Diarmuid O'Murchú on Our Capacity to Meditate: "A Gift Bestowed Upon Every Human Being"

One of the spiritual practices I'm attempting to cultivate this Advent is meditation. In researching this practice I discovered that Diarmuid O'Murchú highlights the revival of meditation in recent decades in his book Reclaiming Spirituality: A New Spiritual Framework for Today's World. In doing so, he provides the following helpful definition.

What in the early part of [the twentieth-century] was considered to be the reserve of those specially dedicated to God in monasteries and convents, has now been reclaimed as a divine endowment bequeathed to all humans.

The desire for, and capacity to meditate – that is to become quiet and centered around an inner core of meaning – is a gift bestowed upon every human being. It is a dimension of the divine seed sown in the heart of each person, awakening a desire to be centred, realigned to the fundamental mystery of existence, at peace with reality. a sense of home-coming to one's true self. Whether pursued in an Eastern or Western form, against a Christian or Buddhist background, is of relative importance. This is a wisdom and a prospensity that cannot, and should not, be reduced to the dictates of any one, or even all the formal religions.

Although meditation is an innate, God-given propensity, it does require gentle and enlightened tutoring. It is a powerful medium of inner growth which awakens forces of light and darkness. It can easily become a self-delusory and self-destructive ego-trip. In learning to meditate, we need the guidance of experienced, centred teachers, people who themselves are immersed in the practice (and not just in the tradition – although that, too, is helpful) of what they are seeking to share and communicate. Many of the outstanding guides of our time, people like J. Krishnamurti, Ram Dass, Shunryn Suzuki Roshi, Kalu Rinpoche and Thich Nhat Hanh, belong to the great Eastern faith traditions where the practice of meditation carries a sacred history thousands of years old, long pre-dating the emergence of formal religions.

For many spiritual seekers of our time, the most meaningful prayer or ritual experience is a space for centering prayer or meditation, done in the presence of a group on a regular basis. The frequency tends to be once a week, on the understanding that the person meditates on one's own at least once a day. The group dimension seems to create a coherence and affirmation of the integration within, and the harmony without, which seems to be the primary achievements of this ancient practice.

– Diarmuid O'Murchú
Excerpted from Reclaiming Spirituality:
A New Spritual Framework for Today's World
pp. 178-179

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Happy Birthday, Mum! (includes Thích Nhất Hạnh's thoughts on walking meditation)
• Prayer of the Week – November 23, 2015
• The Source is Within You
• The Ground Zero Papal Prayer Service . . . and a Reminder of the Spirituality That Transcends What All the Religions Claim to Represent
• Prayer and the Experience of God in an Ever-Unfolding Universe
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Anthony de Mello
• "Joined at the Heart": Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything is Possible
• The Most Sacred and Simple Mystery of All

Related Off-site Links:
The Healing Power of a Meditation Group – Charles A. Francis (The Mindfulness Meditation Institute, June 16, 2013).
Study Finds Meditation Reduces Emotional Pain by 44% – Mandy Oaklander (Time, November 11, 2015).

Artwork: Joseph Skala (right), about whom SolPurpose.com notes the following.

Artist Jösêph Skålå was born in Durango, Colorado. The son of two incredibly talented artists, it seemed from the start it was his birthright to paint the beautiful landscapes he was born into. A master at many things in his life, Jösêph found his deepest solace in the strokes of his paint brush. As a young man with a sensitive nature and a deep understanding of the world around him, he questioned society and the disrespecting of the natural planet. He began to look within for ways to bring healing. Jösêph’s healing consciousness is transmitted through his art. It acts as a bridge from mind to heart, mirroring the evolutionary journey of spirit through the eyes of the viewer.

Jösêph relays waking life reality transmission through the vajra paintbrush. Through a great reverence for his craft and the channels in which he receives his downloads, Jösêph brings live art to a new visionary galactic level. By encouraging being to exist in the heart space he creates an atmosphere and summons an energy that draws people to gather around his he(art) process while he connects them closer with their reality avatar. Jösêph’s deep connection to his art and his keen ability to share the stories that connect our collective consciousness allows others to receive dreamlike inspiration in a way that encourages them to follow their own bliss.

The Ground Zero Papal Prayer Service . . . and a Reminder of the Spirituality That Transcends What All the Religions Claim to Represent

.

Above: Some of the participating faith leaders in the interfaith prayer service at Ground Zero in New York City on September 25, 2015. From left: Ms. Yasuko Niwano, Venerable Bhante Kondanna, Ms. Gunisha Kaur, Archbishop Demetrios, Dr. Sarah Sayeed, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, Pope Francis, Imam Khalid Latif, Pastor A.R. Bernard, Dr. Satpal Singh and Archbishop Timothy Dolan.

One definite highlight for me of last month's visit to the U.S. by Pope Francis was the interfaith prayer service at the 9/11 Memorial in New York on September 25.

About the setting of this prayer service, Michelle Boorstein of The Washington Post writes:

The ceremony in the late morning, after Francis had spoken to the United Nations, was dramatically set in the soaring Foundation Hall, against a World Trade Center retaining wall that stayed up despite the [terrorist] attacks [of September 11, 2001].

The choice of the spot in the 9/11 Memorial’s museum represents a “new urgency” for religious tolerance, said James Massa, a Brooklyn bishop who has been a national Catholic leader on interfaith work and who designed the ceremony.

“That’s the wall that holds back the Hudson River. If that had fallen on 9/11, even greater chaos would have happened. It held. It’s the wall that holds back the chaos. I think these leaders with the pope are gathered, like the conscious of our time, that holds back the chaos of war and violence and hatred that afflict segments of humanity,” Massa said.

Francis selected Ground Zero as the place in the United States he wanted to have an interfaith gathering, Massa said. Pope Benedict visited Ground Zero and prayed there in 2008 but the memorial and museum were not yet built. [NOTE: To view the program of the service, click here.]

As powerful as this event was, it wasn't without its issues. For one thing, there were no indigenous and/or mystic wisdom traditions represented. Also, while there where women as well as men representing the Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths, no women were present representing either Judaism or Christianity. In her October 1, 2015 National Catholic Reporter column, Christine Schenk muses on this second issue, though goes further by questioning the lack of women presiders at any of the official prayer services of last month's papal visit.

Since four of the eight papal prayer venues were not Masses, would it have killed us to have a female presider at one or two prayer services? This is permitted under current liturgical guidelines. Female lay ecclesial ministers preside at prayer services in parishes all the time.

Why couldn't a woman (gasp!) have preached at a papal prayer service? This is also permitted under current guidelines.

Most embarrassing was the multi-faith service at Ground Zero. Here, Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists included both men and women prayer leaders. Only the Judeo-Christian traditions did not. This is surprising since there are many female rabbis and Protestant ministers. For Catholics, again, this was not a Mass. A Catholic woman minister could and should have been invited to help lead prayer.

I was consoled by the beautiful rendition of "Let There Be Peace on Earth" by a mixed choir of boys and girls at the interreligious service. The girls wore multicolored stoles but not the boys. Was this a silent witness? Rather than the usual "With God as our Father, brothers all are we," the choir sang an inclusive: "With God our Creator, family all are we." A small comfort, but I take it where I can find it.

Another issue for me is this: In response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks which killed 2,996 Americans, the administration of then-President George W. Bush instigated a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 that would see almost 1,500,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children killed for something they had absolutely nothing to do with. In my mind, the deaths of these Iraqis and the deaths of those killed in the 9/11 attacks are inextricably linked. All the lives of these people, whether in the U.S. or Iraq, were precious, none are "expendable." The loss of each and everyone of these lives remains a great and terrible tragedy. At last month's Ground Zero papal prayer service, I think all should have been honored.

With all of this in mind, I share now an excerpt from Diarmuid Ó Murchú's appropriately titled book, Reclaiming Spirituality: A New Framework for Today's World. In this particular excerpt, Ó Murchú highlights the archetypal values that are foundational to all human yearning – love, truth, honesty, integrity, peace, liberty and the creative complementarity of the Yin and the Yang. These values, Ó Murchú writes, comprise an understanding of spirituality that "transcends what each and all the religions claim to be about." (I should say that for me, this understanding of spirituality is deeply embedded in many expressions of indigenous spirituality and is also what I've come to recognize and call "the Sufi Way" – a way that I discuss and explore here, here, here, here and here.)

Throughout the ages spirituality has been associated with a particular set of convictions and values, embraced within a particular lifestyle and celebrated regularly in devotion, prayer, ritual or worship. A Christian spirituality is based on those values and virtues which are highly prized in the Christian Gospels: love, compassion, service, justice, right relationships and suffering in the cause of right, a central statement of which are the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:1-12). How these values are to be appropriated and lived out has been the subject of the church's teachings and laws down through the ages. Finally, he Christian church also provides a repertoire of prayers (personal and communal) and a sacramental system, to enable Christians to engage more meaningfully in the central experiences of personal and planetary life.

Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam – each of the religions has evolved a similar tripartite system around central beliefs, congruent behaviours and a ritual repertoire for prayer and worship.

Over the centuries, a subtle and at times quite overt competition arose between the different religions, each giving priority and superiority to its vision and praxis. In recent decades, however, a growing coming-together – in dialogue and mutual engagement – has been evidenced, especially in Christian cultures.

The reader can readily see that religion and spirituality mean essentially the same thing in he above outline. As a Christian phenomenon, spirituality has been viewed with suspicion and anxiety. For much of the Christian era it was relegated to the closed sphere of monastic seclusion or subsequently, to the post-Renaissance environment of the university where it became a sub-set of philosophical debate and logical argumentation. In the seventeenth century, spirituality referred exclusively to the interior life of Christians, often expressed in bizarre devotional practices. By the eighteenth century, it refers to the perfection associated with mystical states, unattainable by the majority of ordinary people. Finally, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, academic status was granted to the study of the spiritual life, but only in the context of ethics or moral theology.

In every age, the meaning and impact of spirituality has been influenced by factors of global proportion. To understand the emerging spirituality we need to be aware of the global ferment of our time: a growing awareness of our planet as one Earth, destined to be shared equally by all; unprecedented scientific discoveries such as the quantum theory of the 1920s; the growing realization that nothing in our world – religious or otherwise – can be comprehensively understood apart from a multi-disciplinary mode of exploration; the captivating mystical visions of astronauts from outer space confirming our unity-within-diversity in what seems to be an alive planet Earth; finally, the nauseating disgust that after centuries of religious fervor, moralizing and proselytizing, we are left with a world divided, lacerated and desecrated by pain, inequality, barbarity and warfare, much of which is fueled by religious bigotry.

It is these and many other changes that have birthed the sense (perhaps even the science) of the new spirituality. It is a spirituality that belongs to the world and its peoples and not some distant God in heaven or to an ultimate state of nirvana. It is a spirituality that transcends what each and all the religions claim to represent. It is a spirituality that engages with the search for meaning as people struggle to interrelate more authentically in what we progressively consider to be an interdependent world, within an eternally evolving universe. It is a spirituality that invites us to break out of all our anthropocentric enclaves – religious and political – and reclaim the whole of creation as our one true home.

The anthropologist, Mircea Eliade, and the psychologist, C.G. Jung both claim that all values are based on innate universal aspirations which people aspire towards and yearn for throughout the whole of time and creation. These archetypal values are foundational to all human yearning, and include such simple and significant ones as unadulterated love, truth, honesty, integrity, peace, liberty and the creative complementarity of the Yin and the Yang. All the world religions seek to enculturate these values and offer guidelines for their appropriation and integration in various cultural and geographical settings.

Consequently, in the deep story of each religion, we encounter a value-oriented vision upon which the dogmas and institutions of that religion are constructed. The example I offer is the Christian notion of the Basileia (the New Reign of God), with its underlying archetypal values of justice, love, peace and liberation. At this primordial level, Christians connect with the universal sense of spirituality which underpins all religion. Spirituality is older, more enduring and more pervasive than all the religions put together. Spirituality, therefore, engages with the core values, with the foundational value-orientation which belongs to the mutual co-existence of person and planet alike. The values that the religions claim to foster and safeguard – often in the exclusive context of a specific religion, or denomination – belong essentially and primarily to spirituality. Religion is the name we give to the enculturation of such values in the patriarchal culture of the past 8,000-10,000 years.

Not all the values perpetuated in the name of formal religion are congruent with spiritual unfolding. We now understand formal religion to be very much the product – indeed, the icing on the cake – of the patriarchal culture of post-Agriculture/Revolution times. The prevailing culture was unambiguously a dominator one, with the values of divide-and-conquer predominating over all other aspirations. The oppressive end result is all too familiar: market-competition where the poor and weak always lose out; power-acquisition, often reaching compulsive levels; land exploitation, female subjugation, feminine suppression, anthropo-centricizing the divine (i.e., creating God figures in the image of the patriarchal male). These are clearly not the values of the New Reign of God depicted in the Christian Gospels, nor indeed do they even remotely resemble the deep values upheld by other world religions.

And this brings us once again to what may well be the most controversial and daunting claim of the new spirituality: religion is a temporary reality that in all probability has outlived its usefulness. Spiritual engagement for our time is not about revitalizing or renewing religion and its accompanying moral, dogmatic and liturgical practices. Rather, the primary task of spirituality is to enable and empower people to reclaim the fundamental raison d'etre of all religion: the engagement with, and practical living out of, those deep values which alone can assuage the spiritual hunger in the heart of every human being.

– Diarmuid Ó Murchú
Excerpted from Reclaiming Spirituality:
A New Framework for Today's World
pp. 170-173

Related Off-site Links:
Pope Francis Leads Solemn Prayer at 9/11 Interfaith Service – Reuven Fenton, Yoav Gonen and Bob Fredericks (New York Post, September 25, 2015).
Why Wasn’t a Woman Invited to Preside at a Papal Prayer Service? – Christine Shchenk (National Catholic Reporter, October 1, 2015).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Something Extraordinary . . . Again
• Whether Christian or Muslim, James Foley Remains a "Symbol of Faith Under the Most Brutal of Conditions"
• Pope Francis in the U.S.
• Amos Oz on the Essence of Fanaticism
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• It’s Time We Evolved Beyond Theological Imperialism
• In Search of a Global Ethic
• A Return to the Spirit
• The Source is Within You

Images: Reuters/Tony Gentile.

Roman Catholicism's Fundamental Problem: The Cultic Priesthood and Its "Diseased System" of Clericalism

The clerical leadership of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis has been in the news recently . . . and not in a good way.

Last week's broadcast of the Minnesota Public Radio documentary Betrayed by Silence shocked and upset many. The documentary is, after all, a damning indictment not just of the current archbishop but of his two predecessors also. Following is part of the documentary's introduction.

For decades, the archbishops who led the Catholic archdiocese in the Twin Cities maintained that they were doing everything they could to protect children from priests who wanted to rape them.

Reporters picked up those assurances and repeated them without question. Police and prosecutors took the assurances at face value. Parents believed the assurances and trusted priests with their children.

But the assurances were a lie, and the archbishops knew it. Three of them — John Roach, Harry Flynn and John Nienstedt — participated in a cover-up that pitted the finances and power of the church against the victims who dared to come forward and tell their stories.

[Betrayed by Silence] draws on dozens of interviews, thousands of never-before-published documents and insider accounts to explain how and why powerful men protected priests who abused children.

And if this wasn't bad enough, there were soon newly-published revelations from Jennifer Haselberger (left), about which the Star Tribune notes the following.

Whistleblower Jennifer Haselberger described the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis as a place where child abusers were given repeated opportunities to remain in the priesthood, where “monitoring” was lax or nonexistent and where investigations often favored priests, in an affidavit filed Tuesday [July 15] in Ramsey County District Court.

Haselberger, who exposed troubling practices in the church’s handling of clergy abuse cases, wrote that the archdiocese had a “cavalier attitude toward the safety of other people’s children.”

The written testimony of Haselberger, an archdiocesan canon lawyer before resigning last year, comes in response to an explosive lawsuit filed on behalf of a man who claims former priest Tom Adamson abused him in the 1970s.

Haselberger is one of the major players in the resulting sex abuse scandal rocking the archdiocese. A canon lawyer who worked for the archdiocese for all but two years between 2004 and 2013, she is among key critics with direct knowledge of child sex abuse practices.

The lawsuit was filed shortly after Minnesota changed its statute of limitations to allow older child sex abuse cases to be heard by the courts. The changes in law, combined with Haselberger’s public disclosures about church practices, set the stage for unprecedented revelations now being made public about how the church handled abusive clergy.

Her written testimony is important because if lawyers are to argue that the archdiocese has created a “public nuisance,” it requires evidence of continued practices that endanger children.

Much has been written about Haselberger's testimony, and, not surprisingly, there have been renewed calls for Archbishop Nienstedt's resignation. Even the editorial board of The New York Times has chimed in, noting that:

When Pope Francis met earlier this month with victims of rape and sexual abuse by priests, he vowed to hold bishops accountable for covering up the scandal instead of confronting it.

A good place to start is with the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese, where calls are mounting for the resignation of Archbishop John Nienstedt, a warrior against same-sex marriage who, it turns out, is facing accusations that he indulged in improper sexual conduct in the past with priests, seminarians and other men.

. . . Archbishop Nienstedt acknowledged earlier this year in a sworn deposition for a pedophilia lawsuit that he did not fully disclose to police or parishioners which priests were under suspicion. But the archdiocese insists reforms have since strengthened disclosure.

The situation was only worsened by another deposition from a former vicar general of the archdiocese, the Rev. Peter Laird, who in conferences last year with Archbishop Nienstedt twice suggested that the archbishop consider resigning. Concerned Catholic parishioners, individual clergy members and university professors have also called for the archbishop to resign as the best solution. Instead, the archdiocese has made a mockery of accountability.

Hundreds of American priests have been forced from service because of pedophile crimes, but the parallel need for accountability among those who covered up the scandal has been shamefully avoided. In promising closer attention to this issue, the pope should not overlook the church’s leadership disarray in the Twin Cities.

Locally, one of the best commentaries on what the New York Times calls the "leadership disarray" in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis has been written by Pioneer Press columnist Rubén Rosario (right). Here's part of Rosario's July 18 column, "Archbiship Nienstedt Needs to Go. Now."

Haselberger's affidavit paints a disturbing picture of church officials acting more like a cabal of corporate schemers or a power-driven political administration run amok than like shepherds of the state's largest Roman Catholic diocese.

Haselberger details how archdiocese officials gave special payments to abusive priests, allowed others to continue in public ministry and failed to notify authorities of abuse allegations in violation of a 2002 churchwide policy.

In the case of the Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer, Haselberger warned Nienstedt and others of his sexual proclivities and habit of trying to pick up men. Not only were her concerns ignored, Wehmeyer was promoted to pastor of a church on St. Paul's East Side before his conviction for molesting two boys in his parish.

These were not allegations decades old. They were recent. There's the tale of former Vicar General Peter Laird's attempt to declare disabled Father Mike Tegeder of St. Frances Cabrini Church in Minneapolis because of his criticisms of Nienstedt in the debate over the proposed marriage amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage. Laird resigned soon after Haselberger's concerns were made public.

. . . Nienstedt apparently has an ornery side to him, warning folks not to bother him and sending critical emails to church subordinates that one described as "nastygrams," according to the affidavit.

Haselberger recounts how Laird basically ignored her concerns and refused to read documents about a priest, removed from ministry just this year, who had a sexual attraction to young boys.

"I literally followed Father Laird out of the building one evening with those highlighted documents in my hands, saying that if he didn't have time to read the whole documents, he could at least read the highlighted remarks. He refused," Haselberger wrote.

Laird's reaction, Haselberger noted, was just one example of a "cavalier attitude toward the safety of children."

Cavalier? More like shameful.

In his op-ed, Rosario asks Haselberger who or what kind of archbishop she would like to see take over. Haselberger responds by saying, "I would say a no-nonsense kind of guy with more or less a pastor's heart."

Reflecting on this response I find myself thinking of and agreeing with Colleen Kochivar-Baker's contention that it's actually the system of the cultic priesthood that's the real problem, more so than individual "leaders," even those as inept as John Nienstedt. After all, as theologian and former priest Paul Collins points out, the clericalism that largely defines Roman Catholicism's cultic priesthood is a system "which has developed a kind of moral immunity over the centuries."

What happens, says Collins, is that "everyone who works in the system, no matter how generous, saintly, and virtuous they are, has to struggle to avoid being inexorably caught up in a clericalism that misuses power and that is essentially deceitful and corrupt."

Collins is quick to point out that he doesn’t believe that priests themselves are necessarily corrupt. Many, he notes, are "men of considerable integrity." Nevertheless, "they work in a diseased system and it is very difficult for them to avoid the consequences of clericalism."

Theologian Diarmuid Ó Murchú offers a similar analysis, observing that "innate to clericalism is a patriarchal, subconscious driving force which is much more about power in the name of religion, rather than about service in the name of spirituality."

It seems pretty clear to me that this is exactly what has been the case here in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis. What's new is that it's finally being exposed, thanks in large measure to Jennifer Hasselberger.

I'll conclude with an excerpt from Colleen's aptly titled July 17 blog post, "Jennifer Hasselberger Drives a Truck Through the Lies of the Clerical Caste of the Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis.

I'd love to believe the circumstances cited in [Hasselberger's] deposition were exclusive to the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, but after doing decades of research, I can no longer find it in my Catholic soul to believe the situations and attitudes she describes are unique to this archdiocese. They are not the exception to the rule. They are the actual observed practice, and this in spite of all the recent rules written specifically to look as if these practices are no longer the rule. The real rule in operation, as Jennifer shows beyond a doubt, is now as it always has been: the welfare of the offending priest before any thought of any justice for a victim.

I also know there really are dioceses where the unwritten rule does not hold sway, but these are the exceptions. The exception is not the level of duplicity and corruption in the Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis. The only exception here is that a highly placed archdiocesan individual refused to play the clerical game, and unsurprisingly she just happened to be a lay woman. As for religious women and lay men, they were complicit at least to the extent that information stayed in house that belonged in the hands of police.

I don't know how many times I have written, here and in comments elsewhere, that the corruption and abuses will not stop until Catholics are released from the conditioning that God desires a magical celibate male priest as essential to the sacramental functions in the Church. The abuses of our clergy, both sexual and financial, will never end as long as all the power is in the hands of the very men who are causing all the problems. Pope Francis will not solve any of these issues by leaving the current theology of the priesthood as is. He has done nothing that demonstrates to me he has any desire to change one aspect of this theology. Even if it is eventually decided to let married men in the priesthood, that does not change a thing about the exclusive power held by the priesthood.

Related Off-site Links:
Betrayed by Silence: How Three Archbishops Hid the Truth – Madeleine Baran (Minnesota Public Radio News, July 14, 2014).
Under Oath, Whistleblower Challenges Archbishop Nienstedt Over Abuse Testimony – Madeleine Baran (MPR News, July 15, 2014).
Jennifer Haselberger Was Ignored, Bullied Before Blowing Whistle on Archdiocese, Records Show – Jesse Marx (City Pages, July 15, 2014).
Holding Church Shepherds Accountable – The Editorial Board (New York Times, July 17, 2014).
Archbishop Nienstedt Needs to Go. Now. – Rubén Rosario (Pioneer Press, July 18, 2014).
MN Archdiocese Wanted to Label Marriage Equality-Supporting Priest ‘Disabled’ – Andy Birkey (TheColu.mn, July 22, 2014).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Paul Lakeland on How the Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal Reveals a Crisis of Leadership
A Clerical Leadership Unresponsive to Voices of Reason
Has Archbishop Nienstedt's "Shadow" Finally Caught Up With Him?
It's Time for Nienstedt to Resign
Time for a Fresh Start in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis
In the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, the Unravelment Continues

Prayer and the Experience of God in an Ever-Unfolding Universe

Some time back I let go of the idea of a God who intervenes in human affairs. Such letting go liberated me to explore and develop alternative ways of thinking about God present and active in our lives and the world. Yet I have to admit that when I hear about tragic events in people's lives or terrible developments on the world stage (the current situation in Iraq, for example) I can find myself wanting to believe in a puppet-master God, a God who will intervene and make things right.

Of course, what's "right" often depends on different people's perspectives, which I think highlights the reality that a puppet-master God is a tribal God, a God of and for only a certain group of people and thus of their perspective only. I have to believe that humanity has, by and large, evolved beyond belief in such a God.


A loving and transforming energy

I've come to experience God not as a puppet master but as a loving and transforming energy deeply embedded within all aspects of creation. As humans we have the ability, and the choice, to open ourselves to this sacred energy, thereby becoming conduits of divine love and transformation in our own lives, in the lives of others, and in the wider world.

Such embodiment takes discipline and work, of course; a lot of work. I liken it to the discipline and dedication of a dancer, especially the dancer's striving for the balance and grace that comes from developing one's core. Indeed, it helps me to think of myself as a soul dancer, one dedicated to living from a well-developed and maintained spiritual core.

Of course, none of us can undergo and endure the rigors of spiritual development alone; we need to be part of a community of faith. At their best, such communities open us to and teach us about humanity's long history of wisdom with regards to recognizing and responding to the sacred within and beyond us. They also guide us in our discernment of the sacred and provide support and strength in our efforts to be communal and individual embodiments of divine love in a world often hostile to this love and its implications. These implications are to do with important and often interrelated realities, the grappling with which can cause polarization and division. These realities include social and economic arrangements and all kinds of often complex relationships we have with aspects of one's self, with others, and with the environment. Yet deal with all of these we must, while all the while remaining open to the guiding presence of the sacred within and among us.


Mystical

This way of understanding God that I'm describing isn't new; it's always been with us – most clearly within the various mystical paths within the world's religions. Indeed, what many people understand to be "traditional religion," i.e., various forms of pietism and dogmatism, is actually a relatively recent development, and one that some would argue can obscure our true purpose, which is to be ever-unfolding and growing embodiments of God’s transforming love in the world. As Pope John XXIII famously said, “We are not on earth to guard a museum, but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.” And, yes, we're all part of that garden.

I appreciate Andrew Harvey's definition of the word "mystical." In an interview he gave to Mark Thompson for the book Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature, Harvey says:

I mean by the word mystical entering into conscious direct relationship with the divine. It must be conscious and it must be direct to be mystical. Mystical is not theological; it's not having a series of ideas about God, however lucid or wonderful. It's not emotional; it's not having a series of feelings, however deep and adoring, about God. And it's not intellectual, in any sense, even in the most refined sense.

What it means is having direct contact in the soul, the core of being, with the Source. That can take place in many different ways, but its primary ways are through an opening of what people call the third eye. Through devotion, mystical prayer, and the saying of mantras, all the senses of the subtle body – the spiritual senses, if you like – wake up and begin to see and interpret the world in a completely fresh way.

The world remains the same but appears now drenched in light and transparent and is experienced far more like a magical film than as something inherently real. The ego stops interpreting and deforming, and you begin to see the primal, divine world in its pain and beauty and to respond to it with love of the soul, which is one with the love that creates all things. . . . A mystic is someone who sees God in all things and all things in God.

I've come to recognize core aspects of the mystical path as comprising humanity's deepest and truest religious traditions. Interestingly, these aspects, along with the insights of many indigenous spiritualities, are hallmarks of what we call "evolutionary spirituality." (1) These hallmarks invite us to see the created world and be in the created world in a certain – and, perhaps for some – ‘new’ way. Such seeing and being changes our way of thinking and talking about God. It facilitates a movement, a journey towards a way of being in the world that is more mindful and loving. That's a good and hopeful thing, for as theologian Karl Rahner once said: “The Christian of the future will either be a ‘mystic’ . . . or he[/she] will cease to be anything at all.”


Prayer in an evolutionary context

The invitation to embody such change has always been with us. I think of it as being embedded in our spiritual DNA. Our understanding of this invitation has been expanded and amplified in recent decades by what science is telling us about the evolving nature of the universe and the emergent complexity of all life. When we integrate such awareness and knowledge into our spiritual and religious worldview, we have the aforementioned type of spirituality known as evolutionary spirituality. (2)

How does this type of spirituality, one that recognizes we're part of an ever-unfolding universe and which thus is at odds with any type of puppet-master God, guide us in praying when we are confronted by violence and upheaval, such as we're witnessing in Iraq and elsewhere? Answers, or perhaps better yet, responses can be found in William Cleary's book Prayers to an Evolutionary God. This helpful resource, inspired by the spiritual and scientific teachings of Diarmuid O'Murchú and Teilhard de Chardin, offers "prayer that is relevant in a scientific world." It does this, according to John F. Haught, by bringing "the insights of science into contact with the very heart of religious experience."

Desiring to respond in a prayerful way to the situation in Iraq, I found myself recently paging through Cleary's book one sleepless night. I found the following prayer, one of a number of Cleary's "prayers of questioning," to be particularly helpful and meaningful.

Holy Spirit of Evolution,
creator of the cosmos and its wonders,
how shall we deal with the insidious evil
– epidemic in world cultures and societies –
of human egotism,
cruel in its delusional ignorance
and destructive of human life and its environments?

Egotism produces war, crime, cruelty,
disappointment, isolation,
impoverishment, ignorance, illusion:
we are all too familiar with these.

In the end, along with all spiritualities of the world,
we must trust you, Silent Mystery,
and your evolutionary plan for us
unfolding at every moment.

We will come together in our pain,
to pool our wisdom and our energies of hope,
convinced that in the end, the very end,
all shall somehow be well.

May it be so.

I'll close by sharing William Cleary's commentary on the above prayer, a prayer that he entitles "Unfolding at Every Moment."

Where evil comes from – with all its resulting failure and heartbreak – is not something we can understand. Some of it arises from human choice, some comes from the natural evolutionary way of things (3), but most seems beyond human comprehension. Our hearts cry out for reasons; we seldom find them. Some kind of surrender is called for in every spirituality. [Theologian Diarmuid] O'Murchú speaks of "God's mysterious but wise plan." There is certainly solid evidence of order beneath whatever chaos we may encounter. "God is subtle but not malicious," in Albert Einstein's memorable phrase. However, string theory and quantum mechanics now postulate a pervasive uncertainty beneath any orderliness. There seems to be mystery at every level of reality.

Ultimately, we have no choice but to trust in the world around us, in the marvelous processes of nature that we observe daily, in the forces of healing at work in our bodies and in the earth's apparent ability to govern itself and even heal its wounds, in the ingenuity and heroism of our own human companions. Mystics by and large have been optimists. They lead the way.

NOTES

(1) Under the auspices of the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform I recently developed a workshop entitled "Companions on a Sacred Journey: An Introduction to Evolutionary Spirituality." (To learn more about this workshop and/or to schedule a presentation of it to your faith community, click here.) In this workshop I outline the characteristics or hallmarks of evolutionary spirituality by noting that such a spirituality . . .

• Encompasses a “theology of the cosmos” and thus a “theology of evolution” – a way of thinking and talking about God that recognizes and celebrates God’s presence and action within and through creation.

• Is mindful of and attuned to mystery, in particular the mystery of the sacred within all things.

• Is open and responsive to the questions posed by science and the unfolding reality of the universe.

• Places emphasis on inter-connectivity, inter-dependence, and the oneness of all creation.

• Is accepting of paradox and emphasizes “both/and” rather than “either/or.”

• Recognizes and celebrates that we are all participants in a “divine journey,” one that urges us to ever more inclusive states of being.

• Recognizes that we are in a time of transition and transformation, often understood as a “paradigm shift” in human consciousness. Because it calls for a fundamental change in our thoughts, perceptions, and values, this shift challenges us in how we think about and relate to God, the planet, each other, and all forms of human institutions, including the church.

(2) Evolutionary spirituality has been in the news lately, what with Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), recently rebuking the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in the U.S. for its exploration and promoting of evolutionary spirituality. Yet as Jason Berry points out, evolutionary spirituality draws from sources of theological reflection grounded both in the mystical path that winds through Christianity and in the writings of French Jesuit and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. "Pope Francis's remarks have often sounded compatible with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's concept of 'conscious evolution,'" writes Berry. "So why are American nuns in trouble for supporting it?" Berry's article offers some insightful answers, and is well worth reading.


(3) This statement by Cleary brings to mind Andrew Harvey's thoughts on the "terrible aspects" of God. Writes Harvey:

Everything we see or live is for me a shining forth of God, a radiance of the beloved, a radiance that can be terrible as well as beautiful, and sometimes both at once. There is a terrible aspect of God that cannot be avoided. There are hurricanes and plagues, there are collapses of civilizations and stars exploding in the darkness of space. There is agony on every level of creation. There is no joy without pain, no life without death. A mystic comes to learn to dance not only for creation but also for destruction – knowing that life and death are inseparable and part of the same process that transcends both.

Recommended Off-site Links:
A Review of Prayers to an Evolutionary God – Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat (Spirituality and Practice, 2012).
An Introduction to Evolutionary Spirituality (Part 3 in the "Countdown to Synod 2013" series) – Michael Bayly (The Progressive Catholic Voice, August 27, 2013).
The Evolution of Consciousness, God, and Prayer – Mark Gilbert (ConsciousBridge.com, February 23, 2010).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
May Balance and Harmony Be Your Aim
A Dance of Divine Light
The Soul Within the Soul
Within the Mystery, a Strange and Empty State of Suspension

Image 1: "The Rise of the Sacred Masculine" (detail). Artist unknown.
Image 2: From Men in Motion: The Art and Passion of the Male Dancer by François Rousseau.
Image 3: Amy Giacomelli.

"Make Us Lovers, God of Love"

Are you, Eternal Spirit, full of erotic energy?
Can we trace our own drive for relationality back to you?
Is not that heartfelt magnetism among lovers
your own numinous paradigm?
Does it speak of you, model you, reveal you?
It seems so.

You are a God of Love, then – above all other identities.
Love is your premier creation.
It is lovers who are your first mystics,
and it is lovers who should guide the world
in almost every way,
lead the religions, lead the nations, and lead the leaders.

Make us lovers, then, God of Love.
Fill us with your own spirit.
May it be so.

– William Cleary

(From the book Prayers to an Evolutionary God)

Reflecting on his prayer, "Make Us Lovers," Cleary writes:

The erotic may sound to us like something debased and carnal. That is regrettable because erotic feelings are above all a creation of God and a revelation of what our world is all about.

In fact, according to Diarmuid Ó Murchú, erotic is not too strong a word to apply to the divine spirit itself, and to all the healthy energies essential to the evolution of the world. The Big Bang also can be thought of as erotic, an unimaginable outburst of love and creativity. In Evolutionary Faith, Ó Murchú states: "If we take seriously the creative Spirit at the heart of the evolutionary process, then we must spare no effort to attune ourselves with the Spirit's wild, erotic energy."

Our sexual experiences might consequently be seen as potentially religious, as revelatory, as sacred. We might express gratitude in symbol, like candlelight, or gesture, like the instinctive motion of hand to heart. All our human love experiences have the potential to take us into the world of the sacred, and in that light the debasement of them is sacrilege.

Recommended Off-site Links:
A Review of Prayers to an Evolutionary God – Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat (Spirituality and Practice, 2012).
An Introduction to Evolutionary Spirituality (Part 3 in the "Countdown to Synod 2013" series) – Michael Bayly (The Progressive Catholic Voice, August 27, 2013).
The Evolution of Consciousness, God, and Prayer – Mark Gilbert (ConsciousBridge.com, February 23, 2010).
ClearyWorks – The Official Website of William Cleary.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
"More Lovely Than the Dawn": God as Divine Lover
"Never Can We Be Separated"
In the Garden of Spirituality – Diarmuid Ó Murchú
In the Garden of Spirituality – James B. Nelson
Sex as Mystery, Sex as Light (Part 1)
Sex as Mystery, Sex as Light (Part 2)
The Dancer and the Dance
"Then I Shall Leap Into Love"

Image: Photographer unknown.

Diarmuid Ó Murchú on Celibacy and Androgyny

Social psychologist, "evolutionary theologian," and Sacred Heart Missionary priest Diarmuid Ó Murchú has an interesting and, no doubt for some, controversial new essay published in The National Catholic Reporter. In it he offers a "fresh appraisal" of the call to celibacy.

Overall, I appreciate the perspective of Ó Murchú and consider the ideas and insights he shares important to the Catholic Church's much-needed discussion on human sexuality. However, as evidenced here, I don't consider his perspective above critique. That being said, following (with added links) are excerpts from his latest essay on celibacy and androgyny.

____________________________

. . . It seems to me, and to many developmental psychologists, that our sexuality is first and foremost a form of psychic energy and not just a biological capacity with procreation as its primary purpose. The physical and biological dimensions of our sexuality ensue from the psychic foundations. As a psychic phenomenon, sexuality may be described as the sum total of our feelings, moods and emotions as articulated through relational interaction, which the Canadian theologian Carter Heyward pushes into the spiritual realm by defining sexuality as: “Our embodied relational response to sacred/erotic power.” The psychic and spiritual aspects become much more transparent and integrated in the life-experience of the androgyne.

I am proposing an understanding of celibacy that may seem very new, but in fact is quite ancient. By revisiting the notion of androgyny, I want to activate a spirituality and theology of celibacy more coherent and congruent for our time.

. . . The inner drive is towards integration and wholeness, motivated in this case not so much by conscious choice as by an inner subconscious urge which is fundamentally spiritual in nature. And it is not a once-and-for-all achievement; it is a life-long process, which merits the status of a life-calling or vocation, as distinct from a goal one reaches through learning and human accomplishment.

The androgyne and mystic seem to have a lot in common; each aspires to a sense of wholeness that transcends all our man-made distinctions and dualisms. Perhaps, St. Paul was alluding to this when he describes the new person in Christ: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, . . .slave or free, . . . male or female” (Gal.3:28). The mystical dimension helps to articulate and channel the spiritual meaning which is central to androgynous orientation; this may be subconscious rather than conscious and may not be easily integrated with formal religion.

Psycho-sexually, androgynous behaviour is informed by a stronger desire for psychic wholeness rather than driven to perform out of stereotypical, biological conditioning. Because it is difficult to internalise this identity in a culture addicted so rigidly to sexist and gendered stereotypes, androgynes are often labelled as bi-sexuals or transsexuals, and some prematurely adopt these labels.

I suspect that people called to a celibate vocation effectively embrace an androgynous identity. This is not something they have consciously chosen; more likely it is something that happens in the internal spiritual realm evoking a particular calling or vocation. Were such people always disposed to this calling - already marked out at birth as several ancient cultures claim? I feel unable to offer a meaningful response to this question. Whatever the preconditions governing the vocational call, the consequences remain the same and it is the consequences I am exploring in this essay.

Celibacy in its primordial significance seems to arise from a passionate desire to share more closely in the erotic intimacy of the Divine. God is the supreme lover who allures and captivates the heart of the loved one. This can easily be depicted as a mystical calling for the rare few, with nothing of value or worth for the rest of humanity. I suspect that the opposite may be the case. The celibate fulfils a cultural role – perhaps a paradoxical one – exemplifying the ultimacy that is at the heart of all our desiring as a human species. Of course, the vocational motivation may be based on less worthy aspirations, some of which may even be pathological; this is an area for profound and comprehensive discernment.

Despite this divine initiative – or perhaps precisely because of it – I wish to suggest that the celibate calling is a highly sexualised one. The celibate may well be the most erotic of all humans, honouring a very ancient understanding of the Divine as a highly eroticised life-force, impregnating the whole of creation. That being the case, two important adjustments need to be made to our thinking. Firstly, God is not a-sexual, and neither is any organism created by God. Secondly, the celibate needs expressive outlets for psycho-sexual energy, which cannot be adequately or appropriately channelled through sublimation or total abstinence.

On this complex question, ancient cultures may have been far more enlightened than contemporary ones. They provided outlets for the expression and articulation of sexual desire other than those of the monogamous, married relationship. They seem to have understood better the intense and amorphous energy of human sexuality and facilitated its articulation through rituals and ceremonies whereby people were sexually intimate, inclusive of genital expression (not to be reduced to biological intercourse). We glean evidence for this through ancient Chinese and Indian art; through spiritually-informed traditions like that of the Tantric philosophy of ancient India; in the iconography of early Hinduism; through a vast range of initiation rites among indigenous peoples, and through the courtly customs of medieval Europe.

That celibacy will involve an option for non-marriage makes a lot of practical and pastoral sense. That it must also imply total abstinence from sexual intimacy, is less compelling in our time. What may be most shocking about this claim is my differentiation between marriage and sexual expression. As indicated at the beginning of this essay, human sexuality is a process of growing more deeply into our evolving humanity - which for most of our time on earth was not confined to monogamous marriage - and there are several contemporary indications that this equation will not prevail in future.

. . . In popular Catholic culture, priesthood inevitably means a celibate lifestyle. I believe this has obfuscated the real meaning of celibacy and continues to make a meaningful retrieval both problematic and confusing. Long before a dominantly male priesthood evolved (about 7,000 years ago), celibacy was extensively practised. Celibacy did not begin with the Catholic Church, nor even with the monastic systems of the other great religions. Celibacy should not be equated with any one religious sub-group, particularly one so rooted in ecclesiastical structure.

Formal priesthood is probably too rigidified, institutionalised and ascetically based to appropriate the mystical embrace of androgynous values. Those committed to the monastic/vowed life stand a better chance of witnessing authentically, but that role too has been co-opted into the ecclesiastical/religious system and, correspondingly, has been seriously disenfranchised in terms of what it has to offer. The congealed clericalised culture is just not amenable to this new and daring vision.

In the light of recent debates, especially in USA, one wonders if greater recognition of homosexuality among Catholic priests and clerical students would be a step towards the integration of the androgyne in priestly celibates. It may help, but it could also confuse. Revisioning celibacy to accommodate those of homosexual orientation is a desirable goal, but it leaves deeper issues unrecognised and unresolved. In most cases, I suspect homosexuality is not the problem; human sexuality is. Because of the heavy impact of dualistic thinking in our Western world, unconsciously we try to resolve problems by switching from one pole to the other. In the case of celibacy, I think we are in great danger of missing the deeper challenge, namely the archetypal lure to an androgynous lifestyle!

. . . Naively, we assume that a homosexual leaning is at the root of the problem of clerical abuse. To me, at least, it seems fairly obvious that celibate sexuality itself, and the repressive clerical culture in which it is (mal)nourished, is the problem, precisely because neither the Church nor the wider culture is capable of recognising or affirming what the call to celibacy is really about. The so-called pedophile priest may be the ultimate scapegoat in one of the greatest cover-ups known to modern culture.

Eugene Kennedy has taken the bold step to describe celibate sexuality in terms of an archetypal wounding, which presumably can only be healed by tender and compassionate care. And if such positive regard is not forthcoming, then obviously the woundedness grows infectious and can create great havoc for priests themselves as well as for others. While Kennedy attempts to shift the focus to the archetypal level (I know of nobody else who has attempted this), I have some reservations about his starting point.

I don’t believe that people enter priesthood in a wounded state - particularly those who feel a deep sense of calling. I believe the majority enter as quite wholesome people who become wounded because of the internal corruption of the clericalised-institutionalised system with which they affiliate. Nor should we lay all the blame at the feet of a culture of clericalised power which Kennedy seems to suggest is the heart of the problem. I blame the wider culture of repression which is unable to discern the deeper meaning of human sexuality, for everybody, celibates included. . . .

– Diarmuid Ó Murchú
"Celibacy and Androgyny"
The National Catholic Reporter
March 16, 2011

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Thoughts on Celibacy (Part 1)
Thoughts on Celibacy (Part 2)
Thoughts on Celibacy (Part 3)
Celibacy and the Roman Catholic Priesthood
What Is It That Ails You?
Now We Know
In the Garden of Spirituality – Diarmuid Ó Murchú
A Little Too Fluid?

Image: "Ascension Into Androgyny" by Daniel Neskovich.

Thoughts on Celibacy (Part III)

.

Back in the late 1990s, when on a return visit to Australia, I looked into joining the Jesuit order as a brother. I met with a Jesuit in Sydney for what I guess you’d call an interview. During the course of this interview I noted that I was an out gay man, and felt that being out was important for both myself and others. I explained that by “out” I meant being open about acknowledging my sexual orientation if and when it seemed appropriate. I asked if this would be a problem as a Jesuit.

The response I received took me aback. I was told that when one becomes a Jesuit (and presumably, in the view of this particular Jesuit, a member of any vowed religious community), one is neither gay nor straight, but celibate. In this man’s view, a life of sexual abstinence negates one’s sexuality - be it gay or straight. Sexuality also seems to be limited to whatever one does with one’s genitals!

Now, at that time, I was quite prepared to consider committing to a celibate life, a life of sexual abstinence. But I also realized, then and there at that interview, that to deny one’s sexuality - one’s relational capacity - would be very unhealthy and problematic on a number of levels. Needless to say, I abandoned my inquiries into joining the Jesuits.

I was reminded of this encounter when preparing the following (long overdue) third installment of The Wild Reed’s “Thoughts on Celibacy” series. As you’ll see, I once again share the thoughts of Catholic theologian Diarmuid Ó Murchú, and, in particular, his contention that it is a fundamental denial of our God-given identity – indeed, an act of blasphemy – to choose a non-sexual way of life, to attempt to live, in other words, asexually.

Also shared in the following excerpt from his book, Poverty, Celibacy, and Obedience: A Radical Option for Life, is Ó Murchú’s idea of a “vow of relatedness” – an understanding of celibacy in which the “integrity and authenticity of the call to celibacy is not dependent upon the ascetical ability to forego sexual engagement, but upon a quality of engagement – emotionally and spiritually – that touches the very depths of sexual aestheticism”

______________________________________

[I propose] that we leave behind a spirituality focused on law and adopt one focused on value. We also need to abandon the traditional language “of celibacy” and adopt the phrase “for relatedness.”

The vow for relatedness is a call to engage with the emerging issues of psychosexual relating in the contemporary world, to read the unfolding reality with discernment and sensitivity, to unearth the deeper, archetypal meanings of this unfolding, to name the unfolding process in a way that is holistic and liberating, to highlight the spiritual implications of this new understanding, and to promote social and political strategies to reintegrate what for so long we have split off in our destructive asexual, disembodied ways of living.

The liminal vocation* is, of its very nature, highly paradoxical; that is what safeguards its essential mysterious and divine nature. In traditional biblical terms the laminar is in the world, but not of it. The laminar is a full sexual person, with all the feelings, emotions, desires, and possibilities of that deeply creative urge. But the call to the liminal space requires a different way of living out our sexual relatedness.

Traditionally, this has been interpreted as refraining from all types of sexual and genital interaction in a single lifestyle, with community living offered as the antidote to meet emotional and relational needs, but in a non-sexual way.

This interpretation carries an inherent violence against self and others. It is a fundamental denial of our God-given identity to choose a non-sexual way of life; it is an act of blasphemy. Biologically, psychologically, and spiritually, we cannot become asexual. The more we try, the more our sexual selves will rear up in protest.

Our sexuality consists of all those feelings, moods, and emotions that require a certain quality and quantity of human closeness, intimacy, tactility, and love if we are to become, and help each other become, the fully evolved people that God intends us to be. To choose to forego this call is an act of violence against God, self, and other people who befriend us on the journey of life.

NEXT: Part IV

* Ó Murchú contends that the vocation to religious life is, above all else, “a liminal calling, a threshold experience, to those places apart where we are invited to provide a mirror-image in which the people can see reflected their own searchings, struggles, and hopes for a more meaningful existence. It is the people (or, more accurately, God working through the people) that create the liminal spaces. And those called apart are accountable first and foremost to the people and not to the church or to any formal religious system. It is unfortunate that religious life today is so closely identified with formal religion. . . . It is unfortunate that religious life today is so closely identified with formal religion. . . . The vowed life was never intended to be secluded in monasteries or convents and, ironically, for the greater part of its existence it has not been. . . . The major crisis facing the vowed life today is that it has largely lost touch with its capacity to serve in a liminal capacity. It has been heavily domesticated and excessively institutionalized, not merely in religious (ecclesiastical) terms but also because it has over-identified with the conventional behaviors of secular life. Religious tend to work and minister in institutions and systems sponsored by state or church, sometimes both. Such involvement seriously hinders the ability to act in a liminal and prophetic way.” (pp. 18-19)

Given all of this, I think gay people, by their very otherness and their subsequent journeys of authenticity within a frequently hostile world, have an intrinsic “liminal calling.” This makes sense when one considers that throughout history – and to this day – a disproportionate number of gay people are drawn to spirituality, religious themes, and religious life. I think it also explains my own interest in the Sufi Way – and its concept of the dervish, which, as Neil Douglas-Klotz reminds us, means “one who sits in the doorway, or on the threshold of something, ready to move on and transform him- or herself” – and, by extension, I’d add, others and the world. Yes, folks, the world (and the Church) needs us gay folks!


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Thoughts on Celibacy (Part I)
• Thoughts on Celibacy (Part II)
• Celibacy and the Roman Catholic Priesthood

Recommended Off-site Links:
• Richard Sipe: Priests, Celibacy, and Sexuality
• CORPUS

Recommended Books:
The Serpent and the Dove: Celibacy in Literature and Life by Richard Sipe.
Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes by Richard Sipe.
The Unhealed Wound: The Church and Human Sexuality by Eugene Kennedy.

Image: “Liminality” by Tristan Roy.

In the Garden of Spirituality – Diarmuid Ó Murchú

.

“We are not on earth to guard a museum,
but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

- Pope John XXIII

The Wild Reed’s series of reflections on spirituality continues with an excerpt from Diarmuid Ó Murchú’s 2007 book, The Transformation of Desire: How Desire Became Corrupted – and How We Can Reclaim It.

____________________________________

At the heart of all desiring is a yearning for beauty. “The human soul is hungry for beauty,” writes John O’Donohue. “We seek it everywhere – in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture, gardening, companionship, love, religion, and in ourselves. No one would desire not to be beautiful. When we experience the Beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming . . . The time is now ripe for beauty to surprise and liberate us.”

Our educational and spiritual conditioning suggests that we can only reclaim beauty by mastery and control. Very rightly, John O’Donohue reminds us that surrender rather than mastery is how we will make the journey to true wholeness. Beauty is mystically suspended between the act of awakening and the art of surrender. Among the awakenings of our time is the growing realization that we live far from where beauty first originates for us, namely in the earth itself. The religions inform us that God is the source of this beauty and, therefore, the creator of everything that exists. But religion itself has not been very successful in honoring its own deep insights.

We desire to live beautifully because that is what creation has modeled for us for billions of years. But being creatures who have so alienated ourselves from creation, with its foundational propensity for beauty, desire in our time has lost much of its beauty and its retrieval may well be the single greatest challenge facing humanity today.

Desire – all desire – belongs first and foremost to the cosmic realm of creation. It is the driving force within the intentionality that guides evolutionary becoming. In the words of Wayne Dyer, “intention is not something you do, but rather a force that exists in the universe as an invisible field of energy.” That which brought forth creative energy in the original flaring forth of the Big Bang, and sustained its emergence over several billions of years, is itself intention or desire (eros),. We can describe it as the power that energizes energy itself, infusing it with what some evolutionary scholars call “a preferred sense of direction,” persuasively illustrated by John Stewart as an unrelenting capacity for co-operation in which “Evolution itself evolves, and living processes get smarter at evolving.”

This foundational energy I call eros, the fiery fierce, yet subtly gentle, force that brings everything in creation into being. Veronica Goodchild discerns that the God, Eros, luks in the compelling desire of matter and spirit for each other to recover a lost wholeness. It abides in the depths of creative silence, ever manifesting as that which persuades being to transcend the polar force of non-being, what Swimme and Berry describe as the paradox of creation and destruction. On this paradoxical evolutionary movement hangs all hope and possibility from the deep ancient past to the present moment.

. . . Our desires are fuelled by the erotic urge through which everything comes into being, from the cosmic galactic structures to the tiny bacteria invisible to the human gaze. And the desiring heart is sustained and nourished by the beauty that radiates in creation’s elegant unfolding. . . . This is not always pleasant to our senses, but for those who can intuit the deeper meaning, there is beauty even in the chaos.

For more insights by Diarmuid Ó Murchú, see the previous Wild Reed posts:
A Little Too Fluid?
Reflections on Babel and the “Borders Within”
Thoughts on Celibacy (Part II)

See also:
James and Evelyn Whitehead’s thoughts on the “Eros of Anger” in the previous Wild Reed post The Passion of Christ (Part II)



Others highlighted in The Wild Reed’s “In the Garden of Spirituality” series include:
Zainab Salbi, Daniel Helminiak, Rod Cameron, Paul Collins, Joan Chittister, Toby Johnson, Joan Timmerman, Uta Ranke-Heinemanm, Caroline Jones, Ron Rolheiser, James C. Howell, Paul Coelho, Doris Lessing, Michael Morwood, Kenneth Stokes, Dody Donnelly, Adrian Smith and Henri Nouwen.

Images: Michael J. Bayly.