Welcome to Holism

This could turn out to be quite a useful resource to help us stay abreast of what is happening in the holistic spirituality world. Now why would we want to do a thing like that? Well have a look at the following.
"We live in a period of remarkable change out of which a new, open-minded and open-hearted approach to spirituality is emerging."
This is the new plausibility structure that we are living in. In other words, if we do not express things in a way that resonates with this kind of sensibility, we are doomed to appear so odd that we may as well be Moonies or Scientologists. Now that may indeed be what we are in a sense, but I don't think we need to be as way off-beam as that to be both authentic to the gospel and authentic to our culture. So is 'open-minded' and 'open-hearted' compatible with Christian faith? Well, I will take it that broadly speaking 'open-hearted' is compatible with our Christian affirmation of hospitality and loving respect for others, a privileging of relationship above form and so so on.

The difficulty lies with 'open-minded', I suspect. Usually because we are pretty heavily into making sure that doctrinal 't's and scriptural i's are crossed and dotted respectively. And yet open minded can simply be about being prepared to recognise that someone else probably has good reasons to hold their view, and that if we take the time to understand it they will be more willing to hear what we have to say and we will probably have heard enough to say things that affirm quite a lot and build common ground. We may need to be open minded enough to realise that they may say things that will challenge us and change our mind or approach to something. I trust that Christian faith has the resources to go on making sense for a long time to come. The question is whether we will be prepared to dialogue adequately with our neighbours to learn how to express things in ways they can hear, including the way we bahave and organise ourselves. Open minded can mean an attitude of recognising that the Holy Spirit has a habit of talking through Asses [as with Balaam] and we can learn a lot by paying humble attention to those who may even appear to be criticising us. I want to be open minded in that respect. Not so keen on the idea of open-mindedly allowing people to chuck all sorts of rubbish into my thinking, but even then it's what I do with it that is important; I like the idea of sorting out all the recyclable stuff and building art with it!

Anyway, the article goes on. to describe holistic spirituality.
"This holistic spirituality:
- Welcomes and celebrates diversity of culture and belief.
-Honours the beauty, power and mystery in nature, universe and all existence - by whatever name it is known - and our natural place within it.
- Recognizes that all life is connected, interdependent and developing to fulfil its potential.
-Cultivates the essence of all spiritual traditions: - Connect with and experience the wonder and miracle of existence. - Guide your development with wise self-reflection. - Serve the community of life.
-Affirms the core morality of all faiths, joined with the ethical imperatives of ecology and absolute respect for the development of all human beings.
- Is dedicated to the creation of:Social Justice - World Peace - Environmental Harmony Development, Prosperity and Fulfilment for All."
Again, seems to me that there's little to decry on the face of it. Though I suspect that the first point, again, may be a sticky one for many of us on the belief side; I guess that most of us at least in theory are willing to go with celebrating cultural diversity. And maybe that is a case in point for interpreting and discovering a way to go with the belief aspect too. I mean, when we say that we celebrate cultural diversity we are affirming that other cultures have a right to exist and that there is much to be learned from other cultures and much to enjoy. It doesn't mean that we are committing ourselves to affirm that, for example, exposing unwanted newborn children on hilssides is good birth-control [Roman culture of the early church period] or that the expectation that widows will imolate themsleves on their husband's funeral pyre [India before and during the British Raj].

So can I beleive that Jesus is the Way, truth and life and in some way welcome and celebrate diversity of belief? Actually I can and do -and in fact in a way similar to most other people who do too. Here's how: I welcome the different philosophical approaches of societies which Christian faith has embedded itself in, both historically and contemporaneously. The engagment that this has brought of Christian theology has helped to produce some important thinking and development for Christians and society and continues to do so as we wrestle with post-modernity, for example. In the engagement we learn more about God and God's way as well as about ourselves. If it is true that "God has yet more light to break of of his word" [can't recall who said that] then perhaps we should expect that some of that light amy pour through the cracks opened up by wrestling with the content of other people's beliefs, especially if there is the possibility that some, at lest, of their drive to develop their beliefs has been in response to feeling the tug of the Spirit. It is the witnesses to truth that Christian evangelists and apologists look for in other cultures and spiritual traditions and responses that we can certainly affirm without even challenging our inherited traditions and ways of thinking. It's only when we get heavily into boundary maintenance that we get twitchy about such things.

About the only thing that I can't celebrate is outright denial of Christ, but even then, if we listen carefully we can learn much, even if it doesn't cut much ice with one person may actually help us to commend Christ to others. So, there is even a redemptive celebration possible there. The key is remaining open-hearted and to some extent open-minded.

I'm running out of energy for this just at the moment, but I think that I've said enough so I'll leave it there for now, at least.

Welcome to Holism.info: