The original Christmas rituals wrapped the darkest day of the year with the birth of a tiny light in this very dark season of Advent judgement—a single candle, a new star in the midnight sky, a tiny babe born in extreme poverty, an intrusion of something dangerous to the dark powers of degraded government. Even this inconspicuous tiny beginning of hope, the powers of darkness sought to kill.

The good-news narrative of Matthew envisioned the true wisdom of the world coming to visit this birth. And the good-news narrative of Luke envisioned poor nighttime sheep keepers joining the party.

This has been an especially dark Advent season for me. The biggest, richest, greediest corporations on the surface of the planet are doing cartwheels of delight over the president-elect of my nation, a man who claims that the climate crisis is a hoax. But I groan in grief that adequate action to moderate the most horrific crisis humanity has ever faced may be still further delayed. In addition, I see the prospects for relieving poverty and low wages being neglected and billionaires. further empowered I also see backward motion on finishing the overthrow of our unacknowledged and unconfessed minority enslavements and patriarchal oppressions.

I even groan over the unconsciousness of the population of my own Texas county, of my own mostly good-hearted neighbors, 1 out of 2 of whom did not even vote, and of those who did vote, 4 out of 5 voted for the dark side. Such are my surroundings as I light my Christmas candle on the darkest day of the annual calendar,

All rituals are, of course, sort of silly. It is only the darkest day in the northern hemisphere, and those Medieval ritual makers missed December 21st by four days. But silly rituals can sometimes point beyond themselves to the dynamics of life that matter most. So what is this tiny Christmas hope all about?

Our first good-news narrative, accredited to someone named “Mark,” did not tell of a baby’s virgin birth, but of a “heavenly” second birth of a poor roof-repair man being doused by a wild man in the waters of the river Jordan. Both John and Jesus apparently gave this ritual the meaning of washing away the cruel darkness of grim estrangements gripping that out-of-the-way religious people of ancient origins. When in Mark’s story, Jesus came up out of that washing, the very heavens announced him as another real threat to the evil powers of the world. Being such a hope for the downtrodden and such a peril to the establishment hypocrites drove Jesus to undergo a long fast, in which he grappled with his possible vocations. In the wilderness, alone, with only wild nature and enigmatic angels to comfort him, Jesus decided to take on his dangerous vocation. This was Mark’s new birth of hope. The rest of Mark’s narrative reveals the “secret” of this new hope. And here it is. When we die to our clinging to all our temporal devotions, we are left with the resurrection of our authenticity.

The fourth good-news narrative, accredited to someone named “John,” told of a “virgin birth” that can happen to any of us who choose to join Jesus in his mode of living.

What then is this “virgin birth” that anyone can share? Well, it turns out that it is simply this: When we die to our clinging to all our temporal devotions, we are left with the resurrection of our authenticity. When that has taken place, we are born of Final Realty—freed from our parental upbringing and open for the real future we face. This is the virgin birth. This is the hope of Christmas. This is the core healing of the dark powers of the world, and the dawn of the Final Commonwealth of Ultimate Realism.

How is this so? If by this “virgin birth” we are freed from the powers of the past and open for the future, whatever that future may be, we are participating in the solution to any and every cruel problem that needs to be solved.

For example, here is the virgin-birth contribution to the moderation of the climate crisis—dying to the need for fossil fuels and open for a future with only sunshine to power the lives of the many billions. This will include more dying and openness that goes along with the climate crisis. We will need to die to having billionaires and grueling poverty, and be open for an economic justice that includes everybody—blacks, whites, browns, yellows, reds, greens, women, men, and any other color or gender or culture.

It may seem strange that all this begins with a few million virgin births, but that is just the way it is. Without these virgin births the same old karma carries us into the abyss of disintegration and total despair. But when the millions and billions share in the virgin birth, anything is possible. When the virgin born say, “Move!” to our mountains of wrong, those mountains simply move. The demons will cry out in wild backlashes, but they are on the wrong side of realism. Reality always wins in the end. The virgin born get to choose how they would like for Reality to win. The cosmic power that the virgin born breathe and live, can enable these surprising but ordinary folk to claim the victories that they are willing to live and die for.

Sure, the future will be a surprise, for many other forces are at play than the historical forces of the virgin born; nevertheless, the future will be very different because the virgin born live their lives and do their doing.

For more 21st Century theologizing on these core topics, I recommend the following essay on the controversial topic of “God” and Part One of my revised commentary on the Gospel of Mark:

The “Death of God” Conversation

http://www.realisticliving.org/PDF/0NextChristianity/1GodDeathResurrection.pdf

Mark Commentary: Part One
Cross and Resurrection

a commentary on the last three chapters
of the Gospel of Mark

http://www.realisticliving.org/PDF/MarkCrossResurrection.pdf

The post The Darkest Day of the Year and the Virgin Birth first appeared on Realistic Living.

So, we don’t know where we have been, or where we are, or where we are going. We do have images and perhaps careful thought and plans about all of that, but none of those rational products provide certainty. The sheer MYSTERY of it all is our only complete certainty.

Christian faith includes trusting that very MYSTERY that anyone and everyone can know about and have certainty about if they will only admit their ignorance and stop assuming total certainty for their models of thought with which they express and exclude aspects of that MYSTERY. This strange certainty that there is no complete certainty graspable by a human mind is, paradoxically, a type of certainty that we can absolutely count upon.

Trusting that this MYSTERY is friendly toward us is an additional type of certainty. It is a risk into the unknown for which we have no rational proof. But we have no rational proof that this MYSTERY is not trustworthy. Of course, we do find it true that the MYSTERY is not trustworthy to operate entirely in accord with our preferences, hopes, neuroses, plans, moralities, social conditioning, personality constructions, loves, hates, passions, intuitions, fears, anxieties, despairs, horrors, or any other aspect of our temporal modes of evaluation. Trusting the MYSTERY means surrendering all of our temporal modes of evaluation. This surrender is experienced as a kind of certainty.

Such paradoxical certainty is the key to understanding properly the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Innocence. They ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil of which Absolute Realism forbid them to eat. Our healing, rescue, or redemption from the Adam and Eve fall from innocence entails vomiting up that fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Trusting the MYSTERY means a return to full and complete ignorance about good and evil. All our choices become ambiguous. We never know if we are doing the right thing, No law is absolute. No teaching is absolute. No social conditioning is absolute. No fabric of consciousness is absolute. No intuition is absolute. No body-wisdom is absolute. Nothing! We have nothing but total ignorance on the topic of good and evil. According to Christian witnessing the Holy Name for this state of being is called “Freedom.”

Trust and Freedom are two aspects of the same Holy Spirit,
the same authentic humanity, the same primal innocence.

And a third aspect of Holy Spirit also exists as part of that Trust/Freedom state-of-being human. The name of this third aspect of Holy Spirit is “Love”—Spirit Love, Love of the MYSTERY, Love of the neighboring beings as we love our own beings, compassion to be with the joys and horrors of our own life, as well as with the joys and horrors of other people’s lives. Such Spirit Love is a deep experience, and it is a profound commandment to actually live our essential humanity. The Holy Spirit is a gift of our “creation” and Holy Spirit is a gift of our redemption or restoration to that essential humanity. Holy Spirit is simply our essential being. This Holy Spirit is simply there when all our escapes from the simply there have ceased to hide this essence. After the restoration of this gift, this Trust/Love/Freedom demands to be lived by the ones to whom this restoration has happened. Not living this gift of Holy Spirit means a return to slavery and mistrust, as well as malice, envy, avarice, greed, sloth, arrogance, pride, and every other deadliness of un-love, mistrust, and non-freedom.

So what does all this have to do with “God,” as that word is used in Christian theologizing? One of the faces of “God,” in the Christian view of God, is this Holy Spirit that we can access within our own beings. Another face of “God” is that MYSTERY we pointed to above. To call that MYSTERY by the name “God” means that we trust that MYSTERY as our ultimate devotion. It does not mean that there is a Big Person sitting back there in a second realm of things. That double-deck thinking is simply story-book talk that works somewhat for the childhood of our upbringing. As true adults, we can now be absolutely atheistic about any supposed need to believe in a second realm of Gods, Goddesses, angels, devils, and all other such supposed populations. In a true understanding of the biblical texts, “God” is simply that MYSTERY that we all face and that can be, according to the Christian good news, be understood as being for us in everything that happens to us—including our death, suffering, limitations, opportunities, joys, and our horrific as well as glorious possibilities and challenges. For Christian faith, nothing more need be said about that MYSTERY than its trustworthiness. And this trust in the trustworthiness of the MYSTERY is what Martin Luther was pointed to with his assertions that “redemption” happens not by achievements of good works but “by faith alone.” To be redeemed, nothing needs to be done by us, except trusting the trustworthiness of the Mystery.

So how is Jesus as the Christ (Messiah) also a face of “God” in the Christian elaboration of this devotional word “God.” Let us look at the literary story of Jesus (as portrayed in the fictional narratives of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John). These minimally historical narratives were composed not as biography, but simply to tell us what it looks like to live in that Trust, Love, and Freedom that results from of our trusting obedience to the MYSTERY. In these narratives we see the 12 disciples and an uncounted group of women followers becoming excited, confused, and eventually horrified by following this spirited Jesus. In the end, having experienced compete despair over what they thought they were following, they found themselves moving beyond the hell of this despair into a life that they called “resurrection”—resurrection from the dead, resurrection from the horrific estrangements of the devilish world of which they were members, resurrection form their temporal hopes (that were also temporal fears) to a new quality of hope that cannot disappoint because it is a hope for that MYSTERY to remain a MYSTERY that forgives us, supports us, and loves us completely. This basic message of good news is said to reveal the nature of the MYSTERY—that is, that this MYSTERY can be our ultimate devotion—our “God.”

In the event of encountering Jesus we meet the MYSTERY that loves us. Jesus, seen as the final coming of our essential humanity, is also a face of our ultimate devotion. Jesus Christ is a face of “God,” a never absent part of the dynamic of our ultimate devotion to the MYSTERY and to how that MYSTERY is love for us and therefore can be loved by us in return.

This ordinary, fully human, fully temporal, suffering, dying Jesus is, in spite of all of that temporal humiliation (as well as because of all of that down-to-Earth humanness), a revelation of the MYSTERY’s love for us. In that sense, Jesus showed us that the MYSTERY was God for us. In the face of Jesus these healed ones saw their God. Whoever truly sees Jesus sees God—sees the nature of the MYSTERY. This is the claim. And now on the other side of this death and this resurrection, the essence of Jesus walks among us, eats fish, feeds us fish, lives on among us as a member of our group of trusters. And get this full paradox, this trusted Jesus also lives in a “right elbow” association with the trusted MYSTERY. In other words, the Jesus-presence-among-us is understood as fully human and, you may not believe this, fully God. In so far as we share in this presence of authentic humanity depicted in Jesus as Christ, we are also, you may not believe this either, both fully human and fully God. That is, anyone who has eyes to see any one of us as a trusting person sees the trustworthiness of the MYSTERY. This human/God paradox is an essential part of the Christian revelation and an essential part of our ongoing theologizing about that revelation.

This very quick outline about “God” in the Christian sense of that word, is introductory to a project of theologizing that can fill thousands and thousands of books and centuries and centuries of living. For a further elaboration of a core part of this theologizing, see the following essay.:

Redemption From What to What?

http://www.realisticliving.org/PDF/Redemption.pdf

The post Certainty first appeared on Realistic Living.

In the opening verses of the 11th chapter of Luke’s Gospel, we find the disciples noticing that Jesus spends much time in prayer. One day, after he finishes praying, they ask him to teach them to pray. Jesus, according to Luke, gives his disciples a brief set of terse sentences we call “the Lord’s Prayer.” Then Luke continues the subject of prayer with Jesus teling his disciples a story about a man who goes to his friend in the middle of the night to get three loaves of bread for his suprise guests. The friend is already in bed and won’t get up. Jesus says that if this man persists, his friend will get up and give him everything he needs.

Jesus applies this story to the subject of prayer, “And so I tell you, ask and it will be given you, search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. The one who asks will always receive; the one who is searching will always find, and the door is opened to the person who knocks.” (Luke 11:9,10) These verses seem to contradict about half of what we experience in our real lives. We have all asked for things we never received. We have all done some passionate seeking without finding. And we have all done some knocking on doors that never opened.

Some interpreters of these verses have suggested that our problem is poor praying. If we were to pray correctly, we would receive what we are praying for. But such interpreters have never satisfied me; nor have they convinced me that this is what Jesus really meant. In the 14th chapter of Mark, we see Jesus himself praying all night not to have to drink the cup of crucifixion. As part of his prayer, he notes that all things are possible to God. Yet he apparently knew that God might not give him his request, for he concludes his prayer, “Yet it is not what I want, but what you want.” (Mark 14:36)

So what does it mean to say that the person who asks always receives? An answer to this question can be found in the verses that follow the verses about always receiving:

“Some of you are parents, and if your child asks you for some fish, would you give that child a snake instead, or if the child asks for you for an egg, would you give that child the present of a scorpion? So if you, for all your evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much more likely is it that your Heavenly (Parent) will give The Holy Spirit to those who ask (Him/Her)!” (Luke 11:11-13)

God gives the Holy Spirit! What a curious thing to say. The verse seem to imply that if we ask God for some fish or an egg, God will give us The Holy Spirit! And this gift is a “good thing.” The Holy Spirit is a better gift than fish or egg or whatever specific things we asked for.

Is this the way that prayer works? No matter what we ask for, God gives something better. God sends the Holy Spirit! Let me stretch this metaphor out a bit: The divine prayer-answering order-house works very simply: it only has one product, all packaged and ready to go. No matter what you order, you get this same package, the Holy Spirit. This makes things easy for the prayer-answering order house. You pray for a new car. God sends the Holy Spirit. You pray for better health. God sends the Holy Spirit. You pray for a lover. God sends the Holy Spirit. You pray for a workable, planetary social order. God sends the Holy Spirit.

So what is this Holy Spirit? And why is it so wonderful that it can be the answer to every prayer?

First of all, the Holy Spirit is freedom. This is the way Paul describes it. The Holy Spirit is liberation from sin, liberation from the fear of death, liberation from the law, liberation to creatively affirm the life possibilities coming toward you. Here is certainly one aspect of the way life works: If you pray for health to the liberating God of the Bible, this God sends you the freedom to take care of yourself, the freedom to read up on health matters, the freedom to give up your addictive eating, the freedom to exercise your body, the freedom to find tranquility in sickness and in health. God sends more than you ask for. God sends freedom. God sends the Holy Spirit.

If you pray for a new love relationship in your life, God sends you the freedom to look around you at the real possibilities you may have been overlooking. God sends you the freedom to improve your shy and halfhearted efforts to interest some appropriate person in a relationship with you. God sends you the freedom to find tranquility in being alone or in being mated. God sends more than you ask for. God sends freedom. God sends the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps I need to say a few words about the phrase “God sends.” This is metaphorical language. We must be careful not to fall back into thinking literally about a big being beyond the sky. “God sends” means “The Wholeness of Being issues forth to us.” We are talking about a real experience, not about a transaction in the sky, not about a Supreme Being in heaven stooping down to do something here on Earth.

Whenever you, in your freedom, persist in asking for something from that Final Reality which you confront, you will receive a response from that Final Reality. You will receive the Holy Spirit. You will receive freedom. No magic here. This is just the way life works. Persist in prayer and you will receive the freedom to live toward what you are praying for. You will receive the openness to have what you are praying for, if and when it happens. You will receive the liberty to do without it if what you are praying for does not happen.

Whatever you pray for, God sends you freedom, the freedom to go for it, the freedom to enjoy it, the freedom to do without it. God always sends you more than you ask for.

You can’t ask for too much, as long as you are willing to recieve a Holy Spirit answer. Ask for the moon, you will always get more than that. If you pray for everlasting life, God sends you the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is not just freedom, but also trust, compassion, and bliss, poured out on you here and now. These gifts of the Spirit do not end. They are everlasting realities. Indeed, God always sends you more than you ask for. God sends the Holy Spirit.

These insights give us a deeper grasp of the nature of true prayer. Prayer is not some sort of magic by which I persuade some Supreme Being to get me something I want, though praying might issue in getting what I want. Prayer is an exercise. Prayer is an exercise in two ways: (1) Prayer is a rehearsal of your freedom in preparation for the performance of your freedom in the wide world. And (2), prayer is exercise that builds up your freedom muscles, strengthening yourself for freedom living in the wide world. The more you persist in using your freedom to ask, to seek, to knock, the more freedom you receive. This is the divine economy. There is just one currency: freedom. The more you spend freedom, the more freedom you get to spend.

So let me invite you to pray with me for a planetary human society more in tune with nature, more just, and more sane. Our long hours of persistent prayer will be answered with the Holy Spirit welling up within us. We will receive freedom, the freedom to create winning strategies, the freedom to compose for ourselves effective vocations of action. God always sends more than we ask for. God always sends the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is also compassion or spirit love; trust or faith, and tranquility, peace, joy, or bliss. But I will save these vast subjects for another time. For now, let us simply meditate on using our profound spirit freedom to ask, and on receiving more freedom to persist in asking, and on using that freedom to ask some more. For, “the one who asks will always receive; the one who is searching will always find, and the door is opened to the person who knocks.”

If you are interested in more on the topic of “Spirit Freedom,” I suggest the following essay:

http://www.realisticliving.org/UR4/4AweFreedom.pdf

A still longer exposition of related topics can be found in the book The Love of History and the Future of Religion: Toward a Manifesto for a Next Christianity.

http://www.realisticliving.org/books.htm

The post Prayer Always Works first appeared on Realistic Living.

One of the best stories about penetrating a moralistic personality is the story in which Jesus is having a meal and a discussion with a Pharisee who invited him for a visit and apparently has a modicum of interest in Jesus and his wisdom.  While they are there at the table, a woman comes in and begins washing Jesus’ feet with her tears and drying them with her hair.  The Pharisee recognizes her as a woman of the streets who has probably made her living providing bodily comforts to the male population.  He is repulsed that Jesus is permitting such a woman to touch him.  Jesus recognizes the Pharisee’s feelings and asks to speak to him.  The Pharisee consents, and Jesus tells a story about two men who owe another man a debt.  One of them owes a big debt and the other a small debt.  The lender forgives them both.  Jesus asks the Pharisee, “Which one do you suppose will love the lender the most?”  The Pharisee gives the obvious answer that it is the one who owes the most.  Then Jesus points out that this woman whose sins are very great is showing great love.  He also points out that nothing comparable is being shown him by the Pharisee.  Then Jesus makes this penetrating remark, “Her great love proves that her many sins have been forgiven; where little has been forgiven, little love is shown.” (Luke 7:47)  The Pharisee is left to ponder whether his harshness toward the woman and his lack of love for Jesus indicates layers in his own life that need forgiveness.

Here are some other examples of New Testament stories in which Jesus penetrates someone’s personality with a challenge to that person to access their Spirit Being:

[Jesus] said to another man, “Follow me.”  And he replied, “Let me go and bury my father first.”  But Jesus told him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead.  You must come away and preach the Kingdom of God.”   (Luke 9:59-60; J. B. Phillips translation)

Jesus sees that this man’s personality includes an attachment to family obligations.  For this man to enter the “Kingdom of Spirit” he must turn loose of that old pattern.  Jesus’ words penetrate his sense of reality, penetrate the box of personality in which he is living.

Another man said to him, “I am going to follow you, Lord, but first let me bid farewell to my people at home.”  But Jesus told him, “Anyone who puts his hand to the plow and then looks behind him is useless for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:61-62; J. B. Phillips translation)

In this case, the man wants to make everybody he loves feel good about his decision to be a Spirit person.  This is a violation of the wholeheartedness required for living the Spirit Life.   Jesus penetrates his sense of reality.

And while he was still saying this, a woman in the crowd called out and said, “Oh what a blessing for a woman to have brought you into the world and nursed you.”  But Jesus replied, “Yes, but a far greater blessing to hear the word of God and obey it.”
(Luke 11:27-28; J. B. Phillips translation)

This woman appears to be a helper, an outgoing person who says what she feels to encourage others, but does not appreciate fully the dynamics of her own inner being.  Jesus does not deny the truth of what the woman says about him, nor does he reject her enthusiasm.  Yet he cuts through this woman’s images of subservience and challenges her to be a Spirit woman herself rather than simply an enabler of someone else.  Her flight from Spirit is not her vision of the greatness of Jesus, but her reluctance to see herself as the very same greatness, a potential waiting to be enacted.  If she came to see herself as Jesus saw her, left behind her old images, and received her welcome into the clan of Great Spirit Beings, then Spirit could be said to have penetrated her personality cocoon.

In such stories, individuals in Jesus’ presence are provoked to look beyond their habituated patterns and see the hidden Kingdom, the Spirit Being, the personal essence that is our true human nature.  In such initial experiences of Spirit, one is not asked to demolish personality or to be completely detached from personality or even to stop identifying with one’s personality.  One is asked to simply allow a bit of Spirit into one’s consciousness.   Such is the challenge of the first beatitude:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3)

This might be reworded to mean:

Blessed are those who experience their profound need,
for they shall find the Commonwealth of Spirit.

Living exclusively in the box of personality sooner or later becomes a desert, lacking moisture, water, juice. Repeating old dry habits over and over ceases to be an alive and vital participation in life. Also, we begin to be more aware of the devilish quality of our own personality. Its addictions, defensiveness, reactive behaviors, violence, meanness, bitterness, and despairs become a never absent pain that haunts our lives that are lived in the box of personality.  Life in this box becomes a meaningless life, a thing of dust, useless worthless dust, like some old discarded something found in an attic, so useless that we might as well be a corpse rotting in the grave. These are examples of that sense of profound need that the first Beatitude calls “blessed.”

Such experiences are blessed because they indicate that the Commonwealth of Spirit is near, that the Kingdom of Full Reality is close by. The box of personality is being penetrated by a larger sense of Reality. This moment is blessed because the Reality that is seeping into our box is a moisture, a refreshment, an innocence, a vitality that we are missing and very much need. We can call this seepage “Awe” or “Spirit,” but whatever we call it, it is something more than living in our box. It means getting in touch with the Mystery, surprise and adventure of our lives

Here is a personal example:  While still in college I attended a lecture by an African American preacher who had written a novel about the life of Jesus. He made it plain that the power and courage of Jesus were possibilities for all human beings. He also made it plain that accepting this simple truth would be costly in terms of one’s acceptability to others. In a private conversation, he chided me that I might not want to pay this price. For some reason, perhaps my own stubbornness, this chiding prompted me to push into the matter even more vigorously. I began to look beyond the box of being a mathematics scholar and teacher acceptable to my parents and expected by my friends. I began to become poor in spirit in the sense that I began to sacrifice my riches of approval by friends and family in order to open to some radical qualities of awareness that most others found foolish and dangerous. But I experienced this rather difficult openness as a blessing, a road to happiness.

Blessed are those who experience their profound need,
for they shall find the Commonwealth of Spirit.

For more discussion of along these lines, consider the essays in:

Unreduced Realism, Course Three:
Steps Toward a Next Christianity
Transfiguring a Religious Tradition

http://www.realisticliving.org/UR3/

The post Spirit Penetration first appeared on Realistic Living.

Too often overlooked is Niebuhr’s insight that the word “God” in biblical writings does not point to “a being,” but to “a devotion”—that the word “theism” or “God” is a devotional word, like the word “sweetheart.”  Niebuhr holds that the Hebraic Scriptures and the New Testament, as well as Augustine, Luther, and thousands of others use the word “God” to mean a devotion to a source of meaning for our lives.   Luther was very explicit about this: “Whatever your heart clings to . . . and relies upon, that is properly termed your God.”

So, if we view the syllable “theo” in the word “theology” to mean a devotion rather than a being, then “theology” might be termed “devotionology.”  “Monotheism” becomes “mono-devotionality.  “Polytheism” becomes “poly-devotionality.  And “henotheism” becomes “heno-devotionality.”

According to Niebuhr, monotheism, polytheism, and henotheism are three different devotional attitudes toward the whole of life.  I will describe these devotional attitudes beginning with poly-devotionality.

Both Augustine and Mohammed conducted a severe critique of the poly-devotionality that dominated their surrounding cultures.  Gods like Venus and Mars are about devotions to real realms of life—in this case love and war.  It is understandable that both of these devotions can exist in a single life, along with many other devotions: family, work, nation, race, sex, gender, virtue, personality, etc.  Niebuhr points out that each of these many temporal devotions can make an ultimate claim upon our lives.  And when they do, we experience our lives being torn apart among these many claims.  Perhaps we have experience this tension between our family and our work, or between other meaning-givers of our lives.   Niebuhr calls this “the war of the gods.”

Niebuhr also points out that each temporal god-devotion is doomed to disappoint us.  Each of these temporal “gods” (devotions) will disappoint us because each is temporal.  None of these “gods” can endure as an ultimate devotion.  Our family can die or abandon us.  Our work can end or bore us.  Our nation can embarrass us.  Our strong body can become old and fragile.  Any one of these god-devotions can cease to be a devotion that renders our life meaningful to us.  Niebuhr calls this “the twilight of the gods.”

Niebuhr’s radical mono-devotionality resolves these poly-devotionality short-comings.  A fully radical devotion to the ONE INCLUSIVE REALITY relativizes all the many devotions.  It provides a context of devotion within which these sub-level devotions can have a place, a place that is not ultimate, but a relative place rendered so by that ONE devotion to the Final Source and Final Terminator of all the temporal gods and god-devotions.

Heno-devotionality is an attempt to resolve the poly-devotionality short-comings, but it does so in an incomplete manner.  The “heno” idea points to a cultural pantheon like a nation or peoplehood  that holds the many devotions in some socially prescribed order.  Nativism or nationalism is a form of heno-devotionality, rather than a mono-devotionality, for it does not include a devotion to every other nation, as well as to our own nation.  Similarly, a devotion to life, the life of all animate beings, is a heno-devotionality rather than the mono-devotionality, for it does not include a devotion to the inanimate as well as to the animate, to the processes of dying as well to the processes of living.  As the Sufi poet Rumi said, “ Life and death are two wings on the same bird.”

These reflections allow us to see the fully radical nature of mono-devotionality.  Mono-devotionality turns out to be a complete form of realistic living.  To quote a phrase from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, this faith means a lived life in which “the good and the real come together.”  If something is real, it is good.  If something is going to be viewed as good, then it must be real.  “Evil” from this perspective becomes all those humanly invented value-universes of delusion, escape, and substitution for what is real.  Radical monotheism (mono-devotionality) is a radical realism of the most thoroughgoing sort.

This means that the findings of the scientific approach to truth are good to whatever extent they are real.  For example, if the evolution of life on Earth is real, it is good.  If the climate crisis is real, it is good—facing this crisis demands our full attention and our full responsibility toward ending our dependence upon greenhouse-gas-producing energy sources.  We can have vigorous debates about our various interpretations of the facts and their meaning, but making up our own facts to support our greed-based biases is selling ourselves to the dark-side.

Similarly, the findings of our contemplative inquiries into the essence of our own human consciousness is a valid approach to truth, and if such findings are true, they are good, requiring our ethical obedience and loyalty.  For example, if we find that bigotry, racism, nationalism, sexism, and other oppressive views are not in accord with our reality-based humanity, then those attitudes are a “fall” from a true mono-devotionality.  This fall does not change the essence of our true humanity, but it sets up a split in the self that we can call “despair.”  This fall is a fall into abject hopelessness, because in the final outcome, the real always wins over the fabricated.  If our devotionality is attached to the fabricated, then we are trapped in the losing side of the real drama of life.

It is not an accident that the mono-devotionality religions, at their best, have espoused and lived a thoroughgoing devotion to the Real, as well as to an unconditional love for our real selves and our real neighbors.

For more on this topic check out this longer essay:

http://www.realisticliving.org/UR4/10RadicalMonotheism.pdf

The post Mono-devotionality first appeared on Realistic Living.

Reality is my shepherd, so I lack nothing.
This shepherd provides green pastures,
and leads me to peaceful drinking water.
This Ground-of-all-being persistently renews life within me,
and guides me step-by-step on the path of righteous realism.
Even when I walk through a valley dark as death,
I fear nothing, for the Great Shepherd is leading me.

Dear God, my shepherd, when Your staff pushes me
or Your crook holds me back,
I see these actions as my comfort.
Indeed, Oh Final Mystery, You spread a picnic for me,
even in the presence of my enemies.
My head is anointed in Your oil of honor.
My cup of aliveness runs over.

So I say to all of you here listening:
Goodness and love unfailing will attend me,
all the days of my life,
and I shall abide happily within this Enduring Wholeness
my whole life long.

I am convinced that the above understanding of this Psalm is the understanding meant by whoever it was that wrote this Psalm.   Though the original vocabulary was different for this ancient poet of realistic living, I believe that his or her deep awareness about realistic living was the same as the one I am attempting to express.

Jesus was surely familiar with this Psalm.  Indeed, I believe that Jesus added nothing to this Psalm except a full devotion to living it.  Jesus was nothing more than a good Jew in the terms meant by this Psalm.  Such a happily devoted trust of Reality is the basic attitude that could unite Jews and Christians and both Jews and Christians with Muslims.

I mean this seriously; Jesus was nothing more than a good Jew, where “good Jew” means living Psalm 23.  Let me spell out how I think Jesus lived this Psalm.  When his disciples became anxious about how they were going to be fed, Jesus referred them to the sparrows.  “God feeds them,” he pointed out.  “You can buy a dozen sparrows for a quarter.  Don’t you think God values you that much?”

The Sadducees of Jesus’ culture were well-to-do religious leaders who had colluded fully with the Roman Empire in order to maintain their status, wealth, and positions.  Jesus viewed them as dead, unlike Abraham Isaac and Jacob who were still alive.

The Zealots of his time sought to protect the integrity of Judaism with military action.  Jesus rebuked this attitude.  He saw that “God” had invested the Roman Empire with an overwhelming power that could not be defeated at that time.  Here is his mode of rebuke of the Zealot attitude:  “If a Roman soldier ask you to carry his pack for a mile (which he is lawfully permitted to do) carry it, and offer to carry it a second mile.  If he slaps your face, offer him a second cheek.  This is how you stand up to Roman power.  This is what realistic living looks like.”

Jesus also rebuked those Pharisees who sought to exalt themselves over the masses through a detailed obedience to the Jewish rulebooks, in order to be rewarded by Reality in this life and in the final audit of time.  He saw that they were honoring minute rules while ignoring the weightier meanings of the law—the full demands for realism, love, and justice.  He likened them to straining gnats out of their soup, while swallowing camels.

Jesus was drawn to the John-the-Baptist movement of his time.  John saw that the core issue toward being realistic in that sick culture was acts of repentance.  Come to the river and have water pour on your head as a public symbol of your departure from unrealistic foolishness and for a renewal of your dedication to realism.  Jesus joined those who did this.

All these acts of Jesus illustrate what living Psalm 23 looks like.  And the Jesus story about Psalm-23 living had an even deeper meaning.  When John got his head chopped off, Jesus, so the story goes, was led by the spirit into the desert for a 40-day fast.  After being temped by the key unrealistic options faced by a powerfully awake person, Jesus began his own movement, knowing full well that the outcome that was met by John would be met by him as well.

The end of the Jesus story spelled out, for those who remembered it and lived it, a seemingly strange paradox.  Living the Psalm 23 means dying to all unrealism in spite of the fact that such living is costly.  Those who are dedicated to unrealism are not going to tolerate such living.  Nevertheless, this is where the beautiful life is to be found.  Such living is the resurrection from all death, despair, and daily foolishness.  Living that complete trust in Reality and in lived realism (expressed in Psalm 23) is the best-case scenario for your life, whatever it costs you.  So let us read the above Psalm once again.

The post The Cost of Realism first appeared on Realistic Living.

This is a quote from a book, Crossing the Unknown Sea by David Whyte, (page 75) and it states exactly what was happening to me at age 20 as a senior in college in 1952.

In order to share with you the depth of this shift, I need to brag a bit about my accomplishments in mathematics and physics at that tender age. I had taken every course in mathematics that was offered in my high school and made an A in all of them.

In the summer of 1949 I took and passed tests for college credit for two courses. This enabled me in the fall of my freshman year to be taking and mastering a college calculus course along with some senior engineering students that were struggling with that required course for the second time. In mathematics and physics, I was the star student at the university then called Oklahoma A & M. I continued making A grades in every mathematics and physics course offered, and in my senior year I was asked to teach a freshman course in mathematics. I represented my university at a national mathematics conference where I met mathematicians and physicists who were way more expert than me, one of whom insisted that I read a book he pulled out of a library self for me about Einstein’s theory of relativity. At that time this revolution in physics was still filtering down to places like Oklahoma. My mind was permanently blown by this revolution is thought about the basic foundations of our cosmos.

I had been expected by my parents and peers to proceed with graduate degrees in math and physics and become some sort of teacher or professional in that field. So it was a big deal for me that I had also “begun to form a philosophy of existence that demanded a larger language than the scientific one.”

To the surprise of my parents and many of my peers, I abandoned my scientific track and entered Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas in March of 1953. I chose that school because a revolution in existential theology was taking place there, and I had met a Perkins professor, Joe Mathews, with whom I wanted to study. In my first quarter I managed to enroll in a course with this professor. I never worked harder in a course in my whole life, and I was embarrassed, because with my poor language and spelling skills I ended up with a C grade. I also had to take a remedial philosophy course which also worked my being with unfamiliar content. On top of that, I was an outsider in that pastor-training community. No one I met there matched the sort of scientific nerd that I felt myself to be.

I became what my father correctly predicted, a third-rate preacher rather than a first-rate mathematician. My first church was a sort of disaster. Half this rural east-Texas Methodist congregation thought it was great having an enthusiastic young paster who gave them the best he could do with recreated Paul Tillich sermons, but the other half of that congregation wanted to get rid of me. All this was taking place while I was finishing seminary as well as getting adjusted to married life, complete with two baby boys. But my lifetime in “a larger language than the scientific one” was on its way.

So as I headed off to seminary in 1953, I was seeking a larger language, a contemplative language with which to make a deeper approach to Truth. David Whyte talking about his own life in the paragraphs that followed the above quote says:

“Somewhere out there beyond (my current work) was another work and another life that would support those farther explorations. . . . Every path, no matter how diligently we follow it, can lead to staleness . . . We might reach dizzying heights . . . the top floor . . . but if we lose our horizon and the excitement of that horizon, our high office . . . can seem like a gilded cage.” (Whyte, David, Crossing the Unknown Sea (Riverhead Books, New York: 2001) page 75-76

So what does has this larger-language revolution become for me 60 years later as I write about it at age 84? I am now very clear that there are two very different approached to truth: the scientific approach to truth, an approach that Ken Wilber calls the “It” approach, and the existential or contemplative approach to truth, an approach that Wilber calls the “I” approach. I would like to share with you this very deep discovery with a video-recorded talk I gave on the subject:

http://realisticliving.org/videos.htm

Scroll down to the video entitled The Enigma of Consciousness Workshop Opening Talk. This is the best talk I have given on this topic. It is a brief contemplative talk. Perhaps it will be worth your time.

If you prefer reading, I have also addressed this topic in an earlier blog post:

https://realisticliving.org/New/contemplative-truth/#more-33

By the way the Realistic Living blog has been thoroughly redone, all the previous Realistic Living Pointers are posted there. Take a look; send me a comment. I will answer it.

Finally, I have published a whole book, The Enigma of Consciousness, the first part of which is on this topic of the approaches to Truth.

http://www.realisticliving.org/PDF/EnigmaFlyer.pdf

If you don’t already own this book, well you should (my opinion, of course).

The post A Larger Language first appeared on Realistic Living.

In But Not Of

The quality of the Christian life has to do with being “in the world, but not of the world.”

“Not of the world” means an “end-of-time” happening in your present life.  It means the coming of a deep detachment from your family, your peers, your citizenship, your culture, your time in history, your self images, your personality habits, your gender, yes even your own body and all its time-bound characteristics.  But if  your state is only “not of this world” rather than united with “in this world,” your state is aloofness rather than Christian love.

“In this world” is just as important as “not of this world.”  “In this world” means an “incarnation” of your “out-of-this-world-ness” in your physical body, your personality habits, your self images, your time in history, your gender, your culture, your citizenship, having your peers and your family, your body.  All your temporal relations are fluid; they can change; they can be changed by you; they will change because of your “out-of-this-world-ness.”

Nevertheless, your “in-this-world-ness” does not go away.  Some form of “in-this-world-ness” will always be the case.  Also, the quality of this “in-this-world-ness” is not entirely up to you.  You have been assigned your “in-this-world-ness” by the Infinite Almighty Mysteriousness that has sourced your temporal existence and moves you inexorably toward the end of your temporal existence.  At the same time, you are totally responsible for what you do with what you are and with what you can become over the course of your life.

But if your state is only “in this world” rather than united with “not of this world,” your state is despair, torn and scattered by time’s inexorable march. And you will have no sustained attention and objectivity for what the Christian witness is pointing to with the word “love.”

Love of the Christian sort means a total affirmation of every aspect of your particular body, of your personality and changes, of your self images and your recreations of your self images, of your gender, of your ongoing relationships with peers and family, of your culture and how you live it and alter it,  of your citizenship and your time in history with its limitations and challenges, plus your responses to some of these challenges and the consequences of those responses.

Love of the Christian sort also includes a total affirmation of your end-of-time detachment form the temporal flow of the world.  This absolute uprootedness is your gift of objectivity and creativity in your living in this world. This uprootedness makes you a son or daughter of Eternity rather than a son or daughter of perdition.  This uprootedness is your power, your spirit energy, your equanimity, your rest, your hope, your undefeatable quality that no ups or downs of fortune can disrupt.

“In the world, but not of the world” is your human essence, but perfection in manifesting this essence is not to be expected in your real-time living.  This is a journey.  We may have been born into this quality, but we “press on to the full stature of Christ Jesus,” as the apostle Paul put it.  “We were crucified with Christ” Paul said.  This means our detachment in being “not of this world.”  And we were “raised up in Christ to newness of life,” Paul witnesses.  This means our incarnation in being “in this world” as the resurrected body of Christ.

So, what does this “in Christ” symbol mean for Paul?  It means a perfection into which we have been joined by a profound transformation of the overall direction of our lives—toward ever greater realism in love-relatedness with Infinite Reality and love-relatedness with all the temporal  realities that constitute our lives.  But this is a journey. We do not yet manifest this perfection in our personal life or in our social contributions.   Let us press on.  We are in a cosmic struggle between realism and illusion.

For more study of the “in Christ” symbol, I recommend this essay:

Here Already and Still to Come

Here is the downloading URL for this essay:

And for some companionship in further researching these far-edge topics, put these dates on your 2016 calendar:  Friday evening June 10 to Wednesday morning June 15th

This five-day set of two meetings begins Friday evening June 10, 2016 with a carefully orchestrated set of methods for a spirit-retreat on honoring women’s experience led by Joyce Marshall and Pat Webb.  This “retreat” lasts until Sunday noon June 12th followed by an afternoon break.

Then, beginning the evening of June 12th, we begin our Research Symposium Meeting on the topic “Is There a Post-Patriarchal Christianity” moving on with related topics until 9:00pm Tuesday evening the 14th.  People return home Wednesday morning June 15th.

The post In But Not Of first appeared on Realistic Living.