Confessions Part III (What Was Not on My Radar Screen)

Dear Friends, Known and Unknown,

I am – as I have been confessing to you – haunted, haunted by the idea of humanity not developing the requisite spiritual maturity to meet the crises of our age.

Now in my youth, I hardly saw everything that such 'requisite spiritual maturity' would involve – including not only rich psychological Feeling and awareness (which I did experience at Findhorn in certain ways ) but also rigorous Thinking and Will.

Thus the all-too-common New Age dismissal of the intellect (implied in‘head-tripping’, ‘mind-f******’ etc) did not especially bother me.

I did not appreciate how much our collective need for spiritual development, mandated not **dismissal** of the mind – but its deep regeneration.

But the profound Christian esoteric thinker, Rudolf Steiner saw this all too clearly. And how often over my years in the New Age, did I hear Rudolf Steiner written-off as ‘too heady’ or ‘too Christian’.

But Rudolf Steiner knew, Rudolf Steiner knew that the ENTIRE trinity of Feeling-Thinking-Will had to be regenerated, if humanity or at least humanness were to survive ...

But Christianity, neither esoteric nor exoteric, was not on the horizon of my New Age youth. In my American adolescence, I had known hardly anything but a caricature of Protestant Christianity, with its strong taint of **individualism**: ‘Jesus is **your** personal saviour; if **you** believe in him –and the Bible (literally) - **you** will not go to hell'.

And I knew nothing of the Catholic Mass celebrated every hour of the day, in nearly every corner of humanity, which seeks to ‘advance the peace and salvation of all the world’ …

And so, as with many New Age folk in the Protestant countries, Catholic Christianity was not on my 'radar screen' at all. Catholic Christianity with its hour-by-hour Communion with the Heart of the World.

And if someone were to have suggested to me, that this holy intermingling with the Sacred Heart, had anything significant to offer to the planetary crisis – for example, in rousing the stone-cold heart of neo-liberal economics - I would probably have smiled indulgently.

But looking out at the heart of flint of modern capitalism, and at the increasing social and environmental suffering, real **suffering** it brings, looking out at Lovelock’s vision of a planet **burnt** …

I confess, I confess to you, dear friends, that I no longer smile at the ‘irrelevance’ of what it now seems to me – tragically - is the Catholic Church’s ‘best kept secret’. (A near secret, at least in the secular Protestant West).

That is to say, the communion, the interpenetration, the intermingling with the Sacred Heart and the cleansing, healing and strength it brings, when entered into sincerely and regularly.

No I no longer smile, because I feel the radiance of the Sacred Heart of Humanity making me ever more human, as I regularly receive it in the Sacraments.

Yes, I admired and still admire many qualities of psychological sensitivity in the New Age movement. At the same time, I have come to feel how traditional Christianity (Catholic and Orthodox) with its ongoing Sacraments of Communion with the Sacred Heart, has done still more to deepen my human FEELING.

Yes, none of this was on my ‘radar screen’ at all before.

I looked out at the world, with a certain upbringing. I was raised in secular and Protestant countries in which I saw a Christianity that made no sense.

I saw a psychologically acute New Age movement that appeared far more vital to me. And I saw modern humanity’s need for the Spirit in living and accessible ways.

I did not know the Catholic Sacraments, healing the human heart.

I also did not know the vastness of the Catholic intellectual effort over the centuries. I did not know, for example, Catholic Social Teaching and its radical and extensive challenge to modern capitalism, articulated on many fronts. (For more on this, see my comment to this entry.)

I did not see the Will that had built countless hospitals, fed countless hungry people, brought the living Sacraments to countless more ...

But I now agree with Rudolf Steiner that the entire trinity of human Feeling, Thinking and Will must be addressed more than ever at this time …

And my entire spiritual journey, it seems to me - with many arduous trials and struggles to clarify my perception - has brought me to this point of truly beginning to SEE the Church at this hour of humanity's need.