Tag: christianity

Christianity and Hope – when the Pope does hopium, what do the mystics do?

jembendell

For anyone who has grown up in a Christian country, the past week can be a time for reflection on values and purpose. It can be a moment where we find calm away from the rush of our normal lives and re-assess. Any religious festival can provide us with that opportunity, if we are open to that. On religious occasions like Christmas and Easter, people exposed to Western media will read or hear about what The Pope says about the world. So that’s why I heard the Pope’s new message on hope in difficult times. My discomfort about his message meant I shared some thoughts on social media, which generated feedback and dialogue. Rather than repeating myself in comments on those threads, I thought I’d write a post about ‘Christianity and Hope’ on my blog… so here goes.

The Pope’s message seemed to be asking us all to have hope in a better tomorrow. But he went much further than that, when claiming that hope for a materially better situation in the world is a requirement and concomitant with being loving towards others. He wrote:

“Those who love, even if they find themselves in uncertain situations, always view the world with a gentle gaze of hope.”

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Deep Spirituality in an Era of Collapse

jembendell

Reverend Stephen G Wright

[This essay is available as an audio, narrated by Jem Bendell]

As a follower of the contemplative-mystic Way for many decades, and written about it, guided others in it, even set up a School to ‘teach’ it, in recent years I’ve taken the idea and community of Deep Adaptation into deep discernment – to consider its impact upon my spiritual life and that of others. The unfolding ecological disaster, and its implications for our societies, is something I observe and experience from that contemplative-mystic approach to life. I have come to believe that deep adaptation will be spiritual or there will be no deep adaptation at all. By which, I mean that there will be no softening of the collapse of societies, for people or wider nature, unless more of us discover and prioritise our own spiritual response to this predicament. That is not a summons to fluffy feel-good spiritual experiences to keep the horrors at bay. It is a summons to fierce and profound inquiry, a deep plunge into the joypain of existence, and a wholly (holy!) different perspective on reality and what it is to be human in that reality. Such a Way lifts (or sinks) us into an utterly different relationship and perception of life; of self and that which is beyond the self. Without that we shall persist in limited perceptions of what it is to be human and part of all of life. Without it we would continue deploying our good intentions and rearranging bits and pieces of ordinary reality without fundamentally changing our relationship to that reality.

Continue reading “Deep Spirituality in an Era of Collapse” →