Tears, Indignation and Feeling

One thread in all the feedback I’ve received since this project began, is a concern for the quality of emotion I am expressing. Am I despairing or perhaps unbridled in my anger?

Now I neither want to encourage despair or unbridled anger. Neither is creative, in the slightest.

But I believe there is tremendous value – not to despair, but to tears and lamentation. Not to unbridled anger – but to feeling, really FEELING what is tragic in the world. And if necessary, feeling real **indignation**.

As long as that indignation neither curdles into bitterness, nor erupts into violence. And the key, the keys to **healthy** lamentation and indignation are the keys given by Saint Paul: Faith, Hope and Charity.

Now Saint Paul who was filled, it seems to me, with ***a new quality of feeling*** born into the world with Jesus Christ, certainly experienced deep lamentation and indignation. But his faith, his hope, his charity, were such that these qualities cannot be classified as either morose or uncreative …

Still although we may aspire to the way followed by Saint Paul, how much we succeed, of course, is an entirely different matter...

Thus I certainly understand the concerns that have been raised. One might well ask: is this not too tragic a picture of the trajectory of the world I have intimated ... from the new life added to the world by the Incarnation of the Word – to the ‘life’ added to the world by Coca Cola? …

In reply to this, I will say the following. In my personal life, I remain overwhelmed. I thought today I might not be posting an entry at all. But rather than abandon this weblog, I will turn to an unfinished manuscript for the next days - in which I was dealing not only with the above questions, but also with their relationship to New Age spirituality.

Now use of this manuscript is not exactly ideal. For one thing, it’s ripped out of a certain context (dealing with the New Age movement). And there are other ways I am not completely happy with it either.

Nonetheless, having mentioned my concern, I will put it up as is (with just a tweak or two). Put it up in installments as something not written specifically for this weblog – but which may yet be of interest …

To this question of being morose, I had responded:

“Am I not aware of another trajectory at work in history – a trajectory of liberation from crippling and lethal diseases, liberation of slaves, liberation of women, liberation from the ethnic hatred, liberation from hatred of homosexuals, of human rights everywhere becoming more and more clarified and defined? Am I not being simply morbid?

It depends. For yes, I am aware that a work is at work across the millennia that testifies to the unfolding of the Christic seed, whereby for a certain number of souls at least, there are unparalleled developments in capacities for human consciousness, human compassion.

I am aware of the glory of human evolution, and one needs to be aware of all of this, if one is not to become ‘simply morbid’.

One needs to be aware and to have hope …. Without this one becomes morose indeed. Is the cup half empty or half full? So the old adage goes.

Now, a preoccupation with the half-emptiness of the glass leads only to morbidity. But what does a **preoccupation** with the half-fullness of the glass lead to? Joyous hope and inspiration?

Maybe. Or maybe it leads in the end to a certain nonchalance, and even trivialisation of the suffering of the world.

For the truth is: the glass of the world is **both** half full and half empty – at the same time. And the half-fullness of glass of the world needs to be celebrated, and the half-emptiness of the glass of the world needs to be lamented.

At least this last, I believe is among the principle messages of Christianity – both esoteric and exoteric.”

This will shortly continue with reflections on the relation of FEELING Christianity to the New Age movement.