Living Spirituality

Living Spirituality

 

[Article Copyright - John Hetherington - December 2010 - for publication in the Newsletter of the Progressive Christian Network Britain.]

On a showery Saturday in November my partner Mandy and I, and a Buddhist friend, drove from Kendal across to Sheffield to attend a Conference organised jointly by St.Mark’s Centre for Radical Christianity[1] (CRC) and the Living Spirituality Network[2] (LSN). LSN was relatively new to me, perhaps surprisingly.

 

It is part of the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland. LSN aims to:

• “be an open space for theological reflection and exploration
• ask questions which deepen and challenge us, and move us forward
• 'fly kites'
• live the tensions that arise in spirituality
• listen and respond to the people the churches do not meet - both inside and outside the churches.”

LSN’s webpage, points out that LSN exists for people who are exploring the meaning of spirituality both within and beyond the traditional churches. So it provides supporters with information, contacts and encouragement as they seek to understand and deepen their spiritual lives.

 

However, LSN recognises that, “while many people pursue their spiritual quest within the traditional Christian churches ... the spiritual and religious landscape is changing dramatically. Some continue to participate in church services and groups, but find most of their spiritual needs met outside them.” Their view is that, “Many spiritual seekers today have little or no experience of formal religion; and for significant numbers of others, traditional religion provides neither a context nor a language which is helpful or meaningful on their journey”. As people both in and beyond “church” explore and deepen their spiritual experience, practice and commitment, many of them are looking for information and for companionship. They seek access to new thinking, new ways of seeing and new experiences, and for new opportunities to connect with fellow travellers - kindred spirits - embarked on a similar quest.

 

LSN links across a wide range of organisations and bodies – though PCN Britain is still not formally one of them. Among the organisations that are linked are CRC, CANA[3], the network of Christian Meditation Groups[4] (in the John Main tradition), the network of Julian Groups[5] and significant communities such as the Iona Community[6], and Corrymeela[7] in Ireland. Although the Findhorn Community[8] is not on the LSN list, it is also an ecological and spiritual community celebrating open spiritual inquiry and practice. Having been there, it is clearly deeply involved in the development of a “living spirituality”.

 

The exploring mindset of PCNB, Free to Believe, the Living Spirituality Network and other related networks should enable bridges to be built across this rapidly expanding spiritual landscape. There is a growing interest in spirituality as evidenced by the relatively large viewing figures for the recent TV series[9] “The Big Silence” which has sought to bring “spiritual awakening” to a national audience.

 

Back in September 2008 I authored for Free to Believe a booklet entitled, “Reshaping Christianity – Mysticism, Spirituality and Global Faith”. In it I explored the exciting story of the growing attention now being given to mystical writings in Judaism, Christianity and Sufi Islam. I also touched on the growing significance of the Baha’i faith. My booklet[10] (available from Free to Believe, price £2.50) also looked at the surveys done in the UK on the “new spiritualities” and their “belief” systems, and how there are more and more participants in the many open and varied forms of spiritual practice. In it I suggested that orthodox interpretations of Christian doctrine based on a “God above the sky” perspective, as opposed to a “Ground of all Being”, or especially a “God Within”, perspective must be taken less and less seriously. From a Celtic Christianity perspective “all that is” in nature is the divine domain. The new spiritualities and the new physics increasingly share common ground and invoke a form of “process theology” with God present both in the timeless realm of spirit and through the evolving gift of the physical universe[11].

 

Many open hearted people are indeed finding ‘God within’, in forms such as Quaker silence and in the practices of Christian meditation and its Vedanta / Buddhist forms. Traditional Christian doctrines are increasingly being challenged by these perspectives, and by the growing, “turn to experience”. All this is evidenced in falling church attendance, but growing participation in the many forms of “spiritual practice” now available. I am increasingly convinced that it is to the new or rediscovered forms of mystical spirituality and experience that we must look.

 

So what is the future? Is it likely that the tradition of attending church is only hanging on in those churches which support a “social network” format for the elderly? By contrast, some liberal / progressive churches (and PCN Britain Local Groups) are providing a safe place for erudite discussion of the nature of God. There are also churches (often held in community buildings) that are characterised by loud music and choruses, i.e. “evangelical” celebratory styles of worship, whatever the doctrinal approach. The social action style of Christianity that many churches aspire to is, of course, an entirely valid and vital component of a faith born in the justice milieu of the Old Testament Prophets and of course of Jesus of Nazareth and Paul who challenged the powers and empires of their day. Today, interfaith exploration is increasingly being seen as a profoundly important component of people’s faith and spirituality in the “global village”. It is too early to write “church” off.

 

In my booklet, I quoted Dave Tomlinson from his book “The Post Evangelical”, who, like many others, had shared my journey from Christian Union to Liberal Protestant, via disillusionment and through to the next obvious step – the journey inward to a new mysticism and spirituality. The mysticism of the early Jesus movement seems to have been lost or suppressed in the period that followed Rome’s takeover.

 

Spiritual depth, in today’s context, is more and more likely to be rediscovered in the living out of a personal spiritual journey, but one shared with others in small groups, who study together the world’s store of mystical writings in small groups. It needs situations where participants are comfortable with the traditions of the ‘broad catholic’ spectrum (Lectio Divina[12]), where retreat and meditation provide sources of inward experience and insight. Another growing practice is the “pilgrimage” – as for example my life changing journey to Iona – on a Retreat led by "The Sacred Space Foundation[13].”

 

For others, poetry (across a spectrum from the Christian Mystics, via Rumi and the Romantic Poets, to modern verse) encompassing both religious and spiritual dimensions, is increasingly significant. Sources of poetic meditation that have meant much to me recently are the works of Kenneth Stephen[14] and the late John O’Donohue[15].

 

So, it was a delight to be at Sheffield as we listened to the speaker Eley McAinsh[16] who, in two lectures and two periods of shared meditation, gave a clear overview of the breadth of contemporary spirituality. Amongst others, her talk drew on Baron Freidrich von Hugel, who argued that there are three dimensions to the authentic religious life – institutional, intellectual and experiential, and Ken Wilbur (one of my favourite modern thinkers) who has sought to add “contemplative knowledge” to the scientific quest. Eley commented that spiritual experience, meditation and contemplation are what lie at the heart of the “Spirituality Revolution[17]”. She sees mysticism and spirituality as closely related but not interchangeable. Both involve direct personal experience of the divine ground. Many within PCNB will recall Marcus Borg’s Sheffield lecture[18] with his quotation of Karl Rahner’s phrase, “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he or she will not be at all.” For Borg, mysticism is about experiencing God, the Sacred, or Spirit as Real (my underlining).

 

Eley also quoted key authors such as Gordon Lynch (Professor of the Sociology of Religion at Birkbeck University, London) who has mapped out the changes now rapidly occurring. He has set out his analysis of the emerging encounter with what he calls ‘The New Spirituality’ in his book, subtitled, ‘An Introduction to Progressive Belief in the 21st Century’, which describes his research. It first reviews the roots of the new, progressive spirituality, its ideology, and its organisational emergence. Its approach is captured by his sub headings to Chapter 2 – The Ideology of progressive spirituality:

• The unity of the ineffable and immanent divine – the guiding intelligence behind evolutionary process and the energy of the universe itself
• Pantheism / Panentheism – replacing a transcendent, patriarchal view of God
• Mysticism and the divine feminine – using symbol and liturgy, encounter with nature and celebration of the feminine in God
• The sacralisation of nature – affirmation of the material and nature / life as participation in divinity
• The sacralisation of the self – as a manifestation of the divine – with human consciousness derived from the supra-consciousness of the “All”.
• Understandings of Religion – as culturally and historically bound and thus metaphorical – enabling a growing spirit of ‘ecumenism’
• The deeper cultural roots of progressive spirituality show underlying coherence, reflecting adaptation to modernism, liberalism and welcome insights in quantum physics and cosmic ‘unfolding’.

Gordon Lynch also comments that, “people are engaging more and more deeply with the meaning and significance of spirituality in contemporary life and culture.” My view is that films like Avatar express a hunger for a lost innocence and engagement with the natural world of which we are fully part and share responsibility for[19]. There remains both a justice and subversive political perspective to the mystical and spiritual path. Dorothee Soelle[20] proposes that mysticism is about, “the breaking through of wisdom”.

 

So, to conclude, I fully agree with Eley McAinsh’s summation in her afternoon lecture, “Mysticism .. is a way to participate in transformation. The physicist Paul Davies says, ‘we have to embrace a different concept of understanding ... the mystical path is possibly such a way’.”

 

In 1994 James Redfield wrote a novel, the “Celestine Prophecy – An Adventure”, in which a lost manuscript was found that spoke of a coming time of human development and a recognition of our capacity for change. It had the drama and tension of all such novels (also made into a film), but behind it was a view that new spiritual capacities were emerging in our evolution as a species. Perhaps it might just be that in the years and centuries ahead the insights of today’s “new spiritualities” and the recovery of the mystical path might just mean that human beings – whether people of traditional faith or newer paths – may find that they indeed live in God – Love – Spirit, or any such interchangeable terms, and that humanity can indeed become more that it has ever imagined.

 

John Hetherington is a URC Non-Stipendiary Minister, and works as a Planning Consultant. He has written a number of published articles for both PCN Britain and for Free to Believe, in particular his booklet, “Reshaping Christianity – Mysticism, Spirituality and Global Faith”. He helped launch the South Lakeland Interfaith Network in 2007 and is beginning work on a Book to further develop the theme of Mysticism and contemporary Spirituality in greater depth.

 

References:

[1] CRC: http://www.stmarkscrc.co.uk/news-and-events

[2] LSN: http://www.ctbi.org.uk/200

[3] CANA: http://www.christiansawakening.org/

[4] CMUK: http://www.christianmeditation.org.uk/public_html/web_new/home_main.php

[5] Julian Groups: http://www.julianmeetings.org/index.htm

[6] Iona Community: http://www.iona.org.uk/

[7] Correymeela: http://www.corrymeela.org/

[8] Findhorn: http://www.findhorn.org/aboutus/
[9] The Big Silence: http://www.beunos.com/bigsilence.htm
[10] Reshaping Christianity: Mysticism, Spirituality and Global Faith – by John Hetherington
       A reflection on emerging spirituality and its implications for Christianity and all global religions.

       (See FTB Website for ordering and payment information:

       http://www.freetobelieve.org.uk/booklets2.html)

[11] See by way of example Adrian B Smith: God Energy and the Field.

[12] http://lectio-divina.org/

[13] Sacred Spaces: http://www.sacredspace.org.uk/courses.html

[14] Kenneth Stephen: http://www.kennethsteven.co.uk/Books_of_Poetry.php

[15] John O’Donohue: http://johnodonohue.com/

[16] Eley McAinsh, Director of the Living Spirituality Network and BBC Religious affairs producer,  including the BBC's Radio Four program "Something. Understood" talked at the Priory 

[17] David Tacey, The Spirituality Revolution: The Emergence of contemporary spirituality; Routledge
[18] Marcus Borg’s and Eley McAinsh’s lectures can be ordered from the CRC website: http://www.stmarkscrc.co.uk/resources/shop---cds-and-books
[19] See my Blog: http://progressivespirituality.blogspot.com/

[20] Dorothee Soelle – German Liberation Theologian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothee_S%C3%B6lle

In Search of Spiritual Knowing

This article was posted in Reform - a United Reformed Church Publication - in the June 2010 edition


We are part of a universe which expanded from ‘nothing’ some 13.7 billion years ago. The 4.6 billion year evolutionary story of life on earth climaxed with our varied societies and their belief systems. Science sees all this as the by-product of an endless series of challenges and chances. Yet, humans appear to be the only species on earth that has evolved enough to sense our separation from ‘all that is’, with the language to express the fear, love, curiosity and joy this engenders. Religion evolved as a by- product of our need to make sense of this alienation.

We are increasingly discovering that there could be a way to get back to the “knowing” that our ancestors perhaps innately experienced – that they and ‘All that is’ are One. At the personal level my recent faith journey has caused me to move beyond the old religious paradigm (requiring hierarchy and control, orthodoxy and orthopraxis) to discover the space where insight and feeling can awaken heart and mind. Many are again seeking a more mystical path to a spiritual ‘knowing’.

More and more I see God in all things – not as a static, distant, theist Being, accessed through religious structures, but as the ever present and engaged Reality that is ‘becoming’ in the Universe’s unfolding. This God has been constantly walking with us on the evolutionary path to human life and being as it is on earth today. The story, as observed by science, does not preclude the possibility of a deep timeless connectedness (‘God’) in which all life and being subsists, which has long been the truth experience of mystics. The Universe is a glorious evolutionary ‘difference engine’ – always creating the wonderful, the bizarre and the awesome. No human, leaf, sunset or snowflake is the same! Evolution is the unifying ‘great story’, if complemented by the theology of a God present in its unfolding.

God’s creative process of evolution exposes all creatures to a painful food chain. Societies develop by warfare and evil empires. On the other hand, evolution moves forward through the ‘still small voice’ of God’s prophets of justice and the wisdom of God’s messengers – Jesus included. ‘Prayer’ can be influential when it brings people together in significant numbers to challenge injustice and the systems that drive it. Whatever our understanding of God, each human life matters in the unfolding story. Increasingly I want to own a sixth sense of intuition as part of what prayer is. The ‘Universe’ or ‘God’ or ‘collective human concern’ speaks and challenges in this spiritual dimension. This is the place of prayer where our ‘thought’ and the ‘Universal thought’ align.

The experience of saints and mystics, of every faith and culture, is that God’s call to play our part in the story is usually subtle and ambiguous. My own experience is that that the ‘Divine’ is found in both the ‘still small voice’ heard from our ‘heart space’, and in the depth of feeling and awareness that can come to us in meditation. It is from the stillness that ‘intuition for change’ can emerge of great power and depth. I believe that God’s creativity creates by offering us true freedom; we are called but never coerced. Where we do engage freely, the possibilities are immense.

For us to truly pray, we need to become aware that conversation with God is possible within the ‘holiness’ of a deeply purposeful life. This insight has inspired great human beings to plunge the depths of life – implying real communication with God. Such conversation also means experiencing challenges of loving – and allows the possibility of change in God. ‘God’s Will’ is not a given, but a part of the conversation. So, prayer is that two-way mutual cry of tenderness that characterises our way of being human in relationship and in our being: loving the ‘All’.

Prayer is also about mutuality – a coming together just for the joy of it; when we are enraptured by creation, when we pause long enough to still our minds and desires. The long-term future of this earth calls us to know that we all are one – while remaining unique and different. My prayer is that all will come to know more and more of the ‘Life, Love and Being’ that launched evolution. That Life still longs for all to awaken and know this Reality in the depth of every human life. When God’s ‘Love is all around’ in creation, people are constantly able to surprise us with joy and hope! So, let us pray!

Copyright - John Hetherington

June 2010

To subscribe to Reform email: reform@alliance-media.co.uk
Or browse to: www.urc.org.uk/reformsubscriptions

A prose poem of awakening humanity

Ascent - an awakening.

Knowing nothing
of right and wrongdoing
Self awakens.

A human being stands tall
on an ancient shore
for the first time.

See, she is coming too.
She also knows Self.
We are
Two in One, Us.

Flesh and blood, evolving,
copying ourselves
into infinite difference.

We were our cousins once,
Subtle in difference,
enjoying the tree canopy.
Knowers in a gentler way.

We will become even more
Through our tomorrows.

Older than eternity
Inhabiting feeling
Their senses reach out.
Thought gathers.

Sand, sea and infinite sky
are nominated.

Alone still,
their beingness cries
in ecstasy

Seeing, touching, smelling.
Sensate explorers!
Form is formed within.
Love is shared.

Thought follows thought
In a crescendo of insight
This is that.
For, in this beginning was the Word.

Now is old.
Yet, there was a before.
A prior union
of creating from love.
Yes, we remember!

Ah the dancing fields.
Infinite energy
Interpenetrating.
Timeless time.
Every thing from no thing.

Re-live the act of becoming.
Awaken to glory and gift.
I AM all for you.

That was OUR
Infinite choreography
Infolding into fire.

Let there be light.
Let life evolve.
Let being become.
For this is what I AM.

Light, Life and Being at play.
ONE and ALL

This is your meaning
and purpose.
Infinite eyes
Infinite imagination
Infinite love

ONE emergent
In each individuated being.
Touched by grace
Loved always, never judged.

Evolving into infinite difference
Thinking, choosing, free at last!
Partnering divinity,
co-creators of an infinite future.

Living on worlds beyond number.
Beings in infinite form.
Love my infinite gift.
Ah, we remember!

In this is joy.
In this is the eternal
ecstasy of being.

Let me never forget.
I know now
And I understand.
And that is everything.

Copyright
John Hetherington
May 2010

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there."

"Life in all it's fullness"

What the mystics across the faiths have discovered is that there is a "field" where all duality fades away. Where I-Thou becomes One. A place of integration and infinite possibility.

It is a place where each of us has the potential to 'become' a contributor to the One. A place where the Christ can be content with dying because Life can never die. For, "where Love is" there is Life.

The shared space where Life and creative silence dance, is also where other dualities spin into oneness - the "singing field" of all that is.

It is the "field" where religions lose their boundaries, and human beings rise above themselves to touch raw spirit - spreading wisdom and practices - that can open an ever widening circle of love.

There is always choice in a freely offering Universe, where countless life forms and intelligences are evolving. Yet it seems that even iindividual choice is somehow framed by the Unity of Yes and No.

The insight that comes from all this is mystical and fluid. It crosses religious and spiritual categories. it seems to get to the heart of everything - Love.

Love is the force, the Way, that permeates all that is, beyond all other natural forces known to science. And we human beings are often suddenly torn to shreds and recreated when Love comes raging through human hearts.

There are many loves that make up Love, the heart of God's Beingness. Indeed ancient and modern societies know of many loves: powerful Eros, gentle agape, compassion, depths of friendship and many more shades of love.

For without question the Universe is a 'love present', a gift, a grace, and indeed another, less tamed, force to it's cousins, gravity and light - and all the fundamental energies of the cosmos.

As I write this I see in mind and heart what is going on in creation. A vast cosmic symphony: of energy becoming manifest through life evolving, and love becoming, and mind emerging, to be given a "god like" freedom to become and become and become.

It literally blows the mind when for a moment we see that Whole, that divinity of which we are but part. And Yes, we are God, becoming! Love, Life, Everything!

Why all this? I have no clear idea, but it seems these intuitions and sensed experiences are a foundation for what comes next - to discover life's purpose.

Again, there is 'non-duality', no right and wrong, just the 'field' of Being, Becoming through it's creatures, it's dancing energy and above all it's Heart of Love. And I think that is it.

And I thank the Universe for it's gift of life and love and sentient being.

We are embodied life, set free to be all we can be, to live life to the uttermost, to love wastefully. That is the heart of every faith and spiritual practice - and when we "see" this and are "enlightened", then we understand to the very depth of our being that 'All that is', is Love manifest.

But, after that we are on our own, though never really alone - living and loving and being all we can be - as co-creators in the divine life. The oft hidden secret of the faiths and spiritual paths is that we are divinity living itself and loving herself and being himself. 'No-thing' becoming 'Every-thing'.

Human beings have evolved on this small planet in a Universe of infinite Becoming, Being and Loving.
Human beings are just one example of God's exploring, caught up in some inkling of understanding and appreciation of what IS.

All that is written above is just, to you the reader, to get "back to where you started and know the place for the first time". (TS Elliot).

For we are on our own, autonomous and free to choose. No right and wrong, no condemning, no fear, no last judgement. Just explorers in the sea of possibilities. Scary!


No help unless sought by opening to stillness - by practices to open heart and mind, or by sharing with our fellow travellers; looking for pointers from the wisdom traditions and faiths and myriads of spiritual paths.

The world is changing fast and not necessarily for the better, but it is entering a possible period of unity (or at least slowly moving in that direction) where like God, unity in diversity is how things are and will become.

We are each free autonomous human beings - dancing with divinity - often mindless - but hopefully more and more "aware" of 'what is' - as mapped out in the opening section of this blog. There is no question that if we see things this way it is awesome, both for our better understanding and to help frame the loving choices.

Human beings cannot avoid choices, indeed in one sense that is what God's universe exists for. We are in one sense free, to simply choose to follow our hearts and be as loving and compassionate as we can be to the circles of love that would be hurt by our choices.

Or, we can weigh those consequences and hurts in the balance and make a judgement, not that one is wrong or right, but whether or not the choices and impacts will be more loving on a wider basis. It is not about right or wrong but about Love and intuiting the optimum balance from our choices.

In the end, it seems to me, that the test is the extent that Love and Life and Being are optimised and others are set free to have new and greater experiences, even through pain.

To sum up:

This Universe is a gift of Love from emergent divinity, presence.

Our path is to connect as fully as we can into that Presence, where Love takes hold of us.

Our path is to grow in compassion and love in all its forms.

For, in a way we are "Gods" - the eyes and ears and mouth of the Source, in his, her, it's, Being and Becoming.

We are free autonomous beings on a journey of exploration into Life, lived in all it's fullness.

And for that we should always be thankful.


John Hetherington

Copyright 2010

My Selection of Must Read World Religious and Spiritual Literature

I thought I'd start off a sharing of my most appreciated books from the literature of 'spirituality', but also sources on the web for out of copyright material. So here goes, not in a particular order, but trending from those most influential to those I still value.

I would love it if readers would add to my list with their suggestions. I will keep this up to date on Facebook and my Blog - this is just a starter.

First - contemporary writers and novel format material :

Kahil Gabril - The Prophet and other works: http://leb.net/~mira/
Paulo Coelho - particularly The Alchemist and the Zahir
Good Compilation of English "Spiritual poets" from Bede to the 1920s - The English Spirit (The Little Gidding Anthology of English Spirituality) DLT

Film - to be added

e.g The Matrix, Avatar

Books I have in my Library:
Radical Amazement - Judy Cannato ["Awareness of the Divine begins with wonder" - a Herschel quote]
Integral Life Practice - Ken Wilbur and others: http://www.integralinstitute.org/?q=node/1
Ken Wilbur - A brief History of Everything
David Tacy - The Spirituality Revolution
Eckhart Tolle: The Power of Now
Neale Donald Walsch - Conversations with God - and many more

Christian Writers:

Marcus Borg - Reading the Bible Again for the First Time & Meeting Jesus Again for the first time (and almost everything else he has written)
John Shelby Spong: Liberating the Gospels, A new Christianity for a New World (and most of his books since - including Jesus for the NOn Religious and Eternal Life - A new Vision.
Adrian B Smith - Tomorrow's Christian (O Books) and lots more
Deepak Chopra - Quantum Healing and lots more
John Hetherington - Booklet "Reshaping Christianity - Mysticsm. Spirituality and Global faith" - avilable from Free to Believe: http://www.freetobelieve.org.uk/booklets2.html

Christian Scriptures - Psalms, Wisdom, Proverbs, Gospel of John and early Pauline genuine epistles. Gospels of Mary (see: http://www.gnosis.org/library/marygosp.htm)
and Thomas (see: http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html)
and the Pistis Sophia (http://www.gnosis.org/library/pistis-sophia/index.htm).

Also see: http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/index.htm

Other Christian writings: St Augustine - The City of God - http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102.toc.html
Also The Confessions of St Augustine - http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confessions.html
Julian of Norwich - Revelations of Divine Love (14th Century): http://www.ccel.org/ccel/julian/revelations/
William Law - (17/18 C) - A serious Call to a devoit and holy life: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/law/serious_call.html
Thomas A Kempis - The Imitation of Christ: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/kempis/imitation.html

For the whole corpus visit and search in http://www.ccel.org/ and http://www.sacred-texts.com/

World Religions:
Taoism - The Book of the Way: http://www.taoism.net/ttc/complete.htm
Zoroastrian: http://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/index.htm
The Vedanta (Indian Religious Scriptures): http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/
Covers: Vedas (http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/index.htm),
Upanishads (http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/upan/index.htm)
Bhagavad Gita (http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/gita/agsgita.htm)

Buddhism: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/index.htm

Islam: http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/index.htm [Includes a full range of Sufi material - Rumi poetry can be found here: http://allspirit.co.uk/rumi.html
Bahai: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bhi/index.htm [Also see: http://www.bahai.org/]

Sites cover not just English translations - but references more general text.

[TO BE UPDATED - so keep popping back, please and add your own lists.]

Copyright © 2009: Rev John Hetherington. All rights reserved. Permission is granted for this content to be reproduced upon condition that full acknowledgements of author and copyright details are made. John Hetherington - January 2010

Christianity and Easter Symbolism

I picked up the following ideas from a post on Facebook - linking to a Website http://www.truthbeknown.com/easter.htm  - almost all of it ties back to the information in "The Pagan Christ" which I read recently [a very good read] and is the foundation of many esoteric belief systems. It sure makes you think!!

You will need to visit the link above - for the full explanation of the dates that make Easter move - and were known many thousands of years ago. It is a fascinating and scary article. Page down to find the text after the book adverts.

There is a really good argument that Christianity started as just one of several mystery cults which were common across the Roman Empire and, via the fertile crescent, go back to the Egyptian and north African civilisations and through Persia and Afghanistan on to India and even China, with the festivals also linked (by communication or because the dates are global) to other cultures in the Americas and South East Asia and even to Australia and other ab-original cultures and belief systems. The astronomy and skills needed to work it all out go back to thosands of years BC and were progressively refined.


It is fascinating that the early Pauline Epistles have no literal historical Jesus - just a conversion or awakening experience - that led Paul to to proclaim that the God 'in whom we live and move and have our being' is to be known in the incarnation of the Crossified One.The Gospels link this to an historical Jesus figure - but by the time they were written the myth was being adapted to the Judeo-Roman world, and the historicity is suspect. The package of early Christian practice and belief is best gleaned from Paul's letters.


The New Testament is thus a reworking of the myths of the Sun God, and his Divine-Human Son [Horus in Egyptian religion or with other names in other places] which couches the ancient myth in hidden language under the cover of a literal story about a Divine- Human Jesus figure who lived in Galilee, was cruxified [crossifiied] and raised (ascended) to the heavens. Christians need to take seriously the propect that their core beliefs are really a lieralising of a long standing myth - though of course "myth" does not mean an 'untruth', rather the telling of a powerful truth in coded ways.


The common core of almost all religions worldwide is that in our humanity there is also divinity. The Horus / Jesus figure is thus 'everyman' / everyone. The role of the religions is to awaken us to the divinity within so as to enable 'return' / reurrection. The package of belief in which you wrap the myth is neither here nor there - what matters is the truthfulness that lies hidden at the core of the myth - the divine presence in all that is.


The Gospels are as good and well written a literalisation as any to capture the truth of the human - divine leader (avatar) who dies and is raised - just as the sun dies in the autumn and rises in the spring to bring new life. I can still go to churches and enter in to the mythic story under its literalising crafting - and use the framework to remind me how to live - in recognition of the divinity in humanity, the power of of that presence to enlighten and change us, and the joy of the company of those on the way - even though I more and more think that the story that infuses Christianity is not a history at all, but a powerful mythic truth about the way this universe is, and the way we should live in it.
 
Your views most welcome.

An alternate Easter Day Gospel

On the first day of the week Mary of Magdala went to the garden tomb with spices to anoint Jesus body.

Finding the stone rolled away, she went in but found the tomb empty, Fearful she cried bitterly because of her deep love for The Teacher whom she loved with all her being: body, soul and spirit.

As she turned to leave, wiping her tears away with her long hair, she glanced across to where a man stood in gardner's clothes, She rushed across to ask why Jesus body had been moved. Her heart began to pound as she got nearer, for a glimmer of recognition struck her - was this her lover? Her teacher and friend? Was it possible? The man turned to her and opened wide his arms just as he had been hung on the Friday cross.

She ran to him and clung to him, wrapped by those strong arms. He held her tight as they kissed passionately. After many minutes of heart rending joy and sorrow Jesus said to her, do not cling to me any longer Mary, there is God's work still to do.

My life is returning to God, your life continues here. You are my friend and companion always. You are to continue in my name as Teacher of the ways of Knowledge, with my commission to lead and teach my followers. I will come soon to you all as you gather the scattered ones back to the meeting room where we shared supper. So be strong - I live as all shall live - remade to know more and more of my wonders. Do not let the hateful and the prejudiced scatter my Friends.

Remember all the words and ideas we have shared, the stories from lands afar and from our own people. Remind them of the joy of life and the wonder of love. Remind them of the simple life and the compassion that must flow from all who will know of me in the future.

Above all tell them of my infinite love - gifting the world and cosmos, of the myriad forms of spirit infused life on world after world. Remind them that the Creator knows this humanity and has shared the wonder of human being too, and found the joy of infinite giving in our passion together. I am who I am and you are also who You are.

Tell my disciples that each and everyone of you has life in me and I in you. Make this day a Holy Day for laughter and feasting, for passion and compassion, for the ache of loss to be filled by loving friends and friendly lovers.

Do not let the angry men and fearful women twist the truth, or make the simple complex, or turn our story into anything that diminishes the literal truth that the spark of divinity is in you just as divine life and light is in me too in this humanity - the glorious work of eons of letting life be life.

Kiss me Mary, cling to me, for we are one.

I have other life forms to awaken across the infinities of space and time.

You have known me most fully and my love remains true. Love others as I have loved you, that is the measure. But never stop loving yourself if you fall short or struggle with the burden of living and loving to the full. There are no ranks, no prizes, no second bests in my creation, no heirarchy to my love.

What is is what is. This is my simple good news. Tell this to my followers and teach them simply and in depth the knowledge I have given and will keep on giving to humanity.

I am going on to other mansions, other worlds of similar beauty, to draw them to me in the highest form familier to each world. Then shall all be one, and all that is shall sing and dance and live and love beyond all imagining.

Listen Mary, in that place of fullness you will live as I live, full of joy and in infinite friendship, knowing as I know, that everything shall be well and life shall stand always.

Go now to my friends and tell them of what you have seen dawning this day, and the words I have given you to share. See even now I am fading from you. Do not cling to me - remember this life is for passion not fear. Love me always as I have loved you. My Mary, my love my friend.

With that the Jesus Mary knew faded from sight as the sun rose. And full of joy Mary ran to awaken her friends with the good news. Jesus is not dead. He is living in the All that is his God and our God.

------------------

Let us today 2000 years on, also listen to the words given to Mary and the words he gives to all who have ears to hear.