Hello Friends. Since you have arrived on this blog page I will assume that you are, like me, a curious investigator of life. If so…then it’s my guess that, like me, you may also have some nagging questions about life and the spiritual journey or faith walk that your are on…questions that cannot be asked or addressed in the conventional religious institutions you attend because they are questions about orthodoxy and theology that might put you at risk of being branded a backslider or heretic if you dare to ask.
About eight years ago I began asking some of the questions that had been stuck in my soul for years but took time to really come to the surface with such pressure that I no longer could stay quiet. I felt very alone in my quest for greater understanding. I knew of no one that was asking the same questions, no one that is; until I discovered Brian McLaren’s book A New Kind of Christian. Before this discovery I felt that I either needed to live with the dissonance that I felt or leave my faith entirely. But, Brian’s book was like a rope thrown out to save me. In it I found that Brian too was asking these hard questions. I knew then that there was hope for me and all those like me. Since then I’ve discovered an entire world of people who are emerging into new understandings of old truths. It’s been a journey of new discoveries and great inner rewards.
It’s been several years since I’ve read one of Brian’s books, but I recently picked up his latest book A New Kind of Christianity (not to be confused with his first book with a similar name). This book has reignited my heart with the message of Jesus that has for so long evaded me, that the Kingdom of God is in us and among us NOW!...which begs the question Francis Schaeffer asked…”How Then Shall we Live?” and I would add…how then shall we rethink what we 'know' and open to the possiblity of learning new ways to live our spiritual life in the 21st century?
In his latest book Brian asks 10 questions that are most important to those of us who live daily with the knowledge that life cannot sustain itself in the ways we are living. The following are the topics he addresses:
1. The Narrative Question: What is the overarching story line of the Bible?
2. The Authority Question: How might the Bible be reunderstood?
3. The God Question: Is God violent?
4. The Jesus Question: Who is Jesus, and Jesus outside the lines?
5. The Gospel Question: What is the gospel’s message?
6. The Church Question: What about the church in the 21st century?
7. The Sex Question: Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting?
8 The Future Question: Can we find a better way of viewing the future?
9. The Pluralism Question: How should we relate to people of other religions?
10. The What-Do-We-Do-Now Question: How do we translate our quest into action?
These are questions that take courage to ask and to talk about. If these questions are ones that are on your mind but you haven’t yet found an arena to discuss them… then Phil and I would like to invite you to join us in a 10-12 week discussion on the above topics using A New Kind of Christianity as a springboard for discussion.
We would like to be clear that this is not a conversation for everyone. However, we do welcome those of all faiths and lifestyles who wish to enter the conversation with us. We have no desire to attempt to change anyone’s belief structure. So if you are not asking the above questions then this is definitely not a group you will be comfortable in.
However, if you are asking these or similar questions…then the following two quotes on the opening pages of this book will most likely resonate with you.
"Lord, we acknowledge that we have made a mess of what Jesus started. We affirm that we are wrong and Jesus is right. We choose not to defend what we have done and what we have become. We understand that many good Christians will not want to participate in our quest, and we welcome their charitable critique. We acknowledge that we have created many Christianities up to this point, and they call for reassessment and, in many cases, repentance. We choose to seek a better path into the future than the one we have been on. We desire to be born again as disciples of Christ. Now grant us the wisdom and guide us in our quest, and create something new and beautiful in and among us for the good of all creation and to your Glory, Living God.”
Prayer prayed by John Robinson, pastor of those who
were about to set sail for the new world on the Mayflower.
AND…
"Never accept and be content with unanalyzed assumptions, assumptions about the work, about the people, about the church or Christianity. Never be afraid to ask questions about the work we have inherited or the work we are doing. There is no question that should not be asked or that is outlawed. The day we are completely satisfied with what we have been doing; the day we have found the perfect, unchangeable system of work, the perfect answer, never in need of being corrected again, on that day we will know that we are wrong, that we have made the greatest mistake of all.”
Vincent J. Donovan
If you think you are interested in becoming a part of this conversation or you have questions about it then please contact me at karenholderbein@comcast.net
Depending on the response we will begin sometime in March and will decide what day we will meet based on the needs of the group.
Thanks for reading and bless you wherever you are on your journey of faith.
Phil and Karen Holderbein
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Friday, June 18, 2010
A Coaching Perspective
Living life well is an art form and, as with any art form, it takes awareness and lots of practice to accomplish. An authentic and fully engaged life is one of being awake, aware and as objective about ourselves as possible. Learning to engage with life rather than resist it becomes easier when we are fully aware and accepting of the body we live in and the thoughts and emotions that flow through us. As clients become more and more able to objectify their behaviors, gain control over their thoughts and learn the messages that emotions have for them…then competency, freedom and power begin to emerge. The coaching process is designed to help clients develop this objectivity in order to fully realize their deep desire for a sense of freedom and competency in life.
The coaching process consists of two initial sessions to determine what the work will consist of and then a mutually agreed upon number of development cycles to produce the desired outcome. The first session is designed to allow client and coach to become acquainted with each other, to determine if there is a good match for working together, and to determine the desired area of change. During this session I will listen deeply and sensitively to where you are in life, in fulfilling your ambitions, in addressing your concerns, and in your personal fulfillment. This involves listening for information in many domains—cognitive, emotional, somatic, relational, and spiritual—and special attention is given to how you are integrating these domains.
Based on my understanding of our first session together I will design a program that fits your specific area of desired change. This program will specifically address your current-way-of-being and a possible new-way-of- being in your coaching topic that is mutually agreed upon. This is accomplished through a program of self-reflective exercises and daily practices that allow you to develop and actually live in your new-way-of-being with greater ease and freedom.
This coaching technique is not to be in lieu of professionally prescribed therapy but, rather it is a partnering between coach and client to produce a specific outcome. The technique is designed specifically around the practices and will not produce the desired outcome without a deep commitment from the client to their own personal development which means a commitment to actually do the practices agreed upon. “Coaching” assumes that the client is the one who actually does the hard work towards their own personal empowerment.
The coaching process consists of two initial sessions to determine what the work will consist of and then a mutually agreed upon number of development cycles to produce the desired outcome. The first session is designed to allow client and coach to become acquainted with each other, to determine if there is a good match for working together, and to determine the desired area of change. During this session I will listen deeply and sensitively to where you are in life, in fulfilling your ambitions, in addressing your concerns, and in your personal fulfillment. This involves listening for information in many domains—cognitive, emotional, somatic, relational, and spiritual—and special attention is given to how you are integrating these domains.
Based on my understanding of our first session together I will design a program that fits your specific area of desired change. This program will specifically address your current-way-of-being and a possible new-way-of- being in your coaching topic that is mutually agreed upon. This is accomplished through a program of self-reflective exercises and daily practices that allow you to develop and actually live in your new-way-of-being with greater ease and freedom.
This coaching technique is not to be in lieu of professionally prescribed therapy but, rather it is a partnering between coach and client to produce a specific outcome. The technique is designed specifically around the practices and will not produce the desired outcome without a deep commitment from the client to their own personal development which means a commitment to actually do the practices agreed upon. “Coaching” assumes that the client is the one who actually does the hard work towards their own personal empowerment.
Friday, February 26, 2010
An Integral Worldview
I like the word Integral; it’s a good 21st century word. Integral, integrated, whole, not separate; integral feels personal and it feels global. So what might an integral worldview look like?
I would like to suggest that an integral world is a worldview free from the idea of separation. If we consider something like the honey bee, we know it needs flowers to exist and the flowers need water and soil and the soil needs worms and nutrients and they all need sunlight and oxygen and a planet and a solar system and a galaxy and ultimately a universe in order for any of them to function at all. A honey bee is not a separate thing, and neither are you and I.
We divide the world up into separate parts, me and you, us and other, my family, my religion, my nation, my boundaries. Where are the boundaries? Have you ever heard the term that the map is not the territory? Maps have lines that define the separation of regions and territories. And, what we all know is that in reality when we visit the actual place, there are no lines. California and Nevada are divided only by arbitrary ideas of lines that we humans have made up. In reality the United States of America is one piece of land not 50 states with lines dividing them. And, of course the USA is a piece of land connected to other pieces of land by seas and oceans. And the earth is a whole that is connected to a solar system to a Milky Way Galaxy to a/the Universe. So, when we live in a larger more true reality there are no lines, we are not divided we are integrated.
So, what’s the problem? Could the problem simply be THINKING? Maybe thinking we are separate is the problem and always has been. We think ourselves separate and then live as though we are. We even think ourselves separate from God. Is that even possible? Of course it’s possible to think of myself as separate from God, but am I actually separate from God?
All the ancient wisdom traditions, Judiasm, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., speak about human begins as fallen from grace and living in a sinful state of being. Did this fallen, sinful state of being exist in nature before man came on the scene? Mankind is the thinking animal, homo-sapiens/sapiens, the one who knows that it knows. The plant and animal worlds don’t know themselves as separate but live with the blueprint of a unified existence. Only we humans live out of sinc with ourselves, each other and nature. And, I would suggest that it's our separation thinking that is causing our suffering. We are responsible for our daily suffering and it is all based upon how we choose to think about ourselves, each other and the world we live in.
From a Christian point of view I begin to realize what Jesus might have meant when he said…”if you have seen me you have seen the Father”. Jesus knew he was not separate from God. St. Paul describes the extent that the human mind goes to in an attempt to justify itself when he said…”thinking themselves wise they became fools”. Are we so conditioned in our ‘thinking’ that we believe ourselves to be so right that we make no space for anything new to emerge?
So, I am going to be bold and suggest that our fallen condition is true based upon separation thinking. We think ourselves separate from our true selves, from others, from God and from all that we think we need. Furthermore, I would suggest the good possibility that this state of illusion is a conditioned mindset that we have been passing down generation through generation beginning with the first conscious humans. We in the west have become so conditioned by the illusion of separateness that it's become concrete, black and white thinking. In the eastern spiritual traditions there has always been a knowing about the oneness of all things. In the 20th century quantum physicists discovered that there is no separation between the visible and invisible worlds. Jesus told us that we need to be born again into the world of spirit so that we could know this too, so we could know ourselves to be containers for the kingdom of God; the invisible God living in an invisible kingdom in this visible material container named Karen, Bob, Jane and Joe. Spiritual beings having a human experience. God and mankind as ONE.
So in this blog I am suggesting that we are not separate from God, we are not separate from each other, and we are not separate from nature, we are not separate from other nations, other people, or other people’s religions. It’s our choice to have eyes to see and ears to hear what the spirit is saying. And, it’s very possible that the spirit has been saying all along that there is no separation between Jew and Greek, male and female, Isralite and Palistinian, Buddhist and Christian, etc. ect. Can we finally wake up and eventually know ourselves to be a united whole, an integraed whole?
I gladly invite your comments, rebuttals and ideas.
I like the word Integral; it’s a good 21st century word. Integral, integrated, whole, not separate; integral feels personal and it feels global. So what might an integral worldview look like?
I would like to suggest that an integral world is a worldview free from the idea of separation. If we consider something like the honey bee, we know it needs flowers to exist and the flowers need water and soil and the soil needs worms and nutrients and they all need sunlight and oxygen and a planet and a solar system and a galaxy and ultimately a universe in order for any of them to function at all. A honey bee is not a separate thing, and neither are you and I.
We divide the world up into separate parts, me and you, us and other, my family, my religion, my nation, my boundaries. Where are the boundaries? Have you ever heard the term that the map is not the territory? Maps have lines that define the separation of regions and territories. And, what we all know is that in reality when we visit the actual place, there are no lines. California and Nevada are divided only by arbitrary ideas of lines that we humans have made up. In reality the United States of America is one piece of land not 50 states with lines dividing them. And, of course the USA is a piece of land connected to other pieces of land by seas and oceans. And the earth is a whole that is connected to a solar system to a Milky Way Galaxy to a/the Universe. So, when we live in a larger more true reality there are no lines, we are not divided we are integrated.
So, what’s the problem? Could the problem simply be THINKING? Maybe thinking we are separate is the problem and always has been. We think ourselves separate and then live as though we are. We even think ourselves separate from God. Is that even possible? Of course it’s possible to think of myself as separate from God, but am I actually separate from God?
All the ancient wisdom traditions, Judiasm, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., speak about human begins as fallen from grace and living in a sinful state of being. Did this fallen, sinful state of being exist in nature before man came on the scene? Mankind is the thinking animal, homo-sapiens/sapiens, the one who knows that it knows. The plant and animal worlds don’t know themselves as separate but live with the blueprint of a unified existence. Only we humans live out of sinc with ourselves, each other and nature. And, I would suggest that it's our separation thinking that is causing our suffering. We are responsible for our daily suffering and it is all based upon how we choose to think about ourselves, each other and the world we live in.
From a Christian point of view I begin to realize what Jesus might have meant when he said…”if you have seen me you have seen the Father”. Jesus knew he was not separate from God. St. Paul describes the extent that the human mind goes to in an attempt to justify itself when he said…”thinking themselves wise they became fools”. Are we so conditioned in our ‘thinking’ that we believe ourselves to be so right that we make no space for anything new to emerge?
So, I am going to be bold and suggest that our fallen condition is true based upon separation thinking. We think ourselves separate from our true selves, from others, from God and from all that we think we need. Furthermore, I would suggest the good possibility that this state of illusion is a conditioned mindset that we have been passing down generation through generation beginning with the first conscious humans. We in the west have become so conditioned by the illusion of separateness that it's become concrete, black and white thinking. In the eastern spiritual traditions there has always been a knowing about the oneness of all things. In the 20th century quantum physicists discovered that there is no separation between the visible and invisible worlds. Jesus told us that we need to be born again into the world of spirit so that we could know this too, so we could know ourselves to be containers for the kingdom of God; the invisible God living in an invisible kingdom in this visible material container named Karen, Bob, Jane and Joe. Spiritual beings having a human experience. God and mankind as ONE.
So in this blog I am suggesting that we are not separate from God, we are not separate from each other, and we are not separate from nature, we are not separate from other nations, other people, or other people’s religions. It’s our choice to have eyes to see and ears to hear what the spirit is saying. And, it’s very possible that the spirit has been saying all along that there is no separation between Jew and Greek, male and female, Isralite and Palistinian, Buddhist and Christian, etc. ect. Can we finally wake up and eventually know ourselves to be a united whole, an integraed whole?
I gladly invite your comments, rebuttals and ideas.
Friday, February 5, 2010
A Faith of Practice...(revised)
What does it Mean to Practice my Faith?
It occurred to me some years ago that my Christian practice had gone flat. I seemed to be just like everyone else...nowhere near the transformation that Jesus talked about when he said that I needed to fall into the ground like a seed and die before new life would come to me. Now don't get me wrong, I did quiet time and contemplation...but that was always about what I already knew. How could God say anything new and different to me if I already felt I knew who God IS. Oh, I did my bible studies faithfully and ended up with a lot of knowledge and some minor changes in my life...but the kind of transformation that Jesus talked about, that kind of living on the edge and taking risks for the greater whole...not even close. I felt stuck in thinking that I really knew and understood God...but all the time wondering, how could that be? I needed to find a new way of being. I needed salvation from ordinariness.
I began to search for a practice and the practice I found was meditation. In meditation I answer the call to..."Be Still and Know that I AM God". In meditation I leave the busy world of BECOMING and enter into the stillness of BEING. Ahhh....sweet relief! BEINGNESS is wonderful. BEINGNESS is always the same, still and quiet. BEINGNESS is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.
To meditate in BEINGNESS is to let go of all angst about becoming..."BE anxious for nothing". I enter into a designated time of 'not knowing'. I become the watcher of my thoughts and feelings without attachment to them. I sit in the present, presence and make space for the new. As I practice this meditation in BEINGNESS every day, I find that when I emerge from the practice and go about my day...BEING continues to reside with me. Why?...because I have given myself to the practice and the practice rewards me by imparting to me...ITSELF. I move into my day with an embodied sense of BEING. "I find that I move and have my being in God and God in me...I AM one with I AM.
It occurred to me some years ago that my Christian practice had gone flat. I seemed to be just like everyone else...nowhere near the transformation that Jesus talked about when he said that I needed to fall into the ground like a seed and die before new life would come to me. Now don't get me wrong, I did quiet time and contemplation...but that was always about what I already knew. How could God say anything new and different to me if I already felt I knew who God IS. Oh, I did my bible studies faithfully and ended up with a lot of knowledge and some minor changes in my life...but the kind of transformation that Jesus talked about, that kind of living on the edge and taking risks for the greater whole...not even close. I felt stuck in thinking that I really knew and understood God...but all the time wondering, how could that be? I needed to find a new way of being. I needed salvation from ordinariness.
I began to search for a practice and the practice I found was meditation. In meditation I answer the call to..."Be Still and Know that I AM God". In meditation I leave the busy world of BECOMING and enter into the stillness of BEING. Ahhh....sweet relief! BEINGNESS is wonderful. BEINGNESS is always the same, still and quiet. BEINGNESS is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.
To meditate in BEINGNESS is to let go of all angst about becoming..."BE anxious for nothing". I enter into a designated time of 'not knowing'. I become the watcher of my thoughts and feelings without attachment to them. I sit in the present, presence and make space for the new. As I practice this meditation in BEINGNESS every day, I find that when I emerge from the practice and go about my day...BEING continues to reside with me. Why?...because I have given myself to the practice and the practice rewards me by imparting to me...ITSELF. I move into my day with an embodied sense of BEING. "I find that I move and have my being in God and God in me...I AM one with I AM.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
The Ancient Battle...Science vs Religion
I love science and I love religion. My great desire is that science and religion would learn to love each other. Well, maybe love is too strong, maybe just acknowledging one another’s right to exist would be a good place to start. Whatever the quarrels between them, be it Darwinism, Creationism, Intelligent Design or whatever is next...truly, something has got to give...and soon.
In his book, Integral Spirituality, Ken Wilbur considers the historical underpinnings of the split between science and religion as beginning during the Enlightenment period. And with that split came the scientific community's suspicions of religion as archaic and mythical, and the religious community's suspicions that science had thrown out the spirit with the bathwater. Looking back at the split it makes good sense that those new scientists were no longer willing to proclaim horrific events such as the black plague as being a judgment of God upon humanity, but sought to discover why the black plague was actually occurring. I'm sure many religious people would join me in saying ...thank God that science gave the death blow to that god. But, who could have known at that time that science was in the process of replacing that dead god...with itself?! With science as the new proclaimer of truth its adherents began to proclaim that energy and matter was the only God that existed. So the religious took their defensive stance on the battlefield of ideas, and rightfully so. And, there they stayed. And therein lays the great divide that we are still living with today. But alas, there is new movement afoot that's very promising and could be moving us towards a new healing paradigm.
As I read, listen and learn, it seems to me that the old arguments between religion and science are quickly becoming outdated. With quantum physicists and cosmologists penetrating both the small and large in our universe, it seems we are in a scientific as well as a spiritual transition. For me, the science that is developing today seems as eventful as was the publishing of Copernicus or a gaze through Galileo's telescope. So maybe we can together take a new look through Galileo's telescope only this time looking from the 21st century backwards to see if we might have new eyes to see and new ears to hear what the the spirit might be saying. And maybe the words you are hearing might just be the same words that I'm hearing..."fear not"!
Most cosmologists today agree that the universe is very old, not static and, is indeed, expanding. In addition, some scientists are theorizing that the universe is not only a matter of expanding energy and form, but might very well be a movement of matter through time directed by something invisible to us. Cosmologist Brian Swimme makes an interesting point when he says that we humans need a new story that gives meaning to our lives...not a story that further divides us but a story that unites us, a story for the entire human race. Our ancient and beloved religious stories are important and necessary and must be retained but they need to be merged with who we know ourselves to be in the 21st century. As science is discovering more and more about the universe that we live in, and as we move closer and closer towards a global community we might need a new narrative about ourselves, a cosmic story that we can all resonate with and a story we can all find ourselves in no matter what our personal religion might be. This story is one that brings the essence of the ancient religions together with science and tells of a new creation story. This creation story puts both spirit and matter together and becomes a story of epic proportions, a cosmic story, and a story of evolutionary spirituality. So travel back in time with me and let's see what might be possible if we were to ask...what if there is a new story to be told based upon the blending of science and spirit, and that this new story might be told something like this?
Unimaginable as it might be, try to image the grand mystery of the ages, the oneness that existed before the beginning...The Perfect, The Uncreated, The Formless Eternal Being...Consciousness Itself residing in no time, no space, no thing, no universe, formless and void. Then...quite suddenly, from this Perfect Ground of Being, on that day at the beginning... a tremendous light bursts forth, a fire storm of tremendous preportions...glaring light expanding at terrific speed creating time and space as it goes. And so, in less than the time it takes to make a sandwich, our universe was born. After about a million years this fire storm of light begins to subside and take form. Billions of stars are born and over their short life span they condense and condense until they first implode and then in a great act of, well...sacrifice, they blow apart forming more stars and more galaxies. This goes on for billions of years until an even more complex order begins to take shape and our galaxy, our solar system, our own planet earth now evolves into form...orchestrated from the beginning of time by mystery. Earth, a womb of creation and biospheric brooding, encounters crisis after crisis hence forcing atoms to cooperate and create molecules, and then molecules to cooperate and create cells and cells to cooperate becoming multi-celled...and so on, and so on until the grand array of life on planet earth has begun. Crisis became the evolutionary driver...for atoms, for molecules, for cells, for vegetation, for animals and for humans. Limitation produced crisis and crisis produced either death OR cooperation that produced new and more complex life. In time the universe developed eyes to see itself and ears to hear itself and a mind to know itself and to know its Source. And this process continues today in all of nature and in each and every one of us.
And so a new story begins to emerge...a story in which the mysterious image of that Source that we have named God impregnated itself into the world of becoming...a kind of virgin birth combining the perfection of God with the imperfection of matter together forming a whole new creature, a conscious universe! From deep time emerging over and over again, creation groaning and groaning to finally produce something new...a conscious universe knowing itself through US...sons and daughters of this Source we have come to know as God! Now it's possible for the confusion to clear...God is both Being and Becoming...both the Perfect Ground of Being peaceful and still, the container that holds the space for all possibilities, and also as the Divine Impulse, not stillness but an urgency that moves us onward and upward to evolve and become. God as agent or Holy Spirit drawing all life towards its own perfection working within the material world moving forward in and through the cosmos, in and through nature, and most recently, in and through humanity. Divinity incarnated into the smallest of all particles and into the most complex of all matter, the human being. The Way of God, expressed in the universe as crisis, cooperation and rebirth. Or might I say...crisis, cooperation and resurrection! This is not Pantheism reborn, but a whole new possibility of the same consciousness (or mind) that was in Christ, now in us causing us to know ourselves as divine beings one with God and all of nature.
Moving forward we can now imagine that this new story doesn't need to change any of the ancient stories but adds a new dimension to them which brings a greater cohesiveness to the planet. Imagine that we are at the dawn of a new kind of partnering of religion and science...that each might be moving towards a new acceptance that both are a viable form of inquiry into the nature and meaning about the universe we live in. Imagine that science and religion retain their own versions of inquiry with a higher level of respect and understanding for what the other knows and how they know it. Imagine that now, as it has been from the beginning, a new cooperation takes place, much the same as it did with atoms, molecules, and cells but this time with physicists, cosmologists and theologians all in mass cooperation...a cooperation capable of producing a whole new way to move forward through crisis, towards a new kind of life...the evolution of a new kind of human being.
In his book, Integral Spirituality, Ken Wilbur considers the historical underpinnings of the split between science and religion as beginning during the Enlightenment period. And with that split came the scientific community's suspicions of religion as archaic and mythical, and the religious community's suspicions that science had thrown out the spirit with the bathwater. Looking back at the split it makes good sense that those new scientists were no longer willing to proclaim horrific events such as the black plague as being a judgment of God upon humanity, but sought to discover why the black plague was actually occurring. I'm sure many religious people would join me in saying ...thank God that science gave the death blow to that god. But, who could have known at that time that science was in the process of replacing that dead god...with itself?! With science as the new proclaimer of truth its adherents began to proclaim that energy and matter was the only God that existed. So the religious took their defensive stance on the battlefield of ideas, and rightfully so. And, there they stayed. And therein lays the great divide that we are still living with today. But alas, there is new movement afoot that's very promising and could be moving us towards a new healing paradigm.
As I read, listen and learn, it seems to me that the old arguments between religion and science are quickly becoming outdated. With quantum physicists and cosmologists penetrating both the small and large in our universe, it seems we are in a scientific as well as a spiritual transition. For me, the science that is developing today seems as eventful as was the publishing of Copernicus or a gaze through Galileo's telescope. So maybe we can together take a new look through Galileo's telescope only this time looking from the 21st century backwards to see if we might have new eyes to see and new ears to hear what the the spirit might be saying. And maybe the words you are hearing might just be the same words that I'm hearing..."fear not"!
Most cosmologists today agree that the universe is very old, not static and, is indeed, expanding. In addition, some scientists are theorizing that the universe is not only a matter of expanding energy and form, but might very well be a movement of matter through time directed by something invisible to us. Cosmologist Brian Swimme makes an interesting point when he says that we humans need a new story that gives meaning to our lives...not a story that further divides us but a story that unites us, a story for the entire human race. Our ancient and beloved religious stories are important and necessary and must be retained but they need to be merged with who we know ourselves to be in the 21st century. As science is discovering more and more about the universe that we live in, and as we move closer and closer towards a global community we might need a new narrative about ourselves, a cosmic story that we can all resonate with and a story we can all find ourselves in no matter what our personal religion might be. This story is one that brings the essence of the ancient religions together with science and tells of a new creation story. This creation story puts both spirit and matter together and becomes a story of epic proportions, a cosmic story, and a story of evolutionary spirituality. So travel back in time with me and let's see what might be possible if we were to ask...what if there is a new story to be told based upon the blending of science and spirit, and that this new story might be told something like this?
Unimaginable as it might be, try to image the grand mystery of the ages, the oneness that existed before the beginning...The Perfect, The Uncreated, The Formless Eternal Being...Consciousness Itself residing in no time, no space, no thing, no universe, formless and void. Then...quite suddenly, from this Perfect Ground of Being, on that day at the beginning... a tremendous light bursts forth, a fire storm of tremendous preportions...glaring light expanding at terrific speed creating time and space as it goes. And so, in less than the time it takes to make a sandwich, our universe was born. After about a million years this fire storm of light begins to subside and take form. Billions of stars are born and over their short life span they condense and condense until they first implode and then in a great act of, well...sacrifice, they blow apart forming more stars and more galaxies. This goes on for billions of years until an even more complex order begins to take shape and our galaxy, our solar system, our own planet earth now evolves into form...orchestrated from the beginning of time by mystery. Earth, a womb of creation and biospheric brooding, encounters crisis after crisis hence forcing atoms to cooperate and create molecules, and then molecules to cooperate and create cells and cells to cooperate becoming multi-celled...and so on, and so on until the grand array of life on planet earth has begun. Crisis became the evolutionary driver...for atoms, for molecules, for cells, for vegetation, for animals and for humans. Limitation produced crisis and crisis produced either death OR cooperation that produced new and more complex life. In time the universe developed eyes to see itself and ears to hear itself and a mind to know itself and to know its Source. And this process continues today in all of nature and in each and every one of us.
And so a new story begins to emerge...a story in which the mysterious image of that Source that we have named God impregnated itself into the world of becoming...a kind of virgin birth combining the perfection of God with the imperfection of matter together forming a whole new creature, a conscious universe! From deep time emerging over and over again, creation groaning and groaning to finally produce something new...a conscious universe knowing itself through US...sons and daughters of this Source we have come to know as God! Now it's possible for the confusion to clear...God is both Being and Becoming...both the Perfect Ground of Being peaceful and still, the container that holds the space for all possibilities, and also as the Divine Impulse, not stillness but an urgency that moves us onward and upward to evolve and become. God as agent or Holy Spirit drawing all life towards its own perfection working within the material world moving forward in and through the cosmos, in and through nature, and most recently, in and through humanity. Divinity incarnated into the smallest of all particles and into the most complex of all matter, the human being. The Way of God, expressed in the universe as crisis, cooperation and rebirth. Or might I say...crisis, cooperation and resurrection! This is not Pantheism reborn, but a whole new possibility of the same consciousness (or mind) that was in Christ, now in us causing us to know ourselves as divine beings one with God and all of nature.
Moving forward we can now imagine that this new story doesn't need to change any of the ancient stories but adds a new dimension to them which brings a greater cohesiveness to the planet. Imagine that we are at the dawn of a new kind of partnering of religion and science...that each might be moving towards a new acceptance that both are a viable form of inquiry into the nature and meaning about the universe we live in. Imagine that science and religion retain their own versions of inquiry with a higher level of respect and understanding for what the other knows and how they know it. Imagine that now, as it has been from the beginning, a new cooperation takes place, much the same as it did with atoms, molecules, and cells but this time with physicists, cosmologists and theologians all in mass cooperation...a cooperation capable of producing a whole new way to move forward through crisis, towards a new kind of life...the evolution of a new kind of human being.
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