Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm

1. Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Engage Escape Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “Spirituality” “The Spiritual Life”

2. 7. Holiness = submission (obedience), enhanced by suffering 6. Imperfect humans in an imperfect world must endure suffering to gain access to the divine Read the Letter to the Hebrews against this background. 5. Culturally, only males can access and engage the divine realm God can only be envisaged as a patriarchal male. 4. What was needed was a perfect priest and a perfect sacrifice. Jesus fulfils this role for ALL humans. 3. The dualistic split had to be bridged: The Covenant via the Law; The Levitical priesthood and sacrifice was constructed to bridge the dualism between this sinful world and the perfect beyond. 2. Judaism: To the Jew it was dangerous to come too close to God 1. Greek Influence: Plato’s perfect world-form, a real world against which the present one is incomplete. For Plutarch, it was blasphemous to involve God in the affairs of the world. Problematic Elements . . .

3. The New Cosmology Lets begin where God begins in time.

4. The Ingraciating SUN “For four million years, humans have Been feasting on the Sun’s energy, stored in the form of wheat and maize, or daily food, as each day the Sun dies as Sun, and is reborn as the vitality Of the Earth.” Brain Swimme.

5. Cosmic Connections The water in your body contains primordial hydrogen formed in the first seconds of the Big Bang. The carbon atoms that formed you came together after the explosion of a supernova. The concentration of salt in your body matches the concentration of salt in the ancient seas. Your cells are direct descendants of unicellular organisms that developed billions of years ago. You see because chlorophyll molecules mutated, so that like plant leaves, your eyes can capture the light from the sun. And in your mother’s womb your tiny body repeated the whole process of multi-cellular life on earth, beginning with a single cell, and then developing greater and greater complexity.(Judy Cannato, Radical Amazement, p.65)

6. The Living Earth . . . The black earth is alive with a riot of algae, fungi, nematodes, mites, springtails, enchytraeid worms, thousands of species of bacteria.The handful may be only a tiny fragment of one ecosystem, but because of the genetic codes of its residents, it holds more order than can be found on the surfaces of all the planets combined. It is a sample of the living force that runs the earth,– and will continue to do so, with or without us. (E.O. Wilson) “Belongingbeautifully to the clay from which we are formed”

7. Our Disconnection with Earth-Spirit Having made nature into an adversary, or at best a pile of “resources,” it is no surprise that we manifest the same relationship within our bodies. The defining diseases of our time are the autoimmune diseases, the somatization of our self-other confusion. Just as the village, the forest, and the planet are inseparable parts of ourselves that we mistake as other, so our immune systems reject our own body tissues. What we do to nature, we do to ourselves, inescapably. Charles Eisenstein, (Sacred Economics, 2011, 51)

8. Other members of the Household

9. The Inter-weaving Web of Life

10. Humans in the Web of Belonging

11. Metamorphosis… Chrysalis Emerging Butterfly Caterpillar

12. The Paradigm Shift . . . The Familiar …………………………………………..The Unknown What has stood the test of time . . . . . Sounds like New Age Clearly of God ………………………………………. Where is God in this? Very personal ………………………………………… Impersonal Controland Clarity………………………………...Trust, possibly confusion Simple and solid …………………………………….Complicated and vague Includes the Church …………………………… Where is the Church in this? Separationn (isolation) ……………………… Relatedness

13. DEFINITIONS 1.Spirituality is concerned with the spiritual life which today is understood as the vital, ongoing interaction between the human spirit and the Spirit of God, with both poles receiving equal attention, and the focus being on the fact, the modality, the process, the effects, and the finality of the interaction itself. (Sandra Schneiders) 2. Spirituality is the aspect of human existence that explores the subtle forces of energy in and around us, and reveals to us profound interconnectedness. (Charlene Spretnak). 3. Spirituality concerns what we do with desire. It takes root in the eros inside of us and it is all about how we shape and discipline this eros. The spiritual journey invites us to pray for and discern the desires that would lead us to life in abundance (James & Evelyn Whitehead)

14. Spirituality: Key Ingredients • ENERGYis the foundational material of all creation • SPIRIT-POWER energises the energy of all creation • PATTERNS Energy is not random but unfolds • INTERDEPENDENCE Everything in creation is programmed for inter-relating • COOPERATION, not competition, is the fundamental imprint.

15. 1. Greek Influence: Plato’s perfect world-form, a real world against which the present one is incomplete. For Plutarch, it was blasphemous to involve God in the affairs of the world. 2. Judaism: To the Jew it was dangerous to come too close to God 3. The dualistic split had to be bridged: The Covenant via the Law; The Levitical priesthood and sacrifice was constructed to bridge the dualism between this sinful world and the perfect beyond. 4. What was needed was a perfect priest and a perfect sacrifice. Jesus fulfils this role for ALL humans. 5. Culturally, only males can access and engage the divine realm God can only be envisaged as a patriarchal male. 6. Imperfect humans in an imperfect world must endure suffering to gain access to the divine 7. Holiness = submission (obedience), enhanced by suffering Problematic Elements . . .

16. Music of the Spheres Particles are said to be vibrations on tiny strings that fold in 10 dimensions, musical notes that are palpably ‘there’ the way a chord struck on a piano is ‘there’. The universe is composed of music rather than matter(W. Heisenberg)

17. The Human Energy Field

18. Energy: Ki, Chi, prana, all express the Asian notion of life-giving energy, which has cosmic social personal dimensions. E N E R G Y

19. In its ground state, the caesium-133 atom vibrates at a frequency of 9,192,631,770 cycles, generating an unit of time = ONESecond

20. In the human being, the home of energy is the belly, HAR in Japanese meaning sea of energy! Located at a point a few centims below the navel, called: tanden in Japanese dantian in Chinese dan-jeon in Korean dantian in Thai. In Asian spirituality this is the center of gravity, the source of creativity, primary locus of religious experience, where the Sacred Energy dwells.

21. It is God who has given to nature the energy which produces its forms. Created beings are made by God to participate in his divine energy. . . . The vital energy of the Logos is ever active. (Maximus the Confessor). The energy that creates individual essence, life and wisdom, and sustains ctreated beings, is identical with the divine volitions, and the gifts of supernal goodness, the Cause of all. (St. Gregory Palamas).

22. Spirituality as Homecoming 1.Coming Home to the Cosmos and Planet Earth 2.Coming Home to our true story of 7,000,000 years 3.Coming Home from Separation to the relational web of life 4.Coming Home to the ground of our soulfulness 5.Coming Home to the creativity of ritual making 6.Coming Home to the empowerment of the feminine.

23. 1. Greek Influence: Plato’s perfect world-form, a real world against which the present one is incomplete. For Plutarch, it was blasphemous to involve God in the affairs of the world. 2. Judaism: To the Jew it was dangerous to come too close to God 3. The dualistic split had to be bridged: The Covenant via the Law; The Levitical priesthood and sacrifice was constructed to bridge the dualism between this sinful world and the perfect beyond. 4. What was needed was a perfect priest and a perfect sacrifice. Jesus fulfils this role for ALL humans. 5. Culturally, only males can access and engage the divine realm God can only be envisaged as a patriarchal male. 6. Imperfect humans in an imperfect world must endure suffering to gain access to the divine 7. Holiness = submission (obedience), enhanced by suffering Problematic Elements . . .

24. Four Key Elements of New Spirituality A credible religion for today’s world (From: Gordon Lynch The New Spirituality, 2007, p.22) Truly liberating and beneficial for women Connecting with scientific knowledge Helps to make sense of impending ecological crisis

25. Prayer . . . “It is not we who pray; It is the Spirit of God who prays in us.” “Prayer is love in search of a word.” “Prayer is not about addressing God, But about expressing God.” (Martin Buber)

26. I n G r a t i t u d e . . . Something operates us, but what? Is it not the free flow of brilliant and ancient information, an involuntary and endemic intelligence, freely exchanged on the cellular and intracellular level? This is the system in which we should place our faith, because it is the only one that has ever worked eternally. If this enlightening, enlivening pulse is God, then may we go on our knees and give thanks night and day! If it is Allah, may we face the east five times between sunup and sundown and humble ourselves; If it is Yahweh, may we touch the Holy wall and shed tears of gratitude! If it is biology, may science touch the sacred. I believe it is all of these, but whatever it may be to each person, and however we name it – it is really beyond our knowing!(FROM: Paul Hawken (2007), Blessed Unrest! )