ANCIENT & MODERN PROPHETS
"Seeds of Wisdom for our Modern Age"
Modern prophet Teilhard de Chardin, geologist, paleontologist & theologian “Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”
Ancient prophet: Matthew 13: “Truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”
Modern prophet: Barbara Ward, environmentalist: “Thrift, conservation, un-greediness, the acceptance and care of other life-systems and other selves are the preconditions of survival itself. The Sacred Order cannot be mocked. It is the very nature of reality.”
Ancient prophet: Deuteronomy 30: “These laws are not in the far heavens, so distant that you can’t hear and obey them…nor are they beyond the ocean, so far that no one can bring you their message, they are very close at hand—in your hearts and on your lips—so you can obey them.”
Modern prophet: James E, Lovelock, chemist: “Evidence suggests the atmosphere is not merely a biological product, as oxygen often is, but more probably a biological construction—like a cat’s fur, or a bird’s feathers; an extension of a living system, designed to maintain a chosen environment.”
Ancient prophet: Psalms 19: “The heavens are telling the glory of God; they are a marvelous display of his craftsmanship…without a sound or word, silent in the sky, their message reaches out to the entire world.”
Modern prophet: Lewis Thomas, physician: “I would not lay heavy odds on our survival unless we begin maturing soon. Up to now, we have been living out of the childhood of our species.”
Ancient prophet: 1Corinthians 13: “When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.”
Modern prophet: Christopher Fry, poet and playwright: “Affairs are now soul size. The enterprise is exploration into God. But what are you waiting for? It takes so many thousand years to wake, but will you wake, for pity sake?”
Ancient prophet: Deuteronomy 39: “I call heaven and Earth to witness against you. I have set before you life and death, blessing or curse. Oh, that you would choose life so your children might live.”
Modern prophet: Victor F. Weisskopf, physicist: “If any human beings are alive 50 years from now, they may look back on today’s situation as a virulent case of collective mental disease that gripped humanity.”
Modern prophet: Elisabet Sahtouris, in her book Earth Dance: Living Systems in Evolution describes: “Our belligerent adolescence of a species on the brink of maturity…at the Choice Point at which we must decide whether to continue our suicidal course or turn from it to responsible maturity... What could be more interesting, more exciting, than to be alive in the very age when we as a species have the opportunity to mature and solve the adolescent problems we have caused ourselves and others?”
Modern prophet: Jane Goodall: “Many Hebrew scholars believed the word ‘dominion’ was apoor translation for the original Hebrew word “v’irdu” which actually meant to ‘rule over’ as a wise king rules over his subjects with ‘care and respect.’ It implied a sense of ‘responsibility, humility and enlightened stewardship.’”
Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image…and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
As Jane Goodall explained, the word “Dominion” was misinterpreted for the Hebrew word as to mean “Dominate.” So “Dominator” became the Choice of the Unreal World Dominator society that would polarize all of humanity. Humans would be in charge and could use Earth’s living systems and its marvelous craftsmanship for whatever purpose they chose. They wouldn’t need help from any source, and there wouldn’t be any Sacred Order or preconditions for a Dominator society’s survival. Their motto would be “survival of the fittest” and they would believe they were the fittest.
Genesis: 2:15 The Lord God “took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it.”
This became the Choice of a Real-World Partnership society that would keep humanity connected at a deep species level of consciousness. Humans wouldn’t be in charge and they couldn’t use Earth’s living systems and its marvelous craftsmanship for whatever purpose they choose. They would know the preconditions for their survival, and they would know to respect the Sacred Order in Nature. They would take responsibility for other life systems. If help was needed it would be there for the asking. Their motto would be to “Do unto others as you would others to do to you.”
Jane Goodall and Elisabet Sahtouris had much to teach us
In Jane Goodall’s book, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, she described the sense of humility she learned from the chimpanzees. She also learned from an inspirational group of young people who barely survived the horrors of war in Nigeria, Sarajevo, and the murderous Pol Pot campaigns.
These young people were determined to join with other youth around the world to end the violence and ensure a better future for their children.
Goodall contrasted these young people with the vast numbers of children in the affluent Western Unreal World who were thrilled watching violence on movies and TV screens. Victims of playing “Virtual Reality,” they lost all touch with “Real Reality.”
She told us, “I was taught, as a scientist, to think logically and imperially, rather than intuitively or spiritually. When I was at Cambridge University in the early 1960s most of the scientists and science students working in the Department of Zoology, so far as I could tell, were agnostics or even atheists. Those who believe in God kept it hidden from their peers.
“I believed in the spiritual power that, as a Christian, I called God. But as I grew older and learned about different faiths I came to believe that there was, after all, but One God with different names: Allah, Tao, the Creator, and so on. God for me was the “Great Spirit in Whom we live and move and have our being.”
In Elisabet Sahtouris’ book, Earth Dance: Living Systems in Evolution she included a chapter titled “A Matter of Maturation.”
She wrote that “The purpose of this book is for us to see ourselves within the whole Evolving World, even within the whole Evolving Cosmos. When we look at things broadly this way, we see that the problems we have created may not be as great as problems other species have created, for which life found solutions.
Sahtouris spelled out for us our species Real-World CHOICE. She wrote, “Humans were like any adolescent who is suddenly aware of having created a very real life crisis.”
“This is the Choice Point where humans must decide whether to continue their suicidal course, or turn from it to responsible maturity.”
Sahtouris continued, “What could be more interesting, more exciting, than to be alive in the very age when we as a species have the opportunity to mature to solve the adolescent problems we have caused ourselves and others?”
FOR OUR SPECIES NOTHING COULD BE MORE INTERESTING & EXCITING
Than to steer our species off of its suicidal course to responsible maturity
There is no question that our adolescent species is on a suicidal course.
There is no question that it couldn’t be more interesting and exciting for ordinary humans like us to take the lead in turning the evolution of our species around to Responsible Maturity?
Jane Goodall described throngs of young people who barely survived the horrors of insane terrorists. These young people were eager to take the lead in achieving Responsible Maturity?
Given the opportunity, how many of us will volunteer to participate with these young people from around the world who suffered so much and are so eager to end the violence?
Given the opportunity, how many of us will volunteer to participate with others in our community to decide whether to continue on our species suicidal course, or turn from it to responsible maturity?
What more do we have to offer?
We can tell you how the Christian Evangelist E. Stanley Jones and the Hindu Mahatma Gandhi exposed a Christian Fraud.
Jones takes us back 2,000 years to Jesus’s “Sermon on the Mount.” That Sermon spelled out Jesus’s “Way of Love” as the one and only path for the evolution of humanity to Peace and Justice.
Gandhi shared with Jones his Pacifist Plan to apply Jesus “Way of Love” to free India from British military rule. Surprisingly, Badshah Khan, a Muslim warlord over the most powerful and violent Pashtun tribe in Afghanistan was attracted to Gandhi’s pacifist worldview.
Badshah decided that Gandhi’s Pacifist Plan was more powerful than any army he could raise. Khan convinced members of his Pashtun tribe to lay down their weapons and join in Gandhi’s nonviolent revolution. He trained 80,000 of his fellow tribesmen to serve in a disciplined “Nonviolent Army.” They wore red uniforms and called themselves the “Servants of God.” The British Army persecuted and even tortured the “Servants of God” and then admitted nothing they did could make Khan’s warriors to fight back.
Gandhi credited Khan’s unique army with playing a major role in the Nonviolent Campaign that won freedom for India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan from British rule.
A book by Eknath Easwaran titled, A Man to Match His Mountains described why British soldiers ended up fearing Khan’s nonviolent civil disobedience even more than they had feared the Pashtuns’ former savagery.
When freedom was won, Gandhi was quoted as saying:
“That such men who would have killed a human being with no more thought than they would kill a sheep or a hen, should at the bidding of one man have laid down their arms and accepted nonviolence as the superior weapon sounds almost like a fairy tale.”
Badshah Khan said:
“There is nothing surprising in a Muslim or a Pathan (Pashtun tribesman) like me subscribing to the creed of nonviolence. It is not a new creed. It was followed fourteen hundred years ago by the Prophet all the time he was in Mecca, and it has since been followed by all those who wanted to throw off an oppressor’s yoke. But we had so far forgotten it that when Gandhi placed it before us, we thought he was sponsoring a novel creed.”
E. Stanley Jones in his book, Gandhi: Portrayal of a Friend exposed the Christian Fraud
Jones declared that Gandhi’s successful nonviolent revolution had demolished forever a Christian Fraud. He explained that for centuries Christians had been avoiding the challenge of Jesus’ “Way of Love.”
The Fraud claimed that Jesus could live the Way of Love because he was Divine. Christians were not Divine, so they could not live the Way of Love that Jesus lived.
Jones explained that: “The success of Gandhi’s nonviolent revolution demolished forever the excuse used by Christians. Gandhi demonstrated on a colossal scale that Jesus’ Way of Love was no longer idealism. It was stark realism. It had been demonstrated as clearly as a problem in geometry.
It was pure science. Mahatma was God’s appeal to this age—an age drifting again to its doom.
“If the atomic bomb had been militarism’s Trump Card thrown down on the table of human events, then Mahatma Gandhi was God’s trump card which he threw down on the table of events—a table trembling with destiny. God had to play his hand skillfully, for man was free, and God could not coerce.”
Jones added, “I would like my readers to see the man I see…a little man who fought a ‘System in the Framework’ of which I stand. He taught me more of the spirit of Christ than perhaps any other man in East or West. This book is a symbol of my gratitude…”
The Framework in which Jones stood was the Framework of the System of the Unreal-World in which almost all the human species now live.
The God that could not coerce humans is the Real-World God Force of Love. I am convinced that this is the one and only Real God.
The God Force of Love was the source that evolved our Universe into existence 13.7 billion years ago.
What more do we have to offer?
Teaching from Gandhi’s Ashram in India in the United States
We welcome my colleague, the Rev. Danny Morris, Founder and Director of the Academy for Spiritual Formation. Danny would say that E. Stanley Jones deserved another “thank you.”
In 1940 Jones brought Gandhi’s religious teachings and Jesus’ “Way of Love” from his Ashram in India to the United States. Since then many weeklong Ashram Retreats have been held in the United States.
In 2009 Danny Morris led a one-week Ashram Retreat at the Lake Junaluska, United Methodist Conference Center in North Carolina. I participated in the Ashram and a mutual friend Dr. Evelyn Laycock led a Bible class during the Ashram.
When our Ashram was over Danny invited me to experiment with practicing Ashram rituals for a whole year, instead of a week) while we wrote a book together. Danny titled the book, A Miniature History of Earth.
In his Preface he wrote: This book is not copyrighted. No rights are reserved. It is our gift to all the future generations with our gratitude to the ever-present Presence of the primordial God Force of Love.
I appreciated Danny’s vigorous recruiting when near to the end of the book:
YOU are being recruited by owl and frog and every species alive.
YOU are being recruited by generations yet unborn.
YOU are being recruited by Earth and the Universe.
YOU are being recruited by God to participate consciously in the same creative dynamism of Love that brought forth the continents, the seas, and the atmosphere—and awakened life in the primordial cell that is now awaking consciousness in you.
I remember vividly the conclusion of our 2009 Ashram.
Danny Morris and Evelyn Laycock led all of us to the shore of Lake Junaluska at daybreak. Evelyn led in prayer. Then Danny’s voice resonated with emotion as it boomed out across the beautiful Lake:
“Who among us will step forward to do WHATEVER IT TAKES for the Church to be reborn?
“Who is willing to do whatever it takes for us to stop playing church, and stop playing school, and stop playing politics, and economics, and science, and all the institutions we’ve divided civilization up into that need to be reborn, so that we can be reborn ourselves, rather than stay on a dead-end path until civilization destroys itself?”
I WAS PREPARING TO BE REBORN MYSELF.
I remember vividly in the 1980s I had struggled to understand the difference between “being religious” and “being spiritual.” Lloyd Knox, then a Methodist District Superintendent, suggested I sign up for the “Academy for Spiritual Formation” that was sponsored by the Upper Room ministries in Nashville, Tennessee.
For two years I commuted from Miami to Nashville every three months. For five-days we were immersed in Spirituality and in Religion. For every session Danny imported two topnotch scholars who were available day and night to discuss various forms of spirituality and religion. We were learning to live the Balancing Act that bonded Mind, Body, and Spirit together. The Balancing Act made possible the Cosmic Dance every molecule of matter and ever cell of life would participate in.
At first I didn’t take seriously our Spiritual Director Rueben Job’s orientation.
We sat in a circle in silence while Rueben looked each one of us in the eye. Then he announced firmly, “You are not here by accident.” I thought I wasn’t. I thought of the many accidents that had my life zigzagging in different directions. After one session in the Academy I realized the zigzagging was what got me there. I knew I was not there by accident. I told Rueben I was thankful for his Spiritual guidance.
Some of the topnotch monastic Catholic scholars Danny imported were so insightful we signed a petition requesting that the United Methodist Church create one of its own monastic orders.
Danny surprised me when we were writing A Miniature History of Earth.
He told me, “We have created the Saint Brigit of Kildare monastic order.” This was the first Methodist-Benedictine monastic order in the history of the world. Sister Mary Stamps was a lifelong United Methodist authority on theological studies. The monastic order began with 32 Oblates related to Saint Bridget.
Let us listen again to Danny Morris’s Challenge to Humanity.
These words are being addressed to each of you.
“Who is willing to do whatever it takes for us to stop playing church, and stop playing school, and stop playing politics, and economics, and science, and all the institutions we’ve divided civilization up into that need to be reborn, so that we can be reborn ourselves, rather than stay on a dead-end path until civilization destroys itself?”
Can you imagine that we are not here by accident and we can be reborn?
Can you imagine that the survival of Homo sapiens can depend on ordinary individuals like us?
What more do we have to offer?
Leonard I. Sweet will take over here.
He was President of the United Theological Seminary, a theologian, a church historian, an ordained United Methodist pastor, and the Honorary E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism, and author of Quantum Spirituality: A Postmodern Apologetic, and many more publications.
Sweet’s focus was on “an increasingly damaged planet and demoralized church!”
He optimistically envisioned “our species walking confident into a terrific and terrifying future.”
Sweet’s focus and optimism were close to E. Stanley Jones description of the “Framework of the System” that was the Un-Real World that the vast majority of the human species live in today.
He quoted an ancient Hebrew prophet: “Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.” He then described how after the Chinese Revolution in 1911, the Social Greeting used by all young Chinese would be: “Are you living in the New World?”
In 2014 are there any of us who are already living in the New World?
How would we know whether or not we were living in the New World?
Sweet told us what we should learn from the “Proverbial Frog.”
You toss the frog into a pot of boiling water on the stove. The frog immediately will jump out. That frog will survive to live in a New World.
You toss the frog into a pot of cold water on a stove. The frog will swim around as the temperature slowly rises. The frog will be cooked to death before it occurs to the frog to jump out of the water while it still could.
Human beings living in the “Framework of the System” today are like the frog swimming around in a pot on the stove as the temperature of the water rises.
Sweet described how Homo sapiens are having so much trouble responding to the slow changes that are intimately connecting them to the System we live in. For instance we haven’t responded to a swelling world population. We haven’t responded to the steady environmental degradation. We haven’t responded to a decrepit educational system as described by Professor Dan Daniel. That would be only a tiny sampling.
That is why subtle changes that are introduced with a minimum of disruption often become the most profound Crisis we are unable to control. Sweet gave us a biblical example:
In 2 Samuel 18.29, King David asked his servant Ahimaaz to get for him “news” in case there was a Crisis. The King wanted to know if there were any major changes he should know and prepare for.
His servant Ahimaaz replied, “I saw a great tumult. But I did not know what it was about.”
Sweet observed, “We are living in the midst of a great tumult. But we do not know what it is all about.”
The historian/futurist William Irving Thompson compared humans to flies crawling on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. We were blind to the beauties surrounding us.
BLIND, BUT NOT KNOWING WE ARE BLIND; AND THE COMING OF “NEW LIGHT”
Some ophthalmologists were excited about two “awareness defects” recently isolated and identified. The first was Anton’s syndrome, a condition in which patients were blind to their own blindness. They could think they could see, but they couldn’t.
The second “awareness defect” was called “blindsight.” That was a condition in which patients were blind to their own sight. They actually had a visual experience, but their visual consciousness was divorced from their visual receptivity.
The church and our species veer wildly between awareness of the defects of a blind spot and of blindsight. That leaves us in dire straits because of our lack of “see-ers” and “Seers.”
“I come to you because I want to see” is what Native Americans would say to the medicine man or shaman. This is where we get our word for Wise Man.” A “Seer” literally means “One who Sees.”
Coming to terms with our blind-spot and blind-sight is comparable to coming to terms with Jesus ecology of the mind. He expressed in his requirement that his followers learn to read “the signs of their times.”
In the church there are two kinds of reading. Sweet refers to one as Re-Ferential Reading. That distances the reader from what is being read through too Analytical, Objective, and Clinical Thinking.
Sweet refers to the other as Re-Verential Reading. That connects the reader to what is being read through Empathetic, Celebrative, and Creative levels of knowledge.
This involves naming the “Dangers and Powers” that our present age is facing. It then involves claiming these Dangers and Powers as “spiritual and moral issues.” Then finally it involves reverentially framing an alternative Vision, a New Picture of how the world should be.
The church (and our species) should be cooperating in the transformative process of creation (evolution). Instead, we systematically screen out of consciousness those changes we do not want to be part of. We become “the proverbial frog” as the pot of water heats up,” and Jesus “Way of Love” seems far too Divine for us to envision how the world should be.
I was surprised at how close Sweet’s solution for “Framing an Alternative vision of how the Church and the World should be” was to E. Stanley Jones’ solution for the Christian Fraud by envisioning a new “Framework for the system in which he stood in— andwe stand in today in the 21st century.”
DO WE WANT TO SEE “THE NEW LIGHT?”
Sweet tells us “In one sense the whole of this book is an extended meditation on the nature of true New Light leadership. And on how more of these voices of the third millennium might emanate from America’s churches and synagogues.”
His meditation takes us forward through the Biblical evolution from Old Testament through New Testament to a New-New Third Testament that is in the making.
SOUND HAS ITS ROLE TO PLAY TOO.
He says the treasury of a people’s memory is often best found in their musicality however hidden. What songs make their lips quiver, their spines shiver? The Biblical scholar/literary critic, Gil Bailie argues that every community listens to a “sound track.” Indeed, the Gospel is being drowned out today by implants of alien sound tracks into the brain.
Whatever “sound track” communities listen to determines what they hear, what they see, what they do. New Light Leaders check out the background music to a community’s life before making any moves. The music of truth may take centuries to play itself out. Not all of God’s communications are released overnight. Indeed, many of them may be in the process of being created as we go along.
SURPRISE: I (Mac) found on page 324 in Sweet’s Endnotes the following from Sweet: “Gil Bailie was first quoted to me by McGregor Smith, Director of the Environmental Ethics Institute, Miami Dade Community College, Miami, Florida.”
My path and Sweet’s path had crossed several times during the 26 years that I was Facilitator for a Team of faculty members, students, and volunteers that were experimenting with new curricula for the College.
Gil was a great friend and colleague. Some of his most significant contributions for us are included in the “7 Generations Remembering and Reconnection Project’s Seed Bank of Wisdom.”
I was surprised again to see in the Quantum Spirituality Index on page 361 listing that I was born in 1899 and died in 1972. By mistake - my Dad’s birthdate had been substituted for mine.
GETTING CLOSE TO PAY DIRT:
Sweet described how every generation inherits Spiritual Soil that has become either overgrown or overdeveloped with thorny places, hardened paths, and shallow spots. For the Gospel to take root, every generation of believers must themselves set about the task of Striking Pay Dirt
It will be the responsibility of every generation to Invest Deeply in the process of uprooting those things like habits, assumptions, questions, conflicts that Choke Creativity. Then they must Replant those vital branches that have become uprooted; add new topsoil to the shallow spots; aerate the hardened paths; and clean up the thorny, overgrown places.
No generation can strike pay dirt for another generation. Every generation must strike pay dirt for itself.
Pay Dirt is the Choice Point where humans decide whether to continue their Suicidal Course or turn from it to Responsible Maturity. Who is willing to do whatever it takes for us to stop playing church, and stop playing school, and stop playing politics, and economics, and science, and all the institutions we’ve divided civilization up into that need to be reborn? As individuals are we ready to be reborn ourselves, rather than remain on a dead-end path until our civilization destroys itself?
What are YOU willing to do - NOW - at this Choice Point???
Will you help us raise awareness – and create a new wave of social consciousness??? Together – let’s ‘open our eyes,’ step back from the edge of the cliff and shift humanity off its current path of violence on to a path of peace.
There has never been such an exciting time to be alive and play a part in the positive movement for EVOLVING HUMANITY. Be the difference you wish to see in the world.
Come join us.