#10 Awakening Consciousness

Paschal Paradox:

Reflections on a Life of Spiritual Evolution by Diarmuid O’Murchu

From the Precis by Helene O’Sullivan, MM

Chapter 5~Beyond Patriarchal Insularism

Spirituality

Beneath all the denominations and religions, and sometimes in the lives of people describ-ing themselves as atheist or agnostic, I began to discern a deeper strand, which I and others have named as spirituality that continues to engage my spirit and my imagination. Over time, I understood that light and shadow intermingle in every sphere of our lives, and religion is not immune. The very notion of religious worship involves walking a tightrope between adult maturation and childish (fearful) dependency. Holding truth lightly can be healthier than excessive zeal.

We have much to learn from those indigenous First Nations peoples who do not employ the notion of worship. Instead, ritual engagement is viewed as befriending the God(s), or facilitating the possibility of being befriended by God, rather than submitting in terms of conventional loyal obedience to some kind of a heavenly superpower.

Throughout much of our long prehistoric story, we humans lived within the culture of a spiritual allurement. We can certainly trace evidence for this to ancient burial rites that possibly date to 150,000 years ago. Obviously, we are dealing with much more substantial evidence in the vast global repertoire of Ice Age art, conservatively dated to 40,000 years ago. Noteworthy in this ancient spiritual tradition is a diverse, amorphous notion of God. Polytheism rather than monotheism was the norm.

The multiple understandings of the deity in those earlier times did not involve the notion of submissive worship that becomes a central feature of mainline religion as we have known it for the past 5,000 years.

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Monotheism and the Unifying Power of Spirit

Monotheism has long been considered an advanced, sophisticated mode of engagement

when compared with the earlier cultural norms. Here we encounter several unexamined assumptions. The emergence of formal religion follows quite closely other evolution-ary developments of the past 10 to 12,000 years, beginning with the agricultural revolution around 10,000 BCE.

Prior to that time, the evidence points toward a human species who coexisted in a convivial way with the living earth itself, perceived to be energized by the organic spirit of God, probably along lines similar to indigenous peoples in the contemporary world. Central to that ancient spirituality was the notion of the divine as the Great Spirit, understood to be embodied primarily not in some distant heaven but within the organicity of the living earth itself.

Long before the evolution of formal religion as we know it today, beginning with Hinduism around 3,000 BCE, humans engaged with spiritual meaning across a vast range of understandings and experiences. We cannot and must not identify this vast diversity with polytheism, which in its literal meaning denotes the worship of several gods, rather than the one true deity.

As already indicated, there is a unifying factor, namely, God as spirit, and that spiritual lifeforce is experienced at a range of different levels.  There is, however, one core dimension to that multifaceted experience, namely, the surrounding creation.   Therein, more than anywhere else, our ancient ancestors encounter the vitality of the living Spirit.

There is a unity within the diversity, but it has nothing to do with the later understanding of monotheism. The earlier ancient experience was transpersonal, rather than personal, in the sense of prioritizing humans.  The encounter with the Great Spirit happened first and foremost in and through the created universe.

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Contrary to the monotheistic approach, the Great Spirit was experienced not as a transcendent power on which all was dependent, but rather as a convivial life force, with which humans were invited to co-create. In several cases, the invitation to such co-creation happened through ritual engagement.

Most important of all is the issue of power and empowerment. The monotheistic God is one of unilateral power, who alone can save humans from the plight of their sinfulness. The notion of salvation is largely absent from faith in the Great Spirit. Trust in the benevolence of the empowering Spirit, and a sense of engagement with the creativity of the Spirit, beget a whole different understanding of God and humans.   We seem to be moving in a collaborative endeavor strongly resonant of John 15:15, “No longer do I call you servants but friends.”

 Multiple Religious Belonging

Monotheism continues to dominate the contemporary religious landscape. This is a cultural rather than merely a religious phenomenon. Across many of the major world religions, we observe a new strain of funda-mentalism, rooted in an exclusive patriarchal ruling God who will tolerate no other. However, evolution is empowering us to redress the balance in a development known as multiple religious belonging.  We can glean its meaning and truth from the following description:

When people ask what I am religiously, I say, “My bowel is Shamanist. My heart is Buddhist. My right brain, which defines my mood, is Confucian and Taoist. My left brain, which defines my public language, is Protestant Christian, and overall, my aura is eco-feminist.”   As a Korean woman, I was raised in the 5,000-year-old Shamanist tradition and the 2,000-year-old Taoist-Confucian tradition, with 2,000 years of Buddhist tradition, 100 years of Protestant tradition, and twenty years of eco-feminist tradition. So, my body is like a religious pantheon. I am living with communities of Gods, a continuum of divinity, and a family of religions.”

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Re-Visioning the Resurrection of Jesus and the Paschal Journey

When Christians reference the paschal journey, it is nearly always in the context of the death and resurrection of Jesus. For much of Christendom, the resurrection of Jesus was viewed in heroic, miraculous terms. Jesus, the perfect representative of the monotheistic powerful God, conquered even death itself, thus reclaiming and re-establishing his divine kin-ship both here and in the life to come.

Beginning in the mid-20th century, some scrip-ture scholars have viewed the resurrection of Jesus in a different light, one that moves us beyond the demonization of death itself but also surfacing another Christological motif, the liberating and empowering Jesus arising within the communal body of believers. This interpretation makes a great deal more sense to adult faith believers in the 21st century.

Adopting a more humble, discerning stance, the argument goes like this. No one can state for certain what happened to Jesus after his death. Our patriarchal will-to-power finds it hard to accept a largely unanswered reality, a classical dark night of soul and senses.   We cannot tolerate a vacuum, despite all that modern science reassures us about the creative dynamic of nature’s own vacuum. Moreover, the patriarchal mind-set feels the need to offer a coherent rational answer to all aspects of life, including those that clearly stretch the human imagination and our spiritual intuition.

Why not move attention to the first witnesses? What was it in that final transformative experience of Jesus that awoke in them an indisputable conviction that Jesus was alive after his earthly death, in fact, more so now than during his earthly life? And was it in the power of that creative arising that they too became the bold witness to all that Jesus lived and died for?

In this discerning strategy it is the questions rather than the answers that guide us to deeper truth. All of which leads us into a massive conundrum!

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It has been long assumed that it was the twelve apostles who were the primary witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus and thus the ones who laid the foundation of what today we call the church. Once again, patriarchal preference gets in the way. Even a cursory glance at the passion narratives illustrates all too clearly that the twelve had huge problems particularly with the death of Jesus. Allegedly, Judas could not handle it at all, and Peter sounds like somebody facing a nervous breakdown. And where were all the rest? They had fled lest they too might be crucified.

So, who remained? Mary Magdalene and a group of followers consisting predominantly of women but very likely inclusive of men as well. According to Luke 23:55, they saw where the body was laid. They are the ones who remain to the very end. They go right into the death experience and do not run away. And in all four Gospels we witness their presence on Easter Sunday morning. The first person to be formally commissioned by the Risen Jesus is Mary Magdalene. The role of women in early Christian times is now well documented and, in the name of justice and truth, must be given the scholarly and religious attention it deserves. Moreover, when we seek to honor the primacy of this alternative apostolic group, and the central role women are playing in it, we enter into those aspects of every paschal journey that we wish to avoid, namely, the lamenting, mourning, and grieving.

This is where the true giftedness of the Gospel women comes to the fore. We are told that the women went away to prepare spices. Even if the anointing with spices did not take place, due to the absence of a body, the anointing is merely one aspect of an elaborate ritual process, marking not merely the death of a loved one but the expression and articulation of the heartbreak and grief involved in losing a loved one. By allowing such grief to come to the fore via lamenting, the mourners, particularly the women, were liberated to engage the deeper meaning of all that was happening around them.  Scripture scholar Walter Brueggemann takes us right to the heart of the matter:

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Only grief permits newness….Where grief is silent, the newness does not come, and the old order survives another season. Jesus’ main conflict is with the managers of the old order who do not know of its failure and who will do whatever is necessary to keep the grief from becoming visible. For if the grief does not become visible then the charade of the old order can be sustained indefinitely and new-ness will never come! If the hurt is fully ex-pressed and embraced, it liberates God to heal.

The women hold a treacherous, prophetic space, wherein nothing is sure or secure, but everything is open to empowering possibilities that the guardians of orthodoxy can neither imagine nor entertain. This is the same birthing space we encounter in the opening verses of the book of Genesis with the Spirit drawing forth new life from the chaotic depths. It is the paradoxical liberation every mystic knows in the dark night of soul and senses. It is also grounded in the ecstatic birth pangs experienced by every mother giving birth to new life.

 At this level of mystical discernment, we are invited to embrace the paschal journey at a depth that defies and transcends rational explanation. The Gospel women at Calvary and beyond enter those depths with a quality of courage, insight, and wisdom that Christian believers of our time urgently need. The secret to their integrity and creativity is their ability to ritualize their deep pain and not be overcome by it. Their creative empowerment does not belong merely to the triumph of Pentecost but equally to all those Calvary dark depths of confusion, struggle, and hope.