glintofpewter

Myron, (I am not sure which emoticon has a wry smile.)

I have not read these sections but this I why would question the claim of monotheism. Looks like monolatry and gnosticism to me with its demiurges and other family members. I am a strict monotheist in the sense that it all comes from God; no devil, no demiurges, etc. While I appreciate language that parallels the Bible it is this spider web multiple" family members" that feels like the Greek pantheon - which itself was valuable in a literary way because their human plot lines were understood when used in theater. (The Great Transformation, Armstrong). In the case of Urantia a modern sci-fi setting for the ages old Christian message. Part IV Should be labelled commentary and a fictional account. An imaginative rewrite that is way to wordy and puts too many preachy words in Jesus's mouth. 156.1 is a worthy rewrite. I personally disagree with its interpretation of the story. I collect various ideas about religion, its development and and manifestations so I will copy 155:5.2 - 155:5.5 as one of many descriptions. Faith found by reason versus faith by revelation. In this case revelatory religion is considered the sole true religion. This would find agreement with Sam Keen and others Take Care Dutch

How ungrateful! On a more serious note I am 'putting down' my two 14 year old poodles tomorrow at noon. It is an ecological, resource decision. I am not able to provide the care they need.

Myron, I agree. But some influenced by Integral thought and Evolutionary Christianity come close. Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point would be an example. No claims of perfection but certainly a threshold of cosmic proportions is crossed in the super-transcendent and terminal event. That's my first impression. Dutch

I think we do an awful lot of work maintaining the 'authoritative' voice of the Bible. We do that work to keep our identity. We, all of the Christian world, disagree wildly about the 'authoritative voice' of the Bible but we keep talking about the Bible and not some other books - which maintains our identity and a fragile sense of unity. Networking, particularly , business networking was a positive factor in the growth of the early church. A traveling 'Christian' business man knew when he got to Philippi there was someone trustworthy, a Christian, he could connect with - Lydia. Perhaps he was even bringing a circulating epistle. Our identity is not confirmed by a fish drawn in the sand but by our behaviors: going to church, talking about God, and some kind of reference to the Bible. The book has an 'authoritative voice' because we give it one. And that, perhaps. is part of the problem with the decline of mainstream and liberals wings of the church. For many the Bible is losing its 'authoritative voice'. I am going to back away a little bit about claiming we support the Bible's voice as if it had nothing to do with its own viability. There has to be something of substance for us to keep talking about it. As we also talk about Plato, Greek tragedies, Shakespearean plays, and Star Trek . On reading a little of the Upapers, once past a positive reaction to some of the mystical language about God, I feel like a stranger in a strange land - rather - strange multiple universes. Dutch PS Whenever I get momentum going in a discussion, reasoning for my point, I am reminded of recent studies that suggest that we don't use reason to solve problems, evolutionarily we developed reason to win arguments.

I am reminded of Michael Dowd's recognition that we have a need to personify our relationship with ultimate reality. The mystical language about God I like. Probably this science fiction aspect would be a significant barrier for me. I am reminded of the work of Orson Scott Card of Enders' fame whose planets have other than human inhabitants - one spends part of its life cycle as a tree. The evolution of a monotheistic belief was a major attainment of the Israelites but the writer seems to want it both ways, which is what Yahweh evolved from--no more need for a wife or a Divine Council which then became Sons of God. Upapers seems to present a complex family structure. Like teilhard de chardin there is the idea that we are evolving toward complexity and perfection. Jakob boehme would feel he had found a kindred soul I think. Once he had his epiphany of the process nature of the relationship of God and creation he went on to elaborate conceptualizations. Mysticism and theosophy. This complexifying impulse also overcomes me sometimes when I try to understand integral theory and spiral dynamics. Too many pieces By Decius at de.wikipedia [Public domain], http://commons.wikim...Boehme-Werk.jpg I don't worry too much about the authoritative issue. That is resolved by 1) the inspiration one experiences and/or 2) the degree to which there is consensus about the nature of the work. I find The Shack by Wm. Paul Young inspiring and, were I a preacher, would reference it often. Take Care Dutch

This is wonderful Bill, ('technically' speaking this is an example of moving from postmodern to post-postmodern view of prayer.) How can I not like this.

Integral view of prayer What? You didn't see the clues? I am guilty of using a word, Integral, for which I gave no references and assumed you had been looking over my shoulder as I surfed. Bruce is using four of several stages of development found in Integral Theory (Similar to Fowler's stages of faith development). He referred to himself as a "spiritual type" and he writes But you don’t get twisted out of shape if someone does imagine [that God who receives prayers and then beams answers back to Earth.] This reflects an attitude that tries to honor everyone wherever they are. (And many of your comments reflect this also.) These are the clues that led to my jump to "Integral" From the paragraph that begins "Post-postmodern" to the end of the article Bruce is speaking from and to a post-postmodern perspective as defined by him. I am now just meandering because I only nibbled around the edges of Integral Theory. In Bruce's brief description, Postmodern seems to share the rational lens of the modern stage. From the kindergarten of intercessory prayer to meditation is a spare, dry movement. The Post-postmodernism project, I think, is to enrich and add life to the skeletal remains left by the rational skepticism of modernism and deconstruction of postmodernism. I think Yvonne brought focus to this problem in her "Mystery and Process Theology" Well this seems very dry compared to the many wonderful posts here. Dutch

Well, I float around between modern, postmodern and post-postmodern when I think about prayer.

thanks George

Sermon I gave 8/7/11 ~#6 in this life Scripture Colossians 1:15-20 Passage from The Shack about God being a verb. To move from a dead noun to a live verb is to move from law to grace. Last night as I was trying to wrestle the final draft of this sermon into completion I thought, “I don’t know anything. I’m just a kid who is exited by new ideas.” So I brought something I need to hear and maybe some things that you will find interesting. If you ask a theologian about the relationship between science and religion a common answer is that science is about discovering how the universe is evolving and religion is about understanding why the universe is evolving. What is the purpose and what is the meaning. Usually how and why questions are answered by the left brain through experiments, scientific method, rational inquiry and reason. At best the theologian might have had a God experience, think about it logically and abstractly, bringing rational statements to the conversation with science. Its as if rational science and rational religion divided the left brain world in half. With the right brain, and what it knows, left out. What does the right brain know? What can it add to the conversation between religion and science? And does science have anything to say about religious experiences of the right brain? In our conversation today I’ll introduce you to a Franciscan nun and a neurophysiologist who has been studying religious experiences for over 15 years. The neurophysiologist is Andrew Newberg. His most recent book for the general audience is “How God Changes Your Brain”. His research can show us what a left brain person can understand about how the right brain works. His observations about the science of religious experiences can put us in our right mind. Ilia Delio is a Franciscan nun and former neurophysiologist. Her life moves from the lab bench to the prayer bench. From the left brain to the right brain she says with laughter because she knows that brain structure and functioning is not so clear cut. In her first career she worked as a neurophysiologist in spinal cord research. One day she noticed with a sense of wonder and awe, a single living motor neuron firing. It just “ripped me in its awesomeness”. She says. A moment of grace. A turning point. Ilia finished her research and joined the Carmelites to learn to pray and learn to garden. Later a Mother Superior would suggest that Ilia was better suited to the Franciscans and their studies. But as a Carmelite she sat daily with other women praying and working in the garden for 4 years. This sitting in prayer daily and daily working in the garden as an active way of focusing or paying attention is a way of knowing with body. As a result the body, the bones, the heart know a reality not accessible in words or reducible to objects that science and reason can examine directly. It is the kind of knowing that a verb gives you. Andrew Newberg began his brain imaging research with Tibetan monks in “mindfulness meditation’ and Catholic nuns in active prayer. They both experience a loss of sense of self, a timelessness, spacelessness, a transcendence or union with what one is meditating on. The nuns might say that when we give up our sense of self then we experience communion with God. These spiritual disciplines result in increased consciousness, increased alertness, and an increased ability to resonate to other people’s feelings and thoughts. To resonate means to vibrate in sympathy with another matching their vibrations. To be empathetic. This experiential knowledge the body gains in the daily disciplines of praying and gardening is an example of the right brain knowledge that was lost 500 years ago with the beginning of the Enlightenment. The modern era chose scientific method, rational inquiry and reason as the only ways of knowing what is real. Up to that time, Ilia Delio says, both the experiential and the experimental were accepted ways of gaining knowledge about the world. Now experiential and spiritual ways of knowing were dismissed as subjective. They became personal, private, closeted. I think Andrew Newberg’s research into the science of the religious experience is one example of efforts in bringing the experiential, body, and spiritual way of knowing what is real out of the closet. After many years of research on brain activity during spiritual experiences he and his team have developed very specific meditations or prayers that improve mental, social and psychological – sounds like a self help book doesn’t it? His book has collected many of the relaxation techniques that have been around for a while. The practice of any these has a positive effect on health and mental well being. But it is in the spiritual disciplines like mindful meditation of the Monks and the focused active prayer of the nuns where one experiences the loss of sense of self and a transcendent feeling of communion or union with ultimate reality, God. – these are the experiences which change our brain. Quiet prayer time is relaxing and has a positive effect on our health and well being but does not have the same effect – increased consciousness, increased alertness, and an increased ability to resonate to other people’s feelings and thoughts. Abilities are what the right brain acquires. It’s activity does not result in more information or facts but it makes you more able to do something. During meditation or active prayer the positive emotions relax the parietal lobe where our sense of self is maintained. Its activity decreases. After meditation the right brain , under less control of the left brain can, use it newly improved abilities, to love and to be compassionate It is this increased ability to be aware of ourselves and others, to feel a greater connectedness with a larger world, to have greater sense of self, to have increased ability for love, compassion, and empathy – it is this spiritual and experiential knowledge that Ilia Delio sees as the other half of the dialog with the science. If we read the science books and look at the universe with wonder, awe and trust, in the present moment, with empathy and compassion one reaches a deeper knowing about what is real. Ilia suggests that this is real wisdom. As our brains develop from infancy to adulthood different ideas about God become available to us. As adults we have several gods in our conceptions. We move between these during a day or week. We center on one of the Gods, preferring it over others. Surveys asked for descriptions of God and how the believer interacted with God. The data suggested five gods, which are Authoritarian, Critical, Distant, Benevolent and Mystical. We would all recognize this benevolent god who loves and cares for us, answers our prayers and occasionally allows suffering. From a neuro-scientific perspective, choosing to believe in a benevolent God is the healthiest choice. Has the greatest benefits and enhances ones ability to be compassionate. From the development of the brain to the evolution of the brain – Newberg sees correlates between the gods and which area of the brain is activated when people are thinking about each kind of god. Thoughts about an authoritarian god increase activity in the oldest part, the reptilian brain. Here are our basic concerns for survival, food and reproduction. We want an authoritarian God to tell us exactly what to do to be safe. When our anxiety or fear rise up this is God we seek. Our earliest primitive conceptions of God occurred about 100,000 years ago. As our human groups grew in size so did our conception of God. The brain evolved to handled a different conception of God. It was not a straight and forward path. Sometimes we are able to widen our circle of compassion, to include more and more people under one God. Sometimes life is so frightening that God’s commandment to love one another reaches only a tight circle of friends. Some today are saying, along with Andrew, that as a whole humans, through the processes of evolution, are becoming more empathetic and this is coincident with the need for larger circles of compassion that must reach around the world in an age of global consciousness. Human evolution is moving in the direction of empathy and we, as part of that evolving, we can also move in the direction of more compassion and empathy through spiritual disciplines. From Ilia Delio - there’s a whole line in the Christian tradition which had another way of thinking about things and that is that Christ was first in God’s intention to love. For the Franciscan theologian Duns Scotus God is love. From all eternity God willed to share that love with another and therefore the Christ was willed to grace and glory prior to any sin. Scotus was basically saying that Christ is first in God’s intention to love and in order for Christ to come, there had to be a creation. In Ilia Delio’s words, Christ, as God’s first word of love, is in the very processes of becoming in the universe. Christ as the head of creation, in whom and through whom all the universe in coming to be. It is Christ incarnating, Christ sacrificing when a supernova explosion creates all the elements in our periodic table which makes carbon based life forms possible. As part of the universe evolving we are Christ emerging. We are in this present moment Christ, the first word of love, emerging into the universe. And this is a story that you can make your own. Andrew Newberg, the neurophysiologist, says that if this story informs your meditations it will change your brain and change the world around you. Really. Scientifically and Spiritually.

I want to apologize to anyone who takes offense at any negative terms I used in discussion of the Modern stage. Any ladder or steps of development has that inherent problem of not seeing some stages as inferior to others. Ulitmately I don't feel that way but I was not able to overcome that problem. I apologize. Dutch

I didn't get quite what I expected - what a blessing! What interested me when I posted that link and quote was the stages of development as expressed in Integral thinking. It is similar to Fowler's stages of faith and Peck's? After reading your responses I had to step back and reflect because of the depth of your answers. Bruce Sanguin concludes his post If we refuse to offer intercessory prayers are we denying Spirit a voice? Is it possible that our intercessory prayers are in themselves God’s way of answering prayers? Our love and compassion goes out and into this seamless, interconnected universe and is brought to bear on illness, loneliness, and grief. It’s not a distant God intervening, but the God within our very own sighs of compassion and longing for wholeness. Your responses and his don't avoid the language of intercessory prayer but take it deeper and wider in a self transcendent movement. It has become 'articulate-able' to me that the Modern's "It's superstitious." seems a childhood and adolescent stage of development - a moment of doubt, disappointment, and an effort to be an adult. Many get stuck here in anger and alienation. Others are not able to take the next step due to their sub-culture, models available to them, own inclinations and perhaps genetics. But the Modern stage has the potential to push one deeper through doubt. Your responses and Sanguin's Integral view says to the Modern, "That's OK. I know how you feel." without any condescension. And we may be in a place to put those thoughts into action as Bill and Jenyll have related. I think there is continuum from the primitive expressions of relationship with ultimate reality such as sacrifices to satisfy the angry gods or to invoke friendly gods - exterior actions as ego centric attempts to control the exterior forces - to our ideas of of being at one with ultimate reality - a self transcendent inaction of profound effect. The development of Israelite need for the exteriority of a Divine Warrior to the development of the interior beliefs after the return to Jerusalem after the exile is one example. Thanks Dutch

(This topic is not about whether intercessory prayer 'works, is superstitious, etc.) Bruce Sanguin discusses an integral view of prayer in his blog. Does God Answer Prayer? an excerpt The short answer is that it depends on one’s worldview: Traditional: Yes. If you don’t get what you prayed for, just remember that God’s ways are not our ways, and who knows if that “no” might not be, in the great scheme of things, the way things were meant to be. Modern: No. It’s all superstition. Postmodern: Define your terms. Define “answer”. Define “God”. Define “prayer”. Most folks here, especially those who are “spiritual but not religious”, regard intercessory prayer as the kindergarten of the prayer world, and prefer to meditate. Post-postmodern: Here, you are willing to take another look at prayer. You might imagine God as the Unified Whole of which you are a part, and yet which is not itself a part of any greater whole. You might even imagine this Whole in personal terms—not necessarily “a” being, totally separate from you, but rather the personalization of Being Itself. Let’s call that Love. Your own evolving personhood is an expression of That. . . . . If we refuse to offer intercessory prayers are we denying Spirit a voice? Is it possible that our intercessory prayers are in themselves God’s way of answering prayers? I see this as a reminder that we say what makes sense to us at our location on the journey and we can't claim our view as Truth. Bruce also has good language to describe "ultimate reality". Dutch

Our pastor asked for volunteers to take his place in the pulpit. Two of us responded. Sunday I gave mine. That makes ~6 this life. Evolution with Half a Brain was the title. A few people asked for copies. That 3 of the 4 songs we sang were less than 40 years old and new to the congregation was, in away, more exciting. Dutch

Congratulations! When we had our second child we were four times as busy. Sounds like you have good help. Dutch

Dionysius the Areopagite, Works (1897) p.130-137. The Mystical Theology

minsocal, Did he at least bring the feathers?

I was surprised to see he used terms like "eternal objects" because, well, they are objects not occasions. I found here a discussion of the "disappearance" of 'eternal objects'. I understood a little of it. The conclusion was either simple or profound or both: "something matters." On Value and Values in later Whitehead(Or – Where did all the eternal objects go?)Michael Halewood – University of Essex.

Does anybody mind if I take links we post in a variety of threads and post them in the links thread. I would encourage you to also put your link there. We post many links in our various discussions. We'd have quite a resource if they were all in one place. Dutch

Happy Birthday soma Dutch

Again, congratulations Nick. Is it still appropriate to wish you a long honeymoon? If so I do. Dutch