Emerging Church Conference

Day Two, cont'd.

Rohr went on to talk about how there is no homeostasis in the universe, everything is change/adaptation/adjustment.

Literalism is always a decrease in meaning, because it tries to reduce the meaning to one dimension.

The next presenter was Suzanne Stabile, subbing for Diana Butler Bass, who had a death in the family and couldn't make it. She talked about liminal space, a place of anti-structure where transformation happens. Nothing new happens as long as we are in our comfort zones. It is the ultimate and perhaps the only teachable space. But our culture abhors liminality. We need to let the church stay in its liminal zone for a while. Don't try and resolve it too soon.

Brian McLaren finished up the day with the evening session. His presentation was balanced by brilliant and funny skits by Ted Schwartz. McLaren's point was that there was a unity that preceded dualism, and a unity that is beyond dualism. Temporary Autonomous Zones are places where the normal patterns of homogeneity and hegemony break down in an acceptance of wild diversity.

Living by duality makes us destructive. The kind of "knowledge" the people acquire in Genesis 3 (duality of good and evil) is recognized and counteracted by Jesus. For the apostle Paul, Christ destroyed duality and established unity. McLaren referenced 1 Cor. 8:1-11, 1 Cor. 12, and Ephesians 2:11ff, and finally 1 Cor. 13. The way to get to the unity beyond duality is love. Knowledge will pass away.

Emerging Christianity Conference

Day Two

The first speaker yesterday was Cynthia Bourgeault, a teacher of Centering Prayer. She talked a lot about the brain and the heart, and how we need to get beyond the often violent reactions we make when we are in our limbic/reptilian brain. More of the brain is available when we learn to relax into what is happening. The heart is also an organ of spiritual perception and the prefrontal lobes connect with it.

When the heart and brain are in "entrainment" there seems to be an alignment between visible and invisible realms. We have contact with the visionary/imaginal world. Jesus referred to this world as "the Kingdom of Heaven." It is the mysterious source or origin of things, "the reality looming on the surface from which things emerge." It is not "imaginary" but quite real and objective. Events don't just happen in the outer world. The resurrection of Jesus, for instance, is a fact on the imaginal plane which altered the disciples' consciousness.

This is an older way of seeing. Christianity began in this liminal, imaginal space. When the eye of the heart is opened that reality becomes manifest here and now.

"The truth does not need to be defended; it only needs to be lived."

Then she went into a strong critique of "liberal" thinking, which is overly timid and lacks conviction. It discounts the reality of the imaginal.

We cannot lose faith in the truth of the Easter kerygma. We have to find the fire and regain the confidence... but no longer on the literal and propositional level. On the imaginal level. It's not about believing the impossible but seeing the invisible.

Ken Wilber's stages of development. We have to move out of the rational and pluralistic and into the integral and non-dual consciousness. The burning-but-not-consumed-bush in Exodus is a good example of non-dual thinking. Both/and.

It is about "opening the eye of the heart and bending the knee of the heart to the grace which surrounds us."

Bourgeault's analysis was inspiring because it looked ahead with integrity towards what the new mind, or the mind of Christ, is beginning to look like... yet at the same time she sank her roots deep into the spiritual tradition. (The Eastern church has used language like "bringing the mind into the heart" for centuries.) I have to take her word for the physiological stuff, though.

After lunch Richard Rohr spoke again.

He built on this physiological side with the observation that the heart literally as a brain/neurons. Separating the brain from the heart resulted in 500 years of dualistic thinking in our culture, and centuries of attrocities.

Jesus talks much more about "how" than "what" to believe.

More later....

Emerging Christianity Conference

Day One

In the morning, Shane Claiborne reflected on his experience with the Simple Way community in Philadelphia. What does it mean to be fully devoted followers of Jesus? Orthodoxy must bear fruit in Orthopraxis. This means a lifestyle based on the widely and radically inclusive vision of Jesus, and all that entails: restorative justice, reconciliation, cultivating goodness and order. We have to keep laughing and dancing. The tyranny of the urgency can't hijack our joy.

Claiborne is always inspiring and exciting. The question is how do we learn from his experience and apply it in our different contexts. I am particularly interested in whether and how the church does ministry in suburbia. More on this as we go through the week, no doubt....

In the afternoon, we heard from Richard Rohr who talked about non-dual consciousness, which is the same as contemplation, and which is the goal of the Christian life. It is Ken Wilber who said that the purpose of religion is to bring people to a new and broader consciousness. Carl Jung suggests that the greatest problems are fundamentally unsolvable, expressing the necessary polarity of every living system: problems cannot be solved, only outgrown, which is something that happens as the fruit of suffering... if we can find the grace in the suffering.

Karl Rahner: to know we don't know is the beginning of religious consciousness. This means respect for mystery, leaving the horizon open: contemplation. Which is the opposite of dualistic thinking.

Jesus assumes a unitive relationship between God and the person. He creates a moral equivalence between God and humanity, between himself and others, and between any person and God. The Spirit is indwelling in the human person: so finally there is a moral equivalence between all people.

Humanity's deepest need is not for answers, but for communion. We need meaning; to be held rather than to hold.

The traditional model in Christian spirituality is Purgation/Illumination/Union. The purgative way brings our wounds out of the unconscious into consciousness, and into community. Mainstream religion generally does the purgation thing fairly well. And this is helpful in a broken and weak society. But obedience to religious laws is just the first stage of the spiritual journey.

(We did an exercise in non-dual thinking, which involved walking meditation and contemplating a found object.)

Rohr later discussed the difference between being "driven" and being "drawn." The former is anxious, compulsive, goal oriented, with irritation when our goals are not met. The latter is more responsive to the world: interactive and reciprocal.

People need to be into the illuminative stage, which means recognizing the shadows, including some holy dissatisfaction. Only then are they ready for the emergent conversation. We need to be shoved into the world of ambiguity.

In short, Claiborne kind of embodies in gritty urban reality the kind of thinking Rohr is talking about.