rishi

I'm not sure what more I can add than agree with you.

When I met my wife, she had been a UCCer for many years in a fairly conservative church.  The minister believed big time in Jesus and the whole resurection story.

Fast forward ten years to a new minister, new age, metaphorically speaking Bible study, and Jesus becomes a nice guy, but nothing special.

So..... church becomes what?  The Kiwanis Club? 

That is the way it now feels to the two of us.  We have crossed the line that says you is dead, you was buried, no way you rose anywhere.  So how can we continue going and pretend it happened that way when we know it didn't. 

The building needs major renovation and we look at what we are going to asked to give and very honestly find it very difficult to convince ourselves to give to the church rather than the local arts/music organizations.  Money better spent, we think.

Yes, the mystery is gone, so why pretend.  The people are great, the food is great, but the service is an hour during which I could be enjoying nature in the backyard.

IT

Russ

Hi rishi:

Having found my way back to Christianity via Zen Buddhism, I deplore the lack of experiential spirituality, also known as mystical experience, in Christianity.

Even the very inclusive United Church does not embrace mysticism as extensively as it could and should. As a doctrinal religion whose doctrines have been largely invalidated by science, doctrinal Christianity has become irrelevant in our scientific age.

I would say that Christianity, in order to save itself, has to re-discover religious, mystical or spiritual experience: a direct experience of the transcendental, a.k.a. God, Allah, Brahman, TAO, Ultimate Mystery, IT, Infinity, etc.

Religious experience is at the root of all religions. Alas, Christianity later fell away from its original mysticism into dogmatism, and the belief in the absolute truthfulness of a particular set of doctrines replaced religious experience as the essential element of faith. Now we find ourselves in the position of having many of our doctrines invalidated by science, and doctrinal religion appears to be dead or dying.

How do we revive our dying religion?

I think we need to re-capture religious experience as the essential element of faith, fully acknowledge science, and re-imagine God as fully natural, as the transcendental power and the ceaseless creativtiy of which we, along with everything and everyone else, are an inseparable part.

I'll be conducting the service at our little Lumby United Church on May 17th. The topic of my service and sermon will be "Re-Imagining God." I'll post the sermon here on blog.

Hi there... I agree very much with what you say about the central place of religious experience. I have a different view, though, of the problem of doctrine. The problem as I see it is not so much with doctrine itself but with how it is taken up in our hearts and minds. The Buddha gave a great example of this, comparing his doctrine ("dharma") to a poisonous snake. If you pick it up incorrectly -- for example, by the tail -- it will quickly turn and bite you. If you pick it up correctly, its venom can be extracted and used as a valuable medicine. A nice way of making the point that there's no way in to appreciating doctrine's great potential benefits if one takes it up with unhelpful views and intentions in one's heart and mind. In our Christian context, we have seen/experienced a lot of harmful handling of doctrine. But doctrine, and its development over time, plays an essential role in the spiritual life. For example, without a good understanding of the transforming process of 'sanctification,' our religious experiences can very easily become very fluffy and egocentric. And this is just one example of how sacred doctrine can help us to discern the subtle movements of God's Spirit and thus prevent self-deception. At the beginning of the year I preached a sermon on this theme. If I can figure out how to insert it below, I will. 

All the Best,

Rishi

"Searching For A Healthy & Happy Home"

White Oaks United Church, London Ontario

January 11, 2009

Gospel Reading: Mark 1:4-11

1:4 John, the baptizer, appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

1:5 And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

1:6 Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.

1:7 He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the

thong of his sandals.

1:8 I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

1:9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

1:10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.

1:11 And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

The baptism of Jesus. This is the first time in Christian scriptures where we find separate descriptions of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit simultaneously present and actively in communion with one another. It is a beautiful window into the religious imagination of the early followers of Jesus. For them, it was a way of portraying the manifestation of the divine – the epiphany – that they were experiencing in the presence of their teacher, Jesus. The experience of being with Jesus must have been so indescribable in normal words that they could only say that “It was as though the Formless One – the divine source of all life, that had always been invisible to us, transparent, like clear, empty space – had suddenly sprouted wings, flown down into our visible world, and become incarnated into human form among us.”

Listen again, to the last part of the passage: “And just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.' ”

Notice the interplay between these three symbols – the loving voice that comes from nowhere in sight; the holy dove descending from a rift in the sky; and the fully human being emerging out of the waters of transformation, with eyes and ears wide open to the reality of the divine... all 3 coming together in the same place and time, in less than a millisecond. It is a great example of the power of religious symbol. It's not just a concept. It's not just an ordinary metaphor.... The gospel writer has inserted into our imaginations, in code form, a dynamic religious experience that cannot possibly be contained in words. Even if it takes us a lifetime or more to unveil the symbol's significance and allow it to unfold within our own experience, we have it within us now, and we will never not have it. It is almost as though it has a life of its own within us. A living symbol. It even has wings.

The experience that is symbolized in the coming together of the Divine Voice, the Divine Dove, and the emergence of the Divine in Human Form is so important to Christianity that it evolved over time into our tradition's central doctrine: the doctrine of the Trinity.

I'd just like to take an informal poll for a moment. How many of you get goosebumps, chills, hot flashes, or other signs of extreme excitement when you hear the word “doctrine”? .... If you don't, it's not your fault. I believe it's our fault. It's the fault of ministers and deacons and priests and elders and Christian educators who have not, themselves, understood and been gripped by the power of doctrines, like the doctrine of the Trinity... to transport us into a deeper experience of the divine.

If doctrine is dry, lifeless, and boring to the leadership in the Church, then that's what doctrine will become to the people those leaders are teaching, no matter what kind of fancy 'spin' we might think we're putting on it. On the other hand, sometimes the problem is not so much that doctrine is boring; it's just that it doesn't seem relevant to anything in real life.

That was the case for me, when I was growing up, back in Detroit, in the 1960s. I was an altar boy in the Catholic church. And in my mind I can still hear exactly how the people would sing every morning, “God in three per...sons.... bless..ed Tri..ni..ty.” There were old vaulted ceilings and marble floors and the smell of incense and the glow of votive candles always burning, and many very nice people, and it was beautiful to me. And it all seemed to be in synch with mysteries like the Trinity.

But outside of the walls of the church building, life was quite chaotic. In that decade in Detroit there were the race riots. There was an epidemic of heroin addiction and all the crime that comes with it. Athough the auto industry was doing quite well at that time, the vast majority of people who actually lived in the city of Detroit (and not the suburbs) were quite poor.

So, back then, for me at least, doctrines like the Trinity, were fascinating, but there was nothing real about them, nothing true to life. Going to church, for me, was like going to the magical land of Narnia for an hour, which was a wonderful place to be, but for me it didn't have much to do with life outside of the church building. I imagine that for many in those years that this otherworldly quality was what made going to church so great – it was nothing like life on the outside, in the city. I never expected to run into the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit on my way home. And so “THE TRINITY” weren't real to me in that way. They were real to me, but kind of like how imaginary friends are real to children. And, of course, I was too young to understand what symbols were, and the important role they play in spiritual life. Maybe it was different for the grownups. I don't know. But often it's not that different. Often the childhood understandings that we had of central teachings of the faith never get updated very much. And this is a problem, because to get on well in the spiritual life, we need adult-level understandings of these core symbols, like the Trinity.

One of my favorite authors, Rowan Williams, describes religious symbols as having two sides—there is a personal side, that was created by some person, some historical human being, in an attempt to describe an overwhelming experience of the Divine.... and there is also a transpersonal side, a side that is outside of time and history, a side that the Divine reality itself is creating. And so the creation of a religious symbol is always a kind of co-creation, always both human and divine. It's not just a 'concept' or a 'metaphor;' it emerges out of a space of deep encounter and co-operation with the divine. This is what makes religious symbols so mysterious and so precious. This is the reason why – or at least should be the reason why – we safeguard symbols in these special protective cases called 'doctrines'. And that is why we take doctrines very seriously – not literally, but seriously. There is a difference. Doctrines are like sacred jewel boxes; and the precious jewels that they store are religious symbols. What makes these symbols precious is that they have proven to be effective portals through which we can encounter the mystery we call God. And so, because of their great value and significance, we hand them down to the next generation.

But in our modern world, we don't seem to understand what symbols are any more. One modern way of misunderstanding religious symbols is to take them literally, and proclaim to everyone within earshot that if they do not do the same, then they're on the fast track to hell. Another modern way of misunderstanding symbols is to take them as just ordinary 'concepts' or 'metaphors'. In this way of misunderstanding religious symbols, something like, “the Trinity,” for example, is just a figurative way of saying that “even though we're separate individuals, we need to join hands and stick together for our common good.” Well, that's a noble thought but is that really all the Trinity is about? Or, another example, the symbol of “the Church” is taken to be just a metaphor to describe a good socially responsible organization, kind of like the NDP or the Rotary Club. Well, there's some truth in that perhaps, but is that the whole story? This modern way of misunderstanding religious symbols has had a huge impact on Liberal Protestant and Catholic theology in the 20^th century. We seem to have become so afraid of taking things literally... like the fundamentalists do... that we have watered everything down to such a bland, common-sense level that, before we knew it, there was really little difference between what we call Christianity and ordinary middle class values. But isn't there more to it than that?

It's an important question for us to be asking in our 21^st century: How can we avoid these dangerous extremes, where being Christian comes to mean either being a fundamentalist fanatic, or having such a watered-down faith experience that it's really boring, not very helpful, and we have to spend most of our time figuring out how to spice it up so that people will buy into it?

How can the Church renew a faith that is genuinely transforming? Should we gather up all of these inherited doctrines, full of their archaic religious symbols, and just chuck them out the window? Some well respected clergy persons, like John Spong (in the U.S.) and Gretta Vosper (in Canada), seem to be suggesting that that is exactly what we should be doing. Personally, I think that to throw out the teachings of an ancient wisdom tradition because we have lost our ability to understand them, is the heart of what is wrong with the modern world. Throwing it all out can all sound very clever and progressive when the right spin gets put on it, but in my view it is not wise. In fact, to me, it seems like the very same kind of narrow-mindedness that drives fundamentalist movements. And so, personally, I advocate taking a very different path from that so-called progressive one. I think that for the Church in our time to renew a faith, a spirituality, that is genuinely transforming...for itself and the world... we need more than anything else to rediscover the power of our ancient symbols.

What would that look like?

Very interestingly, some of the very best 21^st century examples that I know of, where this kind of rediscovery of our ancient symbols is happening do not come from Canada. They do not come from the United States. They do not come from Europe. They come from the so-called “Third World,” where Christianity has often brought more havoc than help. There are many good examples... from Korea and Vietnam, to Sri Lanka, Africa, and South America. But the one example that I want to leave you with today comes (indirectly) from India.

It is the story of a passionate young Catholic priest named Pannikar. His father was East Indian and his mother from Spain, and he grew up with an appreciation of both Hinduism and Christianity. In time, he chose his own path, which turned out to be the Christian way, but throughout his life as a priest he was very sensitive to the sacred reality present in wisdom traditions other than his own. He is now in his late eighties, and he has just completed a book where he shares the insights gleaned from a lifetime of work with Hindus and Christians in their struggles to appreciate one another's faith.

What Pannikar does in this final work of his life is...... he takes a long deep breath.... and he blows all of the dust off of the ancient Christian doctrine of the Trinity, all of the dust that has been obscuring it, and preventing its beauty and power from being appreciated. In a nutshell, what Pannikar discovered over the years, through divine grace and a lot of hard work, is that the 2^nd Person of the Trinity, that sacred position that Jesus of Nazareth stepped into, is open. It is not closed. It never was closed. If there was a spiritual section in the London Free Press classifieds, it would appear there every day --

Sorry... I don't mean to be cheezy, but I'm trying to make a point... What was so unique about Jesus of Nazareth, Panikkar suggests, is that he could hear the divine offer that was being extended, whereas many others could not.

What this suggests is that every single person on the planet, whether he or she is aware of it or not, is located in that divine place where God becomes manifest in human form. Every single person is in that position which is symbolized as the 2^nd Person of the Trinity. And that, according to Pannikar, is the real good news of this wisdom tradition called Christianity. That is the encoded message that we find running through all of the teachings of Jesus. That is the agenda beneath all of our spiritual disciplines, like prayer and meditation and serving others.

We are, in our very nature, that aspect of the Trinity in which the Divine Life becomes embodied in human form. In the language of symbol, we are in our very nature the second person of the Trinity. Of course, this does not mean that we are not also, in our very nature, violent pack animals. (We only have to leaf through any newspaper if we doubt that...) But that is not grounds for cynicism or depression. That doesn't mean that we are evil to the core. It means that we are not done yet. It means that many of us have not yet awakened to our true destiny, which is to become a conscious part of the Divine Life we describe as the Trinity. Of course this kind of transformation is not easy. One doesn't evolve from a violent pack animal to the fully conscious Second Person of the Trinity overnight. It takes time. But, Pannikar suggests, we don't really have anything better to do....since, after all, this sort of spiritual growth is why we are here. It is our true purpose in this life.

Quite a different perspective.... this Asian Christian vision of the Trinity. And the implications of it are far reaching. For one thing, it suggests that Christianity has no monopoly on the Trinity. Christianity has no monopoly on the Divine being incarnated in human form. If what we call the Second Person of the Trinity is truly wide open to all – then long before Jesus of Nazareth, it was also open to the Buddha; it was also open to Krishna... and to how many countless others who never made it into our history books because they were seen as not possessing the right gender, or race, or class, to qualify them for something so holy?

Through divine grace, Jesus of Nazareth, came to understand his true place in life, as the Beloved of the One he called Father, as the Physical Body of the Comforting One he called Spirit. Now the question becomes: What about us? Pannikar suggests that until we come to experience the TRINITY as our place, as our true home, as the one place where we truly belong.... then we haven't really heard the good news. It may all sound quite funny to us, especially if we are accustomed to doctrines being impractical things that we just recite in a lifeless way that misunderstands their symbols and their power. But Pannikar – this Christian voice from Asia – is saying that for the Church to be renewed, we must shake the dust off of these neglected and misunderstood doctrines, because the 2^nd Person of the Trinity is actually that healthy and happy home which we have all been searching for since the beginning of time. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists.... all of us.

I will close with a question for us to silently reflect on for a few moments: If the Trinity really is something that I could actually be living in, on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis, how can I get started?

rishi

Wow!  I take it you are a fellow Winterpegger?

"Christianity has no monopoly on the Trinity"  Radical concept and one that does not seem to penetrate so many minds.

"How can the church renew its faith?"  The more I listen to persons like Arminius and yourselves, the more I feel that the idea of the Emerging Church is very much a dead end, if you can catch my drift.  I think we almost need a Revolution, not an Evolution.  We need to pack the few items that we want to bring along into the ark and let the rest wash away.  I just sense this is not something we going to chnage into, we are going to have to paradim shift into.

And I agree very much with your thoughts on Jesus, etc.  These were people who shut up long enough to hear the voice that is always there, but usually covered by day to day life.  The word half heard in the woods.  The glimpse of something seen out of the corner of your eye.

"Fraid the engineer in me just doesn't have the words.

IT

Russ

I think that's true, Russ. I'm sure that some aspects of the "Emerging Church" movement have been somehow helpful for some people somewhere. But what I've read and experienced of "it" suggests to me that it is more the creation of disaffected religious professionals than "what God is doing."  It may be clever and well packaged but for me it lacks the power of what I experience in Jesus, which lately I've been calling "a consecrated life." So I don't see EC as revolutionary at all, but still coming from a very narrow horizon. What Arminius is saying about the centrality of religious experience is key to the breakthrough we need, but I think we also desperately need the wisdom of elders (not the musings of disaffected religious professionals). I personally find that elder wisdom in the orthodox teachings and teachers that, I think, the emerging church folks have really not understood well enough to be able to criticize. What they are bashing is more a caricature or a perversion of orthodoxy. So the end that I keep coming back to is that we're in a leadership crisis in the church. But in the midst of all this, something very good, sound, and exciting is brewing. Just the fact that we are having this conversation is evidence of that for me. And, as the creed says, we are not alone...

Rishi

(from London, Ont.)   

Perhaps EC is nothing more than a knee jerk reaction to dropping numbers of pew-sitters, and rising Fundamentalism.

Ahh, London, so are you going to the Borg-in in June?

IT

Russ

Re: Borg -- for sure, if I can afford it. I'm out of work at the moment, and it's $40/head. But there are some good prospects on the horizon, so hopefully by June there will be extra cash.

Rishi

There are some neat comments made by scholars in various faiths that place some doubt in the value of doctrine other than it will rub a person of real flesh just enough to make them think of the value of that law in certain time, place and situation (in light of circumstance).

Such thought ... was well put by a Sufi scholar who said that we cannot interpret a story unless we can place our self in the shoes of that person (transpersonal) in that other space, time and circumstance. How many good religious persons would stoop there from their position of preference? One of the main errors in the pride of spirit is entitlement to more than the alien traveller in this realm ... anyone not understood by us! Do we want to know?

Ah the light of understanding spoken of in I Cointhians 13 ... and what is the use of Love without understanding? There are loads of data and intellect surrounding us in a pool of light ... will we look at it observe in the sense of the infinite ... omniscient? We'd rather not, that is a devil of thought processing moment torn between love and intellect ... a blind rule is so much easier!

Perhaps we have to insert that forth member of the circle as according to Numbers 2 where the primary tribes were defined as Judah, Reuben, Ephraim and the bloody furnace of decision ... Dan ... constantly pestering the heels of the donkey. Then the description of the donkey in Genesis is a hoot if you can read the symbols ... that is the ongoing part of the inhumane story. Would Dan be the devil to a pure line of desire? Of course such aspect depends on you sense of monotheism or dualism in regards to the infnite case. How many directions can mortal space look at God? Let me count the ways! How do I Love thee, how do I appreciate thee ... now the latter is a different matter that can cause struggle in that wilderness environment of the mind.

What you think the holy book is, a list of genteel dogma? Omega'd you are living in a fog .... religion and entitlement has left 99% of the world in an awesome state of pain ... and they know little of the cause ... nor do the people at the top of the heap ... is that ironic Dan (core name for the devilist aspect of awareness ... of what you do ... cognizance in a mana of Light)?

Is the light of mind ... unnatural as suggested by the ancient polynesian word (mana)? Now was brutal use of the people by the ancient fathers for teaching, or for private gain? Consider what Christ's Light said of the patriarches of the temple! Can a mortal learn? It is a step on the ladder of common sense ... code name for "Joseph"! Lost in the fog of story ... the history mostly corrupted by burning by those following the Roman way of unlimited rivalry! It wasn't just for the fun of it ... they wanted to control creation! That is the human attitude towards the ineffiable infinite: "Don't believe ID, we have him locked up in our church, temple, house, tabernacle. Does the house leak? Thus the story about not going to need this house much longer, you see it wasn't perfect in the beginning ... leave it alone ... it'll fall from pride, none supports such non sense! Is there more? Let's Dan'ce gently in the O'Ra of Ur!

Hi rishi:

I realize that there is a need for doctrines and teachings. Most people need doctrines. The path of Zen Buddhism, which is beyond doctrines, is nevertheless highly displined and relies solely on meditation and austere living to attain insights and enlightenment. It is not suited for most people.

Taking doctrines seriously but not literally, in other words, taking them metaphorically, that's precisely what I'm doing, with doctrines as well as the Bible. The baptism of Jesus is, as you said, a powerful metaphor for spiritual experience. There is a Trinity at work in every transformational experience. I regard the Trinity as the basic cosmic truth: A (any) pair of opposites, together with the transcendental power that unites and separates the two. In Taoism this is expressed as the Yin/Yang duality/non-duality, in science and general philosophy as the Principle of Complementarity. I think the Principle of Complementarity is the foremost scientfic, spiritual, and philosophical principle, and I am glad and proud that it is also the foremost Christian principle. Unfortunately, many Christians take the Trinity literally.

Every statement about faith comes across as doctrinal, including the very words I am writing here. Doctrine tends to become damaging when it is taken literally, disconnected from the religious experience. As you pointed out, the mistake is the disconnect between spiritual doctrine and spirtual experience, not the doctrine itself. Because of this disconnect, doctrine was taken literally and became dogma, and the damage was done.

When we bring back spiritual experience as the essential element of faith, then the metaphorical meaning of certain doctrines becomes immediately obvious, and the doctrine ceases to be absolute, literal truth and becomes a profound spiritual metaphor.

As you see, I'm in agreement with you, as are the flowers and the trees, the birds and the bees. And I feel that even God nods in silent agreement.

In Kosmic Unity,

Arminius