Ever since the first mind countenanced an unknown source of benevolence, religion has held us together as powerfully as it has driven us apart.
I have spent my life working on the inside of organized religion, even though my love/hate relationship with most God-talkers makes me an outsider.
The Bible is a mirror. In it, we see the structure of our psyches. We see the scaffolding of our spirituality. What makes the Bible holy is not that it is the “word of God”, but rather that so many of its passages offer such breathtakingly vivid reflections of the journeys of our souls.
Here we are, immersed in a swirl of biospheric breakdown and societal strife that isn’t going away; in fact, it’s getting worse. The darkness and distress cannot be passed off as the wrath of an angry God. Rather, we ourselves are at cause, and these are the real end times.
We live in a world defined by the cheapness of human life, indeed, all life. Migrants and refugees are treated no better than the Amazon rainforest. And yet, as entanglement shows us and as the tolling bell reminds us, all is One.
Recently, I was in consultation with a colleague who is First Nation Cree. Throughout the conversation, there was a steady stream of confidence, curiosity, and hope. Really smiling at one point, my colleague said, “I’m an eternal optimist who comes from a history of despair.”
I walked out of our church in ritual silence with the procession at twilight and was met—stunned—by the radiant face of the nearly full moon. I started to weep. Especially tired this particular Maundy Thursday, I was hit by the welling up of unprocessed emotion from a particularly hard year.
Recently, a half-dozen young people in our small town organized a peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstration. The march was seen by some as an intrusion of threatening other-worldly politics into our predominantly (99.8%) white town and riled up a lot of emotional responses on social media.
“New personality types are created during social and spiritual crises of religious, political, or economic origin.” ~Otto Rank
One hundred years ago, as the world was shaking …
A growing number of people who identify as progressive Christians also identify as being post-Christian, and/or post-Church, or even post-God. While this is of course perfectly okay and welcome, I experience this as less than ideal or optimal. To my mind following the way, teaching, and example of Jesus cannot truly, or at least not easily, be done without also having, nurturing, and tending to an active personal spiritual life communing with God (being present to Source/Presence) as well as an active communal/collective shared spiritual community. While some people may say that forums such as this newsletter and other online resources “meet that need” in their lives, words on a page pale in comparison to actually engaging in centering prayer, meditation, communion, shared singing, potluck suppers, organized community service, and experiencing big loving hugs from gifted kindred spirits.