Future and Past: What must we know?
I will pass on to you what I Believe.
I BELIEVE: We must become conscious enough that we will be anxious for our human species to survive through the next few centuries. Our best Scientist and best Theologians believe extinction of humanity is a tragic possibility. Tragedy will continue to the end if humans remain unconscious of the Crisis we are living through.
That is because humanity, right now, is evolving on a path of ever increasing violence. The violence began after the transition from a peaceful Neolithic Tribal cultures to warring civilizations. Each civilization depended on a “Power & Privilege” culture and had to make up a story to justify its injustices and violence.
In the 20th century Albert Einstein diagnosed our dilemma this way: A human being is part of the whole called by us “universe,” a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts, and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task is to free ourselves from our prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
I BELIEVE: The Monastic Catholic Priest Thomas Berry is one of the most reliable authorities on the story of the Universe in its Majesty and Beauty, as well as its Violence and Disruption. It is a drama filled with both Elegance and Ruin. Berry tells us:
“The Universe thrives on the Edge of a Knife. If it increased its strength of expansion, it would Blow Up. If it decreased its strength of expansion, it would collapse. By holding itself on the Edge, it enables a Great Beauty to Unfold. Every being does so in a Balance of Creative Tensions. That’s us.
“History is governed by those Overarching Movements that give shape and meaning to life by relating the human venture to the larger Destinies of the Universe. Perhaps the most valuable heritage we can provide for future generations is some sense of the Great Work that is before them…to carry out the Transition from a period of Human Devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.”
I Believe: Before our Universe could evolve, it had to depend on four Physical Forces to hold itself together as it evolved and expanded. The four Forces that are holding our Universe together right now are: the Force of Gravity, the Electromagnetic Force, the Strong Nuclear Force and the Weak Nuclear Force.
One other Force was most essential to all. Before our Universe could evolve, the Spiritual God Force of Love would have to give Meaning and Purpose to every molecule of mater and to every cell of life on Earth.
This was your and my beginning somewhere between 15 Billion and 17.3 Billion Years Ago.
Our Adolescent Species Dilemma had been diagnosed 2,000 years ago by Jesus as a kind of blindness. We had eyes but we couldn’t see…we had ears but we couldn’t hear.
I Believe: In R. Kirby Godsey, author of “Is God a Christian” and was President of Mercer University for 27 years, and now is Chancellor. He tells us: “I believe that we need to stretch our minds and spirits and raise our expectation toward more radical change. Walking from darkness into light is not an easy journey.
“Creating new communities of conversation can enable us to take a new and bold step in the evolution and the reformation of the world’s great religions. Nothing is more telling of our religious infancy than our barbarous behavior that takes place under the guise of religious devotion.
“The world is presently undergoing dramatic changes in the way humans can connect and in our ability to actually manage the future course of human development. Human beings are in a different place than they have ever been. The capacity to innovate, to invent, to create, to reimagine ourselves and the world will change the face of humanity.
“We are arguably, I believe, in the early stages of the next great leap in the evolution of human life and concurrent development of human religion. People are not only citizens of a nation; they are citizens of the world.
“Nations can no longer act politically, economically, or religiously in an isolated fashion. People either connect or they become irrelevant. We connect with our minds and our intellectual capacity or we remain ignorant. We either connect our faiths or we will remain blind. We should not be content to become a world of intellectual giants and moral and religious infants.
“We can fuel the development of our Moral Capacity by learning from one another’s Religious Insights. The truth is that all our religions are broken vessels. Religions are broken because civilization is broken. Our brokenness is a sign of our infancy. We are immature and the question is whether we are prepared to grow up.
“We can change our ways and rewrite our Human Story. We can be a part of making a new creation in which God speaks to us in many tongues and through many faiths. For the sake of all humankind, we need a New Awakening, a New Reformation, a New Creation, whereby our religious embrace becomes wider and our vision of God’s presence becomes richer.”
I believe that the Monastic Priest Thomas Berry would cheer Godsey on. And I believe the God that both Thomas Berry and R. Kirby Godsey would cheer on would also be the God Force of Love that Evolved into existence between 15 billion and 17.3 billion years ago. Yes, that would be the God that made possible the creation of our Universe. That is the God that right now is seeking to give Meaning and Purpose to you and to me; and will seek to give Meaning and Purpose to every human being who evolves into existence.
I believe: We still can learn more again from Father Thomas Berry:
Let’s start with our ancient matriarchal Neolithic ancestor’s peaceful Village. Thomas Berry describe this as the:
“Most Peaceful a period as humans would ever know. It was a time in which village women…were at their high moment in providing cultural, religious, and social leadership. The first shrines were built…along with elaborate ritual rapport with the cosmological order and the mythic powers of the universe.
“This era of peaceful village culture was founded on three great inventions all made by women.
“The inventions were: horticulture, pottery making, and weaving.
“Women also led in the domestication of animals. Families were generally matrilineal.
“The basic cosmology of the Neolithic village,” Berry said, “is witnessed by the thousands of female images (carved in stone or clay) discovered throughout the Neolithic world. The intimate association of the peaceful goddess with the early earth-based religions integrated with the seasonal rise and decline of the vegetative cycle…continue even after the warring male sky deities took over control of the various societies as a ruling class…
“The transition from female to male deity…when the Neolithic village was superseded by the rising urban centers can now be recognized as one of the more portentous transitions that have taken place in human affairs.
“The transition was between two different cosmological models of reality:
· “The male deity model represented a cosmological order of hierarchical dimensions with a supreme divine authority that communicated sacred power to a human leader whose rule was arbitrary and beyond question.
· “The female deity model represented a cosmological order based on shared authority in which sacred power was dispersed throughout the universe and recognized and exercised by all participants in ritual celebrations—celebrations intended to harmonize the human community with the larger community of all beings.
“The most significant aspect of the Neolithic Period had to do with the rapid invention of thousands of languages. On every continent humans began to articulate a state of consciousness that made possible reasoned thinking. A new richness of expression led to a new intimacy, a sharing of thought that allowed humans to function at a new level of efficacy.
“Neolithic villagers did more to establish the power of words in spoken languages than the people of any other period in history. Thomas Berry described this as a “revelatory moment in the most significant sense. It was a magic moment, a moment of psychic innocence that would never occur again…words took on their form and meaning at that moment of total intimacy with the natural world…and with the deepest immersion of the human in the mysteries of existence itself.”
“(This) was a moment,” Berry said, “when the human was able to establish its species identity with a new clarity, an achievement that had its admirable but also its dangerous aspects…this clarity of species identity tended toward isolating the human within itself over against the nonhuman components of the larger Earth Community.
“Once again we can observe that every perfection imposes its limitations. Liberation in one aspect implies bonding in another.
“The difficulty has been to keep the plasticity of language, to keep language from fixation or trivialization.
“(We must) return to this moment of psychic innocence constantly in our efforts to understand the true meaning of the words that we use, words that determine our most profound sense of reality and value…
“In the great flowering of languages 8,000 to 12,000 years ago human consciousness was swept up in a whirl-wind of change that continues today. In a never ending cycle, new words made possible new thoughts, which made possible new words. As languages matured and coalesced the limitations of words began to be perceived.
“Words could give new meaning to life, but words also could take away meaning. Words were a two-edged sword that could be used to reveal new dimensions or reality, or they could be used to obscure reality. As plasticity was wrung out of language the meanings and applications of words became specialized and professionalized.
“Professionalized words could be bludgeons of power in the hands of specialists. New castes of specialist were privy to whole realms of thought said to be beyond the average humans’ grasp. We would therefore more and more rely on the expert, the authority, the professional to make decisions that would affect the welfare of our children seven generations in the future. The wisdom of grandmothers who held in their hearts the interest of our children would have no place in a professionalized and specialized society dependent on experts to think for us all.
“At this point in the maturation of our adolescent species language was becoming trivialized. Words were useful less for communication than for building walls. Walls of words would separate average humans from professional humans. Walls of words would separate specialists from specialist.
“We were moving into a modern Age of Babel. Relationships even with God were hardening into rigid, established belief systems.”
Berry envisioned: “A future New Age when the human species will experience a revival of a meaningful language and the childlike creative qualities exhibited by Neolithic villagers.
This would not be a return to a romanticized world of the noble savage. It would be a hardheaded, open-hearted model of a modern Eco-Village which he described as the”
“New sustainable centers of the human venture needed as the infrastructures of the plundering industrial cities dissolve, and human communities seek new models for a sustainable mode of human existence within the biosystem of the Earth.”
It was my daughter Lorie Larson reading out loud more of Thomas Berry’s inspiring Cosmology.
It rang loud in my heart. Lorie was tending to her EvolvingHumanity.org website, and it fit right in. So did my work with Rev. Danny Morris, Founding Director of the Methodist Academy for Spiritual Formation—a branch of the Upper Room in Nashville, Tennessee. Danny and I co-authored of a book titled A Miniature History of Earth: In the History We Are Yet to Write We Shall MAKE IT or BREAK IT.
Danny wrote on the first page: “This book is not copyrighted. No rights are preserved. It is our gift to all future generations with our gratitude to the ever-present Presence of the primordial “God Force of Love.”
At the Academy we experienced profound patience in Monastic Catholic Priests who served at the Academy one week at a time. Danny was so impressed he broke through to include the Catholic Cursillo in the United Methodist Church. Later the Cursillo became “the Walk to Emmaus.” One million individuals had completed the “Walk” by 2008.
I was there for another “breakthrough” that was created under Danny’s supervision.
That was to establish a Saint Brigit of Kildare, a Methodist-Benedictine monastic order—the first one in all history. This fit into a Methodist Upper Room that had explored monasticism in an ecumenical context. My friend-and-colleague Danny urged me to establish a branch of the Saint Brigit of Kildare in Florida.
I thought there was a perfect sight on a beautiful Nature-Preserve in Sumter County that we could use. In 2003 the heart and soul of Saint Brigid’s had expanded with the establishment of oblate relationships. The community is now composed of women and men, lay and ordained persons from the United Methodist and other denominational traditions.
I loved the idea of Ecumenical denominations.
I loved the idea that at my age I could still help to found a small Monastic Community on land that I already loved most.
I loved the idea that my colleague, the Dominican Sister Miriam MacGillis, who already has explored the many different Ecosystems that make the Seven Springs’ 400 acres so appealing for creating such a Community.
The Ecumenical Monastic Order was established by Mary Ewing Stamps. St. Bridget’s became a place of residence on the property of Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. This was their first temporary home.
The monastery is now located in Saint Joseph, Minnesota; is a short walkfrom Saint Benedicts Monastery. Historically, Brigid of Kildare was a 5th century Irish monastic “Foundress” credited to have brought Christian religion to women in Ireland.
I hope there will be in Florida, in Sumter County, in the near future a branch of the Ecumenical Monastic Order that will be under construction with my daughter Judy and me will be doing some of the work.
The Monastic Priest Thomas Merton had much to Teach
I remember how Father Thomas Merton defined the Kairos. This was a very “special time” when we finally were coming to grips with a dilemma “religious humans” had always faced.
Merton observed that in the past: “the God of the religious man had always been: the God of his tribe, of his nation, of his King, a God of a tribal or national religion, a God that would be for us and against everyone else.
“Religion in this sense,” Merton wrote: “is gradually revealed in the Bible to be under judgment. It is questioned not so much by man as it is questioned by God.
“As the Bible progresses, we get an ever growing sense of the urgency and meaning of time. That was a moment of breakthrough toward which history itself, with all of the good and the evil that are in humans, has gradually been maturing.
“In this ‘Last Age,’ all the struggles and problems of humans come to a head and they face extraordinary decisions upon which rest not only the fate of individuals but the judgment of nations and of the human race itself.
“In this time of Great Crisis, everything in humanity, including all we hold most sacred, must come under scrutiny and under judgment. All our institutions, our aspirations, our hopes and desires are weighted and estimated in terms of LOVE!
“When the living relationship with God hardens into a rigid and “Established System” that claims to give humans full control of all the answers and encourages them to ‘use’ even God for their own purposes, then nature and culture, law and religion and even prophecy become ambiguous, deceptive, fatal not only to humans but to human’s ability to apprehend the Truth of God…In such a situation, the most sacred and fundamental conceptions become meaningless….
“At such times, the capacity for ‘Openness,’ the ability to listen to the word of God and hear it, becomes a precious and paradoxical gift: for the word will make itself heard in the most unexpected places. And it may tend to be understood by the people you would be least inclined to qualify as ‘religious.’
“The Kairos’ the special, critical time, is then not only a time of breakthrough, convergence, the destruction of the old, the invasion by the new and unforeseen—it is above all a time of Decisive Response.
“It would seem that we live in such a time. Our response will depend not on deftly picking up and appropriating the latest answers, the most novel explanations, but on our ability to accept ourselves and our time as Highly Problematic. It will depend on our Openness to the future, the unpredictable, the disconcerting.
“We are on the threshold of a New Age. The Bible does not necessarily spell out what we can expect to find when we Cross the Threshold, but it does reveal to us the ‘basic dynamism’ of human existence under God….” (From “Opening the Bible” by Father Thomas Merton, published in 1970.)
What Does All of This Come Down To?
I believe: Thomas Merton hit it right on the head when he observed that our humanity faces extraordinary decisions upon which rest not only the fate of individuals, but also the judgment of nations and of the human race itself.
Thomas Berry, Albert Einstein, R. Kirby Godsey, Danny Morris, and Thomas Merton gave us a taste of what our Human Species really will face in the future. Here is a sampling again:
I REPEAT:
I believe: Father Thomas Berry introduced us to the Spiritual God Force of Love. That is the Force that gives Meaning and Purpose to the life of every human being. Berry goes on to tell us how we are moving into a modern Age of Babel where words can be a two-edged sword to obscure reality. Professionalized words can be bludgeons of power in the hands of specialists. Berry closes by telling us Human Communities must seek new models for a sustainable mode of human existence within the biosystem of the Earth.
I believe: R. Kirby Godsey tells us we are in the early stages of the next great leap in the evolution of human life and concurrent development of human religion. Human beings are in a different place than they have ever been before. Nations can no longer act politically, economically, or religiously in an isolated fashion. People connect or they become irrelevant. Religions are broken because civilizations are broken. We are immature and the question is whether we are prepared to grow up. For the sake of all humankind we need a New Awakening a New Reformation, a New Creation.
I believe: Albert Einstein tells us we experience ourselves, our thoughts, and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task is to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
I believe: The Methodist Rev. Danny Morris participated in establishing the Catholic Saint Brigit of Kildare, a Methodist-Benedictine monastic order—first in history. Danny urged me to establish a branch of Saint Brigit of Kildare in Florida on a beautiful 400 acre Natural Preserve in Sumter County. In 2003 the heart and soul of Saint Bridget expanded to include men and women in other denominations. I plan to participate. If you are interested send your message to EvolvingHumanity.org Website.
I believe: Father Thomas Merton tells us that in this “Last Age” all the struggles and problems of humans are coming to a head, and they face extraordinary decisions upon which rest not only the fate of individuals but the judgment of nations and of the human race itself. At such times of Great Crisis, everything in humanity, including all we hold most sacred, must come under scrutiny and under judgment…All our institutions, our aspirations, our hopes and desires are weighted and estimated in terms of LOVE. We are on the threshold of a “New Age.” “This is above all, a time for a Decisive Response!”
I believe: Yes, yes, this is a time for a Decisive Response. Yes, everything in humanity must come under scrutiny and judgment weighted in terms of LOVE! Yes, we are moving into a modern Age of Babel where words can be a two-edged sword to obscure reality. Yes, for the sake of humanity, we need a New Awakening, a New Reformation, a New Creation. Yes, our task is to free ourselves from our prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in her beauty. Yes, the good news is the Heart and Soul of Saint Bridget has expanded to include men and women in other denominations.
I believe: Yes, Yes, we now live in a “Last Age” which is an “Age of Babel” in a “Great Crisis,” a “Decisive Response,” a need for a “Sustainable Mode for Human Existence,” and in a time when words can be a two-edged sword that obscures reality. This gives us hints about our Past and our Future.
Ironically, I believe the Word of The God Force of Love does make itself heard in the most unexpected places. The Word may tend to be understood by people we would be least inclined to qualify as ‘religious.’
Ironically, Father Thomas Merton tells us we are living in a “Last Age,” and at the same time we are living on the threshold of a “New Age.” Which one it will be, will depend on human beings like us.
Ironically, my wife Jackie and I have lived in the East Ridge Village Retirement Community for 24 years. Our East Ridge Community’s History dates back a little more than 50 years. Elders like us could find ourselves evolving in both the “Last Age” and in the “New Age.”
Thomas Berry tells us the result will be governed by the Overarching Movements that give shape and meaning to our lives.
Ironically, during the 20th century we learned almost everything we needed to know in order to steer our human species off of its evolving ever-increasing Violent Path onto a Path of Peace. We had mastered our Species Story, our Earth’s Story, and our Universe Story, which was the Real World Story that every species has to fit into to survive.
The Real World Story includes you, me, and billions of humans that are evolving right now.
Ironically, an ever-increasing number of Frauds have served as Road-Blocks that are keeping us right now from applying many lessons we have learned. We know that Frauds have served as Road-Blocks as far back as 5,000 years ago.
Thomas Berry tells us we must return to that Moment of Psychic Innocence in our effort to understand the true meaning of the words we use. These are words that determine the most profound sense of reality and value. Not two edged words used to obscure reality with bludgeons of power. The wisdom of grandmothers who hold in their hearts the interest of children will have no place in a professionalized and specialized society dependent on experts to think for all of us.
Specialized society made me remember my experiences with a Myers-Briggs Personality assessment.
I was a Professor at Miami Dade College where we were experimenting with new Earth Literacy Curricula. I planned with a Psychology Professor to bring 100 or so students and a few other professors into a college gymnasium to take the Personality assessment. To begin the day we all filled out Myers-Briggs forms. Each individual’s Form calculated each person’s level of Introvert and Extrovert.
While the forms were being calculated we all enjoyed playing the Psychologist’s games which also was sometimes comical other times perplexing. When it was over we all agreed every student everywhere should have this opportunity.
Large signs were put up on the walls of the auditorium. Each sign identified the vast variety of levels of “Extrovert” and “Introvert.” We all were asked to stand under our sign. Every sign had quite a few standing under their sign. There was a lot of laughter when I was the only one standing under my sign. I was the only 100 percent introvert. I laughed too. It solved a big problem for me.
In a party with my wife, she would fit right in. I wouldn’t fit in, until I could find a book to read. Then I knew why I wasn’t interested in football championships, or any other sports. Ping Pong, Shuffleboard, fishing, hiking and camping out seemed to make more sense to me.
As a student at Florida Southern College, I wasn’t comfortable in the dorms. I negotiated to build my own tiny “Dorm” close to a lake in a bit of wilderness. Just before night I could watch all kind of critters hunt food along the shore and out in the muddy water. I lived there until I graduated.
Ironically, I felt comfortable during my 26 months in the 2nd World War to “end all War” wherever the army put me; then wherever the air force put me. I ended up in a Radio Shack on the Texas Gulf Coast a few miles north of Mexico. The Gulf was very shallow here. New pilots-to-be would practice flying over the shallows. Whenever a plane crashed into the shallows, a Crash Boat (like the ones we use in the Everglades) was sent out to rescue the pilot.
Right after that 2nd World War ended, lots of little tragic wars were started by the Communist Russians and the Capitalist United States of North Americans. The Communist and Capitalist threatened each other with Nuclear Rockets. They came within a hairsbreadth of Self Destruction with a Nuclear Holocaust. Scientists told us our human species and a vast number of other species would have gone into extinction.
At 90-years-old, I felt very much at home with my wife Jackie in our East Ridge Retirement Community for 25 years. I spent most of my time continuing my work with nonprofit organizations. I believed each “nonprofit” org. was responsible and important. I have great respect for East Ridge resident Jnita Wright’s Still Learning project. There have been amazing Learning Opportunities for all of us. She included wonderful Jazz Music played by High School students that reached not only ears, but for some of us our Souls.
Let’s think now about where to go from here?
#1: One of my best friends Jim Hodgman asked me if I could make a list of Frauds dating back as far as I could. I made the list for Jim, and Lorie said she would post Jim’s list and would make all the following documents available on her EvolvingHumanity.org website to.
#2: Here is one of the most tragic Frauds with tragic consequences for the welfare of all of my following selection’s children who were growing up in the 20th century. The Fraud totally reversed Charles Darwin’s Theory of Human Evolution. The lives of our most educated humans are still being sidetracked by the powerful Fraud.
#3: I Believe: Here is a Fraud I would never have suspected. It is a Christian Fraud that was exposed by the Missionary E. Stanley Jones’ with the help of the Hindu, Mahatma Gandhi. Jones explained that Christians had avoided the challenge of Jesus’ way of love. Their excuse was that Jesus could live the way of love because he was divine and they weren’t divine. In Jones book Gandhi: Portrayal of a Friend he explained that the success of Gandhi’s nonviolent revolution had demolished, forever, this excuse used by Christians.
#4: I Believe: We can benefit much from four women who have done more to clarify the chaos of our 20th century’s Tower of Babel’s wildness right into the 9/11 exploding days of Violence in the 21st century.
The four women include Donella Meadows who was the lead scientist in writing the powerful: Limits to Growth: Confronting Global Collapse. Be honest: growth is already out of hands. Global Collapse is possible. Read about it so we can avoid it.
Dominican Sister Miriam MacGillis’ Keynote Address “Fate of the Earth” was responsible for a new way of thinking for avoiding Collapse and limiting Growth. Recordings were made of her Keynote Address that reached all around the world;
Miami Dade College Professor Helen Wallace recruited her elderly volunteers who spent two years with her doing research to document a “100-Million-Year Business Report on Planet Earth” that attracted Graduate Professors and students from Universities. Before we were through we had created a book titled Now That You Know: A Journey Toward Earth Literacy.
In response to the 9/11 tragedy, Dr. Raima Larter, Professor and Chair of the Chemistry Department at Indiana-Purdue University wrote an article for the March-May 2002 issue of IONS Noetic Science Review. She provided a radically different interpretation of 9/11. Then she closed with eight truly significant lessons drawn from her personal experience and her analysis of the events of September 11, 2001.