Developing Global Consciousness #69
Living into a New Consciousness
#69 Living into a New Consciousness
When the Disciple Comes of Age:
Christian Identity in the 21st Century
by Diarmuid O’Murchu
Helene O’Sullivan, MM, has done a Précis of
Diarmuid O’Murchu’s insightful book, and we share here excerpts from the Introduction and Chapter 1.
From Diarmuid’s Introduction
As a social scientist I am heavily committed to the work of integration. I believe in reworking the tradition, not simply retrieving or revitalizing the past, but mobilizing the enduring wisdom of tradition so that it also empowers us for the evolving future. I hope this book will affirm and further encourage those traversing the pilgrim journey in the evolutionary context of our time.
As an evolutionist I believe we are enveloped in an empowering story that outstretches all our human and academic constructs, including the binary opposites of past and future. As an organic earth species we are forever recycling the sources of wisdom, including our spiritual hopes and aspirations.
The older I get, the more I am convinced that, for me as a Christian, Jesus holds an archetypal significance that opens up other trans-historical dimensions of faith, emi-nently significant for the twenty-first century. It is immensely encouraging to see that several Christian scholars and thousands of Christians are reimaging their faith along these lines.
While I cherish the inherited wisdom of the learned, and invoke scholarly wisdom throughout the present work, I want to build upon the wisdom of the human heart informed by the evolutionary momentum of our time.
Chapter 1 - Coming of Age: What is at Stake?
“I become who I will be within the network
of relations, rooted in the non-human, blooming in the intimate, branching
into the unknown.” Catherine Keller
Coming-of-age is a phrase widely used to denote the shift toward adult maturity, particularly the evolution from adolescence into young adulthood. Traditionally this shift was marked in several indigenous cultures by a rite of passage, highlighting a readiness for more adult responsibilities related to the life and welfare of the group. In indigenous cultures, there is also a more subtle dimension, as the initiate is entrust-ed with novel responsibilities for the care and nurturance of the earth. Becoming an adult denotes engagement with a greater sense of complexity, an invitation to be-come a more mature and creative earthling.
Embracing adult maturity has long been viewed as a human endeavor belonging primarily to human persons in their anthropological and cultural contexts. This book seeks to extend the horizon of such growth to include transpersonal dimen-sions of universe and planet – indeed the entire scope of God’s creation. No longer can human aspiration, meaning, or potential be understood over against the natural world. We are earthlings, with hearts, minds, and even brains program-med for cosmic interconnectedness. The maturity and integrity of our coming-of-age in the 21st century depends largely on how we engage and internalize these more expansive horizons.
Personal Reflection (Dairmuid O’Murchu)
Some years ago, there was a public lecture at the London School of Economics, given by Theodore Roszak, professor of cultural history at the University of CA at Berkeley.
He addressed the vision outlined in his latest book, The Making of an Elder Culture. Several years earlier I had read what was to become his best-know work, The Making of a Counter Culture followed in 1979 by a lesser-known work, Person/ Planet, which also struck deep resonances for me. Ever since I first read Roszak back in the 1970s, I detected a maverick of prophetic significance.
Despite my admiration for Roszak, I found myself having other reactions as the public lecture unfolded. His initial enthusiasm about the vast potential of a world growing older did not sit comfortably with me; however, as Roszak continued to speak I began to realize that my own prejudice and fear were inhibiting my receptivity.
I realized I had to listen more attentively, and then I began to detect the several nuances embedded in his counter-intuitive claim that the future of humanity rested not with our younger people but with our wise elders. In the informal conversations after the lecture, I learned that virtually every-body present had a similar set of reactions: from initial incredulity, to the suspicion that there might be some truth in what he was saying, to the eventual realization that in all probability his insights were spot on.
The Return of the Wise Elder
Every culture looks to its youth as the prospective hope for the future, the ones who hopefully will carry forward the inher-ited wisdom of the past and carve the new furrows for future growth and progress. This perception made sense in cultures where progress was viewed in more linear terms, within which leading institutions changed little over long periods of time. Ours is a different time. I know from per-sonal experience that an alternative elder culture is arising rapidly and universally.
In a matter of a few decades it will exert substantial influence on our global value system. We are rapidly approaching the critical threshold when in several Western countries the elderly will become:
(1) the dominant voters, much more critically aware of political policies, and not easily lured to support the inherited party system; and (2) the dominant purchasers, whose buying options will not be deter-mined by popular fashion or commercial spin, but by aesthetic, ecological and more responsive values.
My interest in this new subgroup is mainly spiritual and religious in nature. They are redefining aspects of Christian faith. These elderly, whom I define as fifty-five and older, come mainly from a formal religious background, tend to be well-educated, and often belong to the middle to upper classes. However, they question almost everything in their inherited faith and wish to stretch spiritual understandings far beyond conventional religious belief.
Our older members will exhibit the resilience and wisdom to help us all to make sense of what is happening. In Sorokin’s analysis of sociocultural systems, these people are the primary catalysts of evolutionary change. And in their expansive vision they seek to out-grow the dualistic split between the sacred and the secular and thus are capable of being more discerning in reading what is going on and better able to choose pro-active lines of action. Counter-intuitively, I suspect the elderly will be in the vanguard for Christian prophetic witness as we move deeper into the 21st century.
Coming-of-Age in a Postmodern World
The following are particularly significant factors leading to this new coming-of-age:
· The postmodern worldview which seeks to transcend the narrow totalizing ideol-ogies of patriarchal cultures: one God, one power, one truth, one absolute.
· New scientific breakthroughs, such as relativity theory and quantum physics which transcend the narrower mechanistic rationalistic paradigm of the last 2000 years.
· The new cosmological horizon of 13.8 billion years which is almost a household term.
· The lesser known human story of some 7 million years. We began to understand our human role in creation in a vastly expanded horizon.
· For faith development, we witness a new adult critique of traditional religion whereby people either abandon traditional faith or seek out alternatives open to adult engagement and participation.
The coming-of-age that I am describing is an evolutionary imperative of our time, with long-term benefits that will not be reversed. Like all evolutionary breakthroughs, the transformation will be primarily for those at the ready, and that tends to be a minority. The majority will respond with business-as-usual, with another minority reacting negatively. In time, however, evolutionary breakthroughs become culturally normal-ized, as with the current globalization of information accessibility.
Integration is the Goal
Later in Chapter 3, I outline the feel and tenor of this emerging evolutionary narra-tive. Meanwhile, I want to review the break-down we are going through, what meaning we might detect in its fragmentation and how we can let go of that which sustained us so well for so long. The desire for a new integration is the coming-of-age I seek to explore in the pages of this book.
Characterized on the one hand by disillusionment and rejection of the past, it also embodies a passionate desire for a new and better world.
On closer observation – what I later describe as the art of discernment - we are not dealing with a simplistic and reckless abandonment of all that has gone before. What we are rejecting are the dogmatized edifices whereby a onetime truth claimed that it was permanent and could never be altered. That is alien to the evolutionary trust that informs contemporary humans within and without.
The coming-of-age characterizing our time has integration as its ultimate goal.
The desired outcome is not
another dualistic split
between past and present,
but a new synthesis seeking to
integrate and celebrate all that is sacred
within the canopy of universal life.
Diarmuid O’Murchu
Maryknoll Contemplative Community
Post Office Box 311
Maryknoll, NY 10545-0311