A Leap to Everyday Spirituality

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Contents

Foreword.................................viiPreface..................................ixPonderings As Essays.....................1Epilogue.................................161Glossary.................................163Suggested Readings.......................167

Chapter One

1. It Is Monday

It is Monday, March 18, 2009. As I checked my e-mail this morning I found an e-mail forwarded by my friend Bill Peterson, a Presbyterian Pastor who is also a psychologist. Bill's friend, a professor at a university, had sent him a circulating, anonymous e-mail list of 31 one liners titled, "For Those Who Take Life Too Seriously."

One of them caught my eye because it is Monday –

"Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your week."

Nonsensical? - of course. But some of the 31 were really clever. Like this one written in the days before digital photography -

"Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film."

I'll come back later to, "For those, who take life too seriously. "

Now, March 18 finds me twiddling my thumbs. I have just completed a three-year+ series of blogs that will soon be published as a book under the title. "A Belief System from Beyond the Box." This "Beyond the Box" series of blogs grew out of communications I shared following a 2005 book which described my belief system that evolved during my growing up in a country store: "A Belief System from the General Store."

Over the years I have pondered my belief system. I deny explicitly that I have obsessed my belief system. There is a great difference between pondering and obsessing. Through these decades of pondering I have concluded that my belief system is due an upgrade, as they say in the computer world. My recent communications with peers I know, and many peers I do not know, indicate that many hold this conclusion about their belief systems. The word change arises as we discuss our personal belief systems. I also hear the word change in discussions involving the institution through which we nurture our belief systems – "The church must change or it will die."

Change is difficult for most of us. Mark Twain recognized this: "Many are those we have known who were all for progress – it was change they couldn't tolerate."

Through this past several years, as I have heard this "change-or- die" expression so frequently, relative to the church, I have come to wonder if the problem could be more approachable if we softened the predictions to – "If we morph our belief systems, the church can morph and survive." "Morph and survive" sounds much more approachable than, "change or die."

What advice do we receive for responsive action on this "change or die" warning? Too often it is this vague admonition–

"You must think beyond the box."

What does the church currently tell us is in the box?

1. The Golden Rule, The Sermon on the Mount and unlimited, valuable, proven utterances.

2. The limitless ABCs of the Comprehensible God of the Bible Verse as selected and accepted by previous and present cultures.

What do I determine to be in the box?

1. The Golden Rule, The Sermon on the Mount and unlimited, valuable, proven utterances.

2. The inhibiting ABCs of the Comprehensible God of the Bible Verse as selected and imposed by previous and present cultures.

My working formulary for these ABCs follows:

A. Factious Fundamentals and Doctrines

B. Embellished Stories and Myths.

C. Outmoded Knowledge and Cultures.

My concern is that the box contains inhibiting ABCs by which cultures have tried over the centuries to render God comprehensible to humans – who can conceptualize, although not comprehend - God.

What is beyond the box? - the Incomprehensible God of the Universe, "the atmosphere of possibilities that lures the Earthen histories upslope." (Rolston)

In his book, "Genes, Genesis and God, Their Origins in Natural and Human History," Holmes Rolston III lures us beyond the box with this quote (p.367).

"The divine spirit is the giver of life, pervasively present over the millennia. God is the atmosphere of possibilities, the metaphysical environment, in, with, and under first the natural and later also the cultural environment, luring the Earthen histories upslope."

Here follows my layman's interpretation of Dr. Rolston's thesis that he so thoroughly explains in a scholar's language.

Expanding knowledge of genes, DNA, and evolution of life forms, has resulted in macro understandings of the how of biogenesis. But there is that stage in the biogenetic process where the human mind remains at a micro understanding of the why within the informational component of the process. Obviously the Planet Earth's "sea of soup" for the formation of life was perfect for the how. So where did the information reside that triggered the chain reaction - the why did it start? Is there a metaphysical something, a stimulator, within, or behind, the informational component that instills and then maintains value and purpose in the all of life?

My study of his book tells me that Dr. Rolston writes of this stimulator. It is the atmosphere of possibilities. It is God. This stimulator is not a directive, theistic force. It does not push or pull life upslope. Dr. Rolston states that it is, "luring the earthen histories upslope."

At the time I discovered Dr. Rolston's concept - God is the Atmosphere of Possibilities - I was describing in my blogs the morphing of my belief system from the Comprehensible God of the Bible Verse to the Incomprehensible God of the Universe. Serendipity handed me this gap-filling element for my conceptualization of God. I have long realized that the human cannot comprehend God but it is essential to have conceptualizations beyond "God is Great, God is Good." Thus I became response-able to: The Incomprehensible God of the Universe, the Atmosphere of Possibilities.

The question occurred–what is it that ties us to the Comprehensible God of the Bible Verse? It is the "what has been." More broadly stated it is the Climate of Cultures.

Thus to think beyond the box, we must expand our belief systems beyond the Climate of Cultures (the what has been) into the Atmosphere of Possibilities (the what can be!).

There are not two Gods, of course. It is my conceptualization that is changing from - the Comprehensible God of the Bible Verse, the Climate of Cultures to - the Incomprehensible God of the Universe, the Atmosphere of Possibilities.

As I review this Monday morning blog in preparation for a return to the phrase, "For those who take life too seriously," I realize that we cannot discern life qualitatively (the meaning of "too seriously") until we have defined life objectively, within the following question -

Is life accidentally incidental or is life intentionally purposeful?

2. Life – Accidental or Intentional?

Accidental? What about DNA? Could something so complex be accidental?

Intentional? What about virulent organisms? Dinosaurs? Could deadly organisms or such bizarre...