Emerging Church Conference

Day Three

Richard Rohr came back to the podium on Saturday. The theme for this day is ministry.

The early church held the "prophets" in high esteem; but the church soon marginalized, domesticated, and eventually eliminated the office of prophet. Their role was to provide validation from the intuitive/imaginal level. It was a recognition of demonstrated abilities and gifts.

He spent a lot of time complaining about the ordination process in the Roman Catholic church, which is not that different from what goes on in Protestantism. We ordain people before they show any gifts, as if the act of ordination itself conferred spiritual gifts and authority. This puts the control in the hands of the institution, instead of the Spirit.

Suzanne Stabile identifies 4 "mantras" learned from Jonah: 1- show up; 2- pay attention, 3- tell the truth, 4- don't get attached to the results.

In authentic ministry we don't do it, we serve what God is doing.

True liminality leads to increased awareness.

True liminality leads to increased consciousness of pain.

True liminality leads to increased knowledge of ourselves and others.

True liminality leads to increased knowledge of your own shadows, and those of others.

She shared a wonderful joke by Jack Kornfield about the bedoin family going across the desert on camels, when the father turns and tells one of the children, "Stop asking if we're almost there; we nomads, for God's sake!"

I will summarize McLaren's next talk next time.

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....