Ecology and Spirituality

August 16, 2009

Love Begins in Wonder

Filed under: Ecological Spirituality

Ireland lost one of its great mystics with the death of John O Donoghue in January of 2008.  For this wonderful philosopher and poet wonder kept every experience fresh and original.  In his book ‘Eternal Echoes’ he reminds us that “wonder is the child of mystery.  It calls your heart to thanks and praise.”  Wonder is our first and greatest treasure.  In fact it is at the very core of our existence.  Nurturing it is a life long spiritual quest. It is wonder that awakens us to the delight and rapture of being alive; to an awareness of and a relationship with the unknown, with mystery.  In opening to wonder and the encountering of mystery we are led into a way of living that embraces our rootedness and connectedness to all that is.

The language of spirituality is a language of relationship.  Relationship is our greatest challenge. It constantly encourages hospitality, the welcoming of difference, of the strangeness in myself and the stranger in the other.   Ecological spirituality invites an awareness of neighbour that includes all creation.  It is an embrace of the human story and earth story as one story.  The coming home to God cannot happen in isolation from the homecoming to oneself, to the other and to all life.

The language of the universe is a language beyond words, the language that Leonardo Boff describes as “sleeping in the stone, dreaming in the flower and becoming awake in humanity.”  It is a language of wonder, of the heart and the senses, of the trees and the rivers, the sunset and the dawn.  It is a language that finds the Divine signature in the landscapes of our hearts and of our earth. 

As we learn to co-operate with the Spirit of our inner and outer landscape we grow in appreciation of how we are a part of and not a part from the Body of Creation.  Jesus did not start and finish with his own story.  He needed Abraham, Mary of Nazareth and his disciples.  He also needed the landscape of his bioregion, the desert, the sea, the mountains, the birds of the air, the lilies in the field…..It was his outer landscape that shaped his inner world.  Out of the depths of his contemplation on the rhythm of his belonging in the Earth emerged his wonderful images of his belonging in God. 

The story is told of a telephone operator who each day received a call from a woman who requested the exact time. Finally the operator asked the caller why she phoned every day. "Because," responded the caller, "I am the woman responsible for ringing the Angelus bell at noon." "That is really strange," the operator replied, "because every day, exactly at noon. I set my watch by your bell."  This is a simple story and yet such an accurate parable of life. We are interdependent on one another.  Each life has more far-reaching effects on others than is often ever realised.  “Before you finished eating your breakfast this morning” said Martin Luther King Jn “you’ve depended on half the world. This is the way our universe is structured.”  Everything about who I am, how I live and the choices I make is connected to everything else. 

Thomas Berry says that “if creating a new culture for the ecological age is the next phase of our experience, creating an integral spirituality may well be the next phase of the Christian tradition.”  An ecological spirituality is a spirituality of interconnectedness.  It invites an awakening as Einstein says “from the delusion of separateness.” In every moment I can practice life-giving connections by consciously tracing the links connecting me with every other being. Any starting point is good – the weekly shopping basket being an ideal place to begin.  Love begins when we discover connection.  A positive or negative thought, an encouraging or discouraging word, choosing a Fair Trade product or not – each choice contributes to the quality of life for all.

In every moment each of us finds ourselves the locus of the kingdom of God, right at the point where the universe is breaking into a new form.  May we continually wonder at the Spirit erupting in the new, open to the extravagance of the unfolding, embrace the gift that is revealed and offer thanks for the diversity of ways the Word is constantly being made fresh and original.

©Mary Teresa McCormack

July 30, 2009

Embodied Word of God

Filed under: Healing Movement

Imagine a house with just one window and one view.  In our growing sprawl of built up areas this may not be so difficult.  This one view is maybe to the front, or the back, to the side of the house or maybe it is a view from a skylight window.  It’s not a bad view.  After all it is a view.  At least there is a window and there is nothing wrong with having one perspective but the danger is that someone may build next door and block my view.  Obviously having a house with many windows would allow us to see more and allow our vision to survive despite the blocking of a particular view.  Such a house would be a home for different perspectives.  We are fortunate as a Church that we have at least four Gospel perspectives on the life, vision and mission of Jesus. 

 

In the academic world we depend a lot on books, lectures, papers, research, projects in informing our knowledge about God.  Our prayer and reflection invite us into relationship with this God so that we do not reduce ourselves to simply accessing more knowledge about God but rather we get to know this God personally and allow God to know us.  It is my belief, rooted in my own experience that creative art forms are key tools in this journey from head to heart.  Art discloses a deeper level of meaning than that which is normally called forth from simply talk about God.  It has this power because by nature it is a symbolic form.  Paul Tillich describes the nature of symbols by identifying these characteristics:
1)      Symbols point beyond themselves to an absent reality.
2)      Symbols participate in the reality to which they point
3)      Symbols open up levels of that reality which would otherwise remain closed
4)      Symbols unlock dimensions and elements of one’s soul which correspond to the dimensions and elements of reality
5)      Symbols grow and they die
Symbols invite us into an encounter with reality that is not restricted to the intellectual.  Because a symbol is experiential it is transforming.  We become what we learn in the doing.  A major block to this kind of exploration is that kingdom living can be very far removed from the realities that surround us.  We are so pre-occupied with trying to live lives that a window on a different reality can seem impossible.  The Arts provide us with such a window, a world into which we can enter and in which we can find the meaning of our everyday living.[1]  In a world marked by injustice, abuse, violence and everything that is the antithesis of love there is a growing hunger for meaning in all of our lives but most specially in the lives of our younger people.  New wine needs new skins, skins capable of embracing their bubble, enthusiasm, vision and new life.  In order to play our role in bringing the transformational power of the Christian message into a world that needs every symbol that it can get of God’s love I believe that it is vital that as Christian educators that we be rooted and nourished in the realm of the experiential.  All we need do is look to Jesus to find a life and mission that flowed from such embodied knowing.Jesus the ‘Word’ breaks God out of the silence of the cosmos and into the flesh of of life.  

The prologue to the Gospel of John, a hymn to the embodiment of God’s presence in the world, speaks of the Word as “made flesh” and dwelling among us.  The term Word of God was commonly used in Jewish tradition.  It carried a sense of revelation, the Word of God revealed in creation, rooted in the Wisdom tradition and spoken through the prophets.  It was a Word to be proclaimed and intended action, not an intellectual term but a dynamic expression that meant effect.  “The Word is made flesh and dwells among us.” (John 1:14)  All the Jewish meanings of the term “Word” became present in Jesus.  He embodied “all that belongs to the power and presence of the Word of God.”[2]  God” became flesh” and “lived among us.”  In Jesus, God’s Word took on the fleshiness of existence.  God did not just speak the Word.  God enfleshed the Word.  “The doctrine of the incarnation literally means that God takes the flesh, matter and the world seriously – so seriously, in fact, that in Jesus the transcendent enters into the very processes of material existence.”[3]  I believe this to be the purpose of the Arts in the Breaking open of the Word of God, to take the flesh as seriously as God does, opening all of our bodies to God, as a locus for God’s Word to become flesh in us and to break through us into the world.

Wrapping her arms around the swell of new life within her, Mary of Narareth knew her body as the dwelling place of God, the Word and her flesh becoming one.  Because of her, the truth about God could, no longer be separated from the human situation.  She became a model for humanity to come home to the embodied Word, made fresh in each new unfolding moment.  With her we are invited to wrap our arms around the womb of the cosmos and listen again for the heartbeat of God speaking to us of the need to become the life we desire and beget the life that is our home.  For too long now, we have allowed ourselves to become entrapped in a disembodied theology.  In disembodying ourselves we have disembodied Jesus and so conditioned God’s love.  That first resurrection morning Mary Magdalene went with the other women to the tomb.  Seeing that the stone had been rolled away she pleaded with the man who she presumed to be the gardener to let her know if he knew of the location of Jesus’ body.  Having recognised him in the way he called her name, Jesus said to her “Do not cling to me” (John 20:17).  Why did Jesus use such a physical word – cling?  Would he have needed to have said it if there had not been a history of touch between them?  Mary is invited by Jesus not to “cling to” her old images of him.  No longer would she be able to hold him in his fleshy existence of “man” but rather would behold his presence and touch him in his ‘body risen’ in everything. 
So too we are invited with all those who encountered him after his resurrection to touch his ‘body risen.’  Whether he is cooking or walking with the Emmaus pair, breaking bread or inviting Thomas to touch his wounds the invitation is to experience him as ‘body risen,’  embodied in everything.  
©Mary Teresa McCormack
[1] Joan Carter, Postmodern Worship and the Arts

[2] Cletus Wessels, Jesus in the Universe Story

[3] Paul Collins, God’s Earth: Religion as it really mattered

Principles of the Universe

Filed under: Ecological Spirituality

What Thomas Berry refers to in these three principles is the interdependent dynamic energy that courses through every aspect of life, the three primordial patterns that are present in all levels of existence, the governing intentionality of all, the way the universe orders its creative display of energy everywhere, in everything and at any time – from the flaring forth of 13.7 billion years ago, right down to this present moment and onwards into every future expression of life.  Each of us is different from the other, each one of us a unique manifestation of the Divine.  We all have our own distinctive gifts.  This is the first of the three cosmological principles in its creative display of life.  It is known as the cosmic principle of differentiation (diversity).  We have each received the capacity to experience mystery and to give expression to this mystery through the voice within, the inner summons.  This is the cosmic principle of subjectivity (interiority, inner depths). We are not copies of one another but rather creative expressions of the Divine, of mystery, of life itself.  Together we are all bonded into a pattern of relationship.  This is the third principle – communion (community or interconnectedness).

From the Flaring Forth to the creation of the elements, from the galaxies to our solar system, down through time to our planet Earth, which as far as we know is the most highly, differentiated being in the universe, we experience the cosmological principle of differentiation at work.  From the shaping of the hydrogen atom to the first bacteria, from life in the ocean to our early ancestors who stood up in the plains life has been expanding into a greater complexity of being.  Increased subjectivity or self expression or self organisation led to increased complexity out of which unfolded the development of the human brain and self conscious awareness in the human.  And yet, nothing is completely itself without everything else.  We need one another.  We belong in communion. We need the human touch of love, the shoulder to cry on, a listening ear, the word of encouragement but we also need the feel of the earth beneath our feet, the gentle brush of the breeze, the warmth of sunshine on our face, water for life, water to soothe and refresh, nourishing food of the earth for our bodies, time to do and to be, stillness, moonlight, autumn time and spring time, death and new life… We belong within the web of life, a part of not apart from.

We live in a universe that is expanding all of the time.  This expansion is into diversity. We know we are all different and yet we so often we come before the other with certain expectations as to how he or she should be.  The cosmic principle of differentiation offers a wonderful invitation to surrender… to surrender to the overwhelming expression of diversity, to the abundance….to let everything and everyone break open my preconceptions, my narrow mindedness…. to allow the other, the stranger, the strangeness in myself and the strangeness in the other  to stretch and expand my loving.   It invites me to make room for the other, to be vulnerable before the limitations of myself and the other.  The invitation of Jesus of the Gospels was always into openness, into magnanimity, into experiencing the spaciousness of God, allowing the other, in all of his or her difference to stretch me and in so doing to expand my image of neighbour.  We have it all.  It is just that sometimes we just don’t know what to do with it…. so we play small.  We diminish the other and ourselves too, protecting ourselves from the lavishness of the gift that is offered.  It is like we want to tidy up the extravagance…. the too “muchness” of life, refusing to cast ourselves upon the abundance!

How does a conker know its potential is as a mighty horse chestnut tree?  It is because of the cosmic principle of subjectivity.  Subjectivity is an effort at naming the ability of each being to become itself.  It is about the interior dimension of things… the inner principle of being.   “This is the covenant that I will make with them says the Lord.  I will put my laws on their heart.”(Heb. 10:16)  Interiority is everything to do with listening to and faithfulness to the inner law that is written in the deep recesses of my own heart.  This has nothing to do with a law that is imposed from outside of me, a fitting into another’s will, another person’s understanding of what I should be or what I should become. Living within this principle I take my birthright of creativity seriously, trusting my own inner wisdom, my unique movement into God.  As I do so and because I do so I am challenged to trust, encourage and support the other’s unique creative expression, believing in and nurturing the natural, intrinsic, creative unfolding and becoming of all life forms. 

The third governing principle of the universe is communion.  Relationship is the essence of existence. Relationship is nothing to do with repression and being at war with myself.  Many of us here grew up in a religious tradition of rejection of body.  Our bodies were not to be trusted, they were experienced as barriers to life and the spiritual life becomes an exercise in dis-embodiment.  What we do not learn to love we can never learn to live for.  What we do not appreciate we will never want to save.   If my journey into life is about anything at all is must be about a welcoming of myself back into my own body and as I do so I will find my way back to the body of the earth, remembering and reclaiming my at one ness with all beings… that I am unique, different, wonderfully made, a creative expression of mystery, an equal member, with all members, in the sacred community of life….  becoming again what I always was – a vision of possibility….loved into being…in a universe that is always expanding, a universe in which and through which I am invited to partake in this expansion by risking my love…. now, in this moment… reckless loving… passionate loving from which I came and for which I am coming into being.

© Mary Teresa McCormack

A Dawning Consciousness

Filed under: Ecological Spirituality

The word “emerging” could best describe the journey into our understanding of the story of life – because our understanding is always emerging.  Different wisdom traditions down through time have played a significant role in the breaking open of this understanding – classical wisdom, feminine wisdom, indigenous wisdom and science wisdom.  In this new age of scientific knowledge we are now being invited into a renewed understanding and appreciation of our wondrous origin, of that stupendous explosion of energy that flared forth into being 13.7 billion years ago.  We are invited to allow the sacred story of the Universe to captivate our imagination, to follow its call into fullness of life as it weaves its way into our heart, mind, body and spirit so that nothing, nothing again separates us from the love for which each and every aspect of life is made. 

 

Under the Emperor Constantine in 313CE, Christian talk about God began its journey into being bound into institutional expressions that made words about God into absolutes.  The diversity of forms reality takes, the mysterious reality of the sacred body of God became reduced to a limited point of view, to a certain interpretation of Scripture and to specific formulations that, although they contain undeniable truths, do not exhaust the whole process through which truth unfolds.  Our images of God became enmeshed in a patriarchal structure, a structure that was dualistic in thinking and hierarchical in action.  It orientated us towards certitudes, separated body from spirit, just from unjust, masculine from feminine, heaven from earth.  It taught us to wish for heaven and to see our earth home as a “valley of tears,” a place that we are merely passing through rather than a source of Divine revelation.  It cut us off from our bodies and from our intimate belonging to the body of earth.  We learned to dream of heaven, while disassociating ourselves from the dream of earth.  But heaven is not our mother and our earliest relationship is not with an ideal heaven but with our mother’s body, earth’s body.  Christology became entrapped in a disembodied theology.  In disembodying ourselves we disembodied Jesus and so conditioned God’s love. 

 

But today a new consciousness is dawning.  There is a re-awakening to our real power as it emerges out of the shadows of patriarchy, a naming and letting go of images of God that are no longer life-giving.  In every social and religious system we see an unravelling of the human delusion of control.  This dawning realisation is deeper than thought, emotion or reason.  It is luring us into a renewed surrender to mystery and to the expanding vision of our sacred origin. We stand on a threshold moment.

 

What our world now needs are dreamers of this vision, dreamers who refuse to tame the wildness of the mystery. Dreamers who dare the surrender to the dream of earth, for it is here that we must go, as Jesus went for the guidance needed for the “great work” that lies ahead? Will we dare to go out beyond the boundaries of what we once knew and bring forward from the depths of our belonging to the community of life, the living story of our intimate connectedness to all life, refusing to be co-opted or domesticated by any political, economic, educational or religious system that threatens any aspect of the fabric of our planetary life and of the fullness of life that is the Divine inheritance of all?

 

©Mary Teresa McCormack (Luceat June 2009)

2009 Field of Dreams

Filed under: Meditation

I will live in the present. I will not obsessively think or talk about the past. I surrender an unknown future to the gift of simply being here, now, in this moment.


I will think positive thoughts.  I believe that each time I choose to do this I am honouring the gift of my own life and all life.


I will be grateful for whatever way life presents.  I trust in each new unfolding, opening my heart to learning from the most unlikely of teachers.


I will cultivate life-giving connections paying close attention to how each of my actions is intimately interconnected to all life on my planet home.



I will try not to deny, run away from or escape any aspect of who I am. I seek to experience the Sacred in everything.






















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