Christian Mystics

UPDATE!

Ok, it didn’t take long to figure this one out — why my page (and others) appear to have gone whacky. If you are looking at this site and find that the blog is “exploded” with items in wrong places or if you scroll down the right hand column and see RELATED ARTICLES with noting below it, BUT you see a number of related pages at the bottom of the page, you’re using Internet Exploder Explorer.

Rather than conform to standards common on the Net, Microsoft (and I know this is tough to imagine) has been changing their browser in hopes of nudging the coding market their way. It isn’t working. I looked at my various sites through Firefox, which I love, and even the new Google Chrome, which I like a lot except the opening page design but is jaw dropping in its speed. The results? In everything except IE, the sites look perfectly wonderful.

I know IE ships with Windows which is why it has a huge audience share, although on my own site it’s a distant 2nd at best. I know we all have a comfort zone on our computer, but I really would encourage you to try Firefox or, if you want another type of view, Google Chrome. I’d suggest Firefox because, frankly, I’m not so sure what’s behind Google sometimes in terms of privacy, but I base that on a few of the features and some of their other actions and could be mildly incorrect.

Anyway, be brave. Try Firefox and browse more quickly and safely. It’s a snap to install. Even for me.

Blessings,

Brian

Technorati Tags: internet exploder, internet explorer, IE, firefox, google chrome

Nicolaus Copernicus (19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was the first astronomer to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology, which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe. His epochal book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), published in 1543 just before he died, is often regarded as the starting point of modern astronomy and the defining epiphany that began the Scientific Revolution. His heliocentric model, with the sun at the center of the universe, demonstrated that the observed motions of celestial objects can be explained without putting the Earth at rest in the center of the universe. His work stimulated further scientific investigations, becoming a landmark in the history of modern science that is now often referred to as the Copernican Revolution.

Wikipedia

What I would like to suggest is that it is time, in Christianity, for a kind of Copernican Revolution that, curiously enough, brings us closer to the spirituality of Jesus.

We live in a world of competing religious ideas or, perhaps put more at the heart of it, apparently differing views. I would say that they are perhaps different like the same sentence spoken in French, English, Japanese and any of the other languages. They are speaking of something with words that are filtered through cultural bias and slant. What is at the base of many of these religious approaches? That is the question we must ask and answer truthfully and directly.

We cannot expect God in any real way to favor a particular religion and a specific place and time, as religion by and large tends to be geographical when you look at the numbers of devotees or followers. It makes no sense, as the later Christians said, that tens of millions born before Jesus plus those who have never heard his name, much less adding in those who otherwise did not profess their identity as a Christian, were going to spend eternity in Hell.

How do we deal with the fact that God speaks differing languages to others? As an example of the vast compassion and love of God who, thankfully, is not bound by our own prejudices, limitations, love of being exclusive, and more.

However, there is one additional factor, one that is what the metaphor fora Copernican Revolution calls for and one alluded to in my opening line.

A true revolution, the kind that Jesus termed the Kingdom of Heaven which was both within and around us if we had but eyes to see and hears to hear, flies in the face of established Christian thought as it veered away from Jesus’ spirit and teaching.  Jesus has been the center of things in the Church and in Christianity, when, in reality (or Reality) just as the earth was supplanted by the sun as the center of the Universe (from our point of view, of course), at the center of our universe must be God, not the dogmatic attempt to tie Jesus in and make him a kind of disguise for God, a notion he protested with his very soul .   “Why do you call me good? There is none good but the Father?” among other comments and actions.

How would Christianity be if God was at the center of your Universe? How would you feel about others, perhaps a Vedantist/Hindu, who also has God (as he or she can feel and know) in the center of his life as all else moves around it in celestial orbit? Would you see a different language of God and a follower of that to be akin to you, a fellow seeker whose journey is to be encouraged and supported, not denigrated and belittled as less than your own “right” way?

Since I was a child, meaning as early on as I can remember, my prayers were straight to God, my sense of Presence that appeared in my later years was felt to be that as opposed to a Jesus or a Buddha or a Krishna. I also, later, found myself awed not by God favoring my team, as it were, (white, United States of America, my particular Church), but, rather, the startling universal compassion  which Jesus spoke of constantly and said was right here and right now available to us.

So, perhaps it is not time. Perhaps it does not speak to you.  All that is fine.  But for myself, anyway, the power of a Christian’s Copernican Revolution is Jesus’ desired revolution in the vision and Presence in this world.

May you find Peace,
Brian

Technorati Tags: copernicus, jesus, christianity, christian mystic, christian mysticism, mystic, buddha, krishna, vedanta, compassion, knowing God

I just recently became aware of an astonishing new tool for the net from Pluck or, more correctly, Pluck On Demand. The results you can find in the bottom of the right hand column.

What Pluck does is to read a blog and pull from it keywords. It then goes to search in some 4,000,000 articles from such sources as great blog writers (who have to be approved and show their skill), encyclopedias, videos and more and pulls back to me the most interesting articles that usually (very usually!) might be of interest to you as a visitor. Some will be factual, some opinion just as some will be ones you agree with and some you may disagree with. All are worth discovering and investigating and they change, bringing in new information and ponderings. Keep in mind that if you come across an article that criticizes or challenges the way you think, meet it with gratitude. Having to think about our beliefs and experience makes us clarify our thinking and moves us along the path, even though we may disagree with the article!

Does it work well? When I set it up and got things working, the articles it pulled up included things on Christian meditation, meditation breathing techniques, angels, early Christianity and even encyclopedia entries on certain mystics and on terms.

I hope you find it be of interest! It’ll be growing to include comments and, I hope, a more enhanced sense of community amongst visitors to this and other sites with similar topics.

Blessing,

Brian

Technorati Tags: pluck, syndication, pluck on demand

In the most recent entry here, I talked about the first of two problems with Christianity today — the clinging to the worldview of the First Century that the world is a kind of mechanistic construct, a machine, rather than something more akin to organic, living.

One other problem that lies within Christianity is something I’ve mentioned before — the change of the spirituality OF Jesus to the spirituality ABOUT Jesus. In that radical shift, one has to glean from the various sources what are closest to the words of Jesus and to the remarkable character of Jesus that peers out at us, often from behind constructs designed to support the Church’s existence and power, not to support and enhance the individual’s movement toward recognizing and celebrating the immediate Presence of the Kingdom of Heaven both within us and in this world right now.

The latter is what Jesus taught — not the importance of a religion which, according to some of his harshest words, are like sepulchers — well tended on the outside but, inside, full of dead mens bones. One of the groups identifiable in the New Testament story responsible for Jesus’ death was the religious right of it’s time, those who insisted on clinging to the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law. Those who would set up lofty goals by which people were to be judged as  religious or not and those who identified such goals as future-oriented, to be found in the created image of Jesus that awarded the growing orthodox Church absolute power in such things as penance, morals, and the right to kill or tortureor damn  those who did not toe the line. Frequently those were the ones — often identified as mystics such as Meister Eckhart and the list goes on and on — to whom each one of us is grateful for preserving as best she or he could the inner message of Jesus beneath the self-serving self-perpetuating veneer given to Christianity by its leaders.

The discovery in 1945 of the Gospel of Thomas intact (although at first it was misrepresented at a heretical gnostic gospel, which it plainly isn’t) took us back as if in a time machine to a period which I had grown up believing showed the unified block of believers with a lunatic fringe trying to take the train off the tracks. Instead, we had a wide range of communities dedicated to Jesus’ teachings and the interpretations. Today, the lunatic fringe is driving the train of their own design.

What you know to be true — what you feel in your heart that resonates with Jesus’ words when they are not being forced into his mouth to justify the cornerstone of this or that particular community — as in Peter in some traditions and James (the brother of Jesus) in another and Paul in a third — you are drawing close to Jesus’s heart of compassion as well as passion, of vision as well as insight, of encouragement instead of damnation.

All of the last three may very well be nothing except the briefest of summaries of what I’ve learned in over 55 years of living, of reading, of questioning, of experiencing and, even if they are “true” at best I can say that I believe they are true for me and that I am still growing, still deepening my searches. I think it doesn’t matter to God in the long run which branch of Christianity or which other Tribal identity you have when it comes to Religion. What matters is that the church, just like each one of us, should be there to encourage and to facilitate and to bless those who pass by on the path toward God, giving a temporary respite if needed and an embrace, words of support and joy at a prodigal son or daughter that one has had the pleasure, the uplifting and sweet pleasure, of knowing along the way.

Technorati Tags: christian mystic, mystic, spiritual path, church, jesus christ, what is the church’s role, on being a believer, be passersby

There are two big problems at the heart of Christianity, the religion, and both of them contribute to the reluctance and even inability to come to see the kinds of things I mentioned in Pt. 1 (and thanks for the continuing comments and email!).

These two things are related and if you keep them in mind as a kind of compass to get your bearings you’ll go a long way toward unraveling the problems I’ve alluded to.

First, much of Christianity is based on people’s perceptions of the Universe as held at the time of Christianity’s formative years. Without going into too much detail, the situation is this — much of what followed in Christian Theology assumed the world was a Mechanistic Universe — a machine. God sat at the controls because, well, He build the machine. If one pressed these buttons — the right belief, the correct creed, the winning view of Jesus — then after a great deal of grinding and whirring, out would come the ticket to Heaven.  As an aside, most of this took place in a kind of three-tiered universe that consisted of Heaven above, Hell below, and this veil of tears stuck in the middle.

But the Universe was not universally thought of as being something that could be delivered from a Sears and Roebuck catalog. The idea that you had to buy into the concept of the Universe as a Machine also limited God to a certain time and place with God’s role being the foreman of the plant. Such a view was, to put it mildly a rather peculiar bent in the greater Eastern world.

The Universe, said others with a bit more experience in such things, is not mechanical but, rather, organic. The Universe is alive and intertwining, not dead and segmented, and that which is alive is the very Consciousness I spoke of in my last blog entry. By that I mean that God is a living process — verb, not noun — but I do not mean to even suggest that it is an impersonal process as in a machine, for that takes us back to the mechanistic view of things. Ultimate Consciousness is a process at the depths of which we can find the qualities associated with God — Compassion, Love, Intelligence and Divine Presence.

Think about it — unlike the passionate history of mystics both in and out of Christianity, nobody commits their love, their adoration and their fascination t0 a mere machine. There are relatively few hymns written to a machine or an impersonal, cold and orderly process. Throughout history and culture, participation in the process of Consciousness, however, is something altogether different. That is because our hearts are made to vibrate at the same frequency, as it were, with God, and in those moments of being struck by the absolute beauty of a sunset, the Presence of God in early morning hours before the world’s layer of activity and distraction are piled on, the look of your loved one, the glance at a child’s play and countless other opportunities that you yourself recognize as being “in the flow” or having direct access to the spiritual touchstone for your soul.

But, again, when one looks at Christianity’s history (and much of it as an organized religion is not pretty) ask yourself — is this seeing God as mechanistic or organic? What implications does it have to see it one or the other? Which one matches your own experiences?

At the beginning, I said there were two things, mechanistic vs. organic being the first.  I’ll get to the other in my next entry as I wasn’t expecting to prattle on this long!

Blessings,

Brian

Technorati Tags: christian mystic, mysticism, heaven, hell, mechanistic view, organic, compassion, consciousness

Now and then, I get an email that asks a particular question that I get asked quite often, although it does show up in slightly different forms. The question comes down to this: “Ok, so what do you think God is?” I suspect most of the time I can hear an unspoken phrase at the end:  “Mr. Smartypants!”

I will actually try to give you an honest answer although right up front I have to admit I can only tell you or try to tell you what I’ve come to understand. Like any spiritual traveler, great faith is a must — but so is great doubt! So, this is where I stand right now in this journey:

First, I don’t find it helpful to think of God as a noun but, rather, as a verb. God is not a He or a She or an It, that would be misleading — although, of course, many people feel quite comfortable with one of those labels and, I say, not?  Still, I go back to my point — God is not a noun, but a verb. God is not an object, but, rather, a process. God is a process that goes on constantly, everywhere, and either we realize our own selves to be verbs and part of that grand process, or we don’t.  Indeed, most of the time I kind of just plod along, but, now and then, I can see it quite clearly.

Explaining it is something else again.

Just what that the process (or verb) is, of course, becomes much trickier, and I find myself in a place where words begin to become much less reliable. I will say it as concisely as possible, although it opens up a vast vista of trying to explain, which I won’t do. I believe the underlying process of the universe from here to there and beyond is simply  this — Conscious creating itself.

Stick with me on this. If one takes that insight as a starting point, even a simple walk becomes quite a spiritual event. There are trees and people, flowers and birds, the wind and the rain, but if one looks a bit out of the corner of one’s eye, active in the largest tree down to the smallest atom is hidden in the sidewalk under one’s feet is a dance in which the dancer is not blind movement of physics in a equation on a blackboard but, instead, Consciousness. The process of Consciousness manifests in ways that can delight or frighten; awe us into silence or,  in a voice or the face of a loved one or a complete stranger or a voice singing, move us to tears.

Scientists and religious Fundamentalists are both trapped not in the heart of Jesus’ teachings but, instead, the philosophy of Materialism. Owning a theory in the lab or holding a golden ticket to Heaven because of being in with the “right” crowd aren’t about spiritual things and perceptions at all. More often, it’s about saving one’s backside and what it does is the opposite of knowing “the Truth that will set you free” and more about limiting one’s life and, at the same time, limiting God’s astonishing work.

We are made in the image of God. That’s not to say God wears glasses and has a beard because I do.  It’s much more intimate. We are animated by life, and life was breathed into us from God, at least according to the Traditional explanation and I think it’s a poetic truth that points to a greater Truth.

We can walk down the street and see the tree growing and giving off oxygen to keep us alive, the tree that is made up of sunlight and rain, of earth and water, carbon dioxide and soil and, in fact, just about everything except an absolutely independent thing that we would call a tree. Any of those ingredients could be taken away and, quite simply, the Tree would not be there — and in it and through it we see the magnificent interdependency that is bound together by a great Consciousness.

But suppose, just suppose, that when you see that tree you see Consciousness at work creating itself, just as you can see it in the bird that flies from the branch above your head or the harried person stomping down the sidewalk arguing into a cell phone. If God, or Consciousness, is creating itself here and there, the big game is that we are being created as well and, to a certain extent, we are doing our own creating. You can see it in science.  Quantum physics makes the absurd point (which happens to be true) that a partial or a wave can be either one or the other because of your process of observation and expectation.

But to get back on the ground a bit. If it is difficult for you to see that God permeates this world and all other words seen and unseen by our faculties, then are you saying that God made the world like I make a chair and then had no further involvement? Are you seriously maintaining that God is omnipresent and total except not in the sunset or in the bird or in the tree or in each of us? If so, forgive me, but it seems like a rather inferior view of God, presumptuous in its limitations we impose or project.

What have you got to lose?  Try it. Realize that God is a process and Love can be one medium. In the big picture, however, Consciousness is that process, and it operates at each moment and in every part of this Universe, both seen and invisible to us. Further, Consciousness creates itself anew in each moment - every touch, tear and cry. Further, we are a process as well, as anyone who looks at their life with honesty will have to agree — we are not the five year old we were those many years ago entering public school. Good grief, we are not even the cells in our body from this time last year.

What we are, though, hidden and shrouded by this life and this body is a consciousness that can be in tune with Consciousness. The miracle is that with all the changes we go through, we don’t fly off in all directions but are would around a central core of Identity and Being, a soul, a consciousness that acts and is the most real part of who we are.

In fact, although this is not what I wanted to get into, I will mention it anyway:

There is much of our life that we will lose sooner or later - friends, loved ones, money, status, that brand new Mercedes or that prized first dollar we made in business. What we will not lose, what we can only become more and more of, is that which remains as we continue on our journey from this life. That breath of God that has mingled with our own individual self, that consciousness that is ours with it’s small “c”  finds itself cradled by and drawn toward that Consciousness (note: large “C”) and we respond to it and we are, at the end of this life, to continue clothed in the only essential part of our deepest identity.

What this means, actually, is that we can never be lost, none of us, by dying to this life and its shedding of our existent senses, for in this we will have found a kind of freedom that tells us that we were created for one purpose — to know God and to participate in the process of Consciousness creating itself.

Technorati Tags: consciousness, god, christian, christian mystic, mystic christian, christianity, death, dying

A very kind reader of this site — a long time reader — had a great suggestion in an email to me for an open thread, hoping to get a take on what readers here think.

“On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” 28 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” 29 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ.” 30 Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. ”

Mark 8:27-30

Now, I’d like to suggest this is a version endorsed by the powers that be in one community of early Christians. For another take, one might look at the Gospel 0f Thomas which has been mentioned many times elsewhere on this site.

Jesus said to his disciples, “Compare me to something and tell me what I am like.”

Simon Peter said to him, “You are like a just messenger.”

Matthew said to him, “You are like a wise philosopher.”

Thomas said to him, “Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like.”

Jesus said, “I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended.”

And he took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him. When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, “What did Jesus say to you?”

Thomas said to them, “If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you.”

Now, these are two very different approaches to the story, but the question the reader wanted to open up to those who come here is this question by Jesus, “Who do you say I am?”

I have to bring up one point — tolerance and understanding in the answers and any exchanges that take place or the comments won’t be approved.

Blessings,

Rev. Brian

Technorati Tags: jesus, jesus christ, gospel of thomas, christian mystics, mystics, christian mysticism, jesus

Open Thread — Feel free to comment.

A very simple something popped into my head this morning because of all the news that’s dribbling out about what our country has been doing for the past few years.

The question?  Who would Jesus tortue?

Blessings,

Brian

Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

We were created by God to be an example of His love and we are challenged to be visible symbols of that divine love. Transformation is a vehicle that carries us to the Kingdom of God. Our loving nature allows us to look deeply at our beloved and those around us. The peace in our heart gives us the ability to let go of our misperceptions. We look at others and know that there is deep suffering in them. We are able to be with them without blame, shame, or judgment. As we look deeply and begin to understand the nature of pain in those around us, we are able to be there with them in their place of suffering. We offer them our true presence with love and with kindness.

Loving-kindness is a gentle spirit that whispers healing into the lives of others. Loving-kindness transforms who we are in this very moment.

Hear the bell of God calling.

Breathing in, I feel loving-kindness.
Breathing out, I give love.

The Mindful Christian
By Diane Strausser

All of this makes me recall one of my favorite quotes from one of the great Christian Mystics, Julian of Norwich:

“Our wounds become the womb.”

Anger breeds more anger. Violence begets violence. Greed moves the line, pushes it, and opens the door to more greed which, because of our interdependence in life, ripples throughout our civilization (or lack thereof!). When we are angry, when we are let down by other people, we tend to see ourselves as the victim, as the person on which “evil forces” are operating, or at least the problems of another acting upon us. But when we look deeply into the question, we are to blame for our own reactions, positive or negative. We can choose to let our wounds become a womb for our own anger and indifference.

It’s no coincidence that articles are popping up everywhere that talk about the mass exit of Americans from religion. I believe that these people are not fleeing spirituality as much as religion, because religion’s only answers really are to believe this or that dogma and things will be fine. I don’t believe Jesus saw the world that way, but saw it as an invitation to an active, ongoing, mystical feast that required not passive acceptance of rules and regulations but active searching and serving those around us, because how else are we going to find God, where else, if we don’t find God in the other person and, perhaps more signficantly, in the love that exists in understanding and being totally and truely with the person?

Mother Teresa said once, “God is love in action,” and I think that definition reminds me of something Alan Watts said to me — wind is a wonderful thing, but you can’t put it in a box and wrap it up and send it to a friend — it isn’t wind any more. God In A Box isn’t God, either, to my way of thinking, but, rather, a presumptuous attitude on our parts that we can wrap around God’s being, intent, actions and depth. It’s a little like saying a wave has the total and complete knowledge of the ocean of which it itself is a part.

Technorati Tags: christian mystic, christian mysticism, mysticism, knowing god, mother teresa, diane strausser, julian of norwich

First, the numbers:

So, what are we to gather from this?  The sad message is that the more often one attends religious services and the more Evangelical one is, the more one is in favor of using torture.

It’s that simple and that disturbing.

Where does this kind of thing, this idea that I think hits most people who are involved with the spirituality OF Jesus and not the religion ABOUT Jesus right square in the gut as being wrong, wrong, wrong.  Take, however, a page from the Fundamental playbook — their love of that questionable book of the Bible, Revelations:

They were told not to damage the grass of the earth or any green growth or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were allowed to torture them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torture was like the torture of a scorpion when it stings someone.
-Revelation 9:4,5, NRSV

No one is saying that people who are out to harm other people cannot or should not be searched for, and quite often information from an individual will lead to another connection which leads to another connection, etc. But keep in mind the retired General who, speaking the other day, said the information was almost always unreliable — people will say what the can to get the pain to stop — but that he, in his experience, ended up with far more useable information with a cup of coffee and cigarettes.  And not cigarettes applied to the sole of one’s bare foot.

If 54% of Christians attending services at least weekly say torture is and can be justified, they have a vision that I don’t share and, I suspect, many or most of you don’t share. Is there any wonder — and this is the key point — that those who seek the Presence of God and a deeper undersetanding of the mystery, wonder and challenge of Jesus’ teachings work from a central core of belief in Jesus’ teachings and God’s Love that shapes their spiritual profile, as it were. Those who search only for the seal of God on the forehead of another are bent in a direction that goes the other direction from a Christian mystic and, ultimately, from the life and teachings of Jesus whom they profess to worship.

Peace,
Rev. Brian

Technorati Tags: christian mystics, mystics, christian mysticism, torture, evangelical, fundamentalist, approving torture, divine love