctrinal terms alluding to this are "cosmic Christ" and "Incarnation."
Jeanette
First a word about “consciousness.” For me “Consciousness” can be a synonym for God, similar to Mind or Thought, and I believe Consciousness/Mind/Thought is prior to the material universe.
I’ve read and listened to more than one kind of atheist. Some only disbelieve in the god I don’t believe in either—the humanlike individual. But some atheists apparently don’t believe in immaterial reality, and that makes no sense at all.
We think, and our thoughts cannot be tracked by the brain or attributed to brain processes. They are more than movements of molecules. Furthermore, our scattered and contradictory thoughts are unified by our minds into a unified sense of self. I know that I am I, no matter how the various feelings and ideas in me conflict. Where does this self in me come from? Ken Wilber explores this mystery:
“What in you right now is looking at all these objects—looking at nature and its sights, looking at the body and its sensations, looking at the mind and its thoughts? . . . As you push back into this pure Subjectivity, this pure Seer, you won’t see it as an object—you can’t see it as an object, because it’s not an object! . . . the “Seer” in you that is witnessing all these objects is itself just a vast Emptiness.”
This is the Void that Buddhists talk about and the Formlessness I talk about in God Is Not Three Guys in the Sky. It is infinitely greater than us but not separate from us. Thich Nhât Hanh, a Buddhist monk living in the West, likens our connection with God to a wave’s relation to the whole ocean.
Yann Martell in Life of Pi says “The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the same thing. The finite within the infinite, the infinite within the finite.”
The fourteenth century German mystic Meister Eckhart approached this mystery with Christian language: ““The Father gives birth to me his Son. . . . "When the Father begets his Son in me, I am that Son and no other. . . . Thus, we are all in the Son and are the Son. . . . The Father gives birth to his Son without cease, and I say more: he gives birth to me his Son and the same Son. . . . God and I we are one.”
If we translate Eckhart’s patriarchal symbolism—his father/son language—to apply it universally, we hear him saying that the Source is continually begetting and each of us is equally an offspring of the Source called God. Eckhart essentially says, “I’m just as divine as Jesus is.”
His insight is that of all mystics. Whatever their tradition, mystics are transported into a state of communion with the One so complete that they lose their separateness from It, realizing full union with Divinity. I believe Jesus attained this state, but I do not believe his communion with what we call God was unique and unrepeatable.
Eckhart was excommunicated shortly after he died, but since then his preaching has been received with awe and gratitude by Catholics and others on a spiritual quest, whatever their tradition. One Christian writer said, “To go where Eckhart went is to come close to Lao Tzu [author of the Tao te Ching] and Buddha, and certainly Jesus Christ.”
Now to the breathtaking revision in Connie’s comment to my post “God is not supernatural.” An extraordinary ordinary Catholic, she wrote, “I reverse the consecration prayer at Mass by saying, "in ME, through ME, and with ME." The penetrating insight and courage in that!
My final quotation addresses the consequences of this insight. Andrew Cohen in What Is Enlightenment? writes, “You realize ‘I am the creator’ in the midst of the fact that there are six or seven billion other creators. . . . It means within my own means, I’m going to take absolute responsibility for creating the future. It means we’re no longer deferring responsibility, no longer making excuses.”
This theme implicitly gives an answer to one reader’s comment that I cannot “claim to be a Catholic Christian and then reject the divinity of Christ.” I do not reject the divinity of Christ but, as I say in God Is Not Three Guys in the Sky, the term "Christ" does not refer exclusively to one man who lived two thousand years ago. Divinity infuses the entire universe. Doctrinal terms alluding to this are "cosmic Christ" and "Incarnation."
Jeanette
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