Order, Disorder, Reorder:
Part Two

Going on the Full Journey
Friday,  August 21, 2020

This journey from Order to Disorder must happen for all of us. It is not something just to be admired in Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Job, or Jesus. Our role is to listen and allow, and at least slightly cooperate with this almost natural progression. We all come to wisdom at the major price of both our innocence and our control. Few of us go there willingly; it must normally be thrust upon us. However, we must be wary of staying in Disorder for too long.

Everyone gets tired of critique after a while. We cannot build on exclusively negative or critical energy. We can only build on life and what we are for, not what we are against. Negativity keeps us in a state of victimhood and/or a state of anger. Mere critique and analysis are not salvation; they are not liberation, nor are they spacious. They are not wonderful at all. We only become enlightened as the ego dies to its pretenses, and we begin to be led by soul and Spirit. That dying to ourselves is something we are led through by the grace of God. When we move into the Larger Realm of Reorder, we will weep over our sins, as we recognize that we are everything that we hate and attack in other people. Then we begin to live the great mystery of compassion.

There is no nonstop flight from Order to Reorder, or from Disorder to Reorder. We must dip back into what was good, helpful, and also limited about most initial presentations of “order” and even the tragedies of “disorder.” Otherwise we spend too much of our lives rebelling and reacting. I’m not sure why God created the world that way, but I have to trust the universal myths and stories. Between the beginning and the end, the Great Stories inevitably reveal a conflict, a contradiction, a confusion, a fly in the ointment of our self-created paradise. This sets the drama in motion and gives it momentum and humility. Everybody, of course, initially shoots for “happiness,” but most books I have ever read seem to be some version of how suffering refined, taught, and formed people.

Maintaining our initial order is not of itself happiness. We must expect and wait for a “second naïveté,” which is given more than it is created or engineered by us. Happiness is the spiritual outcome and result of full growth and maturity, and this is why I am calling it “reorder” (much more about that next week). Generally, we must be taken to happiness—we cannot find our way there by willpower or cleverness. Yet we all try—usually heading in the wrong direction! We seem insistent on not recognizing this universal pattern of growth and change. It seems that each of us has to learn on our own, with much kicking and screaming, what is well hidden but also in plain sight.

Dying as Disorder
Thursday,  August 20, 2020

Dying is not extraneous to life; it is a part of the mystery, and we do not understand life until we stand under death. —Richard Rohr

There may be nothing more disordering than being diagnosed with a terminal or chronic illness. It upends our lives and yet, as Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen affirms, it can also be the doorway through which we “grow up” and discover our life’s purpose and meaning. At a young age, Remen was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, which affects all aspects of her life, but ultimately led her to her life’s work: helping doctors integrate their heart and soul into their clinical practices for the sake of healing their patients and themselves.

The view from the edge of life is different and often much clearer than the way most of us see things. Life-threatening illness may cause people to question what they have accepted as unchanging. Values that have been passed down in a family for generations may be recognized as inadequate; lifelong beliefs about personal capacities or what is important may prove to be mistaken. When life is stripped down to its very essentials, it is surprising how simple things become. Fewer and fewer things matter and those that matter, matter a great deal more. As a doctor to people with cancer, I have walked the beach at the edge of life picking up this wisdom like shells.

One of my patients who survived three major surgeries in five weeks described himself as “born again.” When I asked him about this, he told me that his experience had challenged all of his ideas about life. Everything he had thought true had turned out to be merely belief and had not withstood the terrible events of recent weeks. He was stripped of all that he knew and left only with the unshakeable conviction that life itself was holy. This insight in its singularity and simplicity had sustained him better than the multiple complex systems of beliefs and values that had been the foundation of his life up until this time. It upheld him like stone and upholds him still because it has been tested by fire. At the depths of the most unimaginable vulnerability he has discovered that we live not by choice but by grace. And that life itself is a blessing.

Some of those who have had a near-death experience, who have actually set foot over that edge and then returned, have had an additional insight. Their experience has revealed to them that every life serves a single purpose. We are here to grow in wisdom and to learn to love better. Despite the countless and diverse ways we live our lives, every life is a spiritual path, and all life has a spiritual agenda.

Such ideas have the power to change the way you see yourself and the world.

Order, Disorder, Reorder:
Part Two

A Disruption of the Spirit
Wednesday,  August 19, 2020

My friend and CAC colleague Brian McLaren has spent years imagining “a new kind of Christianity” that invites people into a deepening commitment to love of God, neighbor, and self. Such a movement for the common good is surely disruptive or “disordering” to our status quo, just as Jesus disrupted the status quo in his own day.

Jesus was introducing what, in today’s parlance, might be called a disruptive technology. Where sustaining technologies stimulate incremental improvements, like, say, going from a rotary phone to a touch-tone or keypad phone, or even from a landline to a wireless phone, a disruptive technology displaces established assumptions, as in, say, combining a phone, a camera, a computer, a music library and player, a GPS device, and a mobile Internet portal. The old status quo is disrupted, the game changes, and old technologies become irrelevant.

[In] John’s Gospel, Jesus continues to use the imagery of disruption (John 3–4). First, he tells a man that in spite of all his learning, in spite of all his status, he needs to go back and start over, to be born again—perhaps the most apt image for disruption ever. Then he tells a woman that the location of worship doesn’t matter at all—which in their day meant that temples were irrelevant. What matters, Jesus says, is the attitude (or spirit) and authenticity (or truth) of the worshipper. Jesus was calling for a radical disruption in his religion, a great spiritual migration, and a similar disruption and migration are needed no less today in the religion that names itself after him. . . .

A later New Testament writer repeated and expanded upon the disruption and migration Jesus was calling for (1 Peter 2:5). The way of life centered in the Temple must be disrupted because God wanted to dwell not in buildings of bricks or stones cemented together by mortar, but rather in human beings—living stones, he called them—cemented together by mutual love, honor, and respect. . . .

This disruptive revolution, this liberation, this great spiritual migration begins with each of us presenting ourselves, with all of our doubts and imperfections, all of our failures, fears, and flaws, to the Spirit, our legs as pillars, our bodies as temples. . . . You. Me. Everyone. No exceptions.

“The moving ever shall stay,” [twelfth-century Hindu mystic and poet] Basava said. [1] Those words contradict so much of our inherited religious sensibility. “Stay the same. Don’t move. Hold on. Survival depends on resistance to change,” we were told again and again. “Foment change. Keep moving. Evolve. Survival depends on mobility,” the Spirit persistently says. . . .

If you want to see the future of Christianity as a great spiritual migration, don’t look at a church building. Go look in the mirror and look at your neighbor. God’s message of love is sent into the world in human envelopes. If you want to see a great spiritual migration begin, then let it start right in your body. Let your life be a foothold of liberation.

The Disorder of Dismantling Racism
Tuesday,  August 18, 2020

The universal pattern of transformation I’m writing about these three weeks is not limited to religious or spiritual growth. Nor is it only individuals that are invited to make the journey. Whole churches and even cultures experience times of disorder and disruption. In the United States, many of us are discovering that a large number of things we believed to be true—about our nation and ourselves—are not entirely true. I believe this is a necessary step that we must take for the sake of healing and justice in our nation and our world—no matter how “disordering” and even disorienting it may be. Perhaps I can only say this because I believe so completely in the possibility of Reorder! Author Austin Channing Brown, who teaches on issues of racial justice, was raised in a devoutly Christian home and has worked in and with churches for most of her professional life. I hope you can read her words with the openness they deserve.

I learned about whiteness up close. In its classrooms and hallways, in its offices and sanctuaries. At the same time, I was also learning about Blackness, about myself and about my faith. My story is not about condemning white people but about rejecting the assumption—sometimes spoken, sometimes not—that white is right: closer to God, holy, chosen, the epitome of being. . . .

Our only chance at dismantling racial injustice is being more curious about its origins than we are worried about our comfort. It’s not a comfortable conversation for any of us. It is risky and messy. It is haunting work to recall the sins of our past. But is this not the work we have been called to anyway? Is this not the work of the Holy Spirit to illuminate truth and inspire transformation?

It’s haunting. But it’s also holy.

And when we talk about race today, with all the pain packed into that conversation, the Holy Spirit remains in the room. This doesn’t mean the conversations aren’t painful, aren’t personal, aren’t charged with emotion. But it does mean we can survive. We can survive honest discussions about slavery, about convict leasing, about stolen land, deportation, discrimination, and exclusion. We can identify the harmful politics of gerrymandering, voter suppression, criminal justice laws, and policies that disproportionately affect people of color negatively. And we can expose the actions of white institutions—the history of segregation and white flight, the real impact of all-white leadership, the racial disparity in wages, and opportunities for advancement. We can lament and mourn. We can be livid and enraged. We can be honest. We can tell the truth. We can trust that the Holy Spirit is here. We must.

For only by being truthful about how we got here can we begin to imagine another way.

Story from Our Community:​
I recently made the trip to my family’s old cottage on a remote lake. As I settled in [to the cottage] on an unusually clear night, my eyes began to adjust to the lack of ambient light from car headlights and shopping centers. I looked up at the very same sky I had left at my suburban home and saw not just a few stars, but constellations, then clouds of stars, until the night sky seemed more light than darkness. It’s times like these when I’m startled by how close and abundant God’s love really is, whether my eyes and heart are open or not. —James M.

Order, Disorder, Reorder:
Part Two

It Must Happen to Us
Monday,  August 17, 2020

Sooner or later, if we are on any classic “spiritual schedule,” some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter our lives that we simply cannot deal with using our present skill set, our acquired knowledge, or our strong willpower. It will probably have to do with one of what I call the Big Six: love, death, suffering, sexuality, infinity, and God.  Spiritually speaking, we will be led to the edge of our own private resources. At that point we will stumble over a necessary stumbling stone, as Isaiah calls it (8:14). We will and must “lose” at something. This is the only way that Life–Fate–God–Grace–Mystery can get us to change, let go of our egocentric preoccupations, and go on the further and larger journey.

There is no practical or compelling reason to leave one’s present comfort zone in life. If it’s working for us, why would we? Nor can we force ourselves into the second stage of disorder (though we must certainly be open to it). Any conscious attempt to engineer or plan our own enlightenment is doomed to failure because it will be ego driven. We will try to “succeed” in the midst of our failure and “order” our time in disorder! But unexpected weaknesses, failure, and humiliation force us to go where we never would otherwise. We must stumble and be brought to our knees by reality. “God comes to you disguised as your life,” as my friend Paula D’Arcy wisely says. We must actually be out of the driver’s seat for a while, or we will never learn how to give up control to the Real Guide. It is the necessary pattern.

There must be, and if we are honest, there always will be at least one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand. Normally a job, a fortune, or a reputation has to be lost, a house has to be flooded, an illness has to be endured. Some kind of falling, what I call “necessary suffering,” is programmed into the journey. By denying our pain or avoiding our necessary falling, many of us have kept ourselves from our own spiritual depths. We still want some kind of order and reason, instead of suffering life’s inherent disorder and tragedy.

Order, Disorder, Reorder:
Part Two

Disorder: Stage Two of a Three-Part Journey
Sunday,  August 16, 2020

Last week’s Daily Meditations focused on Order as the first stage of healthy development. To continue growing, we must go through a period—or even many periods—of Disorder. The pattern of transformation involves at least some measure of suffering. Part of us has to die if we are ever to grow larger (John 12:24). If we’re not willing to let go of our smaller selves, our norms, beliefs, and preferences, we won’t be able to enter the more expansive and inclusive space of Reorder.

The invitation from Jesus to move from one stage to another seems quite clear in his frequent invitation to metanoia: to turn around or change our minds. I remember having problems with that myself. I thought, “Why should I turn around? I’m baptized, confirmed, have shared the Eucharist, and am even ordained! I’m right!” How foolish and yet how typical of someone in love with Order. That’s precisely the stubbornness Jesus is talking about.

Almost inevitably, our ideally ordered universe—our “private salvation project” as Thomas Merton called it—will eventually disappoint us, at least if we are honest. At some point in our lives, we will be deeply disappointed by what we were originally taught, by where our choices have led us, or by the seemingly random tragedies that take place in all our lives. There will be a death, a disease, a disruption to our normal way of thinking or being in the world. It is necessary if any real growth is to occur.

Some of us find this stage so uncomfortable we try to flee back to our first created order—even if it is killing us. Others today seem to have given up and decided that “there is no universal order,” at least no order we will submit to. That’s the postmodern stance, which distrusts all grand narratives and ideologies, including often any notions of reason, a common human nature, social progress, universal human norms, absolute truth, or objective reality. Much of the chaos that reigns in the American culture and government these days is the direct result of such a “post-truth society.”

But permanent residence in Disorder is rather tragic and certainly unhelpful. It tends to make people negative and cynical, and usually angry. Searching for some solid ground, we can easily become quite opinionated and dogmatic about one form of political correctness or another. While some accuse religious people of being overly dogmatic, this stymied position worships disorder itself as though it were a dogma.

I can see why Christianity adopted the language of being “born again.” The great traditions seem to say the first birth is not enough. We not only have to be born, but remade. The remaking of the soul and the refreshing of the eye has to be done again and again.

Order, Disorder, Reorder:
Part One

A Further Journey
Friday,  August 14, 2020

If we are granted this first stage of Order (and not all are), we feel innocent and safe. Everything is basically good, it all means something, and we feel a part of what looks normal and deserved. It is our “first naïveté.” Everything has an explanation, and thus feels like it is straight from God, solid, and forever. This is probably why we are so reluctant to relinquish our innocence; it often feels like a loss of faith.

Most worldviews have encouraged this perspective. We, in the United States, are a “first half of life culture,” largely concerned about surviving successfully. Probably most cultures and individuals across history have been situated in the first half or “Order” stage, because it is all they had time for. We try to do what seems like the task that life first hands us: establishing an identity, a home, relationships, friends, community, security, and building a proper platform for our only life.

But this is only the first task! When we try to stay in this first satisfying explanation of how things are, we tend to avoid any conflict, inconsistencies, suffering, or darkness and therefore opportunities for transformation. The familiar and habitual are so falsely reassuring, we make our homes there permanently. The ego believes that disorder or change is always to be avoided, so we hunker down and pretend that our Order is entirely good, should be good for everybody, and is always “true” and even the only truth. The new is always by definition unfamiliar and untested, so God, life, destiny, suffering have to give us a push—usually a big one—or we will not go. Even many Christians do not like anything that looks like “carrying the cross,” no matter how piously they use the phrase.

Most of us are never told that we can set out from the known and familiar to take on a further journey. Our institutions, including our churches, and our expectations are almost entirely configured to encourage, support, reward, and validate the tasks of the first half of life. We are more struggling to survive than to thrive, more just “getting through” or trying to get to the top than finding out what is really at the top or even at the bottom.

Most of us in the first half of life suspect that all is not fully working, and we are probably right! Many, if not most, will settle for first-stage survival, and never get to “the unified field” of life itself. As Bill Plotkin, a wise guide, puts it, many of us learn to do our “survival dance,” but we never get to our actual “sacred dance.”

Awe, Wonder, and Love
Thursday,  August 13, 2020

A sense of wonder and awe is the foundation of religion. Too often we associate religion with belonging to a church or professing certain beliefs, but the religious instinct is so much broader than that. Sikh activist and human rights lawyer Valarie Kaur teaches us that awe and wonder can make us available to greater depths of compassion, union, and love.

Wonder is our birthright. It comes easily in childhood—the feeling of watching dust motes dancing in sunlight, or climbing a tree to touch the sky, or falling asleep thinking about where the universe ends. If we are safe and nurtured enough to develop our capacity to wonder, we start to wonder about the people in our lives, too—their thoughts and experiences, their pain and joy, their wants and needs. We begin to sense that they are to themselves as vast and complex as we are to ourselves, their inner world as infinite as our own. In other words, we are seeing them as our equal. We are gaining information about how to love them. Wonder is the wellspring for love. . . .

The call to love beyond our own flesh and blood is ancient. It echoes down to us on the lips of indigenous leaders, spiritual teachers, and social reformers through the centuries. [The founder of Sikhism] Guru Nanak called us to see no stranger, Buddha to practice unending compassion, Abraham to open our tent to all, Jesus to love our neighbors, Muhammad to take in the orphan, [Hindu mystic saint] Mirabai to love without limit. They all expanded the circle of who counts as one of us, and therefore who is worthy of our care and concern. These teachings were rooted in the linguistic, cultural, and spiritual contexts of their time, but they spoke of a common vision of our interconnectedness and interdependence. . . .

What has been an ancient spiritual truth is now increasingly verified by science: We are all indivisibly part of one another. We share a common ancestry with everyone and everything alive on earth. The air we breathe contains atoms that have passed through the lungs of ancestors long dead. Our bodies are composed of the same elements created deep inside the furnaces of long-dead stars. We can look upon the face of anyone or anything around us and say—as a moral declaration and a spiritual, cosmological, and biological fact: You are a part of me I do not yet know.

But you don’t have to be religious in order to open to wonder. You only have to reclaim a sliver of what you once knew as a child. If you remember how to wonder, then you already have what you need to learn how to love.

Order, Disorder, Reorder:
Part One

The Cosmic Order
Wednesday,  August 12, 2020

Matter is the common, universal, tangible setting, infinitely shifting and varied, in which we live. . . . By matter we are nourished, lifted up, linked to everything else, invaded by life. —Teilhard de Chardin

The physical structure of the universe is love. —Teilhard de Chardin

For Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), a French Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist, love is at the physical heart of the universe. He viewed love as the attraction of all things toward all things. We could say that love is the universal ordering principle. In this passage from Liberation and the Cosmos, CAC faculty member Dr. Barbara Holmes imagines a conversation between Civil Rights lawyer and educator Barbara Jordan (1936–1996) and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993). It captures the essence of what is good and possible about Order—in both the laws of cosmos and the land.

Marshall: How about this, Barbara? Suppose, just for argument’s sake, that we consider the law to be a reflection of the order of the cosmos? Although there is chaos and synchronicity, there is also the potential for creative genesis.

Jordan: I remember reading the work of Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest, mystic, and paleontologist who did a good deal of work on consciousness and the laws of the universe. . . .

The laws of nations give clues as to the state of mind of a populace, and sometimes they provide a history of our processive movement toward our highest good. That’s all of the science that I know. But from what I understand, there are laws of the universe as well as laws of nation-states. Matter and spirit are intertwined so that the “quanta of matter and spirit that once permeated the early universe become fibers of matter influenced by gravity and threads of spirit drawn by love.” [1] . . .

Marshall: Let me say a few cosmological things. While our laws are in place to prevent, proscribe, and punish, the laws of the universe seem to be focused on connection, attraction, and a cosmic holding mechanism. . . . Where was Teilhard when I needed him? The idea that we are connected to a future good, and moving toward something better, would have been a breath of fresh air . . . . Now that I am on this side of the continuum, I’m certain that the trajectory of human life is toward mutuality and care of self and neighbor. [2]

I wish more of us understood and accepted the “laws of the universe,” which include disruption, dynamism and evolution, instead of clinging so tightly to the “law and order” of church and country. Jesus himself indicated that “heavenly” and “human” laws are not on equal footing. He refused to enforce or even bother with what he considered secondary issues like ritual laws, purity codes, and membership requirements. He regarded them as human commandments, which far too often took the place of love (see Matthew 15:3, 6‒9).

From Innocence to Knowledge
Tuesday,  August 11, 2020

Many Christians look to the Garden of Eden as the ultimate example of Order. While we can certainly mourn the suffering, it doesn’t do us any good to regret “the Fall.” It had to happen; failure is part of the deal! If Christ is theLogos, the blueprint for all creation, then God has always had our growth and salvation in mind. In this passage, theologian and mystic Rev. Howard Thurman (1900–1981) explores the creative tension that exists between innocence and knowledge, each honoring the other.

The setting is the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve are the central figures in an idyllic surrounding. All is peaceful. All is innocent. They are told by God that they are free to do anything except one thing. They are forbidden to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge which grows in the midst of the garden [Genesis 2:16–17]. For if they eat of the fruit they shall be driven from the garden and from that day forward they shall be responsible for their own lives. They eat of the fruit; they are driven out of the garden; they become responsible for their own lives. With the coming of knowledge, they have lost their innocence.

The transition from innocence to knowledge is always perilous and fraught with hazard. There is something very comforting and reassuring about innocence. To dwell in innocence is to inhabit a region where storms do not come and where all the breezes are gentle and balmy. It is to live in the calm of the eye of the hurricane. It is to live in a static environment which makes upon the individual no demands other than to be. All else is cared for; is guaranteed.

But when knowledge comes, the whole world is turned upside down. The meaning of things begins to emerge. And more importantly, the relations between things are seen for the first time. Questions are asked and answers are sought. A strange restlessness comes over the spirit and the enormity of error moves over the horizon like a vast shadow. Struggle emerges as the way of life. An appetite is awakened that can never be satisfied. A person becomes conscious of himself; the urge to know, to understand, to find answers, turns inward. Every estimate of others becomes a question of self-estimate, every judgment upon life becomes a self-judgment. The question of the meaning of one’s self becomes one with the meaning of life.

This process of moving from innocence to knowledge is never finished. Always there is the realm of innocence, always there is some area of innocence untouched by knowledge. The more profound the growth of knowledge, the more aware the individual becomes of the dimensions of innocence. Pride in knowledge is always tempered by the dominion of innocence.

Thurman offers here a wonderful description of the first stage of Order and a poetic, accurate account of early forays into Disorder. Surely moving between these two polarities is part of the Divine Dance. my body? What is mine to do?

Story from Our Community:
My husband has a diagnosis of “Moderate Cognitive Decline,” probably heading towards Alzheimer’s. Richard’s meditations have helped me rise above my personal grief, anger, and resentment. When I find myself feeling inconvenienced by all the things I now have to do because my husband no longer can, I am reminded of how strong and skilled God has made me. This must be one of the gates through which I am passing on my way to more closely aligning myself with the nature of the Universal Christ. —Linda F.

Order, Disorder, Reorder:
Part One

Necessary Boundaries
Monday,  August 10, 2020

Law, tradition, and boundaries—what I call Order—seem to be necessary in any spiritual system both to reveal and to limit our basic egocentricity. Such containers make at least some community, family, and marriage possible. Boundaries seem to be the only way that human beings can find a place to stand, a place to begin, a place from which to move out. Even those who think they don’t have any boundaries usually do. We discover them when we trespass against them. The human soul flourishes on solid ground, especially in the first years of life.

As Paul belabors in his Letter to the Romans (see especially chapters 2–7), the law is given for the sake of information, education, and transformation, but is not itself enlightenment. Even though allegiance to boundaries, limits, and laws is almost universally confused with religion and even salvation itself, “the law will not save anyone” (Galatians 3:11). Law has to do with the pattern of how transformation happens—and that’s all. The struggle with boundaries and law creates the wrestling ring, but is not, itself, the encounter or the victory.

Human beings seem to need to fight and engage with something before they can take it seriously—and before they can discover what they really need or want. The people who never fight religion, guilt, parents, injustice, friends, marriage partners, and laws usually don’t respect their own power, importance, and freedom. They remain content with the external values of the first “lawful” container, instead of working to discover their own.

I am trying to hold us inside a very creative tension, because both law and freedom are necessary for spiritual growth, as Paul says in both Romans and Galatians. He learned this from Jesus, who says seven times in a row, “The law says . . . but I say” (Matthew 5:21–48), while also assuring us that he “has not come to throw out the law but to bring it to completion” (5:17). Despite having been directly taught to hold this creative tension, rare is the Christian believer who holds it well.

The psyche cannot live with everything changing every day, everything a matter of opinion, everything relative. There must be a sound container holding us long enough so we can move beyond survival mode. There has to be solid ground, trust, and shared security, or we cannot move outward. There has to be a foundational hope, and for hope to be a shared experience there must be agreed-upon meanings and shared stories that excite and inspire us all. If there are truly stories from the great patterns that are always true, they will catapult us into a universal humanity and pluralistic society. We will both stand on solid ground and, from that solid ground, create common ground. If it does not support our movement outward, then it is not solid ground at all.

Order, Disorder, Reorder:
Part One

The Universal Pattern
Sunday,  August 9, 2020

It seems quite clear that we grow by passing beyond some perfect Order, through an often painful and seemingly unnecessary Disorder, to an enlightened Reorder or resurrection. This is the universal pattern that connects and solidifies our relationships with everything around us. This week’s meditations focus on Order, the first in the sequence. We will take a closer look at Disorder and Reorder in the following two weeks.

The trajectory of transformation and growth, as I see the great religious and philosophical traditions charting it, uses many metaphors for this pattern. We could point to the classic “Hero’s Journey” charted by Joseph Campbell; the Four Seasons or Four Directions of most Native religions; the epic accounts of exodus, exile, and Promised Land of the Jewish people, followed by the cross, death, and resurrection narrative of Christianity. Each of these deeply rooted “myths,” in its own way, is saying that growth happens in this full sequence. To grow toward love, union, salvation, or enlightenment, we must be moved from Order to Disorder and then ultimately to Reorder.

A sense of order is the easiest and most natural way to begin; it is a needed first “container.” I cannot think of a culture in human history, before the present postmodern era, that did not value law, tradition, custom, family loyalties, authority, boundaries, and morality of some clear sort. While they aren’t perfect, these containers give us the necessary security, predictability, impulse control, and ego structure that we need, before the chaos of real life shows up. As far as I can see it, healthily conservative people tend to grow up more naturally and more happily than those who receive only freeform, build-it-yourself worldviews.

We need a very strong container to hold the contents and contradictions that arrive later in life. We ironically need a very strong ego structure to let go of our ego. We need to struggle with the rules more than a bit before we throw them out. We only internalize values by butting up against external values for a while. All this builds the strong self that can positively follow Jesus—and “die to itself.” [1]

In our time, many people are questioning and rejecting the institutions, churches, and authority figures that have long provided stability. Looking to the perennial tradition, which has held up over time, can help create a positive “container.” We cannot each start at zero, entirely on our own. Life is far too short, and there are plenty of mistakes we do not need to make—though, of course, there are some that we need to make. We are parts of social and family ecosystems that, when they are rightly structured, keep us from falling. More importantly, these systems show us how to fall and how to learn from that very falling.