July 19, 2011

“So, in my better moments, I want to step down from my puny little pedestal. I want to step aside. I want my heart to open to that 'point or spark which belongs entirely to God'.” So says Christopher Page, quoting Thomas Merton, in his blog response to the issue of fear now dominating the church. What Page says, Merton says, and Cynthia Bourgeault says, in this discussion reflect my own feelings – and let me see a way of hope. The entire post follows.

The Future of Church #5 (with Cynthia Bourgeault)

July 19, 2011

This past spring The Contemplative Society website (http://www.contemplative.org/) posted 12 summary statements about the future of church I gleaned from a Lenten Series I attended, accompanied by a response from Cynthia Bourgeault. With Cynthia’s encouragement, I am reposting the original paragraph, followed by her response, and my response to Cynthia. We hope this may generate some conversation. Cynthia will check in and respond to comments if she feels inspired.

5. The pervasive fear in the church is paralyzing. It inhibits genuine conversation and keeps us fixated on finding solutions, rather than launching into bold new adventures of faith. There is no way to move forward until we come to grips with the reality of fear. Dealing with fear requires deep personal and corporate spiritual practice. Only transformed people will have the ability to be a transformed church.

Cynthia: This is so, so true. If “perfect love casts out fear,” the opposite is sadly but equally true: “perfect fear casts out love.” And it shuts down just about everything else as well.

Fear is always a tip-off that one is living at the egoic level of consciousness (or in the corporate mode, the “we-goic” level): that anxiety-prone hardwiring of the immature human mind that sees everything from its own self-interest and perceives through separation and scarcity.

The only “cure” for fear is spiritual practice, which gradually heals this artificial split in the field of consciousness and restores the direct perception of abundance and connection. All other approaches to fear simply mask the symptoms, generally through reliance on illusory power and control to “fix” the external situation deemed to be broken.

Ironically, this healing of fear is at the very heart of the Jesus message, over which the church claims custodial rights but about which it knows so very little. “Do not be afraid, little flock: it is my Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom,” Jesus assures his followers in those immortal words of Luke 12:32. And throughout his entire ministry, he teaches, models, and ultimately offers himself up in the kenotic (or “letting go”) practice which not only surmounts fear but transforms it.

Imagine what might happen if a whole group of Christians were to simply drop their terrified insistence that the church as we know it must survive and were instead to give themselves to that “deep personal and corporate spiritual practice” that makes it possible to fall through fear into perfect love. What might happen next? Whatever form it might take, it would certainly be REAL: a powerful new unleashing of the Jesus energy, no longer as that “mighty fortress” and “bulwark never ceasing” of times gone by, but as the river itself, ever flowing.

Christopher: We in the church have lived so long in “separation” it is hard to imagine any other way of being.

We have called ourselves “a people set apart,” “resident aliens,” “a peculiar people.” We want to see ourselves as “God’s chosen people,” presumably in distinction from those who are not “chosen.” We take pride in being “in the world, but not of the world.” We want to be special, different, unique. We have built walls around ourselves. Our churches have windows; but they are designed so no one can see in.

We cling to our theological formulations relying upon them to define us as “not them.” We point to the evil ways of the world and declare ourselves separate from the darkness of those who do not follow the One True Light. We suffer from an epidemic of separation, all of which, if we are honest, is driven by our desire to enshrine our superiority and the primacy of our religious practices and beliefs over any other spiritual path. It is a curious kind of humility we model in the church.

To make matters worse; the insistence upon our separation from the vast majority of the world has not worked. Isolating ourselves as God’s specially chosen ones has not given us a robust sense of confidence and conviction in the goodness of life. As much as we have struggled to achieve a sense of abundance by affirming the superiority of our version of the religious way, we have ended up again and again falling back into scarcity mode. And any program or strategy that comes from an innate sense of lack is doomed to end up resorting to, guilt, and abuse – the besetting sins of organizational religion.

How do we move from separation to connectivity? How do we shift from scarcity to abundance?

As you point out Cynthia, the starting point is “letting go.” We must lay down our need to be right. We must surrender our determination to reign supreme. We must let go of our identity as God’s special agents whose job it is to introduce God into foreign territory as if there were places God is absent until we come along to introduce the Divine presence into the dark lost world.

In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton famously wrote,

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

True change will only flow from this centre.

I want to know how this works. I want to know how to program this connecting, this beautiful flowing of God’s Spirit. But, Merton sadly reminds me “I have no program for this seeing. It is only given.”

It is too hard to trust the giving. It is too hard to rely on grace. I want to know what the strategy is. What are the steps forward? I want to be able to contain God, trap God, control God. I want to be in charge.

But, I know, it will be a small poor church if I am in charge. So, in my better moments, I want to step down from my puny little pedestal. I want to step aside. I want my heart to open to that “point or spark which belongs entirely to God.” I want to trust that God’s Spirit is at work, not just in my little life, or my little understanding, or my little church, but “in everybody” and every where.

Church exists to “see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.” This is the business for which Jesus calls us together. This is a mission to which it is worth giving our lives.

http://inaspaciousplace.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/the-future-of-church-5-with-cynthia-bourgeault/