The things that help us discover and return to a place of integrated knowing are both obvious and not obvious at all. Silence is one of them, and probably the one I speak of most often. Yet music and art create valuable channels to God as well. It is a gift to our Christian contemplation tradition that CAC faculty member Barbara Holmes names and claims moments that lie beyond the traditional monastic framework of solitude, silence, and stillness as authentic experiences of contemplation. Here she reflects on how worship in the Black church can create a communal contemplative experience:

The soloist moves toward the center of the podium. The congregation of about 1,500 breathes with her as she moans “Oh . . . oh . . . oh, Jesus.” Those are the only words to the song. Unless you are sitting within the sound of her voice, it is difficult to imagine how a song of two words can be a cry of anguish, balm, and celebration. In each soaring note, we participate in the unutterable spectrum of human striving. In this world, you will have trouble, but “oh, oh, oh, Jesus.” The shouts of exaltation give no indication of what is happening. Although it appears to be the usual charismatic congregational fare, in fact we are riding the stanzas through time to the hush arbors and swamp meetings, over the dangerous waters to safety. In this ordinary Sunday service, something has happened and we are changed. The worldly resistance to transcendence that we wore into the sanctuary has cracked open, and the contemplative moment carries us toward the very source of our being.

Moments like this occur regularly in the black church, yet if you ask congregants about their “contemplative practices,” they would be confounded. . . . Despite numerous exceptions, black church worship is known for its heartfelt, rhythmic, and charismatic character. This depiction has become such an accepted view that contemplative practices remain a subliminal and unexamined aspect of black religious life. As a consequence, the practices are not nurtured, encouraged, or passed on to future generations. Yet when contemplative moments occur, worship experiences seem to deepen. . . .

In the midst of worship, an imperceptible shift occurred that moved the worshipping community from intentional liturgical action to transcendent indwelling. There is no way to describe this shift other than to say that “something happened.” During this sacred time, the perpetual restlessness of the human heart was stilled and transformed into abiding presence. Time shimmered and paused, slowing its relentless pace, and the order of worship no longer took precedence for those enthralled by a joy unspeakable. [1]

This is the contemplative moment, the recognition that each and every member of the congregation shares the same angst over the troubles of the world and the need for reunion. . . . Those who listen know the Holy Spirit is in control. [2]

Thea Bowman (1937–1990), a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration, was a powerful communicator, deeply passionate about Jesus, the Catholic Church, and her African American heritage. I begin today with her words on the history and significance of what she celebrates as Black sacred song.

From the African Mother Continent, African men and women, through the Middle Passage, throughout the Diaspora, to the Americas, carried the African gift and treasure of sacred song. To the Americas, African men and women brought sacred songs and chants that reminded them of their homelands and that sustained them in separation and in captivity, song to respond to all life situations, and the ability to create new songs to answer new needs.

African Americans in sacred song preserved the memory of African religious rites and symbols, of a holistic African spirituality, of rhythms and tones and harmonics that communicated their deepest feelings across barriers of region and language.

African Americans in fields and quarters, at work, in secret meetings, in slave festivals, in churches, camp meets and revivals, wherever they met or congregated, consoled and strengthened themselves and one another with sacred song—moans, chants, shouts, psalms, hymns, and jubilees, first African songs, then African American songs. In the crucible of separation and suffering, African American sacred song was formed. . . .

As early as 1691, slaves in colonial homes, slave galleries or separate pews participated in worship services with white slave holders. They learned to sing the traditional European psalms and hymns . . . which they loved and adapted to their own style and use. . . .

Black sacred song is soulful song—

1. holistic: challenging the full engagement of mind, imagination, memory, feeling, emotion, voice, and body; 
2. participatory: inviting the worshipping community to join in contemplation, in celebration and in prayer; 
3. real: celebrating the immediate concrete reality of the worshipping community—grief or separation, struggle or oppression, determination or joy—bringing that reality to prayer within the community of believers; 
4. spirit-filled: energetic, engrossing, intense; 
5. life-giving: refreshing, encouraging, consoling, invigorating, sustaining. . . .

Black sacred song celebrates our God, [God’s] goodness, [God’s] promise, our faith and hope, our journey toward the promise. Black sacred song carries melodies and tonalities, rhythms and harmonies; metaphors, symbols and stories of faith that speak to our hearts; words, phrases and images that touch and move us. . . . 

Black sacred song has been at once a source and an expression of Black faith, spirituality and devotion. By song, our people have called the Spirit into our hearts, homes, churches, and communities.

The music Sister Thea describes is the gift of a deeply incarnate faith. The people who allowed the spirituals to sing through them knew the presence of a God who existed within themselves and in the difficult circumstances of their lives. In her final years, my [Richard Rohr’s] own mother listened to Thea preach and sing. She found immense comfort through witnessing Sister Thea’s love for God even while Thea journeyed with cancer.

Christ Prays in Us and through Us

Although most Sunday church services don’t foster it, the essential religious experience is that we are being “known through” more than knowing anything by ourselves. An authentic encounter with God will feel like true knowing, not just in our heads but in our hearts and bodies as well. I call this way of knowing contemplation, nondualistic thinking, or even “third-eye” seeing. It is quite unlike the intellectual “knowing” most of us have been taught to rely on. This kind of prayer and “seeing,” takes away our anxiety about figuring it all out fully for ourselves or needing to be right about our formulations. At this point, God becomes more a verb than a noun, more a process than a conclusion, more an experience than a dogma, more a personal relationship than an idea. There is Someone dancing with us, and we are not afraid of making mistakes.

No wonder all of the great liturgical prayers of the churches end with the same phrase: “through Christ our Lord, Amen.” We do not pray to Christ; we pray through Christ. Or even more precisely, Christ prays through us. This is a very different experience! We are always and forever the conduits, the instruments, the tuning forks, the receiver stations (Romans 8:26–27). To live in such a way is to live inside of an unexplainable hope, because our lives will now feel much larger than our own. In fact, they are no longer merely our own lives and, yet, paradoxically, we are more ourselves than ever before. That is the constant and consistent experience of the mystics.

It is within this context that I offer this week’s Daily Meditations on the healing, liberating, and contemplative power embodied in the African American spirituals of the last three centuries.

One of our Living School alums, Arthur C. Jones, is a scholar and performer of African American spirituals. In his book Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals, he observes that “There are many people today who have virtually no understanding of what the spirituals are and why they are important.” [1] He makes the case that:

the legacy of the spirituals is worth our continued attention now, not only as “museum music” (a phrase often used by the great jazz artist Miles Davis), but also as a broad-ranging cultural tradition that remains relevant to pressing present-day social realities, not just for African Americans, but for people everywhere who are concerned with issues of social justice, community bonding, deep spirituality and—most importantly—the healing of deep wounds surrounding the shameful history of American slavery. [2]

If you are concerned, as I am, with the issues that Arthur Jones mentions—social and racial justice, community bonding, and deep spirituality—I hope we can engage with this material with the “ears” of our hearts attuned to what the Spirit has to teach us.

Descriptions of the “dark night of the soul” from the Spanish mystic John of the Cross (1542–1591) have become the marker by which many Christians measure their own experience of unknowing. He fits an entire life spent exploring God’s mystery into memorable poetry, and even dares to call unknowing “an ecstasy”! Here are several stanzas from his poem “Stanzas Concerning an Ecstasy Experienced in High Contemplation”:

1. I entered into unknowing

Yet when I saw myself there

Without knowing where I was

I understood great things;

I shall not say what I felt

For I remained in unknowing

Transcending all knowledge.

. . . .

4. He who truly arrives there

Cuts free from himself;

 All that he knew before

Now seems worthless,

And his knowledge so soars

That he is left in unknowing

 Transcending all knowledge.

. . . .

6. The knowledge in unknowing

Is so overwhelming

That wise men disputing

Can never overthrow it,

For their knowledge does not reach

To the understanding of not-

understanding,

Transcending all knowledge. [1]  

John’s poetry is exquisite in its humility—knowing that he does not know, can never know, and doesn’t even need to know! He goes so far as to call this dark night “a work of His mercy, / To leave one without understanding.” [2] John’s teaching contains paradoxes that are difficult to absorb, but modern readers have the good fortune of many good translations, including that of Mirabai Starr. Like the other friends whose work I have shared this week, Mirabai knows the via negativa, the way of unknowing, personally and intimately, and describes what happens between the soul and God in the “dark night:”

The soul in the dark night cannot, by definition, understand what is happening to her. Accustomed to feeling and conceiving of the Beloved in her own way, she does not realize that the darkness is a blessing. She perceives God’s gentle touch as an unbearable burden. She feels miserable and unworthy, convinced that God has abandoned her, afraid she may herself be turning against him. In her despair, the soul does not recognize that God is teaching her in a secret way now, a way with which the faculties of sense and reason cannot interfere.

At the same time that the soul in the night of spirit becomes paralyzed in spiritual practice, her love-longing for God begins to intensify. In the stillness left behind by its broken-open senses and intellect, a quality of abundance starts to grow inside the emptied soul. It turns out that the Beloved is longing for union with the lover as fervently as she has been yearning for him. . . . God will whisper to the soul in the depth of darkness and guide it through the wilderness of the Unknown until it is annihilated in the flames of perfect love. [3] 

__________________________________________________

Jesus Calling….SEEK MY FACE, and you will find not only My Presence but also My Peace. To receive My Peace, you must change your grasping, controlling stance to one of openness and trust. The only thing you can grasp without damaging your soul is My hand. Ask My Spirit within you to order your day and control your thoughts, for the mind controlled by the Spirit is Life and Peace. You can have as much of Me and My Peace as you want, through thousands of correct choices each day. The most persistent choice you face is whether to trust Me or to worry. You will never run out of things to worry about, but you can choose to trust Me no matter what. I am an ever-present help in trouble. Trust Me, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.
Romans 8:6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
PSALM 46:1– God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Numbers 6: 26 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

If you understand it, it is not God. —St. Augustine, Sermon 117 on John 1:1

God is Mystery and not any “thing” we can wrap our little brains around. Brian McLaren shares how he realized this during a time of deep doubt and perplexity in his life:

A verse I had memorized in my childhood came to mind: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding” [Proverbs 3:5]. For the first time, it dawned on me: there’s a difference between doubting God and doubting my understanding of God, just as there’s a difference between trusting God and trusting my understanding of God. Would I be able to doubt my understanding of God while simultaneously trusting God beyond my understanding? In a strange way, that question for the first time in my life allowed me to see God as a mystery distinct from my concepts of God. [1] 

It’s wonderful to be blessed with such a clarifying insight! Yet, it sometimes takes a longer and more painful “dark night of the soul” to free us from our inadequate concepts of God. Author and Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor, another good friend, explains:

[John of the Cross] says that the dark night is God’s best gift to you, intended for your liberation. It is about freeing you from your ideas about God, your fears about God, your attachment to all the benefits you have been promised for believing in God, your devotion to the spiritual practices that are supposed to make you feel closer to God, your dedication to doing and believing all the right things about God, your positive and negative evaluations of yourself as a believer in God, your tactics for manipulating God, and your sure cures for doubting God.

All of these are substitutes for God, John says. They all get in God’s way. . . .

Yet it would be a mistake to attach the promise of more spiritual benefits to a night that is designed to obliterate them. Those who have come through dark nights of their own, not just once but over and over again, often cannot find the words to say why they would not trade those nights for anything. Yes, they were nights of great loss. Yes, the soul suffered from fearful subtraction. Yes, a great emptiness opened up where I had stored all my spiritual treasures, and yet. And yet what? And yet what remained when everything else was gone was more real than anything I could have imagined. I was no longer apart from what I sought; I was part of it, or in it. I’m sorry I can’t say it any better than that. There was no place else I wanted to be. [2] (italics in original)

Richard again: This description of the “dark night” as a gift can be misleading because such times of unknowing are almost always endured more than enjoyed. However, the experience of mystery, paradox, and not-knowing brings to our lives a rich and unexpected grounding.

The imagination should be allowed a certain freedom to browse around.
—Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action

Basic religious faith is a vote for some coherence, purpose, benevolence, and direction in the universe. Unfortunately, the notion of faith that emerged in the West was much more a rational assent to the truth of certain mental beliefs rather than a calm and hopeful trust that God is inherent in all things, and that this whole thing is going somewhere good.

I worry about “true believers” who cannot carry any doubt or anxiety at all, as Thomas the Apostle and Saint Teresa of Calcutta (1910–1997) learned to do. Doubt and faith are actually correlative terms. People of great faith often suffer bouts of great doubt because they continue to grow. Mother Teresa experienced decades of this kind of doubt, as was revealed after her death. In a letter to a trusted spiritual director she wrote, “Darkness is such that I really do not see — neither with my mind nor with my reason. — The place of God in my soul is blank. — There is no God in me.” [1] The very fact that the world media and people in general were scandalized by this demonstrates how limited is our understanding of the nature of biblical faith.

It seems a movement from certitude to doubt and through doubt to acceptance of life’s mystery is necessary in all encounters, intellectual breakthroughs, and relationships, not just with the Divine. Human faith and religious faith are much the same except in their object or goal. What set us on the wrong path was making the object of religious faith “ideas” or doctrines instead of a person. Our faith is not a faith that dogmas or moral opinions are true, but a faith that Ultimate Reality/God/Christ is accessible to us—and even on our side.

To hold the full mystery of life is always to endure its other half, which is the equal mystery of death and doubt. To know anything fully is always to hold that part of it which is still mysterious and unknowable. Our youthful demand for certainty does eliminate most anxiety on the conscious level, so I can see why many of us stay in such a control tower during the first half of life. We are too fragile yet.

Author Sue Monk Kidd has written eloquently about the disruption spiritual seekers often encounter in midlife and our resistance to it. She wonders:

What has happened to our ability to dwell in unknowing, to live inside a question and coexist with the tensions of uncertainty? Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new? What has happened to patient unfolding, to endurance? These things are what form the ground of waiting. And if you look carefully, you’ll see that they’re also the seedbed of creativity and growth—what allows us to do the daring and to break through to newness. . . . Creativity flourishes not in certainty but in questions. Growth germinates not in tent dwelling but in upheaval. Yet the seduction is always security

Today Brian McLaren shares brilliantly how doubt has often been a tool of love, drawing him ever closer to the heart of God. Applying his four-fold spiritual growth process of Simplicity, Complexity, Perplexity, and Harmony to himself, Brian writes:

Paul makes clear that nearly everything religious people strive for will eventually be swallowed up in something deeper, and in and of itself, is of no real worth. Even faith and hope don’t have the last word. Only love, he says, is the more excellent way [1 Corinthians 12:31]. . . . In fact, he dares to say, nothing else matters except faith expressing itself in love [Galatians 5:6]. 

Looking back on my own spiritual pilgrimage, I have come to see “the still more excellent way of love” as the telos [ultimate purpose] whose gravitational pull has been drawing me first through Simplicity, then through Complexity, then downward through Perplexity, and then deeper still, toward an experience that is too profound for words, the experience of Harmony. When I loved correctness in Stage One, yes, correctness mattered, but the love with which I pursued correctness mattered still more. When I loved effectiveness in Stage Two, yes, effectiveness mattered, but the love that moved me to pursue it mattered still more. When I loved honesty and justice in Stage Three, yes, honesty and justice mattered, but the love that burned in my heart for them mattered still more. . . .

Faith was about love all along. We just didn’t realize it, and it took doubt to help us see it. . . .

I wish I could go back to that younger, agonized me [in Stage Three Perplexity] and bring this message:

I know that your perplexity feels like a dead end. But wait, wait, endure, persist, do your work, see it through, hang in there, trust the process, and it will become a passageway, a birth canal. You actually need this purgation and unknowing to prepare you for a new depth of living, knowing, and loving. There is much that deserves to be doubted, and if you really care about the truth, you must pursue it, using doubt as a necessary tool. (It’s not your only tool, but it is one of your tools.)

I know you feel that everything you value is slipping through your fingers. But don’t clench your fists. Open your hands. Your open hands, open eyes, and open heart will prepare the way for new gains, not just new thoughts, but new ways of thinking. You have already added dualistic thinking, pragmatic thinking, and critical/deconstructive thinking to your skill set. You will soon learn a new skill: unitive or nondual seeing, in which knowing and unknowing, faith and doubt, clarity and mystery are not opposites, but complements. [2]

In this final stage, what Brian calls “Harmony,” we are not returned to certainty or knowing in any concrete way, but we are gifted with the “okayness” of not knowing and the coherence of “non-discriminatory love.” [3] Brian, raised Evangelical, really gets it! I do not believe Evangelicalism or street-corner Catholicism can be renewed at any depth without the discovery of the contemplative mind. 

My good friend and colleague Brian McLaren’s recently published book, Faith After Doubt, shows how doubt and periods of unknowing are necessary for spiritual growth. Brian proposes a four-stage growth process of Simplicity, Complexity, Perplexity, and Harmony. He writes:

Doubt, it turns out, is the passageway from each stage to the next. Without doubt, there can be growth within a stage, but growth from one stage to another usually requires us to doubt the assumptions that give shape to our current stage. . . . 

At the Center for Action and Contemplation, one of our core teachings is “the path of descent,” the idea that the spiritual life will eventually require us to descend into a dark tunnel, to descend into unknowing and doubt, to descend into a loss of certainty, to descend through a process that feels like dying. As with Jesus in the Gospels, we find ourselves crying, “Let this cup of suffering be taken from me” [Matthew 26:39] and “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” [Matthew 27:46]

This deep anguish characterizes what Brian calls Stage Three: Perplexity. Brian continues:

When I studied the mystics . . .  I learned that they spoke often of purgation (or katharsis) as the portal to illumination (or fotosis) and union (or theosis). They saw purgation as the painful and necessary process by which we are stripped of know-it-all arrogance, ego, and self-will. Perplexity, I realized, was working like an X-ray of my soul, exposing much of my so-called spirituality as a vanity project of my ego, an expression of my arrogant desire to always be right, my desperate and fearful need to always be in control, my unexamined drive to tame the wildness of life by naming it and dominating it with words. The doubt of Perplexity, the mystics helped me see, was just the fire I needed to purge me of previously unacknowledged arrogance. In this way, self-knowledge was another gift that came, unwanted, during my Stage Three descent.

[Through the Christian mystics,] I was exposed to “the dark night of the soul,” a period of desolation in which God feels absent, a period in which one can’t see or understand what is going on, a deep valley during which one feels abandoned and lost. To my surprise, the mystics believed this was not something to be avoided, but rather it was a passageway into something deeper and greater. In fact, only the path of descent into spiritual dryness and soul-darkness could lead the soul to a deeper experience of union with God (or theosis).

Richard again: Ironically, one of the few things I can say I truly know is that not-knowing and often not even needing to know is—surprise of surprises—a deeper way of knowing and a deeper falling into compassion. This is surely what the mystics mean by “death” and why they talk of it with so many metaphors. It is the essential transitioning.

The Inadequacy of Words

My thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways. . . . As high as the heavens are above the earth, so my ways are beyond your ways, and my thoughts are beyond your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8–9)

Jesus had been formed by this quote from Isaiah, which teaches Jews humility before the mystery of God (see Ecclesiastes 3:11; Job 11:6; Psalm 139).

When we presume we know fully, we can all be very arrogant and goal oriented at the expense of other people. When we know we don’t know fully, we are much more concerned about practical, loving behavior. This has become obvious to me as I try to observe human nature. Those who know God are always humble; those who don’t are invariably far too sure of themselves (which is different than grace filled self-confidence).

When we speak of God and things transcendent, all we can do is use metaphors and pointers. No language is adequate to describe the holy. As in a familiar portrait of Saint John of the Cross, we must place a hushing finger over our lips to remind ourselves that God is finally unspeakable and ineffable. Or, sharing Jewish tradition, we may even refuse to pronounce the name “YHWH.”

In my experience, the people who find God are usually people who are very serious about their quest and their questions, more so than being absolutely certain about their answers. I offer that as hard-won wisdom.

The Bible, in its entirety, finds a fine balance between knowing and not-knowing, between using words and having humility about words. The ensuing Christian traditions have often not found that same balance. What I’ve called “Churchianity” typically needs to speak with absolutes and certainties. It thinks it has the right and the obligation to make total truth-claims and feels very insecure when it cannot.  Thus, it is not very well trained in insecurity and trust.

I understand that early psychic need for clarity, certitude, and identity, especially to get us started when we are young. Religion, though, also needs a balancing agent to unlock itself from the inside, which most of us would call the mystical or prayer tradition. (“Mystery,” “mystical,” and “to mutter” all come from the Greek verb muein, which means “to hush or close the lips”). Without this unlocking, we will not produce many mature Christians, and certainly not Christians who can build any bridges to anybody else.

This internal balancing act emerged as two streams in the world of spirituality: the knowing tradition and the not-knowing tradition.  The formal theological terms are the apophatic or “negative” way, where you move beyond words and images into silence, and the kataphatic or “affirmative” way, where you use words, concepts, and images. I believe both forms are necessary, and together they create a magnificent form of higher consciousness called biblical faith. This great and healing balance is still rather rare, however, because the ego insists on certitude and perfect clarity (as if that were even possible with things divine).

________________

Jesus Calling…..FOLLOW ME ONE STEP AT A TIME. That is all I require of you. In fact, that is the only way to move through this space/time world. You see huge mountains looming, and you start wondering how you’re going to scale those heights. Meanwhile, because you’re not looking where you’re going, you stumble on the easy path where I am leading you now. As I help you get back on your feet, you tell Me how worried you are about the cliffs up ahead. But you don’t know what will happen today, much less tomorrow. Our path may take an abrupt turn, leading you away from those mountains. There may be an easier way up the mountains than is visible from this distance. If I do lead you up the cliffs, I will equip you thoroughly for that strenuous climb. I will even give My angels charge over you, to preserve you in all your ways. Keep your mind on the present journey, enjoying My Presence. Walk by faith, not by sight, trusting Me to open up the way before you. PSALM 18:29; PSALM 91:11–12 AMP;
2 CORINTHIANS 5:7 NKJV

Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling Morning and Evening Devotional (Jesus Calling®) (p. 66). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

What if Christ is another name for everything—in its fullness?

Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply. I call that kind of deep and calm seeing “contemplation.”

A cosmic notion of the Christ competes with and excludes no one, but includes everyone and everything (Acts 10:15, 34) and allows Jesus Christ to finally be a God figure worthy of the entire universe.

In the Franciscan tradition, John Duns Scotus (1266–1308) developed the doctrine of the univocity of being. He believed we could speak “with one voice” (univocity) of the being of waters, plants, animals, humans, angels, and God. God is one (Deuteronomy 6:4), and thus reality is one too (Ephesians 4:3–5). We are all part of The Story of Being.

Author, lawyer, and activist Sherri Mitchell shares a similar and even more ancient perspective held by Native peoples. They do not use the word Christ, but within The Story, the universal patterns hold. She writes:

We all originate from the same divine source. . . . Sadly, there will also be times when we will lose sight of this basic fact. During those times, we will become lost in the unfolding stories of our own individualized realities. [1]

Albert Einstein once talked about the illusion that is created by [the] belief in separation. He described it as a prison that restricts our awareness of connection to the whole:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. [2]

This is an idea that still seems fantastic to many people around the world. But it is a belief that has been held by Indigenous peoples since the beginning of time. Our songs, stories, and mythologies all speak of our interrelatedness. From birth, we are taught to be aware of the expanded kinship networks that surround us, which include other human beings along with the beings of the land, water, and air, and the plants, trees, and all remaining unseen beings that exist within our universe. . . .

Our challenge is to remember all of who we are. [3]

We must rediscover, reclaim, and recapitulate The Story in as many ways and as often as we can. Remaining trapped in the smaller domes of meaning separates us from the trinitarian flow of divine love and connection that is our birthright.  

Current science positions the universe as the birthing place of all entities and thus a cosmic mother. New perspectives on the birthing aspects of the universe may also help to depict the life space as one that is intended to nurture. The intricate balances of chemicals and stardust, which must occur for life to appear, mimic the process of human birth. Science provides the images of the universe as initiating/siring and as an expanding womb, ready to sustain life. The birthing is mathematical, complex, and necessary. We are made in the image of a parent/creator who invites us into a cosmic belonging. . . .

We need the embrace of a Cosmic Mother. [1]

My poetic friend and interspiritual teacher Mirabai Starr writes about our relationship and responsibility to the maternal energy of the universe in this way:  

She is your Mother the Earth, and you belong to her. She nurtured you in her dark belly, birthed you in joy, and sustains you at great cost to herself. You have slept in her forests, beneath the safety of her canopy. You have cupped her snowmelt in your hands. You have investigated the life hidden beneath the surface of her deserts, skied her alpine slopes, and biked her slickrock canyons. You have reveled in her generosity and been grateful.

She has never asked much of you in return. Up until now, your gratitude has been enough. Your delight has been her reward. Up until now, she has not needed you as you have needed her. But that is shifting. . . .  

“Tell me what is troubling you, Mama,” you whisper, exactly as she always spoke to you when you were small and frightened and bleeding from some injury (real or imagined).

“Pretty much everything, honey,” she answers. . . . “I’ll get through this,” she says. “You’re not getting rid of your old Ma so easily.” She reaches down to smooth the crease between your brows. “It’s you kids I’m worried about.” [2]

Because we have been steeped in patriarchy, we may resist the idea of a “maternal” universe, yet the pattern it reveals—that all life is birthed, held, and nurtured within this cosmos—is undoubtedly true. A cosmic egg, tended, hatched, and nurtured over time is a much better image of all growth than any transactional notion of being saved.

The larger realm of meaning beyond My Story is Our Story. To continue the model of the three domes, this is the dome of our group, community, church, nationality, gender, and ethnicity. (View the three domes of The Cosmic Egg on our website here).We seem to need this for our own identity and security as social beings. It is both good and necessary, but if we try to make it the whole enchilada, we end up with the culture and identity wars we have today. Most of us have to work through multiple memberships: family, neighborhood, religious affiliation, gender, country. These communities are schools for relationship, connection, and almost all virtue as we know it.

Everyone has access to this level of meaning, consciously or unconsciously, negatively or positively. We are essentially social beings and we live inside of some shared meanings, which become our reference points and our runway. Our Story is the necessary training ground for belonging, attaching, trusting, and loving. If we are raised in a healthy family system, we generally feel positive about our group possibilities, including our religious and cultural rituals and traditions. Unfortunately, some people get stuck here and spend their lives defending the boundaries and glory of “their” group. They make plans for war, and perfect the scapegoating of others. Such group egocentricity is more dangerous than personal egocentricity. It looks like greatness when it is often no more than very well-disguised narcissism. I don’t have much self-knowledge, so I throw all of my cache into being Italian! I live on the surface of my own soul, but I sure play good football. I have no deep identity, so I live through my husband or wife or children or friends.

People try to find identity in a group, an institutional affiliation, a nation, a public cause—or today, like never before, public fame or infamy. Somehow, to be on the news or in social media is to be immortalized. People feel protected inside of the group identity or public fame. We all connect with one group or another—a Catholic, a Harley-Davidson owner, a Chicago Cubs fan—and then we sport proud signs about it. Such group symbols, flags, and patriotism remind us that we are not alone; and such shared meaning gives consolation and security to the small self—and something to talk about! The handy language of “us” versus “them” lifts some real burden from our private striving, and there is true comfort in being among our own. In fact, Our Story feels so sacred that most religion works at this level as a belonging system more than a search for intimacy with God. The second dome becomes an avoidance of the third and most all-inclusive (The Story). I see this in many seminarians, young priests, and bishops, after having given them retreats for many years. They put all their eggs in the Roman Catholic basket, but they have little curiosity about their own shadow or inner life. Their goal is not really love of God, but the love of “my priesthood” as it is often strangely called.

Jesus was not into groupthink or loyalty tests. I’m convinced God could care less about them, but God also seems to know that we need symbols, songs, sacred times and places for communal support and encouragement. However, we will need these boundary markers less and less as we move toward the real Center. Thus, we often see a certain freedom in wise elders and people who have suffered and come through renewed. In the second half of life, we don’t need to be a hero anymore and we may not even need to belong. We just need to be real. Saint Augustine put it most daringly, “Love [God] and do what you will!” [1]