#128. Body & Soul, Flesh & Spirit, Sarx and Pneuma

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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.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

Post #128 is a review I wrote for a friend of an extremely important book by the liturgist Cipriano Vagaggini; he is described very positively by the monks in the recorded conversations reviewed in post #127.

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Dear D:

This is another book review. The author is referred to in the earlier review I sent you [of Belonging to the Universe] where I mention that both of the monks involved in the new paradigms conversations "have very good things to say about Cipriano Vagaggini's work in promoting the paradigm shift."

They call Vagaggini "a key person in our theology, who influenced hundreds, even thousands, of students" (apparently at the international Benedictine college in Rome).

The context in which his name came up was David Steindl-Rast's comments about the contemporary rebirth of focus on inner experience, where he stresses that "much that is new is in fact a recovery of the older gnosis-wisdom perspective: a whole-person centered focus on transformative experience."

This book is even older than Belonging and is, I think, even more important. Its affirmation of the central significance of matter to a religious perspective is essential to Sophiology, the New Cosmology and the whole "immense transition." -Sam

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The Flesh, Instrument of Salvation: A Theology of the Human Body, by Cipriano Vagaginni, OSB (Alba House, 1969).

Somewhere in The Good Wine Bruno Barnhart has very positive things to say about this book (as do Br. David and Fr. Thomas in Belonging to the Universe), so I thought it was worth getting a look at, even though it's a half-century old.

I remember the author's name from way back, in connection with the "liturgical movement" of the 1950s and 60s, but I don't think I ever read anything of his.

This book was published after Vatican II but clearly was written earlier. It is just about unreadable; the language is that of a stilted English translation of a Latin document from the Council of Trent! The book even contains a nihil obstat.

But it's got some very good ideas in it. It is, in fact, a great treasure!

Its main point is something which the Christian world still needs to grasp, and which is essential to the perspectives of both the New Cosmology and Sophiology: that matter (the flesh, the human body, the physical universe) counts; that a material body is no less significant than a spiritual soul.

The author's key idea is that from a Christian perspective, the dichotomy between body and soul, which we inherited from Hellenistic matter-spirit dualism, simply has no validity.

He repeats over and over, in numerous contexts and in many different ways, the Latin dictum (which was not previously familiar to me and was the Italian title of the book: caro salutis est cardo).

Cardo is "hinge." So the dictum says that caro (flesh/matter) is the hinge, the cardinal or pivotal point, of our understanding of salvation.

Whatever "salvation" or "redemption" means, the body (matter, flesh) is central to it.

In The Good Wine Bruno talks about the apparent absence of a sense of reversal, paradox, irony in Christianity. That absence is strongly evident in Christianity's history: for almost its entire history, the flesh was considered the instrument of damnation.

Here it is seen as nothing less than the key, the cardo/hinge, the very means by which the cosmo-the-andric unity is achieved, so that the fullness of God may be in everything.

Vagaggini notes that the matter-spirit dichotomy of the past is only now, in our own day, coming to being resolved; and he says that the resolution is due is our understanding (from science) that the human person is at the core of the cosmos.

The copyright on the original Italian text isn't given; the English copyright is 1969. So he was certainly on the forefront of thinking back then.

And since the computer advances of the 1980s, allowing for the study of self-organizing systems, we can express his point even better: Because we can see that the self-organizing principle of the cosmos results in personal consciousness, we can also see clearly the non-validity of the body-soul distinction.

The author wants to take it even further, however. Although he doesn't use Eastern terms like "unitive" or "non-duality," his thought is rooted in the Christian idea of divinization.

His point is that flesh is no less divinized than spirit.

In different words: there is no dichotomy between theos and our real lives in the real world. As Karl Rahner says, "there is no dichotomy between grace and everyday life."

Vagaggini supports these views with texts from the Old and New Testaments and familiar early Church fathers such as Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons and Cyril of Alexandria. He works his way up to Thomas Aquinas (of whom he is quite critical on several important points: "The learned doctor ought to know better," he says).

A good positive summary of Vagaggini's view might be: Our non-duality is "whole person." I.e., we experience our non-duality with God by being a whole, healthy, human being: a person in right relatedness with all things.

To paraphrase St. Cyril: A physically and psychologically healthy human being is the fundamental way the divine glory shows itself.

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So. If the matter-spirit dichotomy isn't valid, how can we understand the bible's and church fathers' clear distinction between flesh and spirit?

Vagaggini says the biblical and patristic distinction between sarx and pneuma is in fact the distinction between the developmental nature of matter/body/person (sarx) in contrast to its having arrived at the telos of the developmental process (pneuma).

This view is obviously coming from a dynamic rather than a static perspective; and with his emphasis on person and dynamis, Vagaggini is clearly in the post-patriarchal, post-rationalistic world of the New Cosmology and Sophiology.

Calling sarx "movement toward the fullness of non-duality," and pneuma "the attainment of the goal to which the process is moving," is new to me. It's very helpful.

That Vagaggini shows that it's both biblically and patristically based is a breakthrough.

He acknowledges that sarx is usually identified with death, decay, corruptibility, but he makes the point that those are, in fact, aspects of the developmental process (of change and transformation).

Thus pneuma is not the opposite of the temporal process (i.e., not just in-corruptibility) but precisely the telos of that process: transformation to glory, new person, new creation.

In this context, he gives a seemingly simplistic definition of the Christian life which I especially like: participation in the movement toward the goal (the pleroma of non-duality) in order to reach it. A fascinating way to put it!

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Although, as I've mentioned, the book was written in Italian about five decades ago and in a style that might have come from five centuries earlier, newly familiar words and ideas keep popping up: importance of matter, centrality of person, dynamic cosmos, participatory process. A new, contemporary translation of this book would be a gift to the world.

Of special interest is his comments on (what else?) Romans 8: "the cosmos groans with us in wanting our bodies to be saved." I never really understood that text so clearly before.

In this context (i.e., that caro salutis est cardo), it is a tremendously powerful statement of the centrality of person in cosmic evolution.

If we keep in mind that "body" here simply means the material aspect of a person, so that from the beginning matter (living matter, human life) is oriented toward its persistence beyond all that threatens it, then the fulfillment of this built-in tendency of the material cosmos to persist depends on the non-duality of anthropos with theos.

What an affirmation of all that is represented by both the New Cosmology and Sophiology!

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Vagaggini was primarily a liturgist, so he wants to emphasize the implications of this insight for liturgy and sacraments.

He says that "the full cosmic value of the laws of the incarnation and sacramentality are derived from the human body." (Sounds like Bulgakov again!)

Unfortunately, it will probably take another generation or two before we can deal well with the liturgical implications of caro salutis est cardo. But once again the ultimate identity of eucharist, church and transfigured cosmos comes through clearly.

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Vagaggini has another, related idea, to which we can give our immediate attention: "The body appears as the result of a labor of tension which pervades the whole of material creation into the very vitals of its being."

This brings together the anthropos-cosmos link in terms of the labor of childbirth, the public work of the liturgy, and those aspects of endurance and burden connected with Sophia that modern Gnosticism seems to be especially concerned with.

This book is indeed a great treasure. Not only does the theological perspective on the ultimate identity of eucharist, church and transfigured cosmos come through clearly. With its biblical and patristic analysis of sarx and pneuma, the matter-spirit dichotomy of the past is resolved, and affirmed in our scientific understanding that the human person is at the core of the cosmos.

This book is a buried treasure!

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#87. Stardust's Imperative: Reinterpretation

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In our day we have "a new mode of religious understanding," as Thomas Berry says. And it's not thanks to our religious traditions, he emphasizes, but to science.

The religious traditions are part of the problem. I quoted Bede Griffith in post #86: "The different world religions-- Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam-- have themselves to recover the ancient wisdom, which they have inherited, and this now has to be interpreted in the light of the knowledge of the world which Western science has given us."

The context for our new mode of religious understanding is the recovery of what Berry calls our "awareness of spiritual communication with the natural world." It was the religious experience of our earliest human ancestors and we remain genetically coded for it today.

While this is obviously not easy for some to accept, modern science is far from being in contradiction to religious perspectives; it offers, in fact, a contemporary context for the re-interpretation of the basic perspectives of our religious traditions.

We are "recovering reverence," says Berry. "Evolution has become our sacred story."

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For a long time, the Western world didn't have a sacred story. We didn't even know we didn't have a sacred story! We were doubly estranged by both religion and science and, as a result, much of the Western world gave up on religion.

Secularists, agnostics, and atheists gave up on it completely, while those who describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious" gave up on its institutional forms. Those who remain in the traditional churches are in a different situation: they find themselves increasingly dismayed by their churches' irrelevance.

And then there are those of us who-- by personal inclination, curiosity, education, or stubbornness-- see something of great value in the old traditions and don't want to discard them. We want to see them in the new scientific context where they can once again be life-giving.

That's the topic of this post. Berry calls "reinterpretation." I've called it "Stardust's Imperative."

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"Stardust" is a faithful reader of this blog; over the last several years she has contributed many good comments to my posts. In response to one of them, I suggested recently she re-read posts #20 and #39. The details are complicated but the main idea isn't: with regard to a view which I'd pointed out to her of the Russian Sophiologist, Sergius Bulgakov, she said, "What a beautiful thought!"

Then she added, "Everything I go back to now gets reinterpreted through a new filter."

That's "Stardust's Imperative": to reinterpret everything-- all the religious teachings that have come down to us-- through the "new filter" of evolutionary science.

As I said in another context, "when the traditional Western religious teachings are reinterpreted in terms of the New Cosmology, the result is an even deeper, richer and more beautiful understanding than was available earlier."

Thomas Berry says that when we look at the data itself, "we begin to see a story of immediate significance." Big History, the largest cosmic perspective, "reveals the mysteries of the universe coming forth from the original flaring forth of primordial energy, then passing through a series of irreversible transformation episodes that have brought into being the visible world around us."

In our day, Stardust's Imperative is the imperative of all of us. We all have to join with Stardust, Thomas Berry, Bede Griffith, Michael Dowd, and many others who are on the growing edge of Western culture, so that we too can have "an even deeper, richer and more beautiful understanding than was available earlier."

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I want to give some examples of the "reinterpretations" Thomas Berry offers. But I want first to share an important thought about the process of reinterpretation itself.

Reinterpretation isn't just something for academics and scholars. It's part of everyday life. We do it all the time, because we know from personal experience that we see things differently when we understand them better. There's no reason to exclude our religious perspectives from this common human experience.

Beyond that, understanding old things in new ways is, for some of us, a special delight. It's exciting when we find that even our understanding itself is evolving. And one of the most significant things we come to understand is that, often, a new interpretation don't negate an older one but puts it in a larger context. It lets us see a bigger picture.

I think that's especially the case with regard to reinterpreting religious ideas in the new scientific context, but religion isn't the only area of life that needs reinterpretation as a result of new scientific findings. Science itself is constantly reinterpreting its own ideas.

Probably the most famous example is Einstein's theory of relativity. It's essentially a reinterpretation of the laws of gravity formulated by Isaac Newton back in the 17th century.

Newton's understanding wasn't wrong; we still experience gravity in everyday life just as he described it 350 years ago. But Newton's 17th-century-formulation is now understood in the larger, more-inclusive context of Einstein's laws of relativity.

That's a key idea to keep in mind with regard to Stardust's Imperative: reinterpretation lets us see older ideas in a newer and bigger context, but it doesn't negate them.

So we don't need to be afraid to look at earlier teachings in the larger context of modern science. Just as Einstein's laws of gravity don't contradict the earlier ones formulated by Newton but give us a better understanding of them, so the perspectives of the New Cosmology don't contradict the basic teachings of Western religion but put them in a much larger and more inclusive context.

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In his 1985 essay "Christian Cosmology," Thomas Berry lists several big ideas from the Judeo-Christian tradition which can be reinterpreted in light of the New Cosmology. Here he's speaking to a Christian audience and so uses familiar Christian terms: "biblical revelation, the incarnation, redemption and the shaping of the Christian community."

Because the idea of community applies equally to all the Earth's religious traditions, East and West, I want to describe Berry's ideas about community first. From my experience I know that a sense of community is especially relevant to those who describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or secular or who think of themselves as "spiritual but not religious."

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Sociologically, we know that community is a fundamental human need, and that our understanding of community, Christian or otherwise, centers on the idea of person.

Asian cultures are often criticized for not valuing human individuals as much as the Western society does, but both of the Earth's largest cultural groups, East and West, have something of importance to learn about persons in light of the cosmic perspective provided by modern science.

In Berry's words, "Persons are a cosmic phenomenon-- both a part of the process and also the process itself come to self-awareness." And it's this cosmic perspective, he says, which allows us to see our proper role in the universe. It allows us to see what persons are "for."

That role (our job, our common task) is, in Berry's words, "to return the universe to itself and to its numinous origins." And he points out that in doing this work we are dependent "for every aspect of our intellectual insight, spiritual development, imaginative creativity and emotional sensitivity" on the findings of science.

Berry's terms for the three main aspects of the cosmic process are differentiation, subjectivity and communion. And he notes that while differentiation-- the diversity of persons, "individuation" in Jungian terms-- is a central aspect of the cosmic process, our industrial society requires standardization. So do our religious institutions.

From the point of view of cosmic evolution, however, persons simply are not subject-able to standardization. So it's only when we have a clear understanding of the individual person as a cosmic phenomenon that we can have good sense of a community of persons.

It's in this perspective, says Berry, that the idea of "community" can be recognized as nothing less than the very goal and purpose of the cosmic process. In his words, "the ultimate community is the whole universe together." And in an extremely significant comment, he adds that "it is the task specifically of the Christian community to articulate and move the world towards the achievement of this purpose."

What a profound understanding of Christian community this is! For me, it's an outstanding example of the recovery of a buried treasure. It's an understanding of "church" utterly un-like that of the authoritarian patriarchal institution to which that name is usually given.

It is the sacramentum mundi of Karl Rahner and the mysterion tou cosmou of Raimundo Panikkar which I wrote about in several earlier posts. It is the Christian community's ancient understanding of itself as a sacred sign, a sacramental symbol of the ultimate community which the New Testament calls the "recapitulation" of the universe, "God all-in-all," the fullness of God in everything (Ephesians 1:10).

This is, indeed, a profound understanding. And Berry's understanding of the idea of "redemption" in the evolutionary context of the New Cosmology is no less profound.

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Berry observes that at every level of the cosmic process-- from sub-atomic particles uniting in stars to form atoms of the chemical elements... to single-celled life-forms uniting to form the Earth's plants and animals... even to parents sacrificing themselves for the sake of their children-- "redemption" or "sacrifice" in some sense is always made at one level "for the emergence of a higher level."

In the static-dualistic worldview of the past, redemption was understood as a legal, even a financial, agreement: "a price must be paid." But in the dynamic evolutionary perspective we can see that "sacrifice"-- Berry even says "self-immolation" at one point-- is "a primary necessity in activating advanced modes of being in the cosmic process."

From the world's creation described in the book of Revelations as the sacrifice of "the lamb slain at the foundation of the world," to the life-story of Jesus, and to every parent changing a diaper at this moment anywhere in the world-- redemptive sacrifice is understood to be a primary necessity. It's a totally valid understanding of how the world works. We don't need to limit our understanding of redemption to the work of one person or one group of persons.

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The same is true with regard to our understanding of "incarnation" and "revelation." In the perspectives of the New Cosmology, we can see that divine incarnation doesn't need to be limited to the life a single individual, nor does divine revelation need to be limited to the sacred stories of only one of the Earth's cultural groupings.

By whatever name-- the familiar Logos of John's Gospel, the less familiar Greek terms such as theosis or Raimundo Panikkar's cosmo-the-andric unity, even the quite unfamiliar Bogochelovechestvo of the Russian Sophiologists-- the divine-human unity expressed in the gospel story of Jesus makes good sense in terms of the New Cosmology.

So does the Passover story, the story of the Great Escape from Egypt recorded in the book of Exodus. Berry calls this biblical revelation "the historical unfolding of the divine in human history." He also notes that, as I've mentioned in several previous posts, it is the very source of our contemporary evolutionary cosmology.

Isn't this a fascinating thought, that Western religion gave us science, and western science is now returning the heart of Western religion to us!

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The main thought I want to share in this post is that "Stardust's Imperative" really is an imperative. We simply cannot go back to the older dualistic religious perspectives-- any more than we can try to understand the universe or our human world without Einstein's ideas about relativity and Darwin's understanding of natural selection.

And just as Einstein's 20th-century theory of relativity doesn't invalidate but deepens our understanding of the law of gravity that Newton formulated in the 17th century, the same is true of Berry's understanding of our need to see traditional Christian teachings in the larger context of the New Cosmology.

Berry sums up these thoughts nicely: "We need to see that revelation, incarnation and redemption are primarily for the entire universe," he says. "And not," he adds, "for any [specific] individual or group."

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That sounds good, but does "Stardust's Imperative"-- reinterpreting everything in our religious teachings through the "new filter" of evolutionary science-- really result is an "even deeper, richer and more beautiful understanding than was available earlier"?

I think it does. The new scientific cosmology helps us recover the most basic aspects of the Western world's religious traditions as they were understood before Western society became "doubly estranged" from the natural world and our spiritual communication with it.

One example that immediately comes to mind is the earliest known description of a gathering of a Christian community. The ancient text says that when the early Christians got together, they began by reading the scriptures and sharing news of the lives of their fellow believers. "And then," it says, "we stand up and pray for all the world."

This ancient practice is explicitly continued in the Christian communities of the Eastern churches. When they gather for what they still call their service of thanksgiving-- "returning the world to its numinous source" in Berry's language-- they pray, "We offer You what is Yours, on behalf of all and for all."

So from a traditional Christian point of view, the Eucharist is quite literally a work (a "liturgia" in Greek) done "for the entire universe." 

From the point of the view of the New Cosmology it is no less. An awkward but I think helpful way to say it is that it is the actualization by a community of cosmic persons of their cosmic role in the cosmic process.

We don't need to refer only to ancient texts and liturgical practices to appreciate this central understanding of service and its sacramental expression in the Eucharist. A contemporary example appears in a recent (January 27, 2011) New York Times article by a two-time 

Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, Nicholas Kristof.

Kristof is reporting on a complex situation in Phoenix where a bishop excommunicated first a nun, and then an entire Catholic hospital-- by refusing permission for the eucharist to be celebrated there. He quotes Jamie L. Manson, columnist for the National Catholic Reporter, who expresses beautifully the ancient understanding of eucharist and its connection with service "on behalf of all and for all."

"Though they will be denied the opportunity to celebrate the Eucharist, the Eucharist will rise out of St. Joseph’s every time the sick are healed, the frightened are comforted, the lonely are visited, the weak are fed, and vigil is kept over the dying."

Clearly, the "new mode of religious understanding" which is ours thanks to science helps us to recover even the most basic teaching of Jesus.

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The New Cosmology also helps us recover the confidence and trust that is the very essence of our personal lives when lived according to the religious perspective of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

When we recognize that "evolution is our sacred story" we see not only that creation is still in process and that we are co-creative participants 
in it, but also that we have an especially good way to understand our personal participation in that story: "passover."

As the text of the Passover Seder says, "this story holds true for us today." The Passover story tells us that we have nothing to lose in the long run, that we don't need to be afraid.

As I see it, Stardust's Imperative-- reinterpretation in light of the New Cosmology-- isn't something to shy away from. It's exciting.

sam@macspeno.com

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#45. Midnight Wisdom: Sophia as Provider

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This post is the last of four dealing with the four main groups of images of Wisdom/Sophia found in the Hebrew Bible's wisdom literature.

I find these images tremendously helpful for a renewed understanding of the western religious tradition in the context of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution. They seem especially appropriate for the major transitional period humanity is experiencing in our movement beyond the limitations of a static cosmology and the patriarchal attitudes of religious dualism.

As in the previous three posts, my efforts here are to relate this fourth group of wisdom images to the other four-fold perspectives about which I've shared my thoughts in earlier posts. This includes the Jungian consciousness functions, the imagery connected with the four directions found in pre-civilization traditions such as the Native American Medicine Wheel, the four traditional ways of being religious, Karl Rahner's existential aspects of human experience, and the Immense Transition itself.

I've called this post "Sophia as Provider" because this fourth group of images sees Sophia as the source of food, shelter and protection for the Earth's children. Alternative names might be "Sophia as Protector" or "Sophia as Caretaker." It's an image of Divine Wisdom taking care of us, Sophia providing for our life and existence.

I've also called it "Midnight Wisdom" because it relates to the North on the Medicine Wheel. "North" especially evokes the darkness of night and the cold of winter, threatening times when alert attention to potential danger is needed and there is little leeway for carelessness or error. If an emergency arises in the middle of the night or in the dead of winter, delay in immediate action can easily result in major injury or death.

The primal element associated with North is earth; in some traditions it's said to be metal. The basic idea is the rock-hard solidity of stone or a chunk of iron, which is in strong contrast to the fluidity of water (the element associated with the West) and the fleetingness of wind, air and breath (East's element).

The solidity of rock and metal represents the harsher aspects of reality, what's sometimes called the world's "obduracy." So "earth", as the North's element, is an especially good expression of our need to attend to the material aspects of our lives, particularly to the needs of our bodies and to the safety and survival of those too young, too old or too ill to take care of themselves.

The main idea is that life is fragile and we need to give our attention to the details of the rock-hard realities of our physical existence.

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On the Medicine Wheel, the animal associated with North is the White Buffalo. For the Plains Indians, the buffalo was not only the main source of food but also of many other things needed for survival. The buffalo provided its skin for covering tepees, its fur for clothing, and its bones to make necessary tools such as scrapers, needles and knives; even the bull buffalo's scrotum was used to make rattles for religious ceremonies. The buffalo quite literally gives itself for the life of the people.

And as in the archaic hunting cultures, where hunting was considered a religious activity, the buffalo was understood to give itself willingly. It's not all that different from the understanding of creation by divine kenosis-- which I described in posts #33 (Talking About God) and #34 (Talking About Us)-- at the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The buffalo is indeed sacred. Even today when an occasional white buffalo is born Native Americans hold it in high honor as an image of this divine self-giving.

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It's important to keep in mind that, although the imagery is very different, contemporary scientists working in fields such as Systems Theory, Chaos Theory and Unified Field Theory are also saying something very much along these same lines. They see the world and ourselves in it as manifestations of an underlying order of reality for which they use terms like the "Cosmic Fullness," "Implicate Order" and "Quantum Sea." An Asian version of this same idea is the traditional Chinese description of the Tao as "the no-thing from which comes every thing."

As I mentioned in several previous posts, the Russian Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov expresses a similar understanding when he describes the world and human persons as "actualizations of the divine potentialities." Jungian analyst Michael Conforti, a contemporary pioneer in matter-mind studies in the realm of psychotherapy, uses a more traditional religious term; he says "the patterns of reality are continually being incarnate in space and time." Karl Rahner says something similar, too-- that we experience ourselves as the "embodiment" of the "incomprehensible source." Perhaps the best name for this self-giving on the part of the Mystery behind the universe is cosmologist Brian Swimme's phrase, "the all-nourishing abyss."

Contemporary scientists, cosmologists, theoretical physicists, psychotherapists; Orthodox and Catholic theologians; followers of ancient traditions such as Taoism and of teachings going back to Paleolithic times-- all are attempting to express the same insight. Like the White Buffalo, the mystery behind the universe provides us with what's needed for the survival and fullness of our lives.

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In the fourth group of the Bible's wisdom images, Wisdom/Sophia is pictured in way that sounds very similar to the White Buffalo's self-giving. The Hebrew writers don't use an animal image, since the Hebrews were farmers, not hunters. In the wisdom literature, Sophia is pictured as a tree, plant or vine-- a source of food and shelter for humanity.

Here are some comments from Hal Taussig's book, Wisdom's Feast, Sophia in Study and Celebration, which I've referred to in each of these four posts dealing with images of Sophia. This group of images is especially relevant to these midnight and caretaker aspects of Divine Wisdom.

Taussig notes that in many of humanity's cultures "a tree comes eventually to symbolize almost every major mythical figure," and he suggests that this may be the reason the "Hebrew scriptures include a number of different images of Sophia as a tree or plant." Some well-known examples are Buddha under the Bo tree, Jesus on the tree of the cross, Thor hanging on the World-Tree.

Taussig says that the "most striking of these" wisdom images is in Ecclesiasticus 24. Here, Sophia herself is speaking: "I have taken root in a privileged people, in the Lord's property, in his inheritance," she says.

And this is followed with a series of wonderful images: "I have grown tall as a cedar on Lebanon, as a cypress on Mount Hermon; I have grown tall as a palm in Engedi, as the rose bushes of Jericho; as a fine olive in the plain, as a plane tree I have grown tall. I have exhaled perfume like cinnamon and acacia, I have breathed out a scent like choice myrrh, like galbanum, onzcha and stacte, like the smoke of incense in the tabernacle."

Sophia compares herself to a glorious oak tree: "I have spread my branches like a terebinth, and my branches are glorious and graceful." And also to a delicate vine: "I am like a vine putting out graceful shoots, my blossoms bear the fruit of glory and wealth."

Sophia gives of herself no less than the sacred buffalo of the Plains Indians: "Approach me, you who desire me, and take your fill of my fruits."

Taussig notes that this is likewise the case in Ecclesiasticus 1, where Sophia is described as a tree providing out of her own abundance: "She intoxicates them with her fruits; she fills their whole house with their heart's desire, and their storerooms with her produce."

Sophia also provides shelter along with her fruits; in Ecclesiasticus 14 she becomes a sheltering presence. Taussig notes that here the writer "mixes metaphors to describe Sophia's sheltering presence" as both a tree and a house. In this text, the writer is speaking of "one who meditates on Sophia."

"He peeps in at her windows, and listens at her doors; he lodges close to her house and fixes his peg in her walls... he sets his children in her shade, and camps beneath her branches, he is sheltered by her from the heat, and in her glory he makes his home."

In all of these images, Sophia gives of herself for the life of the people. She provides the food, shelter and protection especially needed in the dark of night and the cold of winter which are associated with North on the Medicine Wheel.

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It makes good sense that the Jungian consciousness-function associated with the darkness and cold of north on the Medicine Wheel is Sensation. With its attention to details, our Sensation function fits right in with the idea of care-taker and provider.

Sensation is a perception function (as is Intuition, which is associated with the west), and both Intuition and Sensation differ from the two judgment functions (Feeling and Thinking) because, rather than making a judgment about whatever environment we find ourselves in, the perception functions simply look at what's there. The difference is that while Intuition sees the forest, Sensation pays attention to the individual trees; it sees the details.

So the White Buffalo/Sensation function is in great contrast to our Black Bear/Intuition function. While Intuition is concerned with possibilities and potentialities, with the "what might be" of the future, Sensation is concerned with the immediate details of life in the here-and-now.

The mind's Sensation function is apparently based on the activity of the brain's Frontal lobe which allows us to focus our attention on particulars and is concerned with how we make use of things. It's a part of our evolutionary heritage from the ancient past when, as the Biogenetic Structuralists like to say, the main concern of our animal ancestors was to "get food without becoming food." People with a strong Sensation function focus more easily than the rest of us on the details of everyday life. We couldn't survive without them.

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Medical people, nurses and doctors, for example, are often better than the rest of us at being able to handle the immediate details of life and death situations. So are many others who give of themselves for the safety and protection of the rest of us-- firefighters, police, crossing-guards, construction workers, those who care for patients who have highly contagious diseases-- any who have dangerous jobs and are especially good in emergencies.

Care-takers devoted to the more routine service to others are also examples of this White Buffalo ability. Those who run drug rehabs, day-care shelters and food banks, those who provide for the homeless on cold winter nights, those who maintain houses of hospitality and soup kitchens, those who keep our homes and streets clean, those who see better than the rest of us the details of climate change and help us see what we can do about it-- all are examples of our White Buffalo/Sensation function. And as I said, we couldn't survive without them.

The need for this White Buffalo quality in political leaders has recently emerged as a result of the media's references to "the 3 AM phone call." But it's just as much needed by any mother or father when responding to a child's cry in the middle of the night.

These are all examples of our White Buffalo/Sensation function in action, providing the care and protection needed, not only for our safety and survival, but for life in its fullness. They are all expressions of our providing for the shelter and protection for others just as Sophia does.

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It's not surprising that the focus of the Sensation function and the Medicine Wheel's North finds expression in one of the traditional ways of being religious, the way of service. In scholarly circles, it's referred to as "the way of cosmic harmony."

Here, social action is seen as our contribution to keeping the world in balance; service to those in need is a way of being in harmony with the cosmic flow. We take care of one another simply because that's the way the world works; it's "the right thing to do." We provide for one another, as Divine Wisdom provides for us.

This White Buffalo way of being religious contrasts greatly with devotion to the Holy Presence, the way favored by the Green Mouse/Feeling function. In the Sensation function's "way of cosmic harmony," the Holy Presence is understood to be present wherever anyone is in need.

Many of us will remember the traditional works of mercy-- feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, visiting the sick, burying the dead. Martin Luther expressed this perspective well when he said, "Ever, ever goes the Christ in stranger's garb." Mother Theresa describes a leper dying in the streets as "Jesus in a distressing form." The Dali Lama says he can describe his religion in one word, "Compassion."

The native Maori people of New Zealand have an especially simple and powerful image that captures well this way of service and cosmic harmony. They see each individual who is born into the world as something like a fragile fern frond, to be taken care of until it grows up enough so that it can take care of other fragile fern fronds. The image of fern frond is found everywhere in New Zealand. It's even used as a logo for their "All Blacks" Rugby team and the "Black Caps" Cricket team.

What this way of being religious comes down to is offering a helping hand wherever it's needed. And as a "way of cosmic harmony" it fits right in, not only with these older insights of the world's religious traditions, but also with the vision of the New Cosmology we have from modern science.

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In the perspectives of the New Cosmology the idea of service to those in need is simply extended to include our taking care of the Earth itself. The focus is still in terms of survival and protection, but now the care is extended to include endangered species of wildlife and the details of the dynamic environment. In the New Cosmology our sense of the Holy Presence is extended to everything.

It's easy to see that this inclusivity is a major aspect of the Sensation function's focus on details.

In posts #39 (on Hebrew Thought) and #40 (on Sophia/Wisdom), I mentioned the French philosopher and author of A Study of Hebrew Thought, Claude Tresmontant, teacher of medieval philosophy and the philosophy of science at the Sorbonne. Tresmontant observed that from a dynamic-evolutionary perspective, war and violence are distortions of the cosmic process. We can see better now, thanks to the New Cosmology, that patriarchy is too. I have in mind specifically those attitudes of the patriarchal mind which result in the exploitation of the Earth's resources or the exclusion of people from full participation in life because of their age, gender, educational level or ethnic background.

In the New Cosmology, we see that it's a distortion of the cosmic process to exclude anyone. In our care of the Earth and its peoples, nothing is to be overlooked, no one is to be left out.

And this is not just the concern of Peace Prize recipients such as Mother Theresa, Al Gore and Africa's Wangari Maathai. In the Immense Transition, we are coming to see that care for ourselves and for "all our relations" is one of the main practical ideas in the new view of ourselves and world that's offered us by modern science. Just as we are coming to see, too, in this time of Great Turning, that humanity's cultural history is a continuation of the embodiment-- the actualization, incarnation, manifestation-- of the cosmic fullness, the incomprehensible source and all-nourishing abyss we know as Divine Wisdom.

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This understanding of ourselves as manifestation of the Mystery behind the universe is expressed especially well in Karl Rahner's existential analysis of our experience of being "a person in the world." He says that we not only experience ourselves at the deepest level as aware, open and free, but also that we experience ourselves as "blessed" or "graced."

The blessing we experience is nothing less than the fact that we belong to the universe. We know ourselves as blessed to be part of it all, graced to be not only participants in the cosmic process but also called to personally contribute to it.

In my experience, many who are interested in the New Cosmology find it surprising that the western religious tradition has a word for our participation in and contribution to the cosmic process. They find it even more surprising to know that the word is "liturgy."

Originally, "liturgy" just meant something like "public work." In the early days of the Roman Empire, when wealthy people donated funds for public works-- for what today we would call "civic improvements" which are of benefit to all-- that work was referred to as "liturgy." Basically, the word means work done "by the people and for the people."

Christians in the Roman Empire used the word "liturgy" to express their understanding of being called to act for the benefit of the whole human community. In theological texts liturgy is still defined as "the work of the people." And even today, in the liturgical services of the Eastern Christian churches, it's said explicitly that the service is being offered "on behalf of all and for all."

It's easy to miss that we still use the word "service" to refer to a religious ceremony. And it's fascinating to see that the term "liturgy" has become more widespread as a synonym for what used to be called "divine service." Jews have long referred to the "liturgy of the synagogue" and even Buddhists nowadays sometimes refer to their gatherings for meditation as their "zen liturgy."

But the connection between the existential experience of being graced or blessed and the subsequent sense of service to the world is found even in one of the oldest known religious "services," the sweat lodge ceremony of Native Americans. 

Sweat lodge rites go back many thousands of years, perhaps to the time of the Paleolithic hunting cultures. And even today the sweat lodge structure is covered (at least ideally) with buffalo skins. But even if it's covered with plastic tarps, the participants still proclaim, as they crawl naked through the small door that leads into it, that what they are doing is for the benefit of all. Each one says, "All my relations!"

I've never heard the sweat lodge ceremony referred to as a "liturgy," but Native Americans are as explicit as are Eastern Christians in their understanding that what they are doing in the sweat lodge is service on behalf of the world: "We do this so that all the peoples might live." And by "peoples" they mean the winged nations, the finned nations and the four-legged, as well as we two-legged peoples. It's not surprising that this ancient hunting culture ritual has become an important ceremony to many in the context of the New Cosmology.

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From Paleolithic hunting cultures to theoretical physics and modern existentialist analysis of human experience, the same fundamental vision emerges. Although in very different words and expressions, they all seem to be saying something much like the perspective that's at the root of the western culture's religious tradition: Divine Wisdom gathers us, guides us and provides for us, and calls us to contribute our service on behalf of all and for all.

In Taussig's words: "Sophia calls out to us to participate in the world in which we live."

And once again the question is, in Karl Rahner's words: "Are we are willing to make the effort to be sensitive and responsive?"

sam@macspeno.com