Table of Contents | I have been chastised by several respondents who took umbrage at some of the words I used to describe "my spiritual journey." They stopped just short of the shrill screech that I warned is beyond the pale of acceptability. The verbal assault is somewhere between in una voce viva and in una voce forte. So I am responding though I doubt that anything other than repentance over my wicked ways will suffice. I wrote, "...I am not primarily concerned any more with Jesus and who he is." The writer must have ended his reading of my story here. His rantings suggest as much! "How can you claim to be a Christian while turning your back on Jesus? You had better repent and give your heart to Jesus as your savior or you'll go to hell...." Not quite a screech but borderline! I have come to this perspective within the framework of my trek toward "the great mystery" at the core of my faith. Over the years I have struggled with the claim of uniqueness in my own tradition (click on my "Room to Question." Go to 12. Is Message Unique? and read my answer to this question). I have given considerable thought to Islam but my conclusions about my own stance aren't rooted in a careful study of the world's religions. Huston Smith has stimulated my reflection with his book entitled The World's Religions. But I remain a novice in this field. My perspective is the result of two major convictions. The first one comes from a careful and deliberate examination of Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces wherein he convinced me that all religions are human constructs. Gordon Kaufman of Harvard University Divinity School uses the phrase "imaginative human construct" in agreeing with Campbell. The other conviction emerged from my encounter with "the new cosmology." Brian Swimme's considerable gifts of explanation in The Universe Is A Green Dragon and his collaboration with Thomas Berry in The Universe Story were the coup d'etat for my provincial understanding. Even as my limited world imploded my larger universe exploded with amazing and astounding insight. I could no longer deny the implications of these new concerns. Cogito ergo assensio. While this may seem to my detractors as argumentum ad hominem, Bill Moyers has had a similar journey. He writes about coming to see that "all the great religions grapple with things that matter, although each may come out at a different place; that each arises from within and expresses a lived human experience; and that each and every one of them offers a unique insight into human nature." Surely his critics (and mine!) will consider the wisdom of his insight. He goes on to write, "Buddhists have taught me about the delight of contemplation and 'the infinite within.' From Muslims I have learned about the nature of surrender, from Jews about the power of prophetic conscience, from Hindus about 'realms of gold hidden in the depths of our hearts,' from Confucianists about the empathy necessary to sustain the fragile web of civilization. Nothing I take from them has come at the expense of the Christian story....I confess there is something liberating about no longer being quite so deaf to what others have to report from their own experience. They have led me away from condescending toleration of other faiths to an anticipation and affirmation of positive engagement with them. They have led me to the understanding so beautifully expressed by Kathleen Norris in one of her poems when she says, 'We are all God's chosen now,' and in the next breath prays, 'God help us because we are.'" (1) That's my defense. But unanswered is my primary focus. In my seeking I found Jesus was a distant relative, at best, of the Jesus of my earlier years. With mind and heart open to new light and insight, I found that he is "a subversive poet" with an "alternative social vision!" Or, if you prefer, I glimpsed "a subversive story-teller" with a unique gift for framing a counter-world with pithy sayings, aphorisms and parables, a counter-world he called the Empire of God and scholars call his "alternative social vision." In effect, according to Marcus J. Borg in The Heart of Christianity, Jesus says, "Faith is not about me" and then points beyond himself to God -- to God and that counter-world of unfailing justice, full inclusion, authentic freedom, unutterable love and compassion, astounding forgiveness, sheer grace and peace. That's why he isn't my primary focus anymore. He is pointing me to a gospel that turns the domination systems of every Empire of Rome upside down and sets the peaceable domain of God right side up. He keeps assuring everyone that the entrance to that counter-world of grace is standing ajar. So, after all these years, I see it. It's parallel to what Arundhati Roy called "a sharp, compelling sense of community." (2) I see it because of him! I now understand this human Jesus as companion for my journey, model for my life, the symbol of God and the way to the eternal embrace of God's love. And his vision of God's counter-world is the focus of my "sacred journey." No one has expressed my vision of this Jesus better than Susan M. Elliott: "Follow the man who proclaimed hope so intensely and loved so explosively and lived so fully in the power of God that his crucifixion transformed the sign of ultimate terror in his time into a witness to the victory of life." (3) Moyers' personal story can throw light on those dark religious conflicts that have threatened our life as a people. As far as I am concerned any religious tradition that seeks to create a sense of the holy, that uses language, particularly liturgical language, "clunky words that stumble in the presence of mystery," says Marcus Borg in The Heart of Christianity, to mediate the sacred and that refuses to set us free for any madness that ignores or rejects any part of God's cosmos is a pathway to a future of justice, peace and respect between all nations, cultures and people. If that is unacceptable heresy then I am sad but not despairing. Moreover, I don't wish to issue a "manifesto;" this is my "affirmation." The truth is that I remain committed to this future no matter what the trends or the critics. Whether I am winning or losing can't shake my vision. I sense that future in the renewed day born from night and in the new spring that rises from each winter. I am not even repentant! ---------- (1) See Bill Moyers, Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times, pp. 58-59 (reported by Martin Marty in Context, November, 2004, Part A, pp. 3-4). (2) This illuminating phrase is from an essay called In Memory of Shankar Guha Niyogi by Arundhati Roy in An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire. In Gaia and God Rosemary Radford Ruether uses a biological metaphor to describe a future of vulnerability, limits and interdependency. That's the counter-world of Jesus. As I promised, I shall keep pointing to that counterworld of grace! (3) See her article in The Fourth R, July-August, 2004, pp. 9-15. Contact me at BobSueSand@aol.com if you wish. |