Hi everybody,
Jörg Zink, a German theologian who I have gained much from, was once sitting on the beach watching the waves come in. One after another they reached the beach with a foamy head, breaking up on the sand, or dashing against the rocks not far from the beach, causing an explosion of water-drops to spread far on to dry land, only to finally flow away. He thought how ideas are like that, and God knows, our age seems to be a real storm of waves, all breaking in the froth and the spray. New waves roll in, new thoughts, new ideas and imaginations, new concepts about the world and how mankind can understand and lead his life excitingly.
In such times of change, people are often forced to rethink religious contemplation and behaviour. How many times has Christianity has had to adapt in the two thousand years of her history, adapting to new challenges and experiences, adapting to become a state religion, a cultural power that determined the way ahead over hundreds of years? The adaptation in the years of reformation, in the years of conscientious revolt and the development of personal faith. This movement and the age of enlightenment brought forth an undeceived, modern Christianity – which too is waning. What will follow?
It isn’t that each new form of Christian faith is better or truer that the previous one. It wore the colours of the people of each particular age – and each time the people looked for methods to practise their faith in a new clear way, discovering new angles and perspectives. New things had to be discovered and discovered again. What we are rediscovering in our days is the mystic traditions of the last three thousand years. That is what has sparked a new flame into the age old Religion which nobody knows definitely how old it is.
It is a perspective that has more for philosophers than the old dogmatic Church, whilst at the same time being down to earth in it’s approach to worldly problems. The mystics in this tradition didn’t live in ivory towers and were always in touch with everyday people. They were also people reflecting the difficulty of a firm faith in times of grief and sorrow. When wars were fought and pestilence raged, the mystics rubbed shoulders with the unfortunates and thereby alone, they gained high respect.
It is a tradition that I believe can unite the Religions, especially the Book-Religions, but also Buddhism and other meditative lines of faith as well as the Religions based on wisdom and insight, like Tao and Confucianism. It enables us to return to the oral traditions and narratives that have deep truths in them and allow the pluralism, that has long been missing in Religion. Religion is a form of thought (not just obedience), it is conceptual thinking, developing ideas, reasoning, imagining and meditating on the heart of our existence – which we call “Godâ€.
But God is YHWH, the unnameable, the eternal one, He who is who He will be – the divine Mystery. A Mystery that manifests itself in subtle ways, not fully to be grasped, posing questions but causing astonishment at the same time. Something I find wonderfully described in Job (4:13-17):
In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men.
Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake.
Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up:
It stood still, but I could not discern its form: an image was before my eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice, saying „Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker?“
Or in Kings (19:11-12):
And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind:
and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake:
And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire:
and after the fire a still small voice.
This is what my mystic tradition is all about. Any comments anybody?
Shalom
Bob