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Blog
entries beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and
reviews from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer
have the time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent
essay-form the many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them
with all who are interested.
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you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a
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Post
#136 is the first of three collections of thoughts and reflections based on the
only book I know which deals explicitly with what the Christian Church looks
like in the Big History perspectives of the New Cosmology.
The book
is The Holy Web: Church and the New Universe Story by Cletus Wessels (Orbis Books,
2000). The author is a Dominican priest, pastor and theologian in the
Midwestern United States.
===
He begins
the Preface by noting that Christianity emerged in the context of a patriarchal
society and a religious culture founded on the bible story of creation. Both of
these perspectives need to be reinterpreted in the light of modern science’s
creation story and the rise of feminism.
His hope
to help readers to a new and positive way of looking at the church. I think he
is probably more clerical than he realizes.
Wessels
seems to see feminism as replacing patriarchy, but doesn't address the issue
that patriarchy isn't going to be given up voluntarily unless an alternative to
the patriarchal form of masculinity is available.
He says
that a non-patriarchal and non-hierarchical Christian church would be
unrecognizable; the question is whether Christianity can adjust to such a new
worldview. It can,
surely; but just as surely it seems unlikely to, anytime in the near future.
He also
seems to think that modern science, evolution and concepts like Field Theory,
Chaos Theory and dissipative structures might can improve peoples' views of the
church. But if the now dead liturgical renewal couldn’t improve peoples’ views
of the church, it's difficult to see how science ideas can.
Despite
my reservations, I want to emphasize that the vision of this book that makes it
especially stimulating.
===
Part One
says, “We need a new story and we have one.” And, as Wessels notes in the first
chapter, that the winds of change threaten to destroy the ancient churches.
Everything
is different now. The known age of the world, the speed of travel and
communication, our perceptions of psyche, somos and kosmos, the presence of Protestant
churches and the non-Christian religions, the experience of women, and the
no-longer-effective hierarchical authority-- all provide an opportunity for
transformation.
If, as
Karl Rahner says, “the Mystery is always and everywhere making itself known to
us,” I ask what is the Mystery making known about itself in this collapse of
the ancient churches?
Personally,
I think they don’t need to survive now: the spiritualities which those churches
preserved have now become the property of all the world.
---
Wessels says
"Paradigm shifts are intuitive. A pattern leaps out: you see it, or you
don’t. And when things don’t work, they change."
Transformation
results in a new story, new symbols and new guiding wisdom. As I see it, in our
contemporary situation the story is cosmic evolution; the rite is the basic rituals of native
peoples; and wisdom is asking for the help from the cosmic forces, earth-energies, plant
spirits and animal powers.
The
paradigm shift ultimately is about the place and role of the individual person
in the universe. The New Story says to each one of us: "Don’t be afraid.
You count. Your life is not trivial. The universe needs you."
This is
precisely what spirituality is about. It includes instruction: “Since the world
needs you, you therefore need to relate, to listen, to be sensitive, to
be-friend the earth.”
===
The
second chapter presents a summary of The New Creation Story.
We live
in an expanding universe, 15 billion years old, and on a 5 billion year old
planet where life emerged early and consciousness emerged only recently. Matter
is alive in a dance of waves and particles. The realization of this scientific
evolutionary view of the world is the greatest religious, humanistic, cultural
and spiritual event of many centuries.
The
Christian doctrine of the Fall isn’t part of this New Story! Only a new
understanding of consciousness itself will permit the “alteration of
consciousness” to be understood as “salvific.” Altered awareness is the most
fundamental personal transformation possible; it is an “ontological” change.
The old
story puts “man” in charge, and justifies the simple and ubiquitous view, “Work
to get stuff.” Accumulating stuff is a kind of protection against the world.
“They made clothes,” says Genesis of Adam & Eve. Not to cover their
nakedness, out of shame, but to protect themselves, because of fear.
Stuff is
obtained at the expense of the earth. The New Story sees humanity as a
late-comer to and as dependent on the earth, part of the community of species,
and participators in the co-creative process.
---
A big
question is: "If we don’t want stuff, what do we want?" And the
answer is "Meaning"-- “communion with Mystery” and to be in harmony
with the seasons. As Berry says, We need to go back to our genetic roots, to
recover the sacramental worldview.
But this
involved a major change in thinking. We need to reevaluate what we once
considered evil: chaos, darkness, the shadow side of things.
Such
things need to be seen now as a normal part of the cosmic evolutionary process.
We also need to see, therefore, that a salving/redemptive activity is an aspect
of the universe’s functioning-- that the passover mystery is built right into
the cosmos.
The
cosmos itself is paschal. “The universe has an inner self-organizing and self-healing
power that enables it to bring order out of chaos” so that the redemptive power
of God is built into the very substance of the world. And this is what is
highlighted in the story of Jesus.
---
A good
definition of church is “the community of those who-- because of their
attention to the Jesus story-- see that the cosmos itself is redemptive."
I think, How important it is, then, to celebrate the passover process! Via the
seder. Via pesanky. Via the Easter breakfast.
We
celebrate one of the most fundamental principles of the cosmic process when at
the Seder a young child asks, “Why is this night different from all other
nights?”
---
Cosmic
evolution is
theophany. In the history of humanity, fire is one of the most profound images
of the Mystery’s presence in matter; and sitting together around a fire is one
of the most profound images of the Mystery’s presence in our communal lives.
Wessels
presents a wonderful summary of humanness as it emerged during the Paleolithic
Age: hunting, tool-using and tool-making, clothing, fire, language, burials,
art, story, spirituality and community.
===
Wessels
notes that the Neolithic and Civilization periods involve what every young
person has to deal with today: God, sex and money; i.e., earning a living, relating
to others, and making sense of it all.
Here, the
adolescent nature of patriarchy is clear, and so then is the contemporary need
to go beyond the adolescent hero.
Adolescence
is defined as the beginnings of self-consciousness: when it is just starting to
experience itself, consciousness names that experience “isolation” and
“alienation.”
It
understands itself in terms of its need for power-over all, since everything
threatens.
Adolescence
implies lack of reflection (or, better, just the beginnings of it), and
includes undisciplined drives for novelty, excitement and self-gratification.
The result of this perspective is the economic world view of patriarchs who see
our great need to be the acquisition of stuff for protection.
An
interesting thing here is the idea that adolescent (patriarchal) males think of
themselves as adults. They see their situation (adolescence or patriarchal
culture) as the human norm! Even feminists seem to do this.
How
important, then, Allen Chinen's insight that we need to go beyond the hero!
---
In
contrast to those adolescent and patriarchal princes who try to make everything
go their way, authentic adults do not need to dominate others.
They can
relate via reverence, respect and friendship.
Not
competition but communal commitment is their mode of operation.
Authentic
adults accept responsibility. I see that “Quaker reverence "for that of
God in everyone” is especially important.
---
The
evolutionary process on earth is now in the hands of humans. We need to learn
to listen to the earth. Some of us are especially called to listen, to be
especially sensitive to the earth/cosmos itself as shamanic hearers.
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