Who is the Black Madonna?
What She Means to the 21st Century
The Black Madonna speaks directly to modern man confronted with the most important question that has hounded humanity: Will man survive this age of splintered vision?
When the Crusaders returned from the Islamic world in the 13th century, they brought back not only a new appreciation of intricate design but a new respect for the meaning of Isis, the Egyptian goddess whose blackness was associated with the wisdom and life-force of matter – the body of the Great Mother.
Isis was the one who gathered the dismembered parts of her husband Osiris and made them into a whole; hers was the grace of holistic vision. Figures of the "Black Goddess" sprouted all over Europe, evidence that the people understood the divine mystery embodied in her darkness – fertility, mystery and depth.
Unfortunately, the black death that swept across Europe in the 14th century changed all that; it turned the "Great Mother" into the "Whore of Babylon." Distrust of the body`s dissolution, disease and death ushered in a new solar imperative – the heroic enterprise of dominion over nature. The result was a legacy of tyranny by reason.
The Black Madonna, however, refuses to die. She surfaced in romantic art and poetry, in the spiritualism of the late nineteenth century, in the fervor of new age ideals and now again in the 21st century`s call for ecological consciousness.
If anything at all, man is brought face-to-face once more with a darkness that science and the enlightenment have failed to banish. So who is the Black Madonna and what does she mean?
The Black Madonna is a New Concept of Consciousness
According to Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson, the archetype of the Black Virgin speaks directly to modern man confronted with the most important question that has hounded humanity: Will man survive this age of splintered vision?
This question can only be answered by man`s acceptance of his cosmic consciousness and what this means in terms of the new realities of the physical world uncovered by new physics.
If rationalism has sundered the bonds between man and man, man and the cosmos, the "Dark Mother" reminds him that his choice of observation determines his experience of reality. It's said that he has the choice between the particle and the wave; one confines him to the material world; the other releases the wave potential within him, the power of coherence within a magnetic field.
Only by embracing the world and its extension into the cosmos can man come to terms with a new understanding of his de-centered position in cosmology,a position that allows him to experience coherence rather than isolation, compassion rather than pride.
It is this new story that will reveal the significance of different life-forms and their participation in divinity. For his survival, man needs to embrace this new concept of consciousness and pass it on to the world around him.
The Black Madonna Means the Sacredness of Matter
If science has splintered mind from body, it cannot return man to wholeness without honoring the body. The Black Madonna is the most honest expression of the body`s ecology in both the personal and collective dimensions.
She reveals the injustice that lies in the misuse of the earth`s resources and beckons man to exercise the power of stewardship over an earth ravaged by years of exploitation. She calls man to honor the sacredness of all matter, including himself.
The new science that emerges honors the sacredness of matter by recognizing that matter is energy, a psycho-energetic continuum of mind and body.
The Black Madonna Means Unity in Diversity
The blackness and femininity of the Black Goddess call man towards racial and gender diversity. She calls for the union of the masculine and feminine, the white knight and the dark goddess, so that wholeness or unity can be made from diversity. She also beckons man towards moral, political and intellectual diversity.
According to Reverend Matthew Fox, "what but an education in creativity can reinvent learning so that the joy and wonder and enticement of learning [can] displace our failing and boring education systems?"
What but moral imagination can move man to heal the growing division between "materially impoverished nations and materially sated but spiritually impoverished nations?" It is Isis, the one who collected her lover's parts and transformed them into a whole, that creates unity in diversity.
The Black Madonna is an apt metaphor of man moving into the new realities of the 21st century. His survival in an age of splintered vision depends on his willingness to embrace a new concept of consciousness, a new appreciation of the sacredness of matter and a new understanding of unity in diversity.
Source:
Woodman, Marion and Elinor Dickson. Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness.
The Return of the Black Madonna
The Return of the Black Madonna: A Sign of Our Times or
How the Black Madonna Is Shaking Us Up for the Twenty-First Century
Rev. Dr.Matthew Fox
© 2006 Matthew Fox
Every archetype has its seasons. They come and go according to the deepest, often unconscious, needs of the psyche both personal and collective. Today the Black Madonna is returning.[1] She is coming, not going, and she is calling us to something new (and very ancient as well). The last time the Black Madonna played a major role in western culture and psyche was the twelfth century renaissance, a renaissance that the great historian M.D. Chenu said was the “only renaissance that worked in the West.” [2] It worked because it was grass roots. And from this renaissance was birthed the University, the Cathedral, the city itself. She brought with her a resacralization of culture and a vision that awakened the young. In short, it was the last time the goddess entered western culture in a major way.
In this essay I want to address what the Black Madonna archetype awakens in us and why she is so important for the twenty-first century. But before I do that, I want to tell a personal story of my first encounter with the Black Madonna.
That encounter occurred in the Spring of 1968 when I was a student in Paris and took a brief trip—my first—to Chartres Cathedral located about thirty five miles from Paris. While all of Chartres was an amazing eye-opener for me, its sense of cosmology and humor and human dignity and inclusion of all of life, I stood before the statue of the black Madonna and was quite mesmerized. “What is this? Who is this?” I asked myself. A French woman came by and I quizzed her about it. The answer was as follows. “Oh, this is a statue that turned black over the years because of the number of candles burning around it,” she declared. I didn’t believe her. It made no sense. I looked carefully and saw no excessive candle power around the statue.
The story is an old one, one of ignorance and of racism. Even the French, at their most central holy spot, have lost the meaning and the story of the Black Madonna. And racism has contributed to this neglect. The Black Madonna is found all over Europe—in Sicily, Spain, Switzerland, France, Poland, Chechoslavakia—as well as in Turkey and in Africa and in Asia as Tara in China and as Kali in India. She is also named by Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. (Sometimes called the “brown Madonna.”) What is she about and why is interest returning in her today?
An archetype by definition is not about just one thing. No metaphor, no symbol, is a literal mathematical formula. The Black Madonna meant different things in different historical periods and different cultural settings. What I want to explore is why she is re-emerging in our time and what powers she brings with her. Why do we need the Black Madonna today? I detect twelve gifts that the Black Madonna archetype brings to our time. They are more than gifts, they are challenges. She comes to shake us up which, as we shall see, is an ancient work of Isis, the Black Madonna.
1. The Black Madonna is Dark and calls us to the darkness.. Darkness is something we need to get used to again—the “Enlightenment” has deceived us into being afraid of the dark and distant from it. Light switches are illusory. They feed the notion that we can “master nature” (Descartes’ false promise) and overcome all darkness with a flick of our finger.
Meister Eckhart observes that “the ground of the soul is dark.”[3] Thus to avoid the darkness is to live superficially, cut off from one’s ground, one’s depth. The Black Madonna invites us into the dark and therefore into our depths. This is what the mystics call the “inside” of things, the essence of things. This is where Divinity lies. It is where the true self lies. It is where illusions are broken apart and the truth lies. Andrew Harvey puts it this way: “The Black Madonna is the transcendent Kali-Mother, the black womb of light out of which all of the worlds are always arising and into which they fall, the presence behind all things, the darkness of love and the loving unknowing into which the child of the Mother goes when his or her illumination is perfect.” [4] She calls us to that darkness which is mystery itself. She encourages us to be at home there, in the presence of deep, black, unsolveable mystery. She is, in Harvey’s words, “the blackness of divine mystery, that mystery celebrated by the great Aphophatic mystics, such as Dionysisus Areopagite, who see the divine as forever unknowable, mysterious, beyond all our concepts, hidden from all our senses in a light so dazzling it registers on them as darkness.” [5] Eckhart calls God’s darkness a “superessential darkness, a mystery behind mystery, a mystery within mystery that no light has penetrated.”[6]
To honor darkness is to honor the experience of people of color. [7] Its opposite is racism. The Black Madonna invites us to get over racial stereotypes and racial fears and projections and to go for the dark.
2. The Black Madonna calls us to cosmology, a sense of the whole of space and time. Because she is dark and leads us into the dark, the Black Madonna is also cosmic. She is the great cosmic Mother on whose lap all creation exists. The universe itself is embraced and mothered by her. She yanks us out of our anthropocentrism and back into a state of honoring all our relations. She ushers in an era of cosmology, of our relationship to the whole (“kosmos” means whole in Greek) instead of just parts, be they nation parts or ethnic parts or religious parts or private parts. She pulls us out of the Newtonian parts-based relation to self and the world—out of our tribalism—into a relationship to the whole again. Since we are indeed inheriting a new cosmology in our time, a new “Universe Story”, the timing of the Black Madonna’s return could not be more fortuituous. She brings a blessing of the new cosmology, a sense of the sacred, to the task of educating our species in a new universe story. [8]
3. The Black Madonna calls us down to honor our lower charkas. One of the most dangerous aspects of western culture is its constant flight upwards, its race to the upper charkas (Descartes: “truth is clear and distinct ideas”) and its flight from the lower charkas. The Black Madonna takes us down, down to the first charkas including our relationship to the whole (first chakra, as I have explained elsewhere is about picking up the vibrations for sounds from the whole cosmos), our sexuality (second chakra) and our anger and moral outrage (third chakra). European culture in the modern era especially has tried to flee from all these elements both in religion and in education. The Black Madonna will not tolerate such flights from the earth, flights from the depths. [9]
4. Because she honors the direction of down and the lower charkas that take us there, the Madonna honors the earth and represents ecology and environmental concerns. Mother Earth is named by her very presence. Mother Earth is dark and fecund and busy birthing. So is the Black Madonna. Andrew Harvey says: “The Black Madonna is also the Queen of Nature, the blesser and agent of all rich fertile transformations in external and inner nature, in the outside world and in the psyche.” [10] Mother Earth nurtures her children and feeds the world and the Black Madonna welcomes them home when they die. She recycles all things. The Black Madonna calls us to the environmental revolution, to seeing the world in terms of our interconnectedness with all things and not our standing off to master or rule over nature (as if we could even if we tried). She is an affront to efforts of capitalist exploitation of the resources of the earth including the exploitation of the indigenous peoples who have been longest on the earth interacting with her in the most nuanced of ways. The Black Madonna sees things in terms of the whole and therefore does not countenance the abuse, oppression or exploitation of the many for the sake of financial aggrandizement of the few. She has always stood for justice for the oppressed and lower classes (as distinct from the lawyer classes). She urges us to stand up to those powers that, if they had their way, would exploit her beauty for short term gain at the expense of the experience of beauty that future generations will be deprived of. She is a conservationist, one who conserves beauty and health and diversity.
Furthermore, if Thomas Berry is correct that “ecology is functional cosmology,” then to be called to cosmology is to be called to its local expression of ecology. One cannot love the universe and not love the earth. And, vice versa, one cannot love the earth and ignore its temporal and spatial matrix, the universe.
5. The Black Madonna calls us to our depths, to living spiritually and radically on this planet and not superficially and unthinkingly and oblivious to the grace that has begotten us in so many ways. The depths to which we are called include the depths of awe, wonder and delight—joy itself is a depth experience we need to re-entertain in the name of the Black Madonna. She calls us to enter into the depths of our pain, suffering and shared grief—not to run from it or cover it up with a myriad of addictions ranging from shopping to drugs and alcohol and sport and superficial religion. She calls us to the depths of our creativity and to entertain the images that are born in and through us. And she calls us to the depths of transformation, of social, economic, gender, racial and eco justice and the struggle that must be maintained to carry on solidarity with the oppressed of any kind.
She calls us to the depths of our psyche which, as Meister Eckhart says, are “dark” and to the depths of the earth, which are surely dark and to the depths of the sky that have also been rediscovered for all their darkness. Black holes abound in space as well as in the mysterious breadth of our souls. We need to explore them. They too are fecund. They have much to teach us.
6. The Black Madonna calls us to our Divinity which is also our Creativity.
First, our Divinity. Because she is a goddess, the Black Madonna resides in all beings. She is the divine presence inside of creation. She calls us inside, into the “kingdom/queendom of God” where we can co-create with Divinity and feel the rush of Divinity’s holy breath or spirit. But to call us to Divinity is to call us to our responsibility to give birth.
If Carl Jung is correct when he says that creativity comes “from the realm of the mothers” then the Black Madonna, who is surely a realm of the mothers, calls us to creativity. She expects nothing less from us than creativity. Hers is a call to create, a call to ignite the imagination. What but our collective imaginations can succeed in moving us beyond our energy dependence on fossil fuels to an era of self-sustaining energy based on solar and renewable, clean fuels? What but an education in creativity can reinvent learning so that the joy and wonder and enticement of learning displaces our failing and boring educational systems? What but moral imagination can move us beyond the growing divide between materially impoverished nations and materially sated but spiritually impoverished nations?
The Black Madonna would usher in an era where more and more artists will get good work and thrive on good work and reawaken the human soul by way of moral and political imagination. [11]
7. The Black Madonna calls us to Diversity. There is no imagination without diversity—imagination is about inviting disparate elements into soul and culture so that new combinations can make love together and new beings can be birthed. Because the Black Madonna is black, she addresses the fundamental phobia around race and differences of color and culture that come with race and ethnic diversity. Meister Eckhart says: “All the names we give to God come from an understanding of ourselves.” [12] To give God the name “Black Madonna” is to honor blackness and all people of color and to get over an excessive whiteness of soul and culture. It is also to honor the feminine. Divinity is diverse. Diverse in color and diverse in traditions and diverse in gender. God as Mother, not just Father. God as Birther, not just Begetter. Gender diversity is honored by the Black Madonna and so too is gender preference. The Black Madonna, the Great Mother, is not homophobic. She welcomes the diversity of sexual preferences that are also part of creation, human and more than human. (We have now counted fifty four species of birds and mammals that have significant homosexual populations. The medieval notion that homosexuality is “against nature” has been disproven: A homosexual minority is very much part of nature.)
John Boswell, in his ground-breaking scholarly work entitled Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality has demonstrated that the twelfth century, that century that birthed the great renaissance and the Black Madonna in France, rejected homophobia. For a period of 125 years—years that were the most creative years in western civilization—diversity was welcomed at all levels of society. [13] Creativity thrives on diversity.
8. The Black Madonna calls us to Grieve. The Black Madonna is the sorrowful mother, the mother who weeps tears for the suffering in the universe, the suffering in the world, the brokenness of our very vulnerable hearts. In the Christian tradition she holds the dying Christ in her lap but this Christ represents all beings—it is the cosmic Christ and not just the historical Jesus that she is embracing, for all beings suffer and the Black Madonna, the Great Mother, knows this and empathizes with us in our pain. She embraces us like a tender mother, for compassion is her special gift to the world. She invites us to enter into our grief and name it and be there to learn what suffering has to teach us. Creativity cannot happen, birthing cannot happen, unless the grieving heart is paid attention to. Only by passing through grief can creativity burst forth anew. Grieving is an emptying, it is making the womb open again for new birth to happen. A culture that would substitute addictions for grieving is a culture that has lost its soul and its womb. It will birth nothing but more pain and abuse and misuse of resources. It will be a place where waste reigns and where Divinity itself wastes away unused in the hearts and imaginations of the people. Andrew Harvey writes of how the Black Madonna provides “an immense force of protection, an immense alchemical power of transformation through both grief and joy, and an immense inspiration to compassionate service and action in the world.” She is also “queen of hell,” or “queen of the underworld,…that force of pure suffering mystical love that annihilates evil at its root and engenders the Christ-child in the ground of the soul even as the world burns.” [14] She holds both creative and destructive aspects within her.
To grieve is to enter what John of the Cross in the sixteenth century called the “dark night of the soul.” We are instructed not to run from this dark night but to stay there to learn what darkness has to teach us. The Dark Madonna does not run from the darkness of spirit and soul that sometimes encompasses us. She invites us not to flee from pain and suffering. Mechtild of Magdeburg in the thirteenth century wrote of this darkness in the following manner: “There comes a time when both body and soul enter into such a vast darkness that one loses light and consciousness and knows nothing more of God’s intimacy. At such a time when the light in the lantern burns out the beauty of the lantern can no longer be seen. With longing and distress we are reminded of our nothingness….I am hunted, captured, bound, wounded so terribly that I can never be healed. God has wounded be close unto death.” [15] Mechtild does not run from the darkness but stays and learns. “God replied: ‘I wish always to be your physician, bringing healing anointment for all your wounds. If it is I who allow you to be wounded so badly, do you not believe that I will heal you most lovingly in the very same hour?” [16] What is it we learn in this darkness of soul and spirit? “From suffering I have learned this: That whoever is sore wounded by love will never be made whole unless he embrace the very same love which wounded her.” [17]
9.The Black Madonna calls us to Celebrate and to Dance. The Black Madonna, while she weeps tears for the world, as the sorrowful mother, does not wallow in her grief, does not stay there forever. Rather, she is a joyful mother, a mother happy to have being and to have shared it with so many other creatures. She expects joy in return. Celebration of life and its pleasures lie at the core of her reason for being. She expects us to take joy in her many pleasures, joy in her fruits. Sophia or Wisdom in the Scriptures sings to this element of pleasure and eros, deep and passionate love of life and all its gifts.
I have exhaled a perfume like cinnamon and acacia,
I have breathed out a scent like choice myrrh….
Approach me, you who desire me,
And take your fill of my fruits,
For memories of me are sweeter than honey,
Inheriting me is sweeter than the honeycomb.
They who eat me will hunger for more,
They who drink me will thirst for more.
Whoever listens to me will never have to blush….(Eccl. 24.15, 19-22)
Celebration is part of compassion. As Meister Eckhart puts it: “What happens to another be it a joy or a sorrow happens to me.” Celebration is the exercise of our common joy. Praise is the noise that joy makes. Joy, praise and celebration are intrinsic to community and to the presence of the Black Madonna. She did not birth her Divine Child by whatever name in vain. She opts in favor of children, in favor of life, in favor of eros and in favor of biophilia. She is a lover of life par excellence. She expects us, her children, to be the same.
10. The Black Madonna calls us to our Divinity which is Compassion. Compassion is the best of which our species is capable. It is also the secret name for Divinity. There is no spiritual tradition East or West, North or South, that does not exist to instruct its people in how to be compassionate. “Maat” is the name for justice, harmony, balance and compassion among the African peoples. The Black Madonna calls us to Maat. To balance, harmony, justice and compassion. Grieving and Celebrating and Acting Justly are all parts of compassion. In both Arabic and Hebrew, the word for compassion comes from the word for “womb.” A Patriarchal period does not teach compassion, it ignores the womb-like energies of our world and our species. If it mentions compassion at all it trivializes it and renders it sissy. (For example, Webster’s dictionary declares that the idea that compassion is about a relationship among equals is “obsolete.”) Patriarchy neglects what Meister Eckhart knew and taught: “Compassion means justice.” [18] Compassion has a hard side, it is not about sentiment but about relationships of justice and interdependence.
Because the Black Madonna is the goddess that dwells deeply and darkly within all beings, ourselves included, she brings with her our capacity for compassion. We are not whole—we are not ourselves—until we partake in the carrying on of compassion. Meister Eckhart taught that the name of the human soul properly is “Compassion” and that until we are engaged in compassion we do not yet have soul. [19]
Compassion knows when enough is enough; compassion does not overindulge; compassion does not hoard and does not run its life on addictions of insecurity and pyramid-building to overcome these addictions. Compassion trusts life and the universe ultimately to provide what is necessary for our being. But compassion works hard as a co-creator with the universe to see that a balance and basic fairness is achieved among beings. Compassion is present in the Black Madonna in her very essence for “the first outburst of everything God (and Goddess) does is compassion.” (Eckhart) To return to compassion is to return to the Goddess.
Cultural historian and feminist Henry Adams writes about the role of Mary at Chartres Cathedral in the twelfth century. “The convulsive hold which Mary to this day maintains over human imagination—as you can see at Lourdes—was due much less to her power of saving soul or body than to her sympathy with people who suffered under law—justly or unjustly, by accident or design, by decree of God or by guile of Devil.” [20] Adams understood Mary as the Buddhist element in Christianity for with her as with Buddha, compassion is the first of all the virtues. “To Kwannon the Compassionate One and to Mary the Mother of God, compassion included the idea of sorrowful contemplation.” [21] Only the Great Mother could provide the compassion needed by the sorrowful human condition.
The Mother alone was human, imperfect, and could love; she alone was Favour, Duality, Diversity. Under any conceivable form of religion, this duality must find embodiment somewhere, and the Middle Ages logically insisted that, as it could not be in the Trinity, either separately or together, it must be in the Mother. If the Trinity was in its essence Unity, the Mother alone could represent whatever was not Unity; whatever was irregular, exceptional, outlawed; and this was the whole human race.[22]
She was beyond the law, a friend of the outlaws who appealed to the masses who “longed for a power above law—or above the contorted mass of ignorance and absurdity bearing the name of law.”[23] This power had to be more than human. It required the goddess.
The Black Madonna, the goddess, provides the womb of the universe as the cosmic lap where all creatures gather. An ancient hymn dedicated to Isis underscores her cosmic role as sovereign over all of nature and queen of all the gods and goddesses.
I am Nature, the universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are. My nod governs the shining heights of Heaven, the wholesome sea-breezes, the lamentable silences of the world below.[24]
How like a twelfth century poem to the Christian goddess Mary is this ancient hymn to Isis. Alan of Lille wrote the following poem about Nature in the twelfth century:
O child of God and Mother of things,
Bond of the world, its firm-tied knot,
Jewel set among things of earth,
and mirror to all that passes away
Morning star of our sphere;
Peace, love, power, regimen and strength,
Order, law, end, pathway, captain and source,
Life, light, glory, beauty and shape,
O Rule of our world! [25]
Interestingly, Alan of Lille speaks of the “Mother of things” as a “firm-tied knot” and the Thet which is an important symbol of Isis is also understood to be a knot.[26] We play in her cosmic lap, we bump up against one another there, and we work for balance, Maat, and justice there.
The Black Madonna is the Throne of Compassion, the Divine lap. That is the meaning of the name “Isis” and Isis is the African goddess who gave us the Black Madonna both in Ephesus, Turkey and through Spain and Sicily directly into Western Europe. Indeed, certain passages of the Christian Gospels such as the birth narratives, which are clearly not historical but are stories of the Cosmic Christ, are passages taken from stories about Isis and her son, Horus. Sir Ernest A. Wallis Budge, the late keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities at the British Museum, writes:
The pictures and sculptures wherein she is represented in the act of suckling Horus formed the foundation for the Christian paintings of the Madonna and Child. Several of the incidents of the wanderings of the Virgin with the Child in Egypt as recorded in the Apochryphal Gospels reflect scenes in the life of Isis…and many of the attributes of Isis, the God-mother, the mother of Horus…are identical with those of Mary the Mother of Christ.[27]
11. The Black Madonna Calls us to a renaissance of culture, religion and the city. Isis often wears a regal headdress that symbolizes her name as meaning “throne” or “queen.” Erich Neumann has written about Isis as “Throne.”
As mother and earth woman, the Great Mother is the ‘throne’ pure and simple, and, characteristically, the woman’s motherliness resides not only in the womb but also in the seated woman’s broad expanse of thigh, her lap on which the newborn child sits enthroned. To be taken on the lap is, like being taken to the
breast, a symbolic expression for adoption of the child, and also for the man, by the Feminine. It is no accident that the greatest Mother Goddess of the early cults was named Isis, the ‘seat,’ ‘the throne,’ the symbol of which she bears on her head; and the king who ‘takes possession’ of the earth, the Mother Goddess, does so by sitting on her in the literal sense of the word.[28]
The twelfth century renaissance was especially conscious of the role of “throne” and the goddess. In Latin the word for “throne” is “cathedra.” The medieval church gave birth to cathedrals—over 125 were built the size of Chartres—and every single one was dedicated to Mary with such titles as Notre Dame de Chartres, Notre Dame de Lyons, Notre Dame de Paris, etc. Over 375 other churches the size of these cathedrals were built dedicated to Mary also. In many of these cathedrals a statue to the Black Madonna can be found even to this day. A cathedral by definition meant the throne where the goddess sits ruling the universe with compassion and justice for the poor. Anthropocentrism, clericalism and sexism have co-opted the invention of cathedral to mean the “place where the bishop has his (usually his) throne.” This is false. The cathedral is designed to be the center of the city, it is bringing the goddess to the center of the city to bring the city alive with goddess energies and values. Cities were birthed in the twelfth century with the breakup of the land-based economy and religious and political system of the feudal era. The youth fled to the cities where religion reinvented itself apart from the monastic establishment that ruled for eight centuries and where education invented itself apart from the rural monastic educational system in the form of universities. Worship reinvented itself in the Cathedral in the city and apart from the monastic liturgical practice in the countryside.
Today for the first time in human history more than 50% of humans are living in cities; By 2015, over two-thirds of humans—a great proportion of them young people—will be living in cities. The Black Madonna and the “throne as goddess” motif contribute to the resurrection of our cities. They give us a center, a cosmic center, a synthesis and unity and a life-energy by which we can redeem our cities and take them back from lifelessness and thanatos. Artists gather in a city. Celebration and ritual happen in a city. Nature and human nature congregate in a city. No wonder Meister Eckhart and other medieval mystics celebrated the human soul as city and the city as soul. It is the task of a renaissance to bring soul back to city. We might even define renaissance as a “rebirth of cities based on a spiritual initiative.”
(The twelth gift, conclusion and footnotes are continued in the link on the home page entitled "Recent Articles by Matthew Fox")
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Do atheists hate diversity?
Is the very act of atheist activism (trying to persuade people that atheism is correct and working to change the world into one without religion) an act of attempted conformity? Are atheists trying to create a drab, gray, uniform world, where everyone else is just like them?
It's probably pretty obvious that I think the answer is a big fat "No!" (Probably said in the Ted Stevens voice.) But it certainly is the case that many atheist activists, myself among them, are working very hard to persuade religious believers out of their beliefs. Not all atheists do this, of course; many have the more modest goals of separation of church and state and religious tolerance, including tolerance of atheists and recognition of us as equal citizens. But a good number of atheists are, in fact, trying to convince religious believers to become atheists. I'm one of them.
And since many believers see this as an intolerant attempt to enforce conformity -- particularly believers of the progressive, ecumenical, "all religions perceive God in their own way and we have to respect them all" stripe -- I want to take a moment to address it.
The Intolerant Bigotry of the Germ Theory
If there's one single idea I'd most like to get across to religious believers, it would not be, "There is no God." Or even, "There is probably no God." I want believers to reach that conclusion on their own. Preferably upon being awestruck by my brilliant arguments, of course, but ultimately on their own, after thinking it through, after looking at the reasons for belief and the reasons for atheism, and concluding that atheism makes more sense and is more consistent with what we know about the world. I don't want people to stop believing in God just because I say so.
If there's one single idea I'd most like to get across to religious believers, it would be this:
Religion is a hypothesis.
Religion is a hypothesis about how the world works, and why it is the way it is. Religion is the hypothesis that the world is the way it is, at least in part, because of immaterial beings or forces that act on the material world.
Religion is many other things, of course. It's communities, cultural traditions, political ideologies and philosophies. But those things aren't what make religion unique. What makes religion unique, among all other communities/philosophies, etc., is this hypothesis of an immaterial world acting on the material one. It's thousands of different hypotheses, really, positing thousands of immaterial beings and/or forces, with thousands upon thousands of different qualities and temperaments. But all these diverse beliefs have this one hypothesis in common: The hypothesis that there is a supernatural world, and that the natural world is the way it is because of the supernatural one.
Religion is not a subjective opinion, an ethical axiom or a personal perspective. (These things can be connected with religion, of course, but they're not what make its unique core.) Opinions, axioms and personal perspectives can be debated, but ultimately, they're up to each person to decide for themselves. Religion is none of these things. Religion is a hypothesis. It says, "Things are the way they are because of the effects of the immaterial world on the material one." Things are the way they are because God made them that way. Because the Devil is making them that way. Because the World-Soul is evolving that way. Because we have spiritual energy animating our consciousness. Because guardian angels are watching us. Because witches are casting spells. Because we are the reincarnated souls of dead people. Whatever.
Seeing religion as a hypothesis is important for a lot of reasons. But the reason that's most relevant to today's topic:
If religion is a hypothesis, it is not hostile to diversity for atheists to oppose it.
It is no more hostile to diversity to oppose the religion hypothesis than it is to oppose the hypothesis that global warming is a hoax; that an unrestricted free market will cause the economy to flourish for everyone; that illness is caused by an imbalance in the four bodily humors; that the sun orbits the earth.
Arguing against hypotheses that aren't supported by the evidence is not anti-diversity. That's how we understand the world better. We understand the world by rigorously gathering and analyzing evidence... and by ruthlessly rejecting any hypothesis the evidence doesn't support. Was it hostile to diversity for Pasteur to argue against the theory of spontaneous generation? For Georges Lemaitre to argue against the steady-state universe? For Galileo to argue against geocentrism?
And if not, then why is it hostile to diversity for atheists to argue against the hypothesis of God and the supernatural world?
How is it any more anti-diversity for atheists to argue against religion, and to try to persuade other people to change their minds about it, than it is for anyone to argue their case against any other hypothesis, on any other topic?
Many believers will argue that religion doesn't fall into these categories. They'll argue that religion can't be proven true or false with 100-percent certainty, and therefore it's reasonable for people to believe in any religion that appeals to them. (And it's unreasonable for anyone to make an argument against it.)
But that's not entirely true. Many religions, from young-earth creationism to astrology, do make testable claims. And every single time those claims have been rigorously tested, they've folded like a house of cards in a hurricane. They can't be disproved with 100-percent certainty, but almost nothing can, and that isn't the standard of evidence we use for any other claim.
Much more to the point, though: When you start seeing religion as a hypothesis, the fact that it's unverifiable suddenly stops being a defense.
In fact, it's completely the opposite. The fact that religion is unverifiable becomes one of the most devastating arguments against it.
One of the most important things about a hypothesis is that it has to be falsifiable. If any possible evidence could be used to support a hypothesis -- if your hypothesis will be shown to be true whether the water in the beaker gets hotter or colder, stays the same temperature, boils away instantly or turns into a parrot and flies out the door -- it is an utterly useless hypothesis. If any event at all can be fitted into it, then it has no power whatsoever to explain past events or predict future outcomes. It is, as they say, not even wrong.
And that's just as true of religion as any other hypothesis. If any outcome of, for instance, an illness -- recovering dramatically for no apparent reason, getting gradually better with medical intervention, getting worse, staying the same indefinitely, dying -- could be explained as God's work, then the God hypothesis is useless. It has no power to explain the world, to predict the future, or to tell us how our behavior will affect the outcomes of our lives. It serves no purpose. (Except, perhaps, a psychological one.)
The fact that religion is unfalsifiable doesn't mean we have to accept it as a reasonable possibility. It means the exact opposite. It means we should reject it wholesale.
It is not anti-diversity for atheists to point this out, any more than it's anti-diversity to point out how any other hypothesis is unfalsifiable, or unsupported by evidence, or directly contradicted by evidence, or in any other way mistaken and flawed.
A New Model for Diversity
I know that a lot of people will still have problems with atheist activism. Even if they acknowledge that atheist activism is fair and reasonable, they still have a strong, instinctive reaction against it. A lot of people think it seems like religious intolerance to say, "Your religion is wrong, and I think you should change your mind about it."
And I think the problem comes from how we think of diversity.
Historically, we pretty much have two models of dealing with religious beliefs that are different from ours. We have (a) intolerant evangelism and theocracy -- forcing religious beliefs down other people's throats, through social pressure at best, and legal strictures and even violence at worst. And we have (b) uncritical ecumenicalism: The idea that all religions are part of a rich, beautiful spiritual tapestry and they're all at least a little bit true -- and that even if they're not, it's religious bigotry to criticize them or try to persuade people out of them. It's a model created largely in response to intolerant evangelism and theocracy... and therefore, it's a model in which any criticism of any religion automatically gets slotted into that ugly category.
Atheism is offering a third option.
We're offering the option of respecting the important freedom of religious belief, while retaining the right to criticize those beliefs, and to treat them just like we'd treat any other idea we think is mistaken.
The atheist movement is passionate about the right to religious freedom. (With the notable exception of a few assholes on the Internet. Name me one movement that doesn't have its share of assholes on the Internet.) We fully support people's right to believe whatever the hell they want, as long as they keep it out of government and don't shove it down other people's throats. We see the right to think what we like as a basic foundation of human ethics, one of the most fundamental rights we have -- and we have no desire whatsoever to overturn that.
Yet at the same time, we see the right to free thought and free expression as including the right to criticize other people's thoughts and forms of expression. We passionately defend people's right to believe what they want... but we defend with equal passion our right to think what we want about those beliefs, and to say so in the public square. We express our disagreement in a variety of ways -- some more polite and respectful, some more insulting and mocking -- but we damn sure think we have the right to express it.
And we see no reason to treat religion with any more deference than any other idea. We see religion as -- yes, you guessed it -- a hypothesis about the world. We see it as a hypothesis that has never once in all of human history been shown to be correct. We see it as a hypothesis that at the very least has been falsified numerous times, and at worst is unfalsifiable and should therefore be rejected on that basis alone. And we see no reason to treat it any differently from any other deeply flawed, completely unsupported hypothesis. We see no reason not to criticize it, to ask hard questions about it, to make fun of it, to point out flaws in it, to point out the good evidence contradicting it and the utter lack of good evidence supporting it... and to do our damndest to persuade people out of believing in it.
Most atheists would probably be okay with a world that included religion, as long as it was tolerant of other beliefs and stayed the hell out of government. (Some of us are skeptical about whether this is possible... but we'd be okay with it.) Many of us even enjoy some of the rituals and traditions of religion, as long as they don't involve actual religious belief (a la secular Judaism). But yes, many atheist activists would like humanity to eventually give up on religion. We think religion is a mistaken idea about the world. We think we can make a good case for that position. We think it's entirely reasonable to try to persuade people that we're right.
It's probably pretty obvious that I think the answer is a big fat "No!" (Probably said in the Ted Stevens voice.) But it certainly is the case that many atheist activists, myself among them, are working very hard to persuade religious believers out of their beliefs. Not all atheists do this, of course; many have the more modest goals of separation of church and state and religious tolerance, including tolerance of atheists and recognition of us as equal citizens. But a good number of atheists are, in fact, trying to convince religious believers to become atheists. I'm one of them.
And since many believers see this as an intolerant attempt to enforce conformity -- particularly believers of the progressive, ecumenical, "all religions perceive God in their own way and we have to respect them all" stripe -- I want to take a moment to address it.
The Intolerant Bigotry of the Germ Theory
If there's one single idea I'd most like to get across to religious believers, it would not be, "There is no God." Or even, "There is probably no God." I want believers to reach that conclusion on their own. Preferably upon being awestruck by my brilliant arguments, of course, but ultimately on their own, after thinking it through, after looking at the reasons for belief and the reasons for atheism, and concluding that atheism makes more sense and is more consistent with what we know about the world. I don't want people to stop believing in God just because I say so.
If there's one single idea I'd most like to get across to religious believers, it would be this:
Religion is a hypothesis.
Religion is a hypothesis about how the world works, and why it is the way it is. Religion is the hypothesis that the world is the way it is, at least in part, because of immaterial beings or forces that act on the material world.
Religion is many other things, of course. It's communities, cultural traditions, political ideologies and philosophies. But those things aren't what make religion unique. What makes religion unique, among all other communities/philosophies, etc., is this hypothesis of an immaterial world acting on the material one. It's thousands of different hypotheses, really, positing thousands of immaterial beings and/or forces, with thousands upon thousands of different qualities and temperaments. But all these diverse beliefs have this one hypothesis in common: The hypothesis that there is a supernatural world, and that the natural world is the way it is because of the supernatural one.
Religion is not a subjective opinion, an ethical axiom or a personal perspective. (These things can be connected with religion, of course, but they're not what make its unique core.) Opinions, axioms and personal perspectives can be debated, but ultimately, they're up to each person to decide for themselves. Religion is none of these things. Religion is a hypothesis. It says, "Things are the way they are because of the effects of the immaterial world on the material one." Things are the way they are because God made them that way. Because the Devil is making them that way. Because the World-Soul is evolving that way. Because we have spiritual energy animating our consciousness. Because guardian angels are watching us. Because witches are casting spells. Because we are the reincarnated souls of dead people. Whatever.
Seeing religion as a hypothesis is important for a lot of reasons. But the reason that's most relevant to today's topic:
If religion is a hypothesis, it is not hostile to diversity for atheists to oppose it.
It is no more hostile to diversity to oppose the religion hypothesis than it is to oppose the hypothesis that global warming is a hoax; that an unrestricted free market will cause the economy to flourish for everyone; that illness is caused by an imbalance in the four bodily humors; that the sun orbits the earth.
Arguing against hypotheses that aren't supported by the evidence is not anti-diversity. That's how we understand the world better. We understand the world by rigorously gathering and analyzing evidence... and by ruthlessly rejecting any hypothesis the evidence doesn't support. Was it hostile to diversity for Pasteur to argue against the theory of spontaneous generation? For Georges Lemaitre to argue against the steady-state universe? For Galileo to argue against geocentrism?
And if not, then why is it hostile to diversity for atheists to argue against the hypothesis of God and the supernatural world?
How is it any more anti-diversity for atheists to argue against religion, and to try to persuade other people to change their minds about it, than it is for anyone to argue their case against any other hypothesis, on any other topic?
Many believers will argue that religion doesn't fall into these categories. They'll argue that religion can't be proven true or false with 100-percent certainty, and therefore it's reasonable for people to believe in any religion that appeals to them. (And it's unreasonable for anyone to make an argument against it.)
But that's not entirely true. Many religions, from young-earth creationism to astrology, do make testable claims. And every single time those claims have been rigorously tested, they've folded like a house of cards in a hurricane. They can't be disproved with 100-percent certainty, but almost nothing can, and that isn't the standard of evidence we use for any other claim.
Much more to the point, though: When you start seeing religion as a hypothesis, the fact that it's unverifiable suddenly stops being a defense.
In fact, it's completely the opposite. The fact that religion is unverifiable becomes one of the most devastating arguments against it.
One of the most important things about a hypothesis is that it has to be falsifiable. If any possible evidence could be used to support a hypothesis -- if your hypothesis will be shown to be true whether the water in the beaker gets hotter or colder, stays the same temperature, boils away instantly or turns into a parrot and flies out the door -- it is an utterly useless hypothesis. If any event at all can be fitted into it, then it has no power whatsoever to explain past events or predict future outcomes. It is, as they say, not even wrong.
And that's just as true of religion as any other hypothesis. If any outcome of, for instance, an illness -- recovering dramatically for no apparent reason, getting gradually better with medical intervention, getting worse, staying the same indefinitely, dying -- could be explained as God's work, then the God hypothesis is useless. It has no power to explain the world, to predict the future, or to tell us how our behavior will affect the outcomes of our lives. It serves no purpose. (Except, perhaps, a psychological one.)
The fact that religion is unfalsifiable doesn't mean we have to accept it as a reasonable possibility. It means the exact opposite. It means we should reject it wholesale.
It is not anti-diversity for atheists to point this out, any more than it's anti-diversity to point out how any other hypothesis is unfalsifiable, or unsupported by evidence, or directly contradicted by evidence, or in any other way mistaken and flawed.
A New Model for Diversity
I know that a lot of people will still have problems with atheist activism. Even if they acknowledge that atheist activism is fair and reasonable, they still have a strong, instinctive reaction against it. A lot of people think it seems like religious intolerance to say, "Your religion is wrong, and I think you should change your mind about it."
And I think the problem comes from how we think of diversity.
Historically, we pretty much have two models of dealing with religious beliefs that are different from ours. We have (a) intolerant evangelism and theocracy -- forcing religious beliefs down other people's throats, through social pressure at best, and legal strictures and even violence at worst. And we have (b) uncritical ecumenicalism: The idea that all religions are part of a rich, beautiful spiritual tapestry and they're all at least a little bit true -- and that even if they're not, it's religious bigotry to criticize them or try to persuade people out of them. It's a model created largely in response to intolerant evangelism and theocracy... and therefore, it's a model in which any criticism of any religion automatically gets slotted into that ugly category.
Atheism is offering a third option.
We're offering the option of respecting the important freedom of religious belief, while retaining the right to criticize those beliefs, and to treat them just like we'd treat any other idea we think is mistaken.
The atheist movement is passionate about the right to religious freedom. (With the notable exception of a few assholes on the Internet. Name me one movement that doesn't have its share of assholes on the Internet.) We fully support people's right to believe whatever the hell they want, as long as they keep it out of government and don't shove it down other people's throats. We see the right to think what we like as a basic foundation of human ethics, one of the most fundamental rights we have -- and we have no desire whatsoever to overturn that.
Yet at the same time, we see the right to free thought and free expression as including the right to criticize other people's thoughts and forms of expression. We passionately defend people's right to believe what they want... but we defend with equal passion our right to think what we want about those beliefs, and to say so in the public square. We express our disagreement in a variety of ways -- some more polite and respectful, some more insulting and mocking -- but we damn sure think we have the right to express it.
And we see no reason to treat religion with any more deference than any other idea. We see religion as -- yes, you guessed it -- a hypothesis about the world. We see it as a hypothesis that has never once in all of human history been shown to be correct. We see it as a hypothesis that at the very least has been falsified numerous times, and at worst is unfalsifiable and should therefore be rejected on that basis alone. And we see no reason to treat it any differently from any other deeply flawed, completely unsupported hypothesis. We see no reason not to criticize it, to ask hard questions about it, to make fun of it, to point out flaws in it, to point out the good evidence contradicting it and the utter lack of good evidence supporting it... and to do our damndest to persuade people out of believing in it.
Most atheists would probably be okay with a world that included religion, as long as it was tolerant of other beliefs and stayed the hell out of government. (Some of us are skeptical about whether this is possible... but we'd be okay with it.) Many of us even enjoy some of the rituals and traditions of religion, as long as they don't involve actual religious belief (a la secular Judaism). But yes, many atheist activists would like humanity to eventually give up on religion. We think religion is a mistaken idea about the world. We think we can make a good case for that position. We think it's entirely reasonable to try to persuade people that we're right.
Fraternal Correction: the Forgotten Virtue
Fraternal Correction: the Forgotten Virtue | Archdiocese of Washington
In these times one of the most forgotten virtues and obligations we have is the duty to correct the sinner. It is listed among the Spiritual Works of Mercy. St. Thomas Aquinas lists it in the Summa as a work of Charity: [F]raternal correction properly so called, is directed to the amendment of the sinner. Now to do away with anyone’s evil is the same as to procure his good: and to procure a person’s good is an act of charity, whereby we wish and do our friend well. (II, IIae, 33.1)
The World and the Devil have largely succeeded in shaming Christians from this essential work. We are said to be “judging” someone when we call attention to their sin or wrongdoing. In a culture where tolerance is one of the only virtues left, to “judge” is a capital offense. “How dare we do such a thing!” The world protests, “Who are you to judge someone else!”
Now to be sure, there are some judgements that are forbidden us. For example we cannot assess that we are better or worse than someone else before God. Neither can we always understand and ultimate culpability or inner intentions of another person as though we were God. Scripture says regarding judgments such as these: Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the LORD looks into the heart (1 Sam 16:7). Further we are instructed that we cannot make the judgment of condemnation. That is to say, we do not have the power or knowledge to condemn someone to Hell. God alone is judge in this sense. The same scriptures also caution us against being uncessesarily harsh or punitive. And so we read, Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven…. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you (Luke 6:36-38). So in this text “to judge” means to condemn or to be unmerciful, to be unreasonably harsh.
Another text that is often used by the world to forbid making “judgments” is Matt 7:
Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matt 7:1-5)
But pay careful attention to what this text is actually saying. First as we have already seen the Luke version the word “judge” here is understood to mean an unnecessarily harsh and punitive condemnation. The second verse makes this clear. To paraphrase verse two would be to say, If you lower the boom on others, you will have the boom lowered on you. If you throw the book at others, it will also be thrown at you.” Further, the parable that follows does NOT say not to correct sinners. If says, get right with God yourself and then you will see clearly enough to properly correct your brother.
The fact is that over and over again Scripture tells us to correct the sinner. Far from forbidding fraternal correction, the Scriptures command and commend it. I would like to share some of those texts here and add a little commentary of my own in Red.
Jesus said, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Matt 18:15-18) Jesus instructs us to speak to a sinning brother or sister and summon them to repentance. If private rebuke does not work and, assuming the matter is serious, others who are trustworthy should be summoned to the task. Finally the Church should be informed. If they will not listen even to the Church then they should be excommunicated (treated as a tax collector or Gentile). Hence in serious matters excommunication should be considered as a kind of medicine that will inform the sinner of how serious the matter is. Sadly this “medicine” is seldom used today even though Jesus clearly prescribes it (at least in more serious matters).
It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body I am present in spirit, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing. When you are assembled, and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened….I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with immoral men; 10not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But rather I wrote to you not to associate with any one who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Drive out the wicked person from among you. So the Holy Spirit speaking through Paul commands that we “judge” the evil doer. Now again in this case the matter is very serious (incest). Notice how the text says he should be excommunicated (handed over to Satan). Here too the purpose is medicinal. It is to be hoped that Satan will beat him up enough that he will come to his senses and repent before the day of judgment. It is also medicinal in the sense that the community is protected from bad example, scandal and the presence of evil. The text also requires us to be able to size people up. There ARE immoral and unrepentant people with whom it is harmful for us to associate. We are instructed to discern this and not keep friendly company with people who can mislead us or tempt us to sin. This requires a judgment on our part. Some judgements ARE required of us.
Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any sin, you who are spiritual should recall him in a spirit of gentleness. Look to yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. (Gal 6:1-2) Notice we are called to note when a person has been overtaken in sin and to correct him. Note too that the text cautions us to do so in a spirit of gentleness. Otherwise we may sin in the very process of correcting the sinner. Perhaps we are prideful or unnecessarily harsh in our words of correction. This is no way to correct. Gentle and humble but clear, seems to be the instruction here. It also seems that patience is called for since we must bear the burden’s of one another’s sin. We bear this in two ways. First we accept the fact that others have imperfections and faults that trouble us. Secondly we bear the obligation of helping others know their sin and of helping them to repent.
My brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth and some one brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins (James 5:19) The text is ambiguous as to whose soul is actually saved but that is good since it seems both the corrected and the corrector are beneficiaries of fraternal correction well executed.
You shall not hate your brother in your heart: You shall in any case rebuke your neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him. (Lev 19:17) The text instructs us that to refuse to correct a sinning neighbor is a form of hatred. Instead we are instructed to love our neighbors by not wanting sin to overtake them.
If any one refuses to obey what we say in this letter, note that man, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. Do not look on him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother 2 Thess 3:14 Notice again the medicine of rebuke even to the point of refusing fellowship in more serious matters is commanded. But note too that even a sinner does not lose his dignity, he is still to be regarded as a brother, not an enemy. A similar text from 2 Thess 3:6 says We instruct you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to shun any brother who walks in a disorderly way and not according to the tradition they received from us.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom Col 3:16 To admonish means to warn. Hence, if the word of Christ is rich within us we will warn when that becomes necessary. A similar text from 2 Tim 3:16 says: All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Reproof and correction is thus part of what is necessary to equip us for every good work.
And we exhort you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all 1 Thess 5:14. Here fraternal correction is described as admonishing, encouraging and helping. We are also exhorted to patience is these works.
Well there are more but by now you get the point. Fraternal correction, correcting the sinner it prescribed and commanded by scripture. We must resist the shame that the world tries to inflict on us by saying, simplistically, that we are “judging” people. Not all judgment is forbidden, some judgment is commanded. Correction of the sinner is both charitable and virtuous. True enough it is possible to correct poorly or even sinfully.
But if we are to have any shame about fraternal correction it should be that we have so severely failed to correct. Because of our failure in this regard the world is a much more sinful, coarse and undisciplined place. Too many people today are out of control, undisciplined, and incorrigible. Too many are locked in sin and have never been properly corrected. The world is less pleasant and charitable, less teachable. It is also more sinful and in greater bondage. To fail to correct is to fail in charity and mercy, it is to fail to be virtuous and to fail in calling others to virtue. We are all impoverished by our failure to correct the sinner. Proverbs 10:10, 17 says He who winks at a fault causes trouble; but he who frankly reproves promotes peace….A path to life is his who heeds admonition; but he who disregards reproof goes go astray.
In these times one of the most forgotten virtues and obligations we have is the duty to correct the sinner. It is listed among the Spiritual Works of Mercy. St. Thomas Aquinas lists it in the Summa as a work of Charity: [F]raternal correction properly so called, is directed to the amendment of the sinner. Now to do away with anyone’s evil is the same as to procure his good: and to procure a person’s good is an act of charity, whereby we wish and do our friend well. (II, IIae, 33.1)
The World and the Devil have largely succeeded in shaming Christians from this essential work. We are said to be “judging” someone when we call attention to their sin or wrongdoing. In a culture where tolerance is one of the only virtues left, to “judge” is a capital offense. “How dare we do such a thing!” The world protests, “Who are you to judge someone else!”
Now to be sure, there are some judgements that are forbidden us. For example we cannot assess that we are better or worse than someone else before God. Neither can we always understand and ultimate culpability or inner intentions of another person as though we were God. Scripture says regarding judgments such as these: Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the LORD looks into the heart (1 Sam 16:7). Further we are instructed that we cannot make the judgment of condemnation. That is to say, we do not have the power or knowledge to condemn someone to Hell. God alone is judge in this sense. The same scriptures also caution us against being uncessesarily harsh or punitive. And so we read, Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven…. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you (Luke 6:36-38). So in this text “to judge” means to condemn or to be unmerciful, to be unreasonably harsh.
Another text that is often used by the world to forbid making “judgments” is Matt 7:
Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matt 7:1-5)
But pay careful attention to what this text is actually saying. First as we have already seen the Luke version the word “judge” here is understood to mean an unnecessarily harsh and punitive condemnation. The second verse makes this clear. To paraphrase verse two would be to say, If you lower the boom on others, you will have the boom lowered on you. If you throw the book at others, it will also be thrown at you.” Further, the parable that follows does NOT say not to correct sinners. If says, get right with God yourself and then you will see clearly enough to properly correct your brother.
The fact is that over and over again Scripture tells us to correct the sinner. Far from forbidding fraternal correction, the Scriptures command and commend it. I would like to share some of those texts here and add a little commentary of my own in Red.
Jesus said, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Matt 18:15-18) Jesus instructs us to speak to a sinning brother or sister and summon them to repentance. If private rebuke does not work and, assuming the matter is serious, others who are trustworthy should be summoned to the task. Finally the Church should be informed. If they will not listen even to the Church then they should be excommunicated (treated as a tax collector or Gentile). Hence in serious matters excommunication should be considered as a kind of medicine that will inform the sinner of how serious the matter is. Sadly this “medicine” is seldom used today even though Jesus clearly prescribes it (at least in more serious matters).
It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body I am present in spirit, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing. When you are assembled, and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened….I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with immoral men; 10not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But rather I wrote to you not to associate with any one who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Drive out the wicked person from among you. So the Holy Spirit speaking through Paul commands that we “judge” the evil doer. Now again in this case the matter is very serious (incest). Notice how the text says he should be excommunicated (handed over to Satan). Here too the purpose is medicinal. It is to be hoped that Satan will beat him up enough that he will come to his senses and repent before the day of judgment. It is also medicinal in the sense that the community is protected from bad example, scandal and the presence of evil. The text also requires us to be able to size people up. There ARE immoral and unrepentant people with whom it is harmful for us to associate. We are instructed to discern this and not keep friendly company with people who can mislead us or tempt us to sin. This requires a judgment on our part. Some judgements ARE required of us.
Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any sin, you who are spiritual should recall him in a spirit of gentleness. Look to yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. (Gal 6:1-2) Notice we are called to note when a person has been overtaken in sin and to correct him. Note too that the text cautions us to do so in a spirit of gentleness. Otherwise we may sin in the very process of correcting the sinner. Perhaps we are prideful or unnecessarily harsh in our words of correction. This is no way to correct. Gentle and humble but clear, seems to be the instruction here. It also seems that patience is called for since we must bear the burden’s of one another’s sin. We bear this in two ways. First we accept the fact that others have imperfections and faults that trouble us. Secondly we bear the obligation of helping others know their sin and of helping them to repent.
My brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth and some one brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins (James 5:19) The text is ambiguous as to whose soul is actually saved but that is good since it seems both the corrected and the corrector are beneficiaries of fraternal correction well executed.
You shall not hate your brother in your heart: You shall in any case rebuke your neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him. (Lev 19:17) The text instructs us that to refuse to correct a sinning neighbor is a form of hatred. Instead we are instructed to love our neighbors by not wanting sin to overtake them.
If any one refuses to obey what we say in this letter, note that man, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. Do not look on him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother 2 Thess 3:14 Notice again the medicine of rebuke even to the point of refusing fellowship in more serious matters is commanded. But note too that even a sinner does not lose his dignity, he is still to be regarded as a brother, not an enemy. A similar text from 2 Thess 3:6 says We instruct you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to shun any brother who walks in a disorderly way and not according to the tradition they received from us.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom Col 3:16 To admonish means to warn. Hence, if the word of Christ is rich within us we will warn when that becomes necessary. A similar text from 2 Tim 3:16 says: All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Reproof and correction is thus part of what is necessary to equip us for every good work.
And we exhort you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all 1 Thess 5:14. Here fraternal correction is described as admonishing, encouraging and helping. We are also exhorted to patience is these works.
Well there are more but by now you get the point. Fraternal correction, correcting the sinner it prescribed and commanded by scripture. We must resist the shame that the world tries to inflict on us by saying, simplistically, that we are “judging” people. Not all judgment is forbidden, some judgment is commanded. Correction of the sinner is both charitable and virtuous. True enough it is possible to correct poorly or even sinfully.
But if we are to have any shame about fraternal correction it should be that we have so severely failed to correct. Because of our failure in this regard the world is a much more sinful, coarse and undisciplined place. Too many people today are out of control, undisciplined, and incorrigible. Too many are locked in sin and have never been properly corrected. The world is less pleasant and charitable, less teachable. It is also more sinful and in greater bondage. To fail to correct is to fail in charity and mercy, it is to fail to be virtuous and to fail in calling others to virtue. We are all impoverished by our failure to correct the sinner. Proverbs 10:10, 17 says He who winks at a fault causes trouble; but he who frankly reproves promotes peace….A path to life is his who heeds admonition; but he who disregards reproof goes go astray.
Detachment from results
http://www.wildmind.org/blogs/on-practice/letting-go-always-letting-go
.
The Dalai Lama says that meditation is the cure for every problem. That seems a bold claim to make. When we consider the various small and large problems in our lives, it doesn’t seem that meditation could resolve them. What can sitting in silence, counting our breaths do about the pain we feel in our bodies, or the fear we experience when we face death, or the lack of purpose we sometimes feel, or even the bread we baked that did not rise as it should have? How is meditation a solution for that?
Meditation actually applies to every problem, no matter how debilitating or simplistic we find the problem to be. These principles can be seen in stories of people that have lived them out. One story in the Christian tradition is about two sisters, Martha and Mary. We don’t know if either of the women was accustomed to meditating, but we do know that when Jesus arrived for dinner Mary was insistent on simply sitting at his feet. She didn’t seem to want to speak or attend to the details of the meal preparations. Martha, on the other hand, was so distracted, so worried about all that needed to be done, so consumed with the problems that loomed before her, that all she could do was complain – certainly not meditate!
Meditation applies to every problem, no matter how debilitating we find the problem to be.
Jesus’ response to Martha was that Mary had chosen the best part and it wouldn’t be taken from her. Jesus was saying what the Dalai Lama might have said to Martha — that meditation was the solution for every problem — even cleaning the house, getting the table set, seating the guests, being sure that all the dishes were prepared properly and that conversation flowed with ease.
We are accustomed to dealing with our problems by trying to find solutions to them, or by trying to escape them altogether. On the one hand, we stress, we worry, we plan and strategize, or we get more outside opinions. On the other hand, we turn on the television, take a drink, plan a party, shop, take a trip, surf the Internet. Even though neither approach seems to get us the results we hope for, we feel that we are at least doing something -– even if it’s just stressing about our problem.
I have found in my own tradition that there are two principles of meditation that make it the solution to every problem. First, we learn about letting go. Second, we give up our attachment to the result. The most important of these is the first -– learning to let go. It is counter-intuitive because we are so used to holding on, controlling, making something happen by our own will and action. Letting go takes us out of control, removes the drama around our problem, and leaves us with nothing to stress about or act upon. The good news of that is that it takes us out of control, removes the drama around our problem, and leaves us with nothing to stress about or act upon! In other words, when we sit in meditation and find issues, thoughts, and problems rising in our soul and we simply let them go, we are cutting them loose from us. Because we are no longer attached to them they cease to have power over us.
Letting go removes the drama around our problems, and leaves us with nothing to stress about
When we fully accept this, we move into the second principle of not being attached to the result. This is critical because we can separate ourselves from a problem for awhile, but still be seeking a certain resolution to it. When we fully let go of the result, we become as open as curious as children about how things will turn out. We’re no longer so afraid or uncertain. We may take action on our problem, but we are as surprised as anyone else about how it will all unfold.
Meditation helps us learn to let go and helps us practice letting go on a regular basis. It’s really only when we let go that we are able to be detached from what acts on our lives from outside. It’s only when we let go that we experience the freedom of detachment from results.
Letting go is not easy. It’s hard even during the midst of meditation, much less in the hard reality of everyday life. When we’re impatient waiting in line to check out at the grocery store, it’s not easy to let go. When our spouse has misinterpreted something we said, it’s not easy to let go. When our net worth drops yet again, it’s not easy to let go. When our computer doesn’t respond, it’s not easy to let go. When someone hurts us or betrays us, it’s not easy to let go. These are the hard, implacable areas of life – the ones where we tend simply to respond as we’ve always responded. Unfortunately, we continue to get the same results.
Imagine what would happen if we learned to let go. Imagine what would happen if we became detached from results. I believe we would begin to see our souls developing peace and fullness. I believe we would begin to see joy and hope slipping into everything we experienced – even those things that were less than desirable. I believe we would find ourselves becoming braver and bolder.
The divine truth is that the invitation to sit down and breathe is always there. And when we sit down and breathe we are surprised to find ourselves stilled and filled.
.
The Dalai Lama says that meditation is the cure for every problem. That seems a bold claim to make. When we consider the various small and large problems in our lives, it doesn’t seem that meditation could resolve them. What can sitting in silence, counting our breaths do about the pain we feel in our bodies, or the fear we experience when we face death, or the lack of purpose we sometimes feel, or even the bread we baked that did not rise as it should have? How is meditation a solution for that?
Meditation actually applies to every problem, no matter how debilitating or simplistic we find the problem to be. These principles can be seen in stories of people that have lived them out. One story in the Christian tradition is about two sisters, Martha and Mary. We don’t know if either of the women was accustomed to meditating, but we do know that when Jesus arrived for dinner Mary was insistent on simply sitting at his feet. She didn’t seem to want to speak or attend to the details of the meal preparations. Martha, on the other hand, was so distracted, so worried about all that needed to be done, so consumed with the problems that loomed before her, that all she could do was complain – certainly not meditate!
Meditation applies to every problem, no matter how debilitating we find the problem to be.
Jesus’ response to Martha was that Mary had chosen the best part and it wouldn’t be taken from her. Jesus was saying what the Dalai Lama might have said to Martha — that meditation was the solution for every problem — even cleaning the house, getting the table set, seating the guests, being sure that all the dishes were prepared properly and that conversation flowed with ease.
We are accustomed to dealing with our problems by trying to find solutions to them, or by trying to escape them altogether. On the one hand, we stress, we worry, we plan and strategize, or we get more outside opinions. On the other hand, we turn on the television, take a drink, plan a party, shop, take a trip, surf the Internet. Even though neither approach seems to get us the results we hope for, we feel that we are at least doing something -– even if it’s just stressing about our problem.
I have found in my own tradition that there are two principles of meditation that make it the solution to every problem. First, we learn about letting go. Second, we give up our attachment to the result. The most important of these is the first -– learning to let go. It is counter-intuitive because we are so used to holding on, controlling, making something happen by our own will and action. Letting go takes us out of control, removes the drama around our problem, and leaves us with nothing to stress about or act upon. The good news of that is that it takes us out of control, removes the drama around our problem, and leaves us with nothing to stress about or act upon! In other words, when we sit in meditation and find issues, thoughts, and problems rising in our soul and we simply let them go, we are cutting them loose from us. Because we are no longer attached to them they cease to have power over us.
Letting go removes the drama around our problems, and leaves us with nothing to stress about
When we fully accept this, we move into the second principle of not being attached to the result. This is critical because we can separate ourselves from a problem for awhile, but still be seeking a certain resolution to it. When we fully let go of the result, we become as open as curious as children about how things will turn out. We’re no longer so afraid or uncertain. We may take action on our problem, but we are as surprised as anyone else about how it will all unfold.
Meditation helps us learn to let go and helps us practice letting go on a regular basis. It’s really only when we let go that we are able to be detached from what acts on our lives from outside. It’s only when we let go that we experience the freedom of detachment from results.
Letting go is not easy. It’s hard even during the midst of meditation, much less in the hard reality of everyday life. When we’re impatient waiting in line to check out at the grocery store, it’s not easy to let go. When our spouse has misinterpreted something we said, it’s not easy to let go. When our net worth drops yet again, it’s not easy to let go. When our computer doesn’t respond, it’s not easy to let go. When someone hurts us or betrays us, it’s not easy to let go. These are the hard, implacable areas of life – the ones where we tend simply to respond as we’ve always responded. Unfortunately, we continue to get the same results.
Imagine what would happen if we learned to let go. Imagine what would happen if we became detached from results. I believe we would begin to see our souls developing peace and fullness. I believe we would begin to see joy and hope slipping into everything we experienced – even those things that were less than desirable. I believe we would find ourselves becoming braver and bolder.
The divine truth is that the invitation to sit down and breathe is always there. And when we sit down and breathe we are surprised to find ourselves stilled and filled.
Christian anarchism
Christian anarchism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
..
Anarchist organizations
Ecclesia
Life and Labor Commune
Plowshares Movement
Tolstoyan Moscow Society
..
See also
Anarchism portal
Christianity portal
Anarchism and Islam
Anarchism and Orthodox Judaism
Catholic Worker Movement
Christian communism
Christian libertarianism
Christian socialism
Christian vegetarianism
Christian pacifism
Diane Drufenbrock
Early Christianity
Gnosticism
Liberation theology
Nonconformism
Peace churches
Plain people
Precarity
Postmodern Christianity
Render unto Caesar
Self-ownership
Thomas Merton
Weak theology
"Fool for Christ": Christian ascetic and non-conformist tradition within Eastern Christianity, see also "Hermit", and "Stylite".
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Simone Weil: French philosopher, social activist, and Christian mystic of Jewish heritage; Weil died under forced exile in Britain during World War II at 34 years of age. Her major works, including "Oppression and Liberty", "Gravity and Grace", and "Waiting for God" were all published post-humously and to great acclaim. Since her death in 1944 her thought has steadily grown in influence. Pope Paul VI, a great proponent of Catholic Social Teaching, counted Simon Weil as one of his major early influences.
New Monasticism
Order of Watchers: A French Protestant community of Hermits.
God: Sole Satisfier
Jan Tyranowski, solitary, mystic, and student in the teachings of John of the Cross. He was a central figure in the spiritual formation of young Karol Wojtyła, who became pope John Paul II.
The Mormon Worker
..
Anarchist organizations
Ecclesia
Life and Labor Commune
Plowshares Movement
Tolstoyan Moscow Society
..
See also
Anarchism portal
Christianity portal
Anarchism and Islam
Anarchism and Orthodox Judaism
Catholic Worker Movement
Christian communism
Christian libertarianism
Christian socialism
Christian vegetarianism
Christian pacifism
Diane Drufenbrock
Early Christianity
Gnosticism
Liberation theology
Nonconformism
Peace churches
Plain people
Precarity
Postmodern Christianity
Render unto Caesar
Self-ownership
Thomas Merton
Weak theology
"Fool for Christ": Christian ascetic and non-conformist tradition within Eastern Christianity, see also "Hermit", and "Stylite".
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Simone Weil: French philosopher, social activist, and Christian mystic of Jewish heritage; Weil died under forced exile in Britain during World War II at 34 years of age. Her major works, including "Oppression and Liberty", "Gravity and Grace", and "Waiting for God" were all published post-humously and to great acclaim. Since her death in 1944 her thought has steadily grown in influence. Pope Paul VI, a great proponent of Catholic Social Teaching, counted Simon Weil as one of his major early influences.
New Monasticism
Order of Watchers: A French Protestant community of Hermits.
God: Sole Satisfier
Jan Tyranowski, solitary, mystic, and student in the teachings of John of the Cross. He was a central figure in the spiritual formation of young Karol Wojtyła, who became pope John Paul II.
The Mormon Worker
Christian mysticism
Christian mysticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Some examples of Christian mystics:
St. Paul (? –c. 66)
St. John the Baptist
St. John the Apostle (? –c.100)
St. Peter
Valentinus (c.100–c.153)
St. Clement of Alexandria (? –216)
St. Athanasius (c293–373)
Evagrius Ponticus (345–399)
St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430)
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (5th century)
St. John Climacus (525–606)
St. Gregory I (590–604)
St. Isaac the Syrian (c.700)
St. Anastasius Sinaita (?–post 700)
St. Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022)
St. Anselm (1033–1109)
Hugh of Saint Victor (1096–1141)
Richard of St. Victor (?–1173)
Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179)
St. Francis of Assisi (1181–1226)
St. Clare of Assisi (1194–1253)
St. Anthony of Padua (1195–1231)
Beatrice of Nazareth (1200–1268)
Mechthild of Magdeburg (1210–1279)
St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1221–1274)
Bl. Angela of Foligno (1248–1309)
Gertrude the Great (1256–1301)
Marguerite Porete (?–1310)
Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1327/8)
Bl. John of Ruysbroeck (1293–1381)
St. Gregory Palamas (1296–1359)
Johannes Tauler (1300–1361)
Bl. Henry Suso (1300–1366)
St. Bridget of Sweden (1302–1373)
St. Julian of Norwich (1342–c.1416)
St. Catherine of Sienna (1347–1380)
William Langland (?–1385/6)
Margery Kempe (c.1373–1438)
Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471)
St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556)
St. Teresa of Avila (1515–1582)
St. John of the Cross (1542–1591)
St. Francis de Sales (1567–1622)
Jakob Böhme (1575–1624)
Ven. Maria de Agreda (1602–1665)
Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682)
Brother Lawrence (1614–1691)
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
Angelus Silesius (1624–1677)
George Fox (1624–1691)
Jane Leade (1624–1704)
Miguel de Molinos (c. 1628–1697)
Madame Guyon (1648–1717)
Johannes Kelpius (1667–1708)
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772)
John Woolman (1720–1772)
William Blake (1757–1827)
George Rapp (1757–1847)
St. Seraphim of Sarov (1759–1833)
Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774–1824)
Jakob Lorber (1800–1864)
Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866)
St. John of Kronstadt (1829–1908)
St. Bernadette Soubirous (1844–1879)
Max Heindel (1865–1919)
Sergei Bulgakov (1871–1944)
St. Therese of Lisieux (1873–1897)
Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941)
Pope Pius XII (1876–1958)
Antonin Gadal (1877–1962)
St. Gemma Galgani (1878–1903)
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955)
St. Pio of Pietrelcina (1887–1968)
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965)
Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889–1929)
St. Theresa-Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) (1891–1942)
St. John Maximovitch (1896–1966)
Jan van Rijckenborgh (1896–1968)
Maria Valtorta (1897–1961)
Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963)
Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967)
Catharose de Petri (1902–1990)
St. Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938)
Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961)
Eugenia Ravasio (1907–1990)
Simone Weil (1909–1943)
Thomas Merton (1915–1968)
Vernon Howard (1918–1992)
Thomas Keating (b. 1923)
Henri Nouwen (1932–1996)
Vassula Ryden (b. 1942)
Guy Finley (b. 1949)
Erwin McManus (b. 1958)
Richard Foster
[edit] See also
Christianity portal
Spirituality portal
Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
Behmenism
Catharism, Cathar Perfect
Christian Kabbalah
Christian meditation
Christian Mysticism in Ancient Africa
Christian mythology
Church of Christian Mysticism
Esoteric Christianity
Flying Saints
German mysticism
Gnosticism
Harmony Society
Hesychasm
Jesus Prayer
Love of God
Mystical marriage
Mystical theology
Mysticism
Pietism
Prayer in Christianity
Quietism (Christian philosophy)
Radical Pietism
Rosicrucianism, Rosicrucian Manifestos, Lectorium Rosicrucianum
Sister Catherine Treatise
Sophia (wisdom)
Spanish mystics
Starets
The Order of Christ Sophia
Some examples of Christian mystics:
St. Paul (? –c. 66)
St. John the Baptist
St. John the Apostle (? –c.100)
St. Peter
Valentinus (c.100–c.153)
St. Clement of Alexandria (? –216)
St. Athanasius (c293–373)
Evagrius Ponticus (345–399)
St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430)
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (5th century)
St. John Climacus (525–606)
St. Gregory I (590–604)
St. Isaac the Syrian (c.700)
St. Anastasius Sinaita (?–post 700)
St. Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022)
St. Anselm (1033–1109)
Hugh of Saint Victor (1096–1141)
Richard of St. Victor (?–1173)
Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179)
St. Francis of Assisi (1181–1226)
St. Clare of Assisi (1194–1253)
St. Anthony of Padua (1195–1231)
Beatrice of Nazareth (1200–1268)
Mechthild of Magdeburg (1210–1279)
St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1221–1274)
Bl. Angela of Foligno (1248–1309)
Gertrude the Great (1256–1301)
Marguerite Porete (?–1310)
Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1327/8)
Bl. John of Ruysbroeck (1293–1381)
St. Gregory Palamas (1296–1359)
Johannes Tauler (1300–1361)
Bl. Henry Suso (1300–1366)
St. Bridget of Sweden (1302–1373)
St. Julian of Norwich (1342–c.1416)
St. Catherine of Sienna (1347–1380)
William Langland (?–1385/6)
Margery Kempe (c.1373–1438)
Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471)
St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556)
St. Teresa of Avila (1515–1582)
St. John of the Cross (1542–1591)
St. Francis de Sales (1567–1622)
Jakob Böhme (1575–1624)
Ven. Maria de Agreda (1602–1665)
Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682)
Brother Lawrence (1614–1691)
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
Angelus Silesius (1624–1677)
George Fox (1624–1691)
Jane Leade (1624–1704)
Miguel de Molinos (c. 1628–1697)
Madame Guyon (1648–1717)
Johannes Kelpius (1667–1708)
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772)
John Woolman (1720–1772)
William Blake (1757–1827)
George Rapp (1757–1847)
St. Seraphim of Sarov (1759–1833)
Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774–1824)
Jakob Lorber (1800–1864)
Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866)
St. John of Kronstadt (1829–1908)
St. Bernadette Soubirous (1844–1879)
Max Heindel (1865–1919)
Sergei Bulgakov (1871–1944)
St. Therese of Lisieux (1873–1897)
Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941)
Pope Pius XII (1876–1958)
Antonin Gadal (1877–1962)
St. Gemma Galgani (1878–1903)
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955)
St. Pio of Pietrelcina (1887–1968)
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965)
Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889–1929)
St. Theresa-Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) (1891–1942)
St. John Maximovitch (1896–1966)
Jan van Rijckenborgh (1896–1968)
Maria Valtorta (1897–1961)
Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963)
Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967)
Catharose de Petri (1902–1990)
St. Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938)
Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961)
Eugenia Ravasio (1907–1990)
Simone Weil (1909–1943)
Thomas Merton (1915–1968)
Vernon Howard (1918–1992)
Thomas Keating (b. 1923)
Henri Nouwen (1932–1996)
Vassula Ryden (b. 1942)
Guy Finley (b. 1949)
Erwin McManus (b. 1958)
Richard Foster
[edit] See also
Christianity portal
Spirituality portal
Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
Behmenism
Catharism, Cathar Perfect
Christian Kabbalah
Christian meditation
Christian Mysticism in Ancient Africa
Christian mythology
Church of Christian Mysticism
Esoteric Christianity
Flying Saints
German mysticism
Gnosticism
Harmony Society
Hesychasm
Jesus Prayer
Love of God
Mystical marriage
Mystical theology
Mysticism
Pietism
Prayer in Christianity
Quietism (Christian philosophy)
Radical Pietism
Rosicrucianism, Rosicrucian Manifestos, Lectorium Rosicrucianum
Sister Catherine Treatise
Sophia (wisdom)
Spanish mystics
Starets
The Order of Christ Sophia
Prithvi,the Earth Mother
Prthu Chases Bhumi, the Earth GoddessBhagavata Purana, Pahari, c. 1740 Prithvi is one of several Sanskrit names for the Earth Mother, more commonly known as Mother Bhumi Devi. Prithvi is the personification of the Earth, and is therefore also known as Prithivi Tattwa, the essence of the element earth. Prithvi is also called Dhra, Dharti, or Dhrithri, meaning 'that which holds everything'.As Prithvi Devi, she is one of two wives of Lord Vishnu, His other wife being Lakshmi Devi (Sridevi). In fact, Prithvi is another form of Laxmi. As Prithvi Mata, "Mother Earth", she contrasts with Dyaus Pita, who is "Father Sky". In the Rigveda, Earth and Sky are frequently addressed in the dual, which may indicate the idea of two complementary half-shells.Prithvi is the wife of Dyaus Pita ('Father Dyaus'), and the widespread belief that these two were originally a single deity appears to be mistaken. (See Dyavaprthivi). Prithvi is known to be the mother of Indra and Agni. When Lord Indra killed Dyaus Pita, she applauded and married him.Prithvi, or Mother Bhumi, is associated with the cow. Prithu, an incarnation of Vishnu, milked her in the cow's form to get food from her. Prithvi also appears in Early Buddhism, where she is mentioned in the Pali Canon, dispelling the temptation figure Mara by attesting to Gautama Buddha's worthiness to attain enlightenment.Prithvi Sukta (Bhumi Sukta) is a celebrated hymn of the Atharva Veda (AVS 12.1), which consists of 63 verses dedicated to Prthivi (the Earth). In art, she is typically represented as a woman with four arms and a green complexion.Mother Bhumi is also understood to be the consort of Lord Varaha. The demon Narakasura, whose killing by Krishna is celebrated as the festival of Diwali, is Bhumi Devi's son. She is also the mother of Sita, so it is not surprising that baby Sita was found in a ploughed field. According to the Uttara-kanda, when Sita finally leaves her husband Rama, she returns to Bhumi.Several female deities are believed to have had births similar to Sita. Alamelu Thayar of Tiruchendur, for example, was said to have been found in a ploughed field by Akasa Raja. Andal from Srivilliputtur in Tamil Nadu was found under a Tulasi plant by Perialvar.IconographyMother Bhumi is often depicted in votive statuary, seated on a square platform which rests on the back of four elephants, who represent the four corners of the world. When depicted with four arms, the paraphernalia she holds are a pomegranate, a water vessel, a bowl containing healing herbs, and another containing vegetables. When shown with two arms, she holds a blue lotus known as Komud or Uttpal, the night lotus, in the right hand. The left hand may be in the Abhaya Mudra (fearlessness), or the Lolahasta Mudra, which is an aesthetic pose meant to mimic the tail of a cow.
Hamsa the Swan
Lord Brahma on HamsaTanjoor Painting, Gold leaf Hamsa (or hansa) is the Sanskrit term for a transcendentally situated swan or goose. Considered by scholars to be either the Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) or the Bar-headed Goose (Anser indicus), the Hamsa is best known and loved as the vahana (sacred carrier) of Lord Brahma and the Goddess Saraswati.'Vah' in Sanskrit means to carry or to transport. The vahana mount may be a bird or animal, or other type of chimera having divine attributes. A particular vahana carrier is closely associated with many deities and demigods. A deity may be iconographically depicted as riding on the vahana, while at other times the vahana is depicted at the deity's side, or as a symbolical attribute in iconography.In many texts, Hamsa is extolled as the king of birds. One of the Upanishads explains that a Hamsa is said to possess the sacred knowledge of the Brahman. The Sanskrit word 'Hamsa' is cognate with the Latin "anser", the German "gans" and the English "goose", and is generally applied to water birds. But unlike mundane winged-ones, the Hamsa is known to eat pearls, and is able to separate milk from water in a mixture of the two.Hamsa also has special connotations in the monistic philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, which explains that just as the swan lives on water but its feathers are not wetted by water, similarly an Advaitin may to live in this material world full of Maya, but remain unsoiled by its illusionary nature.The Hamsa are said to reside on Lake Manasarovar in Tibet, from where it migrates to the Indian lakes in the winter. Lake Manasarovar itself is the summer abode of the Hamsa. Poetical images are derived from the flight of these spiritual swans to that lake in the Himalayas.[1]During Vedic times, there was a strong association between Lord Surya and the Hamsa. With the emergence of the Upanishads, more attributes of Hamsa were described, including its characterization as a symbol of purity, detachment, divine knowledge, cosmic breath (prana) and highest spiritual accomplishment.The Hamsa transcends the limitations of the material creation around it: it can walk on the earth (prithvi), fly in the sky, and swim in the water. The Hamsa was also used extensively in the art of Gandhara, in conjunction with images of the Buddha, and is therefore deemed sacred in Buddhism.In view of the association of Hamsa with the transcendental attributes noted above, saints and other sadhus are often given the title of paramhamsa, that is, the supreme Hamsa. This title precedes the name and symbolizes that such a person has reached a very high level of spirituality and emancipation.The Hamsa represents a perfect union and balance in life. Constant repetition of the word "hamso" changes it to "soaham", which means "That I am". Hence the hamsa is often identified with the Supreme Spirit or Brahman. The flight of the Hamsa also symbolizes escape from the cycle of samsara.In Hatha yoga, the name of of Hamsa is annunciated as ham-sa. When inverted is spoken as sa-ham, which in Sanskrit means the oneness of human and the divine, i.e., union, or 'yoga'. During pranayama, yogic exercise of breath control, the inhalation is believed sound like 'ham', while the exhalation is believed to sound like 'sa'. Thus, a 'hamsa' came to epitomize the 'prana', or breath of life.
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