Dear Friends, Known and Unknown,
At the heart of these confessions, is my attempt to voice my ever-growing sense, that the Stripping of Tradition is costing our culture far, far more than is commonly appreciated.
But before continuing to ponder the consequences of the New Age Dismantling of Tradition, I am going to ‘backtrack’ in time. It is not easy to articulate my concerns and I have decided that a little more personal background to these confessions may help to elucidate them.
Thus, once upon a time, I ran a small New Age project in Cambridge, England - which published a little magazine called ‘Sacred Culture’.
That simple phrase is filled with meaning for me – and these confessions are written, looking back on more than twenty five years of my search for a ‘Sacred Culture’.
That is to say, my quest for a Culture in which the Sacred and the Truly Human would be honoured – in contradistinction to so much of the mainstream secular and increasingly brutal capitalist culture.
And in these decades of searching for ‘Sacred Culture’, I have experienced two major PATTERNS for forming such a culture. I will call these two models:The New Age pattern and the Catholic Christian pattern.
There is the New Age pattern, wherein the Christian Tradition of the West is dismantled, to be replaced - in the best instances - by a rich psychological awareness and often-rich human to human contact.
It is filled with certain **contemporary** insights into the human condition – but as I have at least suggested, so often at the cost of psychologising and relativising tremendous insights from the **past**.
Again Matthew Fox, to take a single example, seems to me to dismissive of so, so many of the insights and visions of the tradition. Not least of all, those of that author, who began his Gospel saying “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God … and the Word became Flesh and dwelt amongst us” ...
Then there is the Catholic pattern in which so, so much tradition of the West, including not only the Gospel, but also the preceding Greek and Judaic traditions is honoured. And not only sola scriptura - the Bible alone - but also two thousand years of insight into the Christian Mystery ...
These confessions are formed then, from my intimate experiences of very **different** spiritual milieus. (I have also experienced a rather different, but nonetheless Christian Anthroposophical ‘pattern for a Sacred Culture’ – but I leave this aside for the moment.)
My confessions are formed also from my experience of the ultimate inadequacy of the New Age vision, and also of the utterly unexpected riches I discovered within the Church. Profound riches I had not the slightest inkling of in the New Age world. Riches which even in my darkest times, bring me a joy, consolation and peculiar sense of wholeness and wholesomeness I never experienced in my New Age past.
Yes especially in the Sacraments, I feel this rich and peculiar sense of cleansing wholesomeness. Deep, deep, deep.
And all of these are Christian riches, which I now think the New Age ignores or strips to its peril. And I confess, I think to the peril of the world.
For it seems to me that the unexpected riches cast aside by both secularism and New Age-ism, may actually be critical to the future of humanity. By this, I mean not necessarily the survival of the species, homo sapiens – but certainly to the survival of HUMAN culture.
To me it seems inescapable. The last twenty five years or so since I first entered the New Age world, have seen the rise and rise of the New Age cafeteria. And the last twenty five years have seen an ongoing brutalisation of human culture.
Yes, these confessions are formed by very different experiences of very different patterns for a ‘Sacred Culture’. And before I proceed much further with my thoughts about the New Age Stripping of Tradition, I will delve a little further into my autobiography to try to convey better what I experience and see in these two patterns ...
4 comments:
Roger,
I am curious to know why you were drawn to investigate the New Age movement in the first place. It is interesting how leaving the Church was fundamental to ultimately being a part of it.
Perhaps your experience is, in a way, what society in general is going through. The new Prodigal Son story.
The Dalai Llama has reiterated a couple of times over the last few years that we need to stay in the traditions we are born into. That is where we are meant to find the meaning we are searching for.
But then, a primary characteristic of Christ is rebellion against established authority. Perhaps the Church needs to revisit its authoritarianism. The bureaucratic, ritual and theological inventory of 2000 years seems to work against it. After all, Jesus said so little, that they had to repeat it four times just to fill up the New Tesatment. The mind of the Church, I believe, is too heavy for the spirit to bear at times. That's why Jesus travelled light.
Perhaps the New Age is about shedding the granite columns of the Temple. People seem to want to travel into the village with nothing and see if simple spirit will actually provide for them. Then the questions will form and the true wealth of the Church will again be attractive.
Blessings,
Sun Warrior
Thank you, Sun Warrior,
Though our perspectives differ at some points, I appreciate your thoughtful, articulate comments here.
Though I would agree with you that the Church **does** need to revisit its authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is never helpful. It's an attempt to co-erce and violate freedom. Basically: violence.
Nonetheless I suspect that some of what you call 'authoritarianism' is what I would call 'authority'. Which latter, of course, is all about freedom.
That is, that that I would see aspects to those granite pillars so called, and ritual and theological inventory that for me are not so much violence/authoritarianism - but filled with a **convincing** authority.
At least for some of us.
As for myself, I am not a prodigal son of the Church. I never left it - as I was not brought up in it.
I was baptised as an Anglican age 34, and confirmed as a Catholic two years later.
I would say that much of the impetus for my New Age journey lay in what I have called the (bad) caricature of Protestantism I experienced in my youth.
Which derived from things like the Moral Majority you mentioned earlier.
'Like the Moral Majority'. Emphasis on word 'like'. I don't wish to impugn them. These days I know almost nothing about them. They form a far ago memory from a very foreign life.
But somehow from groups 'like' them I picked up this bad caricature.
I think I've indicated more along these lines in these Confessions part II and III.
If you are comfortable, Sun Warrior, I should like to hear of your own tradition.
I've looked a little at your blog/website, appreciated the heartfelt, intelligent content - but still haven't found much of your own background.
Which of course may reflect your conscious wish ...
So I ask only if you are comfortable ...
Of course perhaps it is at the blog/site and I haven't looked sufficiently yet.
One more thing on the distinction between authoritarianism and authority.
John Paul II I believe, for all the vicious media lies he's buried under, understood this distinction very well and tried to bring it forth in the Church - sincerely searching, as he said, for a church that only 'proposes [but] imposes nothing'.
I have entries on this in December. If interested, see for example, Mystic Politician 7/12 and To Heal the World 20/12
Bless you, Sun Warrior,
Roger
Roger,
Thank you for leading me to your earlier posts. I have read them and quite agree. I have written a little bit about myself on you March 29 blog.
I had always suspected John Paul II was not the boogeyman of his press. I comprehended his apprehension to being pope because of the temporal demands of the institution which conflicted with his true nature.
Authority and individualism, the two great combatants of the modern age are truly bound up in our orbit around the Church.
The modern taboo, dominance, as I may have written earlier here, is commonly understood to be abusive dominance.
What is missing is an acknowledgement of 'dominance with wisdom.'
It is like a dance. Authority will lead you if you so wish to embrace, but you are free to refuse. It is much the same with God.
What confuses the civilized man is the question of 'power exchange,' the belief that the submissive does not have power. This, in the hierarchical organization of civilization has systematically lead to abuse. Few realize that a true dominant treats his/her authority as love toward the submissive. The gift of his or her attention involves the sensitivity of the dominant toward the submissive's well-being. The submissive is actually in control of the dominant's focus. It is a dance that blurs the impression of a master/slave relationship.
I have always admired John Paul. I wonder if he realized he was sent to end the Cold War. I made a pilgrimage to see him at the World Youth get-together in Toronto a few years back. I braved a torrential storm, wading through packed crowds and umbrellas to get a good spot to see him. I have felt how much God loves him. It is quite powerful.
Three minutes after he arrived, a great wind blew up. The clouds instantly vanished and the sun came out. I wonder how many noticed. The man had a 'connection,' don't you think?
I think what most clergy crave for in their parishoners, is not obedience. It is spiritual maturity. They would prefer to be teachers and healers than lords of the parish. That is their true calling. That is the peace I believe John Paul sought in his priesthood. A conversation, but the Office too often got in the way, and the challenges of the falsehoods took him to battle.
It is interesting the distinction in your December post about the Church before and after Descarte. There is admiration for that time before, and perhaps aberration for the time after, for both Church and society.
It makes me recall an observation that the great 19th century Russian mystic, philosopher and historian, Vladimir Solovyov, wrote. The progress of history is toward 'Free Unity.' In the beginning there was wholeness without differentiation. Then the wholeness broke apart, and an enforced wholeness was imposed. The time of political oppression. In the end, a new freedom will be established, that he called 'Free Unity.' In it, the individual would be both free and united in One. Three phases of history. I believe we are at the latter stages of the second. The third is to come when a rebirth occurs, that takes the lessons that we have learned from the time of the mind, civilization, and forms a new understanding around the Heart the way Jesus lived it, and how God originally intended when He sent Adam on his journey with the usurpation of the heart by the ascending mind of civilization.
Blessings,
Sun Warrior
I must confess, I have not spent enough time on my weblog or website. Things in progress. I took a year off to write a book, yet to be published, of my spiritual experiences. Though it may seem from what I have written that I have 'gone Native,' in actual fact, I have had little contact with them. As God reveals things to me, when I do converse with them it ends up that they knew many of these things all along. It appears Father didn't want me to go Native either. Just recognize the gulf between the duality that is destined to come together once a language is formed.
Dear Sun Warrior,
Thank you for your lengthy, touching and meditative posts.
I've posted a couple of replies elsewhere - and realised just now I've got mixed up. Some of what you say here on elsewhere.
(I'm responding from a printout of your colllected posts).
I will just say here then, I appreciate hearing of your experience of and insight into John Paul the Great ...
and among other things, I like this
It is like a dance. Authority will lead you if you so wish to embrace, but you are free to refuse. It is much the same with God.
Yes ... God governs the world by authority and not by force.
I am afraid the last words are not my own - but I am indebted to
Meditations on the Tarot pg 80.
See my comments elsewhere and forgive my necessary selectivity!
Warmly yours,
Roger
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