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The Best Spiritual Traditions Are Just Common Sense”
In the last two issues I began a
discussion regarding the “creation spirituality” movement that is
growing within traditional churches as well as outside organized religion.
Simply put, creation spirituality seeks to honor—and
maintain—the goodness of all of Creator’s works, whether human,
animal, plant, or mineral. A
life lived in connection with the rest of creation inspires reverence,
amazement, and awe; it cultivates deep respect for nature and for other
people, across lines frequently drawn according to race, nationality,
gender, sexuality, or economic level.
Moreover, it reveals to us the natural links that exist between
many spiritual traditions and teaches us that the best spiritual
traditions are just common sense: The wisdom of the ages is manifested in many different ways
along diverse paths, but is nevertheless the same truth.
For example, theologian Matthew Fox
and rapper Professor PITT, in working with inner-city youth in Oakland,
California, have put together rap videos to demonstrate what they call
“the ten C’s” whereby today’s youth (tomorrow’s adults and
caretakers of creation) may learn about sustaining our resources and
developing a moral code for life together.
These 10 C’s are: cosmology (knowledge of the universe), chaos (what happens
when the universe is out of balance), contemplation (meditation prior to
informed action), compassion (caring for and feeling with others),
creativity (developing our potential to birth change), community (creating
networks to live together peaceably), character (living in accordance with
Spirit’s ways), critical consciousness (ability to examine our world,
warts and all, with a view toward improvement), courage (moral
fearlessness), and ceremony (spiritual rituals to mark our passage through
life). By creating one video
for each of the C’s, Fox and PITT utilize images from nature alongside
images of how we are destroying its beauty, coupled with urban beats that
appeal to today’s youth but avoid the misogynistic, homophobic, and
violence-laden lyrics featured in much of today’s mainstream rap.
Moreover, they are sponsoring a “creation spirituality
workshop” as an after-school program for youth so that they themselves
can experiment with filmmaking and musical composition as healthy ways of
expressing their own divine creativity.
I was delighted to find these same
creation spirituality principles described in a book I recently read from
the Jewish tradition. In Jewish
Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation (1994), philosopher and
activist rabbi Michael Lerner describes how Judaism can be transformed
through a return to honoring God as Creator and Transformer of the
world—the One who empowers tikkun olam (repair of the world).
He criticizes both those Jews who have become overly secularized
and those who have turned to fundamentalist religiosity, noting that both
of these extremes ignore the lesson of Torah that “the ways things are
is not the way things have to be.”
Rather than empowering a legalistic and demanding patriarchal God
or turning away from God altogether out of post-Holocaust disillusionment,
Lerner counsels a middle ground—the search for and worship of the God of
the Exodus who led the people out of bondage, the God who created every
living thing and pronounced it good, the God of the prophets who feels
compassion and suffers with the people.
Thus, he maintains, “Jewish renewal has a double message.
For those already inclined toward communal obligation, the message
is: wake up and be real; for those committed to the life of doing what
feels good at the moment: wake up and recognize that you can’t build
community or connectedness unless you are willing to accept obligation
toward others, including sometimes not having it your way” (p.
298). What a wonderful way to
revitalize spirituality, and how uncannily like other spiritual paths that
cultivate transformation.
However, lest anyone think that these good common sense principles are the
bastion of religion alone, we should note that others of good conscience,
specializing in other disciplines entirely, are encouraging the same
message of interconnectedness and solidarity that I have been describing.
Thus, Indian feminist philosopher and postcolonial theorist Chandra
Talpade Mohanty describes her own path toward establishing a better world:
“Here is a bare-bones description of my own feminist vision: this
is a vision of the world that is pro-sex and pro-woman, a world where
women and men are free to live creative lives, in security and with bodily
health and integrity, where they are free to choose whom they love, and
whom they set up house with, and whether they want to have or not have
children; a world where pleasure rather than just duty and drudgery
determine our choices, where free and imaginative exploration of the mind
is a fundamental right; a vision in which economic stability, ecological
sustainability, racial equality, and the redistribution of wealth form the
material basis of people’s well-being.”
(Feminism Without Borders, 2003, p. 3) These same words might have been spoken by Jesus, the Buddha,
or diverse contemporary theologians and spiritual thinkers.
Which proves that principles which lead humanity toward wholeness,
peace, and justice know no religion or politics—they are just good
common sense!
The
Rev. Dr. Tom Bohache is the pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of
Rehoboth. Email him at
pastor@mccrehoboth.org.
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