Tuesday, January 31, 2006

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.

Monday, January 30, 2006

The Predators

It has been a long time since we received television in our household. Now, at no point was there any ideological decision to throw out television. No, what happened is that life became so rich in other ways, that most of what was offered on television had less and less importance.

In saying this, I do not want to be censorious of folk who watch TV. Though television has few riches for **me** – I can well imagine it has for others. (For example, sports never had meaning for myself, but I know they do for many).

Thus no criticism is intended here. Though I do want to encourage all of us to **consciously** fill our leisure-time with **whatever** is personally most nourishing and rich. I would go so far as to call such conscious choice of genuine nourishment as a spiritual discipline.

And for me personally, the interior life, the life of the Sacraments, the life of study and family was more rich than anything on television and so it fell away …

And a life of greater simplicity naturally evolved, as the interior life became ever more rich. And I do believe that now, more than ever, our world needs to find simplicity. Not through strict prohibitions – but through the attraction of inner **joys**.

And here a Church devoted to rich and sacramental Mystery, rather than often inane efforts at 'entertainment', could play a great role (as she once did in Ireland).

Now my abstinence from media has led to certain experiences, that I suspect are not common. For example, how clearly I recall taking my young daughter once to the cinema.

Where an experience of horror greeted me.

Horror which was put in relief and made visible, I think, because I had so long abstained from television. Without this abstinence, I doubt I would have **registered** this horror. For it would have seemed all-too-commonplace.

What is the horror of which I speak?

I speak of watching cinema advertising. Commercials, as they are called in America.

Before the film was a barrage of advertising – incredibly sophisticated, powerful, deceitful - all aimed at the child’s soul. My soul screamed: 'Why are they LYING to my child? Why are they trying to **manipulate** my child?'

Of course, the answer to these questions is all too obvious: Greed and hunger for power and control.

What is going on here, is nothing less than **predatory**.

Certain groups seek to gain control of children for their own ends.

What is less obvious are the answers to the following questions:

Why are they allowed to do this? Why are they allowed to prey on the young especially, with an incredibly blatant and manipulative agenda?

Why do so few people seem to notice?

And why when people apparently care about the imposition of ‘offenses’ against political correctness (e.g. a ‘Christmas tree’ instead of a ‘holiday tree’) do they not care about such MASSIVE attempts to impose, as that undertaken by the global advertising industry?

Yes, the so-called imposition of religion i.e. that of matters contrary to the underlying ideology of secularism, causes the greatest consternation in certain circles.

But the flagrant attempt to instill a consumerist ethos raises hardly an eyebrow.

A consumerist ethos which of course, not only does not contradict secularism, but actually DEPENDS on it. As I have tried to say here often - one way or another, however adequately or inadequately.

This is again, a very personal approach to these issues. But it is these kinds of questions of global import, that this weblog is trying to explore, in joining in the Hermetic aspiration to guard the Soul of the World ...

Friday, January 27, 2006

The Marginalisation of the Profound

Yesterday I suggested how, in its culmination in political correctness, Secularism was imposing a tyranny of blandness.

I only **suggested**. At the moment, I feel unable to do more than indicate and suggest …

I also suggest that the bland, faceless world of so much modern architecture is imposing far more on the soul than we ever fully realise.

But the great Christian Hermeticist Rudolf Steiner realised this deeply. He therefore worked to create an architecture that would **free** the soul from the weight of all those monotonous, repetitive rigid 90 degree angles that dominate our world more and more and more.

And what would Rudolf Steiner say to that British mother who feels a marginally Christian school imposes ideology on her children, but that apparently what a state school teaches is neutral and benign?

This is the **essence** of what I think he might say, though with far, far more eloquence and power than I can achieve:

‘There is nothing at all neutral, benign or free about modern education. As modern architecture imposes blandness, so does modern education impose on the child blandness and worse.

Much, much worse – a soulless, hopeless and meaningless world stripped of Mystery. Which increasingly trains children at earlier and earlier ages in the capacity for **dead** CALCULATION, at the expense of **living** THINKING, imagination and feeling.’

Potentially great souls, Steiner said, would be crippled by the kind of education he saw modernity developing. Their souls and minds would be warped.

This is why he pioneered his Waldorf education, which now counts over a thousand schools worldwide: To save the children of the future. To save the children!

But these fragmentary notes about architecture and education are just aspects of a far larger picture. We have created a worldview, markedly emphasising the LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR of our human experience – that of the empirical senses and rational logic.

Markedly emphasising this – and this very definitely at the expense of mystery, imagination, feeling, soul. Without which however, our world becomes ever more colourless and bland.

Because to so markedly emphasise the empirical and the rational is to the emphasise the surface of life. And what is deeper than the surface – in other words, what is profound - becomes marginalised.

Such that what speaks to the profound – the Symbols of religion, for example - are seen not only as private fantasy, but often even as an intrusion into public life.

In American political correctness these days, it is sometimes held that we should use terms such as ‘holidays’ rather than, say Christmas, or a ‘holiday tree’ rather than a Christmas tree.

The underlying idea is that of sensitivity. Non-Christians should not have Christian traditions imposed on them.

The error here, I believe is to suppose that an idea like 'happy holidays' or a 'holiday tree' says nothing at all. But in trying to say nothing at all – they do indeed say a very great deal.

They speak of the poverty of our collective imagination, devastated by empiricism and rationality, and they actually impose on people that very poverty. A poverty of imagination is everywhere being imposed …

The French for example, try to ban Islamic headwear and the wearing of prominent crosses. These Symbols for profound tradition are not to be asserted - in certain public contexts, at least.

Yet there is not the slightest problem with asserting the Symbols of the banal in public. A fifty foot billboard which screams: “Coke adds life!” for example …

In a poor neighbourhood in Britain not that long ago, my wife saw near-infants 'suckled' on cola.

Now Our Lord came to bring us ‘life and life more abundant’. And today we have Coca Cola …

Thursday, January 26, 2006

The Tyranny of Blandness

Yesterday I asserted that secularism imposed its ideology onto us.

This is true in countless ways, I believe. But it is an idea I rarely hear anywhere – yet which I think needs to be raised far, far more often.

As I have admitted, this weblog is fragmentary, being written at the moment under much personal pressure. I would like soon to more fully develop the idea of secularism as an imposed ideology.

But for today, I will simply quote from a book. An unfortunately sometimes bitter and cynical book, unfortunate because bitterness and cynicism serve no-one. But a book suffused nonetheless with a noble consciousness of BEAUTY, that makes many fine and important points.

The book is Ugly as Sin: Why They Changed Our Churches from Sacred Spaces to Meeting Places and How We Can Change Them Back Again by Michael S. Rose.

Among other things, Rose is analysing the impact of secularism and modern political correctness on one facet of our society – the architecture of modern Catholic Churches.

Here, I think, is a revealing passage concerning modern churches:

“The building recedes into the background of the landscape. There’s nothing memorable here. Nothing inspiring. Nothing particularly inviting.

[One] finds that the façade, the ‘face’ this church pre-sents to the world is ‘faceless’.,,

****It simply fits in more or less with the other buildings on that street.****

No passerby would be curious enough to go out of their way to explore this edifice; neither skeptic, nor pious pilgrim will be drawn to its portals, attracted to or even intrigued by any inherent meaning.

The faceless façade of the modern church ***fails to communicate meaning to anyone*** …

Designers and architects of the modern church are careful not to offend anyone in the community by using particularly Catholic symbols such as the crucifix or even the Latin Cross.

Following the modern church fashion of the 1990’s a circular window … is divided into four panes to form a ‘Greek cross’.

Since the horizontal and vertical pieces of a Greek cross are equal in length, the Christian symbolism is lost in the window, and therefore it’s doubtful that the frequent passerby will be offended by such inconspicuous Christian symbolism.

Neither will the pilgrim immediately (or perhaps ever) perceive the Greek cross form. To everyone except the liturgist, the round window is nothing more than a round window with four panes of equal size.”

A round window then, with a ‘plus sign’ in the middle, as Rose also observes …

The emphasis in the above is my own, and what I want to emphasise is that in modern architecture as elsewhere, we are being subjected to a Creeping Tyranny of Blandness and Mediocrity …

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

The Air that We Breath …

This weblog recently began again with the prospects of wholescale ecological catastrophe.

And yesterday in response, we invoked here the little known dream of an Irish Catholic prime minister from 1943 …

I wonder if anyone thought: what is the point? Our world problems surely cannot be solved by going back to a dead past on an obscure little island, isolated from the mainstream. We must contend with the present forces of global society.

Forces, which I believe, are too often seen as having an aura of inevitability about them.

One of the chief things, it seems to me, in combating this aura of inevitability, is to HEIGHTEN CONSCIOUSNESS that there is a **worldview** that informs, shapes and guides all our current political, social and economic activity.

Which activity, moreover, is killing us.

But this **worldview** is not the only one we have available to us.

Yes, one of the first steps it seems to me, is **heightening consciousness** that this worldview is ‘pulling the strings’ – and that we have a choice.

Once we are conscious, that is, that our strings are being pulled.

Now I propose in this weblog to call this worldview ‘Secularism’. I am aware that this word is not quite accurate, nor adequate and that Secularism is not without noble roots and aspirations.

Still in a weblog like this, a certain SHORTHAND is necessary. And it is easier for me to say ‘Secularism’ than explain every time that our society is underpinned and moulded by a complex convergence of philosophical currents including:

Relativism, involving a despair of finding any basis for truth that is not relative to one’s own culture.

Philosophical Materialism, in which little but the most crudely obvious material dimensions are admitted as having **validity** and hence MEANING for the way our society is run.

A Negative Concept of Liberty which holds that any restraint, even **self-chosen** restraint, equals loss of freedom. This approach is also subtly materialistic, inasmuch as it emphasises material restraints over psychological ones (i.e. someone under house-arrest is seen as not free, but an agoraphobic may be).

While also acknowledging that the zeitgeist is informed by genuine aspirations, as well: liberté, egalité, fraternité …

I have tried to unpack these ideas a little in the previous weeks, and I cannot keep unpacking them each and every time. So for the sake of simplicity, I will use the word ‘Secularism’ as shorthand for the zeitgeist …

Now secularism so-defined, is the air that we breathe. We breathe this air so naturally and unconsciously that we never suspect that we might breathe a different air.

But I invoke very recent Irish history to show that people very like us, did indeed breathe a different air – and created a different society.

We are like fish in an all-surrounding sea – poisoned sea – which have no idea that there are very different options available. Fish in this case, that could breath a very different air, if they became aware that this was not the only sea available ...

But when these different options are suggested to us, we can react as though something will be IMPOSED on us …

Soon I want to expand on the story of a British mother I know and admire, as an example of what I mean. This British woman, who is not a Christian, had her children – for non-religious reasons - enrolled in an at least marginally Christian school. But she resented the fact that her children had Christian concepts ‘imposed’ on them.

But it never occurred to her that that in the state-run alternative, children were **also** having something imposed on them. Because these children are breathing in every day the air of secularism – an ideology composed, again, of materialism, relativism, liberty narrowly and materialistically defined – and so forth.

All of these things are being IMPOSED on our children. An ideology is being enforced. When I tried to explain this to her, she had no idea at all what I meant. And it seems to me that most of us have no idea at all – Secularism is the air that we breathe ...

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Ireland, O Ireland!

We face the world suffering and we bring to the table what we have.

And if our outlook is Hermetic, we feel that what we have is the gathered fruit from a journey, a destiny shot through with unfathomable depth and meaning.

I face the world, with my own experience of Ireland.

Ireland – a country radically transformed in the last two decades. Once one of the poorest in Europe, but suddenly transformed by a massive injection of EU capital and capitalist ‘success’. Once radically Catholic, now far more secular.

Yet the legacy of the past remains evident. Everywhere I go on this holy island, I hear the continual lament: ‘Money has ruined us. Money has ruined us’.

From neighbours, from newspapers, from churches, from taxi and bus drivers, I have never heard anything like this far-reaching collective lamentation.

The profound sense of loss cites the loss of community, most of all.

The irony is that Ireland still has by far the strongest community ethic of any country I have ever encountered. And I have lived in several. Simple goodwill and helpfulness here seem to me extraordinary. The social conscience, work for charity and so forth are markedly pronounced.

And yet I am told repeatedly – all of this is but a shadow of the community ethic that once existed in Ireland. 'Everyone just lives for themselves, these days' I am told.

By comparison with other countries, Ireland still remains a country of remarkable religious PRACTICE.

The *weekday* masses have striking levels of attendance, to say nothing of Sunday. Similarly in church after church, one can daily hear the prayer of the faithful: ‘Hail Mary full of grace’… And the chapels of Eucharistic Adoration are not empty. Ordinary people sit within them in silent reverence before the exposed Sacrament.

Again this is but a shadow of what was. I am told by the elders here of a life in their rural childhood, wherein every home, every evening the rosary was prayed. And everyone in the neighbouring area was welcome to come round and join in.

I am told of a world where the Angelus sounded at 12 and 6 every day and summoned people to prayer. And people really did *stop* what they were doing. (Though I am happy to note the Angelus stills sounds from my church and on Irish television at these times).

My destiny brought me here to see this …

Now one of the founding fathers of the modern Irish Republic was the staunchly Catholic Eamon DeValera. The political party he founded has dominated Irish politics from the beginning. He himself was elected leader repeatedly over *** decades*** in Ireland.

And what did Eamon DeValera stand for? Here is how he addressed the nation on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1943:

“The Ireland which we have dreamed of would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis of right living, of a people who were satisfied with frugal comfort and devoted their leisure to things of the spirit; a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry … whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age. It would, in a word, be a home of a people living the life that God desires that men should live."

What I say in this webblog is fragmentary. Particularly at the moment. There are many nuances, paradoxes, shadows, and yes intolerable abuses in the Irish situation that cannot be captured here.

Still I invite you, my friends in more secular countries, to pause for a moment and reflect on your local politicians and what their electoral prospects would be – on the back of a call for frugality, 'things of the spirit', forums of serene wisdom and money 'only as a basis' for … the ‘life that God desires that men should live."

And again, DeValera was elected again and again and again ....

Clearly Ireland, until comparatively recently, breathed a different AIR to many other Western countries. And to different kinds of air I hope to soon return ...

Monday, January 23, 2006

One Fine Day … in January

We had some lovely weather where I live in Ireland this weekend.

Saturday in particular was beautiful. The sun shone. It was wonderfully warm. The birds were singing as though it were spring.

Unfortunately it isn’t spring – or at least it shouldn’t be.

This morning, my wife recalled a kind woman we had once known, who seemed to us to take materialistic excess and opulence to a vulgar degree. What my wife could not understand was that this woman also struck her as a puritanical Christian. Her children would not see Harry Potter, and I imagine her sexual ethics were very strict. But my wife couldn’t understand her nonchalance towards wealth.

Now my wife grew up in Europe, whereas I was raised in America. In essence, I said to her this morning: it’s easier to understand than you think. In America in particular, there is this species of Christianity that is very literal.

The Bible prohibits magic and fornication. That is clear.

Despite Our Lord’s call to simplicity in so many *parables* and *metaphors*, nowhere does it explicitly, EXACTLY say: ‘Though shalt not be a devouring capitalist, devoted to consumer durables and economic growth above all’.

To this mindset then, George Walker Bush is a fine example of Christian ethics.

In the wake of Lovelock's message, I find myself thinking a great deal about **collective** simplicity. Which (if it is to be achieved, as it must be - now more than ever) I suspect cannot be achieved from anything other than INSPIRATION.

A literalistic Christianity succeeded in enforcing many ‘shalt nots’. At least for a certain period of time - in certain cultures at any rate.

But a Christianity of Mystery and Metaphor that INSPIRES is necessary, it seems to me.

It also seems to me that in spite of shadows, contradictions and yes, cruelties, that Ireland nonetheless also had, and to some extent still has, a Christianity that INSPIRED people to a truly beautiful collective aspiration … which resulted in a simpler life …

And despite the many, many fine achievements of the environmental movement over the last decades – it seems to me that this movement by itself, is only capable of inspiring a small segment of folk.To put it crudely in a contemporary idiom: it just ain’t sexy enough to inspire masses to ‘go green’ …

But it seems to me that the Christian Mystery has inspired masses to a devoted life of simplicity, over the centuries. Where the Christian Mystery is present that is, rather than legalism.

In saying this, I do not wish to discount religious Mystery operating in other faiths, attracting, inspiring, drawing, gripping … Creating an interior richness, where external riches are no longer so necessary.

Nor on the other hand, do I wish to discount the fact that the cosmos changed at Calvary, and that Our Lord, though present in all religions and all areas of humane, loving activity, daily vivifies his church, and offers his flesh and blood …

Friday, January 20, 2006

Religion-less Spirituality

From two days ago: “It seems to me that after nearly twenty years involvement in the vast New Age movement that spreads itself particularly in the secular countries of Protestant heritage, that a kind of spirituality is distributed that is insufficient to meet world horror …”

Twenty years involvement in the New Age movement, a movement so hard to define that almost none of its participants can agree to a name for it. But a movement that encompasses many who reject mainstream philosophical materialism and seek meaning in interior paths, psychotherapeutic, esoteric, so-called holistic. Interior paths, which reject religion - especially it seems to me, Christianity.

Yes, in the New Age rejection of VAST amounts of tradition – implicit or not – there is little justice, it now seems to me, to the claim of being ‘holistic’. Though it took me so long to see this.

Then there is my less extensive involvement with Anthroposophy. Another attempt at ‘Religion-less Spirituality’. Which moreover, it seems has created a highly religious system. It seems to me that many Anthroposophists have far more **beliefs** than the formally religious …

Then there is my turning from Religion-less Spirituality to religion. Which proved unexpectedly rich beyond belief, deepening my human-ness in ways the above never did …

But what links my participation in all of these is my concern for the world. All my adult life, I could never understand ‘politicians’ – by which, I mean those who felt the world’s ills could be addressed by **purely** political solutions.

Whether socialist, environmentalist, distributivist, decentralist. And so forth. Whatever the banner - I couldn't see these strategies working in isolation. But all my adult life it has seemed to me that the healing of the world required profound attitudinal, psychological, spiritual, yes ultimately mystical transformation.

Jung said the healing of the individual soul was ultimately a religious matter. And so, it seems clear to me, is the case with our collective and world soul.

And yet this simple idea that seemed so utterly clear to me did not seem that way to so many others.

Like so many others, I turned to the New Age, rejecting the forms of Western religion I grew up surrounded by: American fundamentalism, and later an admittedly more intelligent, but humanist-socialist-political, well-intentioned British Protestantism. Yes well-intentioned, but somehow uninvolving and unmysterious …

But at the age of 34, I finally discovered that traditional Christianity (Catholic and Orthodox) was saying something so very, very, very different from all I had been led to believe about Christianity. ‘Led to believe’ … And who led me …?

Yes, this 2000 years of tradition, embracing not just 1.4 billion people (who often escape the notice of the English-speaking world) but also a living set of practices and Sacraments, and not just beliefs … As well as Mystery, Spiritual Mystery.

This week my mind, my heart, are reeling more than ever before at the world situation.

And all that I personally have is what my own very personal journey has led me to see. The failure of Anthroposophy. The frequent poverty of so-called holistic approaches, although my time at Findhorn and my time setting up a New Age centre in Cambridge certainly also had great riches.

But can these religion-less spiritualities CARRY the Spirit in our world? My experience of Ireland, if nothing else, would alone lead me to feel that the vessel of religion can carry the Spirit into our society far better than any of the other vessels I encountered …

And then there is my sense that although the John Paul papacy has been buried in lies, something extraordinarily living is happening in a Church that is REGENERATING. ‘There is my sense’ … that is again to say: so it seems to me.

In my inner world are so, so many pieces that seem to me –if not to others- directly relevant to what James Lovelock has told us this week. And like each of us, I must take what I have, and assemble them into the most effective response I can make to the world horror.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

It Seems to Me ...

It seems to me there is a series of links between:

The Rise of Protestantism, noble in so many respects, and the loss of Sacramental Union, Mystery and Practice.

The New Epistemology explicit or implicit in Descartes, Kant, Hume, Mill, Ayer, etc.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, to borrow the title of the famous essay by the (non-Christian) sociologist Max Weber.

The rise of materialism – philosophical and commercial.

Hyper-individualism.

It seems to me that Ireland had far, far, far less of this materialism and hyper-individualism until very recently.

That it had a SIMPLICITY rooted in the collective importance given to a transcendent ideal.

Not a hyper-individual pursuit – but a **collective** aspiration to the transcendent.

And that this translated into an amazingly strong community ethic. Amazing that is, in comparison to the secular countries of Protestant heritage.

And that all of this was linked to beholding –consciously or not – transcendent mystery in the form of the Sacraments. Not only the Eucharist, but Confession.

It seems to me that the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965, so admirable in so many respects - please do not mistake me here – it seems to me that this so-often truly admirable Vatican II in its destruction of the liturgy, led to an immense decrease of Sacramental Mystery.

And in Ireland, as elsewhere, the effects can be felt.

It seems to me that the Sacraments – wherever they are truly present, inside or outside the Roman Catholic Church - hold a profound key to addressing the immense tragedy of hyper-individualism, mass consumption and ecological catastrophe.

It seems to me.

What do I do with this ‘it seems to me’ in the face of Lovelock? I ask my heart, I ask my Lord.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

More Intimately Now ...

Before James Lovelock’s extraordinary message (reproduced in yesterday’s entry) broke on Monday, I had written a personal ‘letter’ to the friends who read this weblog.

Though Lovelock’s message dwarfs my own personal situation by an incomprehensible magnitude - I am reproducing here the letter I wrote last weekend, with but minor tweaks:


Dear Friends, known and unknown,

Today, I must take a different approach to heretofore. A more personal one, in which I begin with a morsel of ‘autobiography’.

My life has been marked by sudden and immense upheavals. In one case, I was shocked to learn of my mother’s terminal illness and abruptly left one continent for another to care for her. At another point, a marriage to a woman who was and is very dear to me came to a shocking end.

Now another immense upheaval appears – at least appears – on my personal horizon. And this time, I am glad to tell you dear friends, that neither divorce, nor death, nor illness is involved.

But the processes around this abruptness are intensely difficult. Great uncertainty and insecurity are present – along with a very strong sense of meaning, purpose and guidance. And grace. Profound, profound grace. Without which I might not be standing.

Due to all of this, I have seriously considered abandoning this weblog. But I am not ready to do that – at least not yet.

However in the midst of intensity, I cannot maintain or at least justify the same level of concentration I gave this project before Christmas. Before Christmas, when my life appeared to radically shift, and in which indeed I received a ‘rejuvenating and inspiring effect of Christmas’ …

Now I could wait until a point where I can justify that same level again. But for a few days (or more), I have decided on a different approach.

That approach will take a more personal and subjectivist turn.

For instance, instead of trying to more carefully document what I see in the world – a process which is demanding – I will simply turn to an approach where very often I might just say: ‘It seems to me’.

This then is a more personal sharing: I am simply reporting what seems to me. At least, for the moment. For these things that I address with ‘it seems to me’ are things that I still hope to document in more depth some time in the future.

But for the next days at least, I might say – for example - that “It seems to me that after nearly twenty years involvement in the vast New Age movement that spreads itself particularly in the secular countries of Protestant heritage, that a kind of spirituality is distributed that is insufficient to meet world horror …”

And then say a little more, perhaps in a FRAGMENTARY way of what else 'seems to me' in this regard. So tomorrow I will start in this vein: ‘it seems to me’.

For now I wish to repeat that I regard this as an experiment, which may not succeed. The word ‘fragmentary’ was emphasised, because what may well follow are a series of soul fragments, testifying to a soul in fragments.

It may well make for less meaningful reading – particularly for those of you who do not know me. And I may still discontinue this blog altogether – at least for awhile.

I should also say that I will no longer commit to putting up an entry every weekday – though until further notice, at least, I hope to maintain something like that schedule. I also wish to apologise here to those of you who have sent me mail – some of it **very** meaningful – that I have yet to reply to. I will be in touch when things are easier.

If this brings disappointment to any, I am sorry. I had sincerely hoped to carry on in the old vein. But all is in upheaval and pain – yet also shot through with grace and meaning.

Your friend in Christ,

Roger

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

“If There Was One Scientist You Would Listen To ... It Would Be ... Lovelock"

A few very personal words, to kick off with:

Though I know so woefully little about the environment, I have read and even (briefly) met Jonathan Porritt, a man I truly **respect**. And ‘Britain’s most famous environmentalist’ as the Independent newspaper called him today.

There he is quoted as saying in response to Lovelock’s devastating assessment of the environment:

“If there was one scientist you would listen to on a proposition of that kind, it would be Jim Lovelock.

Is he right? I simply don't know. I'm not enough of a scientist to make a judgment. With many people you would be tempted to dismiss the idea, but Jim is different.”

Now although I am still less – far less - qualified to render judgment, I will simply report that my own meditations of the last 35 hours echo Porritt’s words.

What I know of Lovelock’s trajectory suggests to me that he may have been placed on the scene of world history to bring Earth System Science to the fore – and that this is the latest installment of an unfolding story whose Hermetic depths are indeed deep, very, very deep.

But one thing I have no wish to do in this weblog, is contribute in anyway to a state of hopelessness.

While I obviously cannot come within a million light years of James Lovelock’s knowledge – the fruit of a profound lifetime – I also cannot accept that any of us, including Lovelock, can KNOW what will happen to the biosphere.

I therefore cannot accept Lovelock’s presentation of the remainder of the century as a fait accompli – and encourage all of us to nurture HOPE.

We do not KNOW – but I feel we have been given something here that merits intensive attention. To say the very least.

Speaking personally, I suspect yesterday’s announcement from Lovelock will mark a watershed in my life. One where I see more than ever, that not only HOPE is needed now – but DRASTIC action, and moreover DRASTIC re-thinking.

For very personally, I do not believe, I am unable to believe - that such drastic action can take place without a drastic revision of the way our society thinks about the world. After yesterday, more than ever, do I join with the currents of Christian thinkers as diverse as Rudolf Steiner and John Paul II in saying:

We can have neither a sustainable world, nor a socially just civilization – where the Spirit is driven out by the philosophical worldview that has brought us to this precipice.

I will say more soon. For now, may James Lovelock and the Independent forgive me – I am reproducing his text in this not-for-profit weblog. The profound urgency of this call for drastic re-thinking transcends issues of copyright, I believe. And Lovelock deserves to be heard as widely as possible. Thus I hope the following reproduction will be judged as being in the spirit of ‘fair use’ (and if not, I apologise sincerely and will remove it immediately).

And now Professor Lovelock:

“Imagine a young policewoman delighted in the fulfilment of her vocation; then imagine her having to tell a family whose child had strayed that he had been found dead, murdered in a nearby wood. Or think of a young physician newly appointed who has to tell you that the biopsy revealed invasion by an aggressive metastasising tumour. Doctors and the police know that many accept the simple awful truth with dignity but others try in vain to deny it.

Whatever the response, the bringers of such bad news rarely become hardened to their task and some dread it. We have relieved judges of the awesome responsibility of passing the death sentence, but at least they had some comfort from its frequent moral justification. Physicians and the police have no escape from their duty.

This article is the most difficult I have written and for the same reasons. My Gaia theory sees the Earth behaving as if it were alive, and clearly anything alive can enjoy good health, or suffer disease. Gaia has made me a planetary physician and I take my profession seriously, and now I, too, have to bring bad news.

The climate centres around the world, which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth's physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth's family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger.

Our planet has kept itself healthy and fit for life, just like an animal does, for most of the more than three billion years of its existence. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.

Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves.

Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This "global dimming" is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse.

We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.

By failing to see that the Earth regulates its climate and composition, we have blundered into trying to do it ourselves, acting as if we were in charge. By doing this, we condemn ourselves to the worst form of slavery. If we chose to be the stewards of the Earth, then we are responsible for keeping the atmosphere, the ocean and the land surface right for life. A task we would soon find impossible - and something before we treated Gaia so badly, she had freely done for us.

To understand how impossible it is, think about how you would regulate your own temperature or the composition of your blood. Those with failing kidneys know the never-ending daily difficulty of adjusting water, salt and protein intake. The technological fix of dialysis helps, but is no replacement for living healthy kidneys.

My new book The Revenge of Gaia expands these thoughts, but you still may ask why science took so long to recognise the true nature of the Earth. I think it is because Darwin's vision was so good and clear that it has taken until now to digest it. In his time, little was known about the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans, and there would have been little reason for him to wonder if organisms changed their environment as well as adapting to it.

Had it been known then that life and the environment are closely coupled, Darwin would have seen that evolution involved not just the organisms, but the whole planetary surface. We might then have looked upon the Earth as if it were alive, and known that we cannot pollute the air or use the Earth's skin - its forest and ocean ecosystems - as a mere source of products to feed ourselves and furnish our homes. We would have felt instinctively that those ecosystems must be left untouched because they were part of the living Earth.

So what should we do? First, we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act; and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can.

Civilisation is energy-intensive and we cannot turn it off without crashing, so we need the security of a powered descent. On these British Isles, we are used to thinking of all humanity and not just ourselves; environmental change is global, but we have to deal with the consequences here in the UK.

Unfortunately our nation is now so urbanised as to be like a large city and we have only a small acreage of agriculture and forestry. We are dependent on the trading world for sustenance; climate change will deny us regular supplies of food and fuel from overseas.

We could grow enough to feed ourselves on the diet of the Second World War, but the notion that there is land to spare to grow biofuels, or be the site of wind farms, is ludicrous.

We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate.

Perhaps the saddest thing is that Gaia will lose as much or more than we do. Not only will wildlife and whole ecosystems go extinct, but in human civilisation the planet has a precious resource. We are not merely a disease; we are, through our intelligence and communication, the nervous system of the planet. Through us, Gaia has seen herself from space, and begins to know her place in the universe.

We should be the heart and mind of the Earth, not its malady. So let us be brave and cease thinking of human needs and rights alone, and see that we have harmed the living Earth and need to make our peace with Gaia. We must do it while we are still strong enough to negotiate, and not a broken rabble led by brutal war lords. Most of all, we should remember that we are a part of it, and it is indeed our home."

Monday, January 16, 2006

With Love, Eliphas Lévi

Warm greetings to you friends, known and unknown.

I begin this year jolted, personally jolted. So much so, that I am not sure how to continue this weblog. More will be said. Tomorrow, perhaps.

Then, just in the last hours I have been jolted again – by the enormity (to say the very least) of what James Lovelock is saying today about civilisation (and so, so much more) being destroyed by global warming.

If you have not heard, I urge you to go to the site of the fine British newspaper, The Independent, which devoted its **entire** first three pages today to Lovelock's claim. Lovelock's own words are here:

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article338830.ece

But the related articles also deserve to be ***studied***.

On this matter, I will remain in silence, till more has been digested.

Today I will be very personal and simply say that my heart has been crying out these last hours: “Secularism isn’t working! …

Secularism, rooted in epistemological blindness leads inevitably to blindness of values … The loss of simplicity and devotion to a higher ideal that Ireland, for example, once had - can be laid at the door of secularism, scepticism and the materialism and hyper-individualism that followed in its wake …”

Cry from the heart. And very subjective. More time is needed …

For now, I will just say that as this blog has unfolded, it will have been obvious that I sometimes draw on some unusual Christian thinkers. These include the non-Catholic, non-confessional esotericist Rudolf Steiner. And also the very Catholic anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot.

But as this new year of my weblog gets off to a faltering start, I want to invoke a third unusual source: the great 19th century French Catholic Hermeticist, Eliphas Lévi. And without much further comment today, simply resurrect his voice once more.

For as bizarre as it may no doubt seem, I feel his voice addresses – however adequately or not – the only answer I am able to see to the tragedies intimated above.

'Able to see' that is, after many years of reflection. I am then, unable to see another answer after all these years...

Certainly not in the New Age movement which, it seems to me often plays into affirming the subjectivism of secularism … Among other things …

‘However adequately or not’ - I wish to repeat in regard to Eliphas Lévi. For although he was a man of **magnificently** radiating heart and human wisdom, his formulations can at times be excessive and extravagant.

No matter. I affirm the heartfelt essence, if not all the particulars of his message.Through the veils of prejudice, he saw the Power and the Mystery of the Sacramental Church - which is the Power and the Mystery of Christ ...

Here then, is my friend, the Catholic deacon, Alphonse Louis Constant speaking from Paris in the 1860’s and 70’s:

“Homo sum humani a me nil alienum puto. I am a human, and nothing human can be foreign to me. This is what God has said to the world in the Spirit of the Christian Revelation.”

“The ancient rites have lost their effectiveness since Christianity appeared in the world. The Christian and Catholic religion, in fact, is the legitimate daughter of Jesus, king of the Mages. A simple scapular worn by a truly Christian person is a more invincible talisman than the ring and pentacle of Solomon.

The Mass is the most prodigious of evocations. Necromancers evoke the dead, the sorcerer evokes the devil and he shakes, but the Catholic priest does not tremble in evoking the living God.

Catholics alone have priests because they alone have the altar and the offering, i.e. the whole of religion. To practise high Magic is to compete with the Catholic priesthood; it is to be a dissident priest.

Rome is the great Thebes of the new initiation. It has crypts for its catacombs; for talismen, its rosaries and medallions; for a magic chain, its congregations; for magnetic fires, its convents; for centres of attraction, its confessionals; for means of expansion, its pulpits and the addresses of its bishops; it has, lastly, its Pope, the Man-God rendered visible.”

(By which,in the last instance, Lévi may simply have meant that the two thousand year history of the See of Peter is due not to arbitrary human invention, but to a Sacramental Mystery that reveals Christ in a particular way ...)

“The supernatural is the eternal Paradox of the infinite desire. Man craves to assimilate himself with God, and he does so in the Catholic communion. From a Rationalistic point of view and considered in a purely natural manner, this communion is a thing of colossal extravagance.

In the Catholic Communion they eat the spirit of God and the body of a man! Eat a spirit, and an infinite Spirit! What madness! Eat the body of a man! How horrible! Theophagy, and Androphagy! What claims to immortality! And yet, what can be more beautiful, more soothing, more really divine than the Catholic Communion?

The religious want, innate in man, will never find more complete satisfaction; and how vividly we feel that it is true, when we believe in it. Faith to a certain extent creates what she affirms; hope in the superhuman never deceives, and the Love of the divine is never a deception.

The First Communion is the coronation of the human royalty, it is the inauguration of the serious side of life, it is the apotheosis and the transfiguration of childhood, it is the most pure of all joys and the most true of all happinesses.”

Now I might add to what Eliphas Lévi says here, that I realise many children today do not experience this.

Nonetheless, I was shocked, SHOCKED by the inexpressible joy which the confirmation in the Catholic Church so unexpectedly invoked in me on Easter night, 2000.

Giving me the most profound, unnamable richness, that only seems to unfold more, year by year by year. Yes, I know what lies behind Lévi's words, as to this most pure of happinesses ...

And Lord, the wholesomeness, the mysterious calm and peace of this divine-human wholesomeness, engendered by Sacramental Union with your Being ... perhaps that is what we need now more than ... my voice trails off.

O Lord.