Many people still hold to the illusion that the world is complete, finished and concluded, like a clock, and that when we’re born, we’re born in to such a world which we kind of experience outside ourselves and which we need to get to know like the workings of a clock.
A particular understanding of the creation stories in the Bible seems to re-inforce this illusion. God creates and is then finished. God stands back and looks at the Divine work in its completed and ordered form and calls it good.
When the world is perceived as a closed and complete system simply waiting to be understood, then everything else in it becomes closed and complete, and this includes our spirituality. It isn’t surprising that the more literal we become with the creation stories, the more fundamentalist we are in outlook. Dogmatic and authoritarian constructions of faith find their source in such a worldview with no place for critical and open thinking because things are fixed and finished; after all, the faith knowledge we’re given and have, is like the world we live in, ordered and complete and therefore can't in any way be challenged or questioned. Epiphany is unlikely to be experienced in such a perception of the world. Barely two centuries ago this particular worldview still held sway.
A change in perception is upon us. The old illusion is dissolving and a more open and evolving view of the world is materializing challenging our false securities rooted in our assertive and imperious bodies of religious knowledge.
While a closed and finished world nutures a closed and finished spirtuality, an open and evolving world nurtures an open and growing spirituality, one with immense possibility. This means two things: As the perception changes, either we retreat back in to the safety of our closed systems of belief, or we move out with courage in to the wilderness of crisis and begin appropriating the gift of a new way of being and responding to the Divine.
The philosopher, Jean-Francios Lyotard, makes the point that we’re now living in a time where the old “master narratives” (just a fancy way of describing our previous ways of believing and doing things) are in crisis and in decline. This goes for some of the old “master narratives” in Christianity itself, and indeed in other religious traditions as well.
We find ourselves in wonderfully challenging times full of uncertainty, but absolutely pregnant with promise and new potential, especially in the whole dimension of our spirituality, whatever tradition we belong to. May this new year, which lies open before us, be a year of courageous spiritual exploration for us all.
A big thank you to all of you who have walked with me in 2011. You're emails and comments have not only been a gift to me, but in many cases deeply nurturing and challenging. I look forward to being with you all again in this new year 2012.
A particular understanding of the creation stories in the Bible seems to re-inforce this illusion. God creates and is then finished. God stands back and looks at the Divine work in its completed and ordered form and calls it good.
When the world is perceived as a closed and complete system simply waiting to be understood, then everything else in it becomes closed and complete, and this includes our spirituality. It isn’t surprising that the more literal we become with the creation stories, the more fundamentalist we are in outlook. Dogmatic and authoritarian constructions of faith find their source in such a worldview with no place for critical and open thinking because things are fixed and finished; after all, the faith knowledge we’re given and have, is like the world we live in, ordered and complete and therefore can't in any way be challenged or questioned. Epiphany is unlikely to be experienced in such a perception of the world. Barely two centuries ago this particular worldview still held sway.
A change in perception is upon us. The old illusion is dissolving and a more open and evolving view of the world is materializing challenging our false securities rooted in our assertive and imperious bodies of religious knowledge.While a closed and finished world nutures a closed and finished spirtuality, an open and evolving world nurtures an open and growing spirituality, one with immense possibility. This means two things: As the perception changes, either we retreat back in to the safety of our closed systems of belief, or we move out with courage in to the wilderness of crisis and begin appropriating the gift of a new way of being and responding to the Divine.
The philosopher, Jean-Francios Lyotard, makes the point that we’re now living in a time where the old “master narratives” (just a fancy way of describing our previous ways of believing and doing things) are in crisis and in decline. This goes for some of the old “master narratives” in Christianity itself, and indeed in other religious traditions as well.
We find ourselves in wonderfully challenging times full of uncertainty, but absolutely pregnant with promise and new potential, especially in the whole dimension of our spirituality, whatever tradition we belong to. May this new year, which lies open before us, be a year of courageous spiritual exploration for us all.
A big thank you to all of you who have walked with me in 2011. You're emails and comments have not only been a gift to me, but in many cases deeply nurturing and challenging. I look forward to being with you all again in this new year 2012.
Wow what a wonderful thinking-catalyst to start the new year! It has never occured to me that creation stories imply a completeness of our world. But it is easy to see how much this affects our spiritual thinking and the need to supply finite answers to the things we do not quite understand (because surely it all worked out already?). My understanding is that geography and science describe a multitude of forces from those that turn rocks into sandy beaches to those that create nebulae and new stars and planets...so it is not unfathomable that our world is not as finished as I had previously thought.
ReplyDeleteThis particular blog post has really helped me understand more about a concept that I first came across in a course studying Daniel Erlander's "Manna and Mercy" - anakephalaiosasthai. Quite a mouthful but according to Erlander, the word comes from ancient mathematics and means the total of many separate numbers. The writer of Ephesians used this word to describe what "God is doing in the universe - uniting, gathering up and bringing together everything". At the time of the course, we discussed that "everything" means EVERYTHING - stars, animals, people, rocks etc. I was quite baffled by this concept (I still am! - especially the bit about rocks) but the idea that the world, people and ecosystems included, is not yet complete makes me realise even more that there is something bigger going on. It seems that we are a small part of a process more far-reaching than we can imagine yet in some way connects us all together?
(Quite where God is going to keep the entire history of creation once it is united really makes me wonder... ha ha.)
I possibly now have even more questions than before but thank you Don for your thought-provoking blogs and happy new year!
Thanks Christine for your comment. I identify so with what you say. The question is, ~can it all ever be finished.~ According to what is called Process Theology life in a sense is never finished. The process you have described goes on and on. Life is a paradox of both permanence and flux. Do yourself a favour. Get hold of a book called "Process Theology - A guide for the Perplexed" by Bruce Epperly. Knowing your struggle with so much we have spoken about, I'm sure you'll find your thinking will be challenged in a different way by the concepts conveyed in process theology. Would love to hear how you feel about it. Thanks again for your marvellous comment.
ReplyDeleteI like this. Thanks for the challenging thoughts Don.
ReplyDeleteThanks Darrel. Hope you're settling well in your new work.
ReplyDelete....great meditation Don...the open ended spirituality you describe is'nt for the faint of heart..for me it requires an element of Courage that grows from a solid Trust and confidence that God will always hold and keep us and is in fact encouraging and leading us to evolve and expand the spiritual borders that we tend to establish around us and even vigoriously protect...the only Spriituality that i can imagine as being borderless would be based on Love......
ReplyDelete...the only Spriituality that i can imagine as being borderless would be based on Love......
ReplyDeleteYou're so right - I think that's the very essence of it.