The dysfunctions of community in our experience are all too often supported by structures of faith, belief, authority, and purpose that flow from the lower inclinations of sense of self, from cultural norms premised on power, control, and gratification that are not Jesus patterned.
This is not to miss that many beliefs and affirmations of faith have noble ends. But it is to realize that the many traditional starting points of faith and practice – such as judgement, parochialism, race, gender, and privilege — arrest the realization of the good intent even where that good intent exists. An alternative view, a minority report to be sure, has always existed more robustly in the mystical traditions of each religion. The term “mystical” simply refers to an emphasis on the direct experience of the divine unfiltered by dogma “about” the divine.
So in reconstucting faith,
- how might we discover a vibrant faith for our times…that supports our spiritual journey and direct experience of God rather than supplanting both?
- what fabric of re-constructed faith might allow for our own growth in integral ways attentive to spiral dynamics?
- how can we be both bold and patient in a process that – in its early steps – can be far more clear about what is not working for us, what needs demolition or deconstruction, than what should take its place or what forms it should occupy?
