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

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

Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm

Escape Engage

Salvation in a world beyond

Liberation: embracing all God’s creation

“The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

Page 2: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

Problematic Elements . . .

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

Read the Letter to the Hebrews against this background.

Page 3: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

The New Cosmology Lets begin

where

God

begins

in time.

Page 4: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

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.

Page 5: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

Cosmic ConnectionsThe 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)

Page 6: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

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”

Page 7: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

Our Disconnection with Earth-SpiritOur 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)

Page 8: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

Other members of the Household

Page 9: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

The Inter-weaving Web of Life

Page 10: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

Humans in the Web of Belonging

Page 11: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

Metamorphosis…

Caterpillar

Chrysalis

Emerging Butterfly

Page 12: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

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

Control and Clarity………………………………...Trust, possibly confusion

Simple and solid …………………………………….Complicated and vague

Includes the Church …………………………… Where is the Church in this?

Separationn (isolation) ……………………… Relatedness

Page 13: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

DEFINITIONSDEFINITIONS1.Spirituality is concerned with the spiritual life which 1.Spirituality is concerned with the spiritual life which

today is understood as the vital, ongoing interaction today is understood as the vital, ongoing interaction between the human spirit and the Spirit of God, between the human spirit and the Spirit of God, with with both poles receiving equal attention,both poles receiving equal attention, and the focus and the focus being on the fact, the modality, the process, the being on the fact, the modality, the process, the effects, and the finality of the interaction itselfeffects, and the finality of the interaction itself.. (Sandra (Sandra Schneiders)Schneiders)

2. 2. Spirituality is the aspect of human existence that Spirituality is the aspect of human existence that explores the subtle forces of energy in and around us, explores the subtle forces of energy in and around us, and reveals to us profound interconnectednessand reveals to us profound interconnectedness.. (Charlene Spretnak).(Charlene Spretnak).

3. 3. Spirituality concerns what we do with desire. It takes Spirituality concerns what we do with desire. It takes root in the eros inside of us and it is all about how we root in the eros inside of us and it is all about how we shape and discipline this eros. The spiritual journey shape and discipline this eros. The spiritual journey invites us to pray for and discern the desires that invites us to pray for and discern the desires that would lead us to life in abundancewould lead us to life in abundance (James & Evelyn (James & Evelyn Whitehead)Whitehead)

Page 14: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

Spirituality: Key IngredientsSpirituality: Key Ingredients

•ENERGY is 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.

Page 15: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

Problematic Elements . . .

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

Page 16: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

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)

Page 17: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

The Human Energy Field

Page 18: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

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

Page 19: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

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

ONE Second

Page 20: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

In the human being, the home of energy is the belly, HAR in Japanese meaning sea of energy!Located at a point a few centimsbelow the navel, called:tanden in Japanesedantian in Chinesedan-jeon in Koreandantian 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.

Page 21: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

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 sustainsctreated beings, is identical with thedivine volitions, and the gifts of supernal goodness, the Cause of all.(St. Gregory Palamas).

Page 22: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

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.

Page 23: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

Problematic Elements . . .

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

Page 24: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

Four Key Elements of New Spirituality

Truly liberating and beneficial for women

Connecting with scientific knowledge

Helps to make sense of impending ecological crisis

A credible religionfor today’s world

(From:

Gordon LynchThe NewSpirituality,2007, p.22)

Page 25: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

Prayer . . .“It is not we who pray;It is the Spirit of Godwho prays in us.”

“Prayer is love in search of a word.”

“Prayer is not about addressing God,But about expressing God.” (Martin Buber)

Page 26: Spirituality: The Emerging paradigm Escape Engage Salvation in a world beyond Liberation: embracing all God’s creation “The Spiritual Life” “Spirituality”

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! )