#60. Symbol, Myth & Meaning

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This is the second of several posts dealing with an understanding of religious ritual in the context of cosmic evolution.

I'm aware that the very idea that there might be a connection between religious ritual and the evolution of the universe sounds strange to many readers, so it's important that we keep in mind that humanity is in the midst of an Immense Transition-- from a static to a dynamic worldview-- and that we are now at a new religious moment in the history of the world.

I see giving our attention, at this time, to the place of religious ritual in the evolutionary worldview as a creative activity on the growing edge of the immense Transition.

My main point is that religious ritual is how we humans plug into the energy of the cosmos; it's the means by which we are empowered to participate in the evolution of the universe.

A major problem in talking about all this is that most of the words we have available only have meanings left over from the static worldview. 

In post #59, I listed six of them.

Three are familiar: symbol, myth and meaning. I'm sharing my thoughts about them in this post. The other three-- wisdom, cosmology and creativity-- are much less familiar and I plan to talk about them in the next post.

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One of the main difficulties with all this is that the more familiar terms are often used in less than precise ways in everyday life. And the first two ("symbol" and "myth") are commonly used with meanings which are the very opposite of the ways we need to understand them in order to make sense of the links between cosmic evolution and religious ritual.

An added difficulty is that all three terms are frequently used in confusing pairs; examples include "myth and symbol," "symbolic ritual" and "meaningful symbols." And Myth and Meaning is the title of one of the most significant books for contemporary religious studies.

Of that first group, the word "meaning" offers a special challenge. I think it's the key to sorting out all the other words. My experience has been that it's only when we're comfortable with what "meaning" means that "myth," "symbol" and "ritual" make good sense.

So I'm going to tackle the meaning of "meaning" first.

But a caution: It's important not to get lost in words here. My intention is not philosophical or linguistic analysis, but simply to clarify the meanings of these words in order to share my thoughts about the connections between religious ritual and cosmic evolution.

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MEANING. As I said in the previous post, "Of course, we know what 'meaning' means. At least we feel that we do." In that post I asked readers to think about how they would describe the meaning of "meaning" for an intelligent high school student. (I received one anonymous comment in response that was quite good.)

The best understanding I have of "meaning" comes from Claude Levi-Strauss, the "father of modern anthropology" and author of the book Myth and Meaning I mentioned above. His name is familiar even to many who've no idea what he may have been saying. (He died only recently, in October, 2009, at age 101. The New York Times has a good obituary.)

Essentially, Levi-Strauss says that what we mean by "meaning" is how we understand anything-- that the meaning of something is our understanding of it.

At first hearing, this sounds simplistic-- or maybe even incomprehensible. But the more we think about it, the more good sense it makes.

Whether we're talking about a physical object, an event, or a story, what makes something important to us is the depth of our understanding of it.

Note that what's being said here is that things do not have meaning in themselves. We tend to think they do, but when we reflect on it we can see that it's our understanding of something, not the thing in itself, which gives us its meaning. And we can also see, then, that the more ways we understand anything, the more "meaningful" it becomes for us.

The classic example is a wedding ring. It's not the gold or silver but our understanding that makes a wedding ring meaningful. In our rationalist patriarchal culture-- still preoccupied with money and afraid of relationships-- the best we can do in expressing "meaning" in this case is to say that the wedding ring has "sentimental value." It's almost a dismissal.

Patriarchal cultural does a bit better with its use of the term "significant other." What makes a person "significant" is our depth of understanding of them. Although you won't find CEOs and politicians talking about relationships with "significant others," it is precisely our understanding of our relationships which makes persons "meaningful" or "significant" for us.

Both tribal peoples and traditional religious language offer some good terms for expressing the meaning of "meaning." Plains Indians use the word "wakan," for example, to say that the buffalo is of great significance to them. And in English we have familiar religious words like "sacred" or "holy" to say the same thing.

In a dualistic religious context, such words are usually reserved for "spiritual" (non-material) things; but most people probably wouldn't give you an argument if you referred to something as sacred as a photo of your long-dead mother as a "holy" picture.

In any case, we need to keep in mind that whether we say "holy," "sacred," "wakan," or use a less religious-sounding term such as "important" or "significant," the "meaning" of something isn't in the thing itself but in our understanding of it.

It's this thought that we need if we are to make good sense of the terms "symbol" and "myth," and-- eventually-- of the connections between religious ritual and cosmic evolution.

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MYTH. In the fitness center where I attend tai chi classes several times a week, a large poster recently appeared advertising a "Workshop on Cardiac Myths." It wasn't necessary to explain that the topic was "commonly held but incorrect ideas about heart-related exercise."

We need a more positive understanding of "myth" if we are to make sense of religious ritual and its connections with cosmic evolution.

While most of us are familiar with the classical Greek myths (stories about Zeus and Athena, for example), many of us are only vaguely aware that every cultural group-- from the tribal peoples of Tierra del Fuego to 21st-century North Americans-- has such stories.

One of the best known myth-stories, found throughout all the world's cultures, is that of a Great Flood. In the western world we know it, of course, as the story of Noah and the Ark; it is included in the sacred scriptures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

When early anthropologists first began to study mythology back in the 1800s, they made several unconscious assumptions about the stories of the tribal peoples they were studying.

One assumption was that the myth-stories of these "primitive" peoples were attempts at what today we would call "scientific" explanations of the workings of the world. These 19th-century scientists assumed that tribal myths are descriptions of the behavior of stars and planets and especially of the animal herds on which the people's lives depended.

They also presumed-- in their rationalist arrogance-- that they were superior to the primitive peoples they were studying. As typical products of their time, the early anthropologists saw tribal stories as attempts at primitive science on the part of people who lacked the skills, talents and superior intelligence which those 19th-century scientists assumed they had.

Today, we know better. For a start, we know that "primitive" people weren't all that primitive: we know that human beings who lived five or ten thousand years ago had exactly the same kind of bodies, brains and mental ability we do today. We also know, now, that their attempts to make sense of the world by way of stories wasn't so far off the track.

While tribal myths are indeed about the behavior of stars, planets and game animals, we can see much better today that humanity's myth-stories are also-- and primarily-- about the workings of the human mind. 

Their central concern is psychology and social life.

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If you are interested in these ideas, you might like to read Levi-Strauss' Myth and Meaning. It's readily available in libraries, short (only 50 pages!) and quite easy to follow.

It's comes from a series of radio talks he gave for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in the 1970s. In them he expresses such a wonderfully broad, human, concerned viewpoint and depth of understanding that he leaves most talk along those lines-- from church people and politicians, for example-- in the dust.

It's so impressive to see a person like this actually talking to real people. 

He is able to be not only clear but quite precise about the results of our attempts at understanding ourselves and the world. I can promise that if you're interested in religion or science, you'll like this book.

For a more difficult challenge, there's Levi-Strauss's earlier 1958 work, Structural Anthropology. If nothing else, I urge you to look at the Wikipedia article about his significance with regard to those perspectives in the human sciences known as structuralism.

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Structuralism is defined as "the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity." Levi-Strauss was one of the first to see that humanity's mythical stories have an underlying structure that in fact makes good sense, even though that underlying structure isn't obvious on the surface. It's that underlying structure that we understand.

The Biogenetic Structuralism perspective I've mentioned many times in these posts is a similar structuralist understanding, but it's a further advance, in that its context is the neurologically-informed evolutionary worldview that was not yet available to Levi-Strauss.

When we see ourselves as part of the naturally evolving world, we can see that even our minds are a part of the cosmic process, so that our myths are not just stories about our understanding of the workings of the world but also about our understanding of ourselves.

It's easy to lose track of the main points here, simply because most of these thoughts are so unfamiliar. For the record: my main point is that the world's myth-stories are precisely about meaning. Myths are the expressions of global humanity's self-understanding.

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In the New Cosmology's dynamic-evolutionary context, that self-understanding is quite rich! When we ask, What is the cosmic process about? ("What is the Universe Doing?" as I put it in post #17), we can see that the universe is making persons. We know ourselves as nothing less than personal and unique expressions of the universe become conscious of itself.

We can also recognize that there is much in us that has not yet become conscious. While we can "phenomenologically apprehend" many of the patterns of the way the world works-- in terms of cause and effect, as Dr. Jakob Wolf, whose ideas I discussed in post #53 (Bridging the Gap), helps us so well to understand-- it is also the case that many of those patterns of the world's workings remain unconscious to us.

What psychologists call the "unconscious psyche" is nothing less than the entire universe other than our conscious awareness. C. G. Jung says that the unconscious world within us is even bigger than the physical world outside us.

Jung and Freud were the first in modern times to recognize that the cosmic process shows itself in our dreams and unconscious waking behavior-- that the patterns of the way the world works seep out, even if barely, into conscious expression-- and that that is where our myth-stories come from.

Far from being "commonly held but incorrect ideas," humanity's myths are meaningful-- important, significant, sacred-- because they are expressions of the underlying patterns of the way our minds work. And it's because our myth-stories allow us to understand ourselves as unique expressions of the evolution of the universe that "myth" and "meaning" go together.

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SYMBOL. The word "symbol," too, is often paired with "meaning" (as in "symbolic meaning" or "meaningful symbol"), so that at first glance there seems to be little difference between myth and symbol. It's confusing because we have two different kinds of things we call "symbols." Some occur in nature, while others are the inventions of human culture.

Culturally invented symbols are like myths in that their meaning is our understanding of them. The arbitrary arrangement of letters and numbers in the symbol "H₂0" is a good example. We culturally agree to understand it as standing for water, just as we do with the sequence of the five letters w, a, t, e, and r.

But water itself-- the stuff that falls from the sky, that we swim in, wash ourselves with and drink-- can also be a symbol. So can food. So can fire.

It's these naturally occurring symbols that we need to understand if we are to make sense of ritual. What's so special about things like water, food and fire is that they grab our attention.

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People have known for many thousands of years that naturally occurring symbols like food, fire and water are "attention-grabbers." But it's only in modern times-- thanks to our understanding of natural selection at the primate level-- that we know how they work.

We know today that the minds and brains of our animal ancestors evolved to continually scan their environment; their very survival-- both as individuals and as a species-- depended on their finding food and water and avoiding danger.

We are not the descendents of those animals who, for some genetic reason, lacked that scanning ability; they didn't live long enough to pass on their genes to us. We are the descendents of the ones who survived because their attention shifted every few seconds.

We know from experience that our attention, too, is constantly shifting from one thing to another-- just like that of our primate ancestors. We also know that we can help ourselves stay focused-- to be "mindful," as Buddhists say-- by practicing meditation exercises.

Those things in nature which powerfully grab our attention also make it easier for us to be mindful. Think of how water in almost any form-- a heavy rain, a stream, a river, a lake, a pond, or the ocean--holds our attention. And how we are fascinated by flames and fire-- from the smallest birthday candle to a burning building or a glorious sunset.

Note that such natural symbols are different from myths as well as from the kind of symbols we use in math and science: while myths are expressions of our understanding of ourselves, these natural symbols are tools which help us to focus on our self-understanding.

In religious ritual we use the psychological, attention-grabbing power of natural symbols to counteract our brains' constant scanning activity. 

Calling them "tools" doesn't demean them. The reverse is true: they help us to consciously enter into the very meaning of our existence.

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If you're thinking that none of this sounds much like the religious rituals you have recently experienced, you're right. Ours is still a patriarchal culture-- alienated from the world and seeking escape from it-- so most of our conventional religious rituals involve only minimal use of these powerful natural symbols, and some church services omit them totally.

But we are now at a new religious moment in the history of the world: we're coming to see ourselves as belonging to the evolutionary universe and called to creatively contribute to it.

That's why creativity and cosmology are the topics of my next post. They are as essential as symbol, myth and meaning for understanding the relationship between evolution and ritual.

Meanwhile, you might like to share how you feel about what I've had to say in this post.

Do these thoughts about symbol, myth and meaning make much sense? Any at all?

Send me a note!

sam@macspeno.com

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#59. Evolution and Religious Ritual

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Ever since I began this blog about the convergence of science and religion back in December 2006, I have mentioned often that I would like to share some thoughts about the connections between cosmic evolution and ritual. With this post, I'm finally doing it.

The very idea that there might be a connection between religious ritual and the evolution of the universe no doubt sounds strange to many readers. But offering some thoughts about how evolution and ritual are linked is especially important to me, since both have been major interests throughout in my life.

One indication of my central concern is that the word "ritual" appears in no fewer than 42 of the 58 posts I've published so far. That's more than 70%. (The word "evolution" appears in all of them!)

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The main thing I want to say about the connection between evolution and ritual is straightforward enough: religious ritual is how we humans plug into the energy of the cosmic process.

It's a simple statement-- that ritual is the means by which we get empowered to participate in the evolution of the universe-- but it needs an awful lot of explaining.

One problem is that most of us, still, are not used to thinking in terms of evolution-- about things in general, let alone about religion, and especially not about ritual.

Another problem is that most of the words we have available to talk about ritual only have meanings left over from the static worldview. So it's quite a challenge.

It's tough enough to claim that science and religion are convergent, which is the main idea I've been struggling to express in this blog for almost three years now. So saying that there's a profound and essential connection between humanity's age-old practice of religious ritual and the evolution of the universe is even more difficult.

For some, I know, it's an outrageous idea. For others it may just seem a bit flakey.

But as I see it, it's a central idea on the growing edge of humanity's cultural development, and spelling it out is what I hope to be doing in the next few posts.

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I need to say something first about my personal interest in religious ritual. As far as I can remember, there was never a time when I wasn't interested in sacred rites. (And, right off, that puts me out on the fringe of things!)

My Catholic background gave me access to rituals going back to pre-Christian times. The Catholic mass is essentially a synagogue service connected with a family meal, so candles, food and incense-- common to many of the world's religious rites-- were a part of my early religious experience.

At the same time, from a fairly early age I was aware that Catholics in general weren't especially interested in such things. I've told the story often of my first exposure to what is nowadays called the Easter Vigil.

In those days, the Easter ceremonies-- considered to be the central rites of the year-- were held on Saturday morning, a full 24 hours before the dawn of Easter Day. And the churches were empty.

When I was about eight years old I heard that there was be a blessing of fire and water at the church early in the morning on the day before Easter. When I told my parents I wanted to go to see it they said, "Sure, if you want to get up that early."

I did. When I got to the church, there was a priest, a server, and me. I was the whole congregation!

But it was an experience of magic and transformation-- with light, fire and water at the center of it-- for which, as an eight-year old, I had no words. (And for which, as a 72-year-old, I still struggle to find good words.)

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A major part of my life's energies since then have gone into understanding rites and ceremonies and, later, helping others to do them in an empowering way.

I didn't limit myself to Roman Catholic rites. I was equally attracted to the rituals in other churches and other religious cultures.

Protestant churches didn't seem to offer much by way of sacred ceremonies, but Eastern Christian churches, both Catholic and Orthodox, were rich in ritual. So were Jewish, Buddhist and Native American events.

I quickly learned that ritual-- whatever it is, and however it works-- is something much deeper than the cultural differences we see in the way it is expressed.

Over the years I've been present at numerous ritual events in synagogues, churches, and monasteries (Catholic, Episcopal, Eastern Orthodox, Zen and Tibetan Buddhist), and also at New Age, Native American and Wiccan gatherings. I have witnessed, taken part in and tried to understand religious rites and ceremonies wherever they were available.

Eventually I worked at liturgical renewal efforts in several schools and churches, founded and edited a magazine dealing with family ritual, and published a small "how-to" booklet entitled Passover Seder for Christian Families. I have made three vision quests, participated in Native American sweat lodge rites and I continue to smoke the sacred pipe daily. I've also taken part in rites for men's groups and other small groups-- including a drumming group now in its 23rd year.

While I have personally led sweat lodge ceremonies and even conducted a few funerals for family members and friends, leading such events is not my thing.

My role seems to be more along the lines of what some Native Americans call the "Road Man." It's someone who works mostly behind the scenes or off to the side to help keep things moving along nicely, rather than one who-- like a typical Christian preacher or priest-- is at the center of the activities.

What all this means, for the next few posts, is that I've been dealing with ritual and evolution for quite a while-- roughly six and a half decades now-- and that I've learned, I hope, some valuable things to share with others.

Of course it took a while before I began to understand how religious ritual fits into the evolutionary perspective. And it's my thoughts about those connections which I want to share with readers in the next few posts.

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Here's a one-sentence summary of the main points I'd like to make with regard to connections between ritual and evolution: While science is about how the world works, and religion is about how we humans fit into it, ritual is the age-old means we have for being empowered to play our part in the world's evolution.

The work of Dr. Jakob Wolf, which I discussed in post #53 (Bridging the Gap), is especially helpful for understanding science as the study of cause and effect in the workings of cosmic evolution.

I've described the world's workings specifically in terms of the emergence of the conscious mind-and-brain in several earlier posts-- especially those dealing with Biogenetic Structuralist insights. Probably the best example is post #12 (The Cognitive Extension of Prehension).

I've also talked in many posts about religion specifically in terms of our understanding of how we fit into the world. In cultural anthropology, "how we fit in" is called "cosmology" and I've mentioned that word almost as frequently as I've mentioned "evolution." My best description of "cosmology" is in post #17 (What Is the Universe Doing?).

Post #17 begins with a zen-like quote: "Always remember that you're unique. Just like everyone else." I noted there that "if we ask, in a neurologically-informed evolutionary context, 'What is the universe doing?' the answer seems to be fairly clear: it's making persons." The universe is making utterly unique human beings.

By "neurologically-informed" I mean that in order to make sense of "what the universe is doing" we need an understanding of the human brain and mind as the product of cosmic and biological evolution. This neurological perspective is needed if we are to see that the essence of the cosmic process is the universe-- via persons-- "manifesting itself in innumerable unique ways."

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I've mentioned in many posts the immense transition-- from a static to a dynamic worldview-- which world culture is experiencing. The new dynamic worldview makes all the difference in our understanding of religious ritual as the means by which we are empowered to participate in the cosmic process of divine epiphany.

In the static world view, we can't talk about the evolution of anything, let alone of ritual. And we don't "fit in" either. There, our one task is to escape from the world (and not, we hope, end up in an even worse place).

It's only in the dynamic perspective that we can see ourselves as belonging to the universe and can recognize ourselves as having a role to play in it.

And it's only there that we can understand the significance of ritual as the age-old means by which we Earthlings tune in to and become empowered to play our part in the cosmic process and so become unique manifestations of the divine mystery.

I hope to share some thoughts about that-- in the next few posts.

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In talking about the connections between evolution and ritual, the biggest problem I have, as usual, is language. We just don't yet have the words we need for many of the thoughts and perspectives I'd like to share.

The available words are mostly terms from the static world view. And, as I've said, it's the shift from the static to the dynamic worldview that makes all the difference.

So where do I start? (If I think about it too much, the project feels overwhelming and I will decide not to start!)

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It seems the best place to start is just to list those terms which are most helpful for making sense of religious ritual in an evolutionary context. I want to do more than that, of course, but simply listing those words is a good beginning.

I have a half a dozen of them; they fall into two groups. The first group includes three words that are often connected with religion: myth, symbol and meaning.

Those first two-- "myth" and "symbol"-- have meanings in the static worldview that are not at all the deeper richer meanings they can have in a dynamic perspective. In the static world view, they have, in fact, just the opposite of those rich meanings.

"Myth" is used in everyday life, for example, to refer to a statement or story which isn't true. It may be popularly believed to be true, but it isn't literal or factually correct. People use "myth" in this sense when they say, for example-- and despite the findings of scientific research-- that "global warming is a myth."

Adding to the difficulties is the fact that "myth" is often used in this negative sense specifically with regard to both "evolution" and "religion"-- but with exactly opposite purposes.

Some people say that "Religious beliefs are nothing but myths," while others-- religious fundamentalists-- say that "Evolution is a myth."

And here I am in the middle!

I want to say something different from both those views: that neither religion nor evolution are myths in the negative sense, and both are myths in a positive sense.

Maybe instead of being in the middle, this puts me out in left field-- or even out of the ball park. I would like to think, however, that it puts me on the growing edge.

And that's where that second group of terms needed to talk about ritual comes in: cosmology, creativity and wisdom.

Those three words-- rarely used either in the media or everyday life-- are essential for a growing-edge understanding of the link between ritual and cosmic evolution.

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Of the six terms I see we need to connect ritual with evolution, the most difficult to deal with is the word "meaning." We know what "meaning" means, of course. At least we feel that we do. But putting it into words is quite a challenge.

It's amazing that we have such a difficult time saying what we mean by "meaning."

It's even more difficult to understand what we mean when we ask about the meaning of specific things, especially when we ask heavy questions like "What is the meaning of life?" Most challenging of all is "What is the meaning of my life?"

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For a teacher, the situation is a nightmare!

So, while I would like to talk about the links between ritual and evolution, I obviously can't just plunge into it. I need to do a lot of sorting out first.

I need to do the same kind of sorting I did in the previous post with regard to the many popular meanings of "evolution."

So that's what I'm going to deal with in the next few posts-- spelling out what's meant in a non-static worldview by the words myth, symbol and meaning in one post and, in another, the meanings of the words cosmology, creativity and wisdom.

Only with all that clear can I feel comfortable talking about the place of ritual in evolution.

That's my project for the next few posts. Wish me luck! I'll need it. And I need your support and encouragement.

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One more thing. I want to assign some homework. (Teacher instincts die hard!)

I want to ask you to think about how you would describe "meaning" to, for example, an intelligent high school student. And-- if you're willing-- to share your thoughts with me and our readers.

sam@macspeno.com

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ARCHIVE TECHNICAL PROBLEM: Since I started this new series of posts (with post #51), each time I publish new post, an earlier one vanishes from my Archives list; they're still there, just not visible. Until tech support can deal with this, I'm putting links to those "missing" posts here.

#9. "Exchange of Thought"

#8. Background to Biogenetic Structuralism

#7. Brief Autobiography

#6. Tai Chi

#5. Alternative to "Human Nature Redux"

#4. The "Biogenetic" Perspective

#3. High School 50th-Anniversary Report

#2. Spirituality Research Symposium

#1. On Recent Developments in Science and Religion

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#56. A Saner Approach to Nature

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In Latin, "sane" means healthy. So, this post is about a more healthy approach to nature-- more healthy, physically and mentally, than those negative attitudes toward the natural world which were the norm for centuries in western religion and culture and which, in our day, have resulted in the environmental crisis.

The thoughts I'm sharing in this post are based on an essay, "Shaping a New Ecological Consciousness: Insights from the Spirituality of Interreligious Dialogue," by Dr. Fabrice Blée, a Professor on the Faculty of Theology at the University of Saint Paul, Ottawa.

My thoughts here extend the ideas expressed in the three previous posts about a better understanding of the natural world, so needed in this time of ecological crisis. Dr. Blée is a colleague of Dr. Heather Eaton; his views complement both hers and those of Jakob Wolf which I described in post #53 (Bridging the Gap).

It was a footnote in Dr. Blée''s article that first lead me to Dr. Eaton's work. I mentioned her work in post #52 and shared some of her very significant ideas in my two most recent posts: #54 (We Take Care of What We Value) and #55 ("All we have to do...").

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I originally saw Dr. Blée's article in the July 2009 issue of the Bulletin of the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, published online. Since "monastic interreligious dialogue" is hardly an familiar phrase, I need to say a few words about it.

When I first heard of it, I thought "monastic interreligious dialogue" referred to Catholic monks getting together to talk about things like how long their monastic robes should be or how early they got up for their morning services. Not too interesting!

Turns out it's something completely different: Christian monks and nuns talking with Asian monks and nuns (primarily Hindu and Buddhist). And what they're talking about is nothing less than their understanding of how to best go about being fully human beings.

Even more surprising is that these monastic individuals of East and West have been at it for a half-century and that they have been learning a lot from one another.

It seems monastic people have a great deal in common, no matter what their cultural background and religious beliefs. Their basic orientation to life-- and even much of their monastic practice-- is surprisingly similar. 

It seems "monasticism" isn't-- as I'd thought-- an intensified way of being religious so much as an intensified way of being human.

While the origin of the word "monk" isn't clear, it probably comes from "monos" (meaning "one," as in "monotone"), and for that reason monks and nuns are sometimes described as persons who live alone-- or, more generally, "go it alone."

But a much better understanding is that they are simply people who are working hard at being integrated within themselves, at being whole-- "together," fully human-- persons. "Single hearted" or "undivided," as the nuns of Green Mountain Monastery, where Thomas Berry was buried, say on their website. (Do see their website for some beautiful photos of Thomas Berry's funeral.)

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The focus of Fabrice Blée's academic work is the dialogue between Asian and western 'monastics' (as they are being called nowadays to include both men and women). But in this essay he is specifically addressing Christian monks and nuns and specifically with regard to their need for a "New Ecological Consciousness."

I'm aware that this sounds like odd stuff. If you're thinking that Blée's claim to offer a new slant on the natural world based on "insights from the spirituality of inter-religious dialogue" seems a bit of a stretch, I agree. I had my doubts.

But I read his essay anyway because I was interested in seeing where he was coming from and what he was going to come up with. And as it turns out, I was not disappointed.

I think it's precisely because Dr. Blée is speaking from a context in which most of us may not be comfortable that what he has to say can be of value to all of us. It wasn't so long ago that Eastern spiritual practices like tai chi and yoga were considered "odd stuff."

So today maybe we can also learn from the experience of western monks-- especially if it has to do with the ecological crisis and acquiring a "more healthy attitude toward nature."

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For me, anything that offers a new slant on things is something to look at. The more perspectives we have-- about anything-- the more meaningful they become. And in this case, the religious perspectives being offered here can help us to see our own personal attitudes in the broadest context-- as part of global humanity's cultural development.

To some, it's extremely challenging to accept the fact that our religious perspectives have a history, since it means that we may very well be "faced with the task," as Dr. Eaton says in her essay, "of allowing [our] theological understanding to be transformed."

But that kind of transformation is a big part of the Immense Transition we're experiencing It's why I think, as I said in post #52, that we do indeed live in "Exciting Times."

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But can we really say that the changing views of monks are "exciting"?

In this case, I think we can. If even western monks are moving away from Christianity's long-held negative views of the natural world-- which, as Dr. Eaton says, "belittled the Earth as a spiritual reality"-- then what Dr. Blée has to say may in fact be of great value.

His article first appeared in the April 2008 issue of a French-language review published by the Faculty of Theology of the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Parts of it sound as if it may have originally been given as a lecture. If so, what we have is an online translation of a transcript of a talk originally given in French to a monastic audience-- which may explain why some of it is difficult to follow. But it's valuable.

It's filled with profoundly significant thoughts for those seeking to promote care of the Earth in the context of both the Judeo-Christian tradition and the New Cosmology.

While we may not be interested in inter-religious monastic dialogue in itself, what the Christian monks and nuns of western civilization are learning with regard to the environmental crisis may, in fact, be quite valuable for all of us.

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Dr. Blée begins by noting that, with few exceptions, Christian participants in the monastic East-West dialogue hadn't given much attention to the ecological crisis. As he says, "It took them 30 years to get around to it."

The basic point of his essay is that the new attitudes which are emerging in the monastic world are in fact inherent in the principles of inter-religious dialogue and that they have something of great significance to contribute with regard to healing the Earth.

It's important to keep in mind that he's talking here to a Christian audience. While he never uses the word "dualism," his use of terms like "new consciousness" and "new approach to nature" refer precisely a post-dualistic Christian perspective on the material world.

His goal, as he says, is nothing less than "to describe a way of establishing a relationship with nature that can give support to informed [ecological] action."

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Dr. Blée focuses on one of the most central practices of Christian monastic life: hospitality. In his early Rule for Monasteries, "the father of monks" Saint Benedict of Nursia notes that "guests are never lacking in a monastery" and that they "are to be received as Christ."

Dr. Blée says that the monastic emphasis on hospitality is the very essence of the perspectives which have emerged from the inter-religious dialogue. Hospitality requires participants to welcome the stranger, "the one in whom we cannot immediately recognize ourselves and who [we see] as a threat to everything we stand for."

He adds that "nothing else is so difficult as entering into someone else’s world and receiving that person into our own, regardless of what we think about the individual and his or her beliefs."

The main point of Fabrice Blée's "saner approach to nature" is that just as monks are to welcome guests "even without having any positive perspectives on their views," so this same welcoming attitude needs to be extended to nature itself.

Needless to say-- given the pervasiveness of religious dualism in Christianity for the last 1,000 years-- this is a radical view.

But welcoming the natural world-- and welcoming it precisely "in its very otherness," as Dr. Blée stresses-- is the needed perspective which he says will enable Christians to "incorporate a saner approach to nature in their life of faith."

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Welcoming others means having respect for their "otherness." Just as we "must allow ourselves to be questioned and challenged by our guests," says Dr. Blée, in the same way "we must allow ourselves to be affected by the cosmic process."

Hospitality and respect for "otherness," when applied to the natural world, means "taking the cosmic process on its own." The heart and soul of the environmental issue isn't just biological survival, Dr. Blée says, but nothing less than "communion with nature."

This is, indeed, a totally new and different perspective for western Christianity.

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Dr. Blée makes an especially good point when he observes that Christians engaged in inter-religious dialogue never encounter Islam or Buddhism in an abstract sense. We always meet specific persons, followers of specific religious traditions.

In the same way, he says, we never encounter nature in the abstract. We always meet the cosmic process in terms of "the disparate elements that constitute it."

His heavy academic language here can get in the way, but his point is clear enough: "evolution" is no more of an abstraction than are individuals who practice Buddhism or Islam. In the same way that we encounter specific persons, we also encounter specific aspects of the natural world. And in neither case may we write them off as insignificant.

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Dr. Blée makes a very profound point about hospitality toward nature when he says that we need to welcome the cosmic process even though we may be afraid of it. Otherwise, we miss something important about ourselves, our "capacity for wonder."

If you have been asking yourself why I think these views of Fabrice Blée's are so important, I hope you will see here how they relate completely to the thoughts of Heather Eaton and Jakob Wolf which I described in my three previous posts.

Dr. Eaton stresses awe and wonder, Pastor Wolf stresses our "apprehension" of nature's intelligibility, and Dr. Blée stresses welcoming the cosmic process even when we experience the threatening aspects of its "disparate elements." All three offer different slants on what's needed if we are to heal the Earth.

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Dr. Blée, however, emphasizes one important point the others don't. It concerns what he calls "liberation of the body." He says that the ecological crisis is forcing Christians to deal with their many-centuries-long "negation of the body."

He notes that it's precisely because we have cut ourselves off from nature in terms of our bodies that we in the west are so alienated from ourselves, and that "this alienation from self is precisely what characterizes modern society."

If we are to deal properly with the ecological crisis, we need to understand ourselves physically as part of "nature." We need to recognize that our own bodies are part of the cosmic evolutionary process.

In one especially good paragraph he notes that Christian monks in dialogue with the Asian contemplative traditions have "re-discovered"-- thanks to Asian practices such as zazen and yoga-- that the body has a part to play in the process of what Christian monks call “divinization."

"Divinization" (theosis, in Greek) is an ancient term for union with the divine. Blée says it "does not take place in spite of the body, but in its very depths, in a body that is totally accepted." Healing the Earth depends on our "total acceptance" of our own bodies!

There's a famous statement by the 10th-century eastern saint, Symeon the New Theologian, about total acceptance of the body. In his Hymns of Divine Love, he says that we are divinized even in our genitals-- and adds that thinking otherwise is blasphemous! (When Symeon's work was being translated into Latin back in the 1600s, the western translators deleted that passage.)

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Probably the most profound implication of this understanding of acceptance of the body as part of the evolutionary process is that it allows us, in Dr. Blée's words, "to be reconciled to two of nature’s characteristics: its impermanence and the irrationality of its power."

"Impermanence" doesn't mean that things don't last. It means, rather, that everything in nature-- the environment, our bodies and our very selves-- is always changing.

This understanding of the world as dynamic is a major aspect of the Immense Transition presently happening in human culture. I described it in posts #35 and #36. An especially important part of this tremendous change is the fact that, as Heather Eaton says in This Sacred Earth, we are at "new religious moment in the history of the world."

Today, we can see better than previous generations that each of the world's religions has distinct contributions to make and that we need to identify the "transformative and prophetic insights of each tradition." As we search for the "common ground" that's "necessary for the world to face such a global and intertwined [environmental] crisis," we need "to appreciate each religious tradition as offering specific insights and teachings within a tapestry of revelations."

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One especially strong example of a transformative insight that's found in the Buddhist tradition in a scripture, chanted regularly in the monasteries, which bluntly describes nature's irrational power. The text begins, "Thus we should frequently recollect..."

I am of the nature to age, I have not gone beyond aging.

I am of the nature to sicken, I have not gone beyond sickness.

I am of the nature to die, I have not gone beyond dying.

All that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will become otherwise, will become separated from me.

I am the owner of my kamma, heir to my kamma, born of my kamma, related to my kamma, abide supported by my kamma. Whatever kamma I shall do, for good or ill, of that I will be the heir.

We are told to "thus frequently recollect" these facts because most of us would prefer not to. But it is precisely this irrational power of the evolutionary process which we are called to welcome. As Dr. Blée says, we are to "allow ourselves to be challenged and transformed by it."

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"Transformation," like divinization or theosis, is not a conventional aspect of spirituality in western religion's dualistic view, however. The emphasis has been far more on morality and redemption (getting to heaven, escaping eternal punishment). The Earth has not been understood to be our home; any concern for healing the Earth was irrelevant.

But emphasis on transformation is, in fact, one of the basic insights of the Judeo-Christian Wisdom tradition. It was lost for a thousand years but, with its "transformative and prophetic insights," it is precisely this Wisdom tradition at the core of western religion that Christians needs to recover at this time of ecological crisis.

Dr. Blée expresses the Wisdom perspective well when he notes that the irrational power of nature, which appears as such a threat to us, "is the same divine power that Christian faith sees present and active at the heart of all creation."

It is this same dynamic energy (spiritus) which the book of Genesis describes as "hovering over the face of the deep" at the beginning of the world.

Karl Rahner expresses this Wisdom perspective more explicitly when he says that the divine spiritus present in the world is the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead.

The Wisdom perspective has been preserved by Eastern Christians. Their understanding of the transformational power of nature is expressed most explicitly in their Easter hymn, sung repeatedly throughout the Pascha ("pass-over") season:

Christ is risen from the dead,

trampling out death by death

and upon those in the tombs

bestowing life.

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At this new religious moment in the history of the world, welcoming nature-- confidently accepting its transformative power even in our bodies-- is the "saner approach to nature" we need if we are to heal the Earth.

sam@macspeno.com

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ARCHIVE TECHNICAL PROBLEM: Since I started this new series of posts, each time I publish one, an earlier one vanishes from my Archives list; they're still there, just not visible. Until tech support can deal with this, I'm putting links to those "missing" posts here.

#6. Tai Chi

#5. Alternative to "Human Nature Redux"

#4. The "Biogenetic" Perspective

#3. High School 50th-Anniversary Report

#2. Spirituality Research Symposium

#1. On Recent Developments in Science and Religion

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