Let me recall and return to the general picture for a moment. We've been talking about these four phases or four dimensions, especially of the Christ mystery, but really somehow of all reality, including the human person. And there are four expressions in Christ, there are four expressions of the unitive. We spoke of this reality up here, the reality that is experienced, for instance, in contemplation as being simply the pure unitive, where all things come together, the hub of the wheel as it were, the source, the root, the ground of all being, paradoxically it's on top here, which is God, and which we call Father in Christianity. And then we spoke of the word in Jesus, but the word is the unitive word, out of this word all things came, out of the word everything was created, and somehow everything remains in the word, everything remains rooted in the word and somehow enclosed, embraced by the word. And that's in one way, which is hard for us to describe in words, but it has something

[01:06]

to do with truth, it has something to do with meaning, it has something to do also with structure. Whereas on the other side, on the spirit, that's another expression of the unitive, which is the world of movement, the world of energy, the world of light, and also the world of the feminine, those two compare as masculine and feminine. And the fact that Jesus is a man, is a masculine human being, is the expression of that, the key to that, which we really haven't sufficiently gone into in Christianity. But it calls for another expression of divinity, it calls for the feminine expression of divinity, the feminine image of God, which maybe is not completely an image, which maybe is more material, and that's why it's so mysterious, that's why it tends to be neglected and eclipsed and forgotten so much. But that's another expression of the unitive. In Jesus we find the word that comes to us, the word of life, as John says, that we see, that we listen to, that in some way we touch with our hands, that's a very real human

[02:09]

person for us in the Gospels, and gradually becomes real for us in our own life, even though remote in history. But over here we have something else, it's something that we don't touch, and we don't see, and we don't hear directly. But remember in that first prologue of John's letter, that he goes on, he says, the word of life, and we tell you this so that you may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship, our koinonia, that's the Greek word, is with Jesus Christ and with the Father. Now that koinonia is practically speaking the Holy Spirit, that communion is the Holy Spirit, is this other member. So what we have seen and heard and touched disappears so that we might have fellowship. And the fellowship is God, the fellowship is the Spirit. The fellowship, the communion, is the feminine expression, you might say, of this unitive reality. In the Catholic Church at the time of Vatican II, if we move from a single image of the

[03:11]

Church, the institutional image, the institutional model, as Avery Dillard says, to several models, but largely to this model of communion, the Church as communion, it's a movement from a kind of masculine box, or the box of two, the box of the word, the structure, to a balance in which it's both structure and communion. It's both particle and wave. It's both solid and it's energy. It's partly a matter of images and thoughts in our mind, but also it's something that moves right into our life, something we participate in. And it has to do with the enlivening of our whole being in some way, with the awakening of those dimensions, and particularly here, those energies, those unitive energies in ourself. So this is the third expression of the unitive, the Holy Spirit within us. And the unitive character of that is very evident in the New Testament. Just think, once again, of the Acts of the Apostles in Pentecost Day, and those tongues of flame, and the Apostles suddenly speaking in all those different languages, that plurality

[04:12]

which just tumbles out of this one fire, of this one fire of the Spirit. And it's immediately manifested itself in diversity, the Spirit, that's the marvelous thing about it. It's fruitfulness, it's fecundity, it's naturally music, it's naturally a music of variations, a music of infinite imagination. So imagination also belongs over here, we said, and metaphor. Modern poetry is particularly fruitful on that side. In fact, something happens in the modern age, when you talk about modernism in art and poetry, it means a lot of different things, but there's something very strange and different that happens in poetry, for instance, at the beginning of the 20th century. Because up until then you had a pretty rational type of poetry, in the 19th century especially. It could be romantic, it could be very emotional, but it was still very, what would you call it, pretty clear, and still operating very much out of the conscious mind. And then all of a sudden that explodes and you get this weird poetry, which seems to

[05:14]

specialize in obscurity, its language seems to be mystery. It's very language, it's like the bread has turned to stones in some way it seems. The language has itself turned to obscurity, has itself turned to mystery, as if the difficulty of it were the very language itself, as if you had to chew on these stones of obscurity and of difficulty in order to get the nourishment, in order to eat the bread. Now, what the heck is going on? The same thing tends to happen in painting, I believe, in art, where it turns from representative to non-representative, from representative or clear to what we commonly call abstract, but at least non-representational. What's going on there? Something has broken, a shell has broken, and it's like the shell of obviousness, or the shell of reference, or the shell of allegory, the shell of an exact, rational correspondence to something else. And something's breaking free, and it's very disconcerting, very distressing at first, and after a while you get the hang of it, you sort of like it, and after a while you can't

[06:16]

even look at the old art, you can't even listen to the old poetry anymore, because this thing is so exciting. And what's happening? It's resonating with something inside you, it's resonating with this freedom and this free creativity of the human person, this wild creativity of the human person which is inside of us, and which is God's gift to us in the spirit, meant to recreate the world in some way. So we're beginning to taste once again the freshness of that recreation, something absolutely fresh, something absolutely new, that movement of metaphor in this wild poetry. That's somehow theological. In other words, what's happening is the breaking through our container, the breaking through our container of consciousness over here, this box we were talking about, opening up to all these different dimensions. And as a matter of fact, the new poetry, for instance, in the 20th century goes in each of these directions. You find poets like Zen poets going right up here, into that kind of clear, empty consciousness. And you find modern poetry in general moving over here, in other words, preferring dynamism

[07:21]

to structure, just the breaking up of all the old rhyme schemes and all the old stanza schemes and all the conventional forms of poetry into something wild, where you're trying, you spend a lot of your time trying to discern what is the form, what is the shape of this thing? And then, is there a meaning in it? William Carlos Williams is a good example, we had him in our seminar a little while ago, and he seems deliberately to avoid all the cracks in the sidewalk, he deliberately tries to avoid any kind of regularity, and to create some kind of new regularity which corresponds to human speech, so to think. But the absolute, what would you call it, absolute horror of the old regularities and the old conventions, to break out and somehow express the pure, what would you call it, the pure movement, the pure energy of whatever this is that's in us, and whatever it is actually that we intuit happening in the world, because when we detect this in us, we're just participating in something bigger, call it the zeitgeist or whatever you want to call it, call it the

[08:23]

movement of the Holy Spirit in the world today. But the Holy Spirit is wrestling free, it's breaking out of that box, it's not happy in that box, it's been like a bird in a cage, and the cage is breaking open now in all directions, and we can picture that cage, that box breaking open in these three directions. So modern poetry very much goes over here, practically all of it, I think. And then there's one more dimension which is, in a sense, is the most mysterious of all. This dimension of the earth, of the body, I find it the most difficult to deal with. If we use those four words from our four phases, the silence, the word, the music and the dance, I find the last almost comic in my own regard, because dance would be the most alien thing to me, I think impossible, I've always lived in my head.

[09:23]

The only way that I could possibly dance was by some kind of mortal injury, if the hand grenade exploded underneath me. But that just illustrates how far we can get from that final point. Which is not just my problem, it's in some sense the problem of everybody, because what we're talking about is not just the body, okay, it's also the earth. So today you have this reawakening of a sense of the cosmos, you have a reawakening of a sense of the earth, the urgency of ecology, of environmental concern, when our planet is shrinking around us. We're brought back somehow to the ground in that sense, and when the religions try to get together, for instance, immediately they have to talk about ecology, immediately they have to talk about the shrinking planet and the earth, because that's the ground on which we stand, and that ground suddenly has become precarious. The ground is shrinking, the ground is of questionable health at this point. So we have a consciousness of the earth in that way too, but think about the other things. Think about spirituality and the way the body wisdoms come into play, especially from the

[10:29]

East, but not only from the East. I mean, California is full of this kind of thing. I remember seeing this catalogue of different therapies and things from the Bay Area, it was that thick, and there were literally hundreds if not thousands of different ways you could be rubbed, and your vibrations could be stimulated, and your kundalini and everything. So much of it has to do with the body. The wisdom of the body, which had been totally lost in the West, is coming back, is leaking in from all sides, but especially from the East, especially from the Asian traditions, which have a body wisdom and an energy wisdom. They have a wisdom of the energy and of the body, as well as this wisdom of fear. It's incredible, the kind of plurality of wisdoms that come from the East. The wisdom of the pure unity, the wisdom of Atman and Brahman, the wisdom of Shunyata, the emptiness of Buddhism, that pure non-dual reality, but also the wisdom of energy. We can joke about kundalini, but it's a real thing.

[11:32]

The chi of Taoism, and the pranayama of Hinduism, and the shakti of Hinduism, and so on. Each of those Asian traditions has its own energy wisdom, but try to find one in Christianity. You don't find one. We talk about the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit always remains, as it were, spirit, and somehow we haven't realized its, what would you call it, incarnational manifestations. We haven't realized how it comes down here somehow. Of course, in Eastern Orthodoxy, you do find something like that, especially in Ezekielism, and yet it never arrived at the refinements which you find in the Asian traditions. But I think there's a reason for that in Christianity. You see, Jesus didn't come to bring everything. He doesn't bring everything. He comes and incarnates himself. The Word incarnates itself, the Spirit incarnates itself, and so it absorbs from everything else in the world, including the other religions. Not only the philosophies and cultures, but also the religious traditions. There's no problem with that in Christianity, as long as the center can remain Christ, as

[12:34]

long as we realize clearly that personal relationship with Christ, and the way that it orients us towards God. And then it's this infinitely simple wisdom of God that comes into the world in Jesus, and can somehow, I think, absorb every other wisdom. But it has to remain somehow upright, it has to remain with that same, what would you call it, that same fierce concern for fidelity to the central thing that Judaism has, and that early Christianity has, and you see it in the martyrs. You can't let go of that. But if you hang on to that, then that's the seed that can go into the ground and sort of fill all of reality, and transform all of reality, including the cultures and maybe even the religious traditions. Certainly the practices of the religious traditions. But it's important, for instance, when people do meditation, when they do silent meditation, and so on, they keep it in a faith context, that this keeps its connection with this, that this keeps its connection with this, and that prayer is also a part of their life,

[13:35]

the prayer of the heart, that movement of energy, and of the soul, and of the spirit towards God, that that remains part of their life too. Otherwise they can also form a box around this, people who do that psychologically, people who meditate and meditate and meditate, and make a kind of, what would you call it, a kind of sanctuary of meditation, which enables them to shut out everything else. And they find a kind of freedom there, a kind of repose, but also I think they get into a kind of refrigerator, humanly speaking, and a kind of North Pole, theologically speaking. Because there isn't enough there. They need the whole thing. And the Christ mystery offers the whole thing. So this morning I want to talk about this last pole, the Earth Pole. And what I'm going to say will be a little bit impressionistic, because it's very simple and very difficult at the same time. It's almost as if we only have glimpses, we only have hints. And we don't know how to put them together, and it's best that we don't. Because somehow we're only at the beginning of this.

[14:36]

There are a lot of things that come together at this last pole. I said the cosmos, the earth, the body. There's something else too, and that's social justice. If we talk about the earth, we have to talk about the people of the earth. And it's as if our discourse is always flying somehow, it's always a paper airplane, until we ground it in this fact of oppression and suffering, and what we talk about under the title of social justice. You have to think about where we are in the United States, where we are in California, where we are, let's say, in the middle class. And then look over the fence into Latin America, into Central America, into Guatemala and so on. And that's the other side of our world, that's the underside of our world. It's not only our backyard, but it's our earth, it's our ground. And those are the people of our earth. That's part of us, and we don't realize it. That's the shadowed, forgotten, exploited, oppressed part of ourselves. Which is, to put it in a self-centered way, what I'm trying to accent is the fact that we're never quite in touch with reality

[15:40]

until we integrate that in some way, until we're really in touch with that ground. I wanted to read you a couple of things that have to do with that. Our spirituality remains a kind of hobby until, in some way, it grounds itself in that reality. Just as it was always said in the New Testament that your Christianity isn't real until somehow it turns into action. Until the word that you have heard turns into action. Because action is also there, you see. The whole thing involves some kind of physical response, some kind of bodily response. Which, in early Christianity, was what? Feeding the poor. It was washing the feet of the poor, and then the guests, and so on. It was simply those corporal works of mercy. Which, in those days, were in a local scene, weren't they? It was in your own local church. But nowadays, the local church is the world, in that sense. So we have to have another kind, another range of consciousness about these same realities, and simply expand it to that level. Because we're all... It's like we're all in one room today. Because we know about Somalia, or we know about Cambodia,

[16:43]

that means it's part of our world, part of our responsibility now. Which is, at the same time, a very heavy weight, and something exhilarating. Because somehow the whole thing, we're in touch with the whole thing now. It's as if the earth, the world, humanity, enters into this phase where all the cards are out on the table. And it's up to us somehow to move ahead with it. It's all there, and because it's all there, we can find Christ somehow, and Christianity, and the Gospel, in its freedom, in its totality. Because this is the world in which it was meant to function. This is the world in which the whole world, the whole of humanity, is where the Gospel and the Holy Spirit came to operate. So until that's our sphere, we're always operating within walls. When we're in that whole world, that whole planet, that whole of humanity, then Christianity can fly. Then the Spirit can really move, the Spirit can really burn. That's the kind of theology they had in the early days in Christianity, where they saw the whole of the earth, the whole of the world, the whole of humanity, and the whole of the cosmos centered in Christ. That's what you find in Paul and in John.

[17:45]

But then Christianity begins to be itself once again. It's not a question of one Christian denomination, or defining it against another. Because when we start doing that stuff, we lose the, as I say, we put the ceiling between us and the sky, and we lose the earth, too. We build a house, we elevate it above the earth, we close it in on all sides, and it's no longer a recognizable Gospel, no longer a recognizable Christianity. We've moved back in some way into the law. We've moved back completely into that box of the second principle. We were talking about music yesterday, and there's something you might call a Gospel music, which happens when the Gospel is... When Jesus comes into the world and starts breaking down walls, this music is what happens when a wall collapses. The music is what happens when suddenly the limitation, the confinement, is broken down,

[18:50]

and the whole space is opened up. And there's a kind of a flash of energy that happens from the center, from Jesus at that point. Now, this happens in one way when Jesus heals somebody. When he heals somebody, notice that the body itself is participating. In other words, the dance is happening, because the music has got all the way into the flesh, it's got all the way into the earth, all the way into the ground. This music of the Gospel sounds in the breaking out of confinement into un-confinement. Now, that may be the breaking out of the Jewish container to the Gentiles. Then you hear the music when Jesus reveals himself to the Samaritan woman, and so on. Or it may be between Jesus and the sinners. Remember the banquet of Levi when Jesus converts Levi and Matthew, and then they have a dinner for him, and all these no-good people are there. Remember the sinners of all kinds,

[19:52]

and the publicans, and it's a mess. And the Pharisees complain, why does your master eat with sinners? And Jesus says, I haven't come for the righteous, but for sinners. The physician doesn't come to those who are well, but to those who are sick. I came for them, I'm here for them. You hear that music. That music is when the wall is broken, when the wall opens, and suddenly the thing resounds, and you realize that unlimited expanse of what's happening. That unlimited expanse of the Spirit. The unlimited range, as it were, of the light that comes in Christ. That's when you feel the exaltation of Christianity. But what I wanted to point out today is that that gospel music sounds particularly when it goes into the body. That's why the healings are so effective, I think, in Jesus. Why that energy flashes out. Why you can hear that music in these healings. When Jesus says to Lazarus, come out, Lazarus, and he comes walking out of the tomb. See, somehow, that's when the gospel ultimately vindicates itself.

[20:54]

When the music is real, is when it can raise the dead. When the music is real, is when it can go right down to the bottom and pick up that which is hopeless. Go right all the way to the extreme, to the bottom, to the end. Now for us, that's the body, that's matter. For us, that's illness, and ultimately it's death. So the final music is the music of the resurrection. When that spirit of God, that power, that energy of God comes down all the way, scoops down all the way and picks up absolutely everything there is. Including that which is completely extinguished and hopeless. And of course, that's in us, too, because we're living that, we're dying that. That's when the music is real. And that's what I mean by the dance. So the dance is only ultimately in the resurrection, when the whole thing is brought back to life. And that's the particular thing about Christianity. It begins with Israel, but it concludes in Christianity that it redeems everything. It comes right down into the flesh, right down into matter, and saves it.

[21:56]

And divinizes it in some way. That's this absolute music of Christianity. If we talked about two principles, like the perennial philosophy and this other thing. Now this is what's characteristic of the second thing that Jesus brings, is this redeeming of matter, is this transforming, it's going right to the bottom, which happens in the resurrection. But notice that what's being raised there is not just matter, not just body, but person, isn't it? It's the human person that is the core of that, that ties that all together in the end. That's the creature which is able to be both creation and God. The human person is, as Maximus says, is microcosm and mediator. That is, all of the universe somehow is gathered into this human person. Just like it was all gathered into Adam and Eve in the garden. So they were in the center, as it were, of the creation, and they had this role of giving God to creation and giving the creation to God. But somehow they didn't fulfil it for us.

[22:58]

So that's where we are. And the whole thing comes together in us in that way. That's our destiny. So I think the exaltation in the music of Christianity sounds right there in that realization because we come to our center at that point. But it doesn't happen until it's all brought back to life. And when it's brought back to life in the resurrection, it's brought back not just into human life, but into a human life which is the life of God, which is participating in the life of God. Because those two together are the life of Christ. It's like there are three musics. The first music is the music of Christmas. That music of tenderness and innocence. There's something very strange about Christmas, isn't it? The way that the music sticks in our minds, sticks in our ears. We may not even prove of it. I mean, aesthetically, musically, we may think it's not much, but boy, it stays there, doesn't it? Because it's bound up with our own childhood. It's bound up with the first music of life which we live through. With whatever paradise there was for us

[24:00]

in our childhood. And somehow that's inside us. And that music retains its grip on us. Every year it catches me, that's for sure. I like to sing those Christmas carols. But then that music has to give way to... Actually, you see that music in the Gospels and Luke's infancy narratives particularly. Those scenes are full of music. Think of the... I said in Luke or in Matthew where the angels remember where the magi are told to go and visit the mother and child and the angels are there singing the glory of God. I think that's in Luke, isn't it? That's the music I'm talking about. See, there's a music which is not just sound but the music of the scene itself. There's a music of the spirit in the words, and Luke is a master of that particularly. And then the scene of the annunciation to Mary in Luke. And the scene of the visitation when Mary goes to visit Elizabeth. Those scenes are pure music in some way.

[25:01]

There's a resonance to them. There's a tender, gentle energy that comes out. A human energy. An anointed human energy that comes out at you. There's that first music and then that first music gives way to something else, doesn't it? The second movement as it were. The second music is a kind of discord. A dark music which is already there in the early music. Remember when Herod sends and kills all the children in Bethlehem? So that harsh music of discord that terrifying music is already heard in the first music but it doesn't kill it. It doesn't interfere with it really. It's just there. But then at a certain point in Jesus' life it takes over. And that's what we have in Holy Week, isn't it? That dark music. The music of Holy Week and particularly of Good Friday when it reaches its darkest point. And then there's a third music where the resurrection of Jesus is a third music

[26:03]

which is a music which goes right down. He comes out of the empty tomb. That tomb is a hole in the ground. This music comes right out of the ground and brings the ground with it where everything somehow dances with this music of the resurrection because now the grace of God, the Spirit of God has reached down and gathered up everything that's created and brought it to life in Christ. Symbolically and virtually and what would you call it? Seminally in this one person who is Christ but really so. And the way that that comes down to us is in the Eucharist, of course. That new matter, that new creation which is the body of Christ. Paul talks about it as a spiritual body. He said, well, there was a psychic body, there was a body of earth and now there's a body of heaven. There was the man of earth and now there's the man of heaven. There was a body which was of the soul he said, a psychic body and now there's a spiritual body. Soma pneumaticon, the spiritual body. Now what would that be?

[27:04]

See, that's the body of the risen Jesus. It's a new kind of matter. It's the first bit of the universe which is divinized. Now what kind of matter would that be? Because that's what we are ultimately. We are that spiritual body, we are that divinized matter ultimately. What does it mean when the thing turns over so that matter no longer weighs down or conceals the spirit? When matter takes on, when body takes on the properties of the spirit, which are freedom and an abundance of life and luminosity, what's that like? I think we need to try to imagine that. And I think strangely modern poetry begins to give us a taste of that in some way because of its freedom, because somehow it finds the fire in things. Maybe I should read a couple of poems. Actually I'm thinking of one of Mary Oliver, which is about whales

[28:05]

but it's very relevant to this. It's called Humpbacks. Mary Oliver is very good poetry for nature and body and earth poetry. There is all around us this country of original fire. She's not talking about the resurrection. She's finding this just where it is. For her it's in the creation. She's not a theological person. You know what I mean. The sky, after all, stops at nothing. So something has to be holding our bodies in its rich and timeless stables or else we would fly away. Off Stelvagen, off the Cape, the humpbacks rise carrying their tonnage of barnacles and joy. They leap through the water. They nuzzle back under it like children at play. This whale is a very important image for her. In pure, brute physicality they sing too and not for any reason you can't imagine. Three of them rise to the surface near the bow of the boat. Near the bow of the boat, excuse me. Then dive deeply, their huge

[29:07]

scarred flukes tip to the air. We wait, not knowing just where it will happen. Suddenly they smash through the surface. Someone begins shouting for joy and you realize it is yourself. As they surge upward and you see for the first time how huge they are. As they breach and dive and breach again through the shining blue flowers of the split water. And you see them for some unbelievable part of a moment against the sky, like nothing you've ever imagined. Like the myth of the fifth morning galloping out of darkness pouring heavenward, spinning. Then they crash back under those black silks and we all fall back together into that wet fire. You know what I mean. I know a captain who has seen them playing with seaweed, swimming through the green islands, tossing the slippery branches into the air. I know a whale that will come to the boat whenever she can and nudge it gently along the bow with her long flipper. I know several lives worth living. Listen, whatever it is you try to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you like the dreams of your

[30:08]

body. Listen, whatever it is you try to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you like the dreams of your body. It's spirit longing to fly while the dead weight bones toss their dark mane and hurry back into the fields of glittering fire where everything, even the great whale throbs with song. See, poetry becomes a kind of prophecy at a certain point. And at this time, in our time, it becomes a prophecy of a transfigured earth, of a transfigured body, of a cosmos, somehow a universe which is afire with divine life. There's a refusal to distinguish there. There's a refusal to be theological. There's a refusal to make logical statements. But there's this sense, this perception of what's there. And as I say, it is theological. In other words, this is the Holy Spirit working in the world, working in our bodies. Let me change

[31:08]

course a little bit and read you something from Huard Cousins. Huard Cousins, I may have mentioned before, has this idea of the second axial time. That time, 500 years before Christ, the time of the Buddha and the time of the Vedanta and the Upanishads and so on, is the time of the first axial period, according to Carl Jaspers. That's when personal consciousness breaks through. And you have a breakthrough here and you have a breakthrough here. The one in the East, the one in the Asian religions is here. That's the breakthrough of this realization of the Atman, of the Atman and Brahman. And that the two are one. And in the West, it's something else. And in Israel, according to Jaspers, it's the breakthrough of the individual consciousness, the prophetic consciousness. That is God's voice coming through an individual now, not just through the tradition and the magisterial teaching. Now for him, that first axial time is the emergence of personal consciousness and he says there's only been one time

[32:10]

that returns to that kind of importance, that kind of significance in human history as we know it and that's right now, which he says is the dawn of the second axial time. Now the second axial time for him is the dawn not of a personal consciousness but of a global consciousness. A global consciousness because suddenly, very quickly, we are one planet, we are one globe, we are one human family in some way. Now for him, the first axial period, that emergence of the personal consciousness and also that contemplative consciousness is coming out of a background of tribal cultures of primal peoples, as he says. So what happens at the time of the second axial period and the dawn of the global consciousness is that we have to reintegrate, as it were, that primal consciousness. Reintegrate that wisdom of the primal people. Typical for us would be the North American Indians, the Native American people.

[33:12]

But there are many other indigenous peoples around. I think in Latin America, in Guatemala, for instance, you're much more conscious of that because the Native American people are much more numerous. For instance, there are five million Native Americans in Guatemala. That's the majority of the population. They still keep a lot of their culture despite five centuries of Hispanic overlay. And he says that actually there are two dimensions that are involved there. We have to regain their sense of communion, their sense of family. But now we have to do it on a world scale so that we have to find that we somehow are one tribe, that we somehow are one family. That's the horizontal part. The vertical part, however, is to recover their relationship with the earth, recover their earth consciousness. And all of this is a reintegration, keeping what we have, which is this larger range, which is this whole growth of human personality

[34:13]

and of human scope, I would say, and of critical thought, and of all that has happened, all that's developed since then, which involves all of these poles except the bottom one, basically. That's the one that we've moved away from. Let me read you a little bit of what he has to say about that. ... This global consciousness complexified through the meeting of cultures and religions is only one characteristic of the second axial period. The consciousness of this period is global in another sense, namely in rediscovering its roots in the earth. In the second axial period, we must rediscover the dimensions of consciousness

[35:14]

of the spirituality of the primal periods of the pre-axial period. As we saw, this consciousness was collective and cosmic, rooted in the earth and in the life cycles. We must rapidly appropriate that form of consciousness or perish from the earth. However, I'm not suggesting a romantic attempt to live in the past, rather that the evolution of consciousness proceeds by way of recapitulation. That is, you move away from something, and then you have to come back and reintegrate it. Well, we've moved farther away from the earth than anybody ever did, and now we have to come back and somehow integrate it. And that means integrating this level of human development, this level of our own history, which is built into us in some way at some point, which is that of the primal peoples. Having developed self-reflective analytic critical consciousness in the first axial period, we must now, while retaining these values, reappropriate and integrate into that consciousness the collective and cosmic dimensions of the pre-axial consciousness. We must recapture the unity

[36:14]

of tribal consciousness by seeing humanity as a single tribe. That's asking for quite a lot, isn't it? And of course, the tribal consciousness doesn't look very attractive, does it, nowadays, when it's expressed in terrorism, particularly blowing up airplanes and things like that, and killing people at random because they belong to the others. There are parts of that which are simply not acceptable, which is the most awful thing in the world. However, there's something else in it, that closeness, which is part of Israel, isn't it? I mean, Israel is our biblical tribal people. Whatever we think of Israeli politics, there's something about that sense of belonging, that sense of family that needs to be recovered for us, and the sense of earth. Sometimes I wonder if our separation from this point in Christianity doesn't have to do with our separation from Israel, which has somehow never been bridged. How much did we let go of? How much did we separate ourselves from? We separated ourselves definitively from Israel and from Judaism. And remember, for a long time,

[37:16]

Christianity defined itself sort of as being not Jewish. The New Testament is that which is not the Old Testament. There's a lot of continuity there. Maybe the continuity has to be re-established. Remember what Paul says in Romans? He says that if their alienation, I think we had the reading recently, the alienation of the Jews by their not accepting Christ, means the salvation of the Gentiles, because then the Gospel goes out to the rest of the world. It's kind of expelled. What does their restoration mean? The reconciliation with Israel but the resurrection from the dead. But the resurrection from the dead. I'm quoting approximately, OK? Not exactly. But see, that's the element of the body. So the restoration of Israel is being connected with that restoration of the body, with that totality of restoration. So there's something there which I don't claim to understand. Cousins goes on. This means that the consciousness

[38:16]

of the 21st century will be global from two perspectives. First, from a horizontal perspective, cultures and religions must meet each other on the surface of the globe, entering into creative encounters that will produce a complexified collective consciousness. Horrible language. Complexified collective consciousness. He's getting his language partly from Teilhard. He's a great student of Teilhard. And Teilhard's a great prophet in all of this matter. Because it's as if Teilhard is within Christianity, he's not a Western Christian. He's the one who leaves behind them, as it were, these two dimensions, and heads in this direction and in this direction. And instead of the God of the above, he wants the God of the ahead, the one that's moving ahead in history, in a pattern of evolution. And he thinks of God not as up there, but in Christ as the Omega, which is imminent in the creation, imminent in humanity, moving forward on this evolutionary track. So it becomes completely incarnational. He's the one who seems, strangely,

[39:18]

to reverse the pattern and to thoroughly, what would you call it, thoroughly sketch out this revolutionary movement down in this direction. Away from the preferred hemisphere, as it were, for all those centuries. So he's very significant. But his language, my goodness, that kind of science fiction language that he has. Complexified collective consciousness. Second, from a vertical perspective, they must plunge their roots deep into the earth in order to provide a stable and secure base for future development. So there's the horizontal, which is the gathering of peoples and of religions. And the vertical, which is a plunging of their roots deep into the earth in order to provide a stable and secure base for future development. This new global consciousness must be organically ecological, supported by structures that will ensure justice and peace, and so on. The voice of the oppressed must be heard and noticed how he relates two things once again. The consciousness of the earth and the consciousness of the poor and oppressed.

[40:19]

The voices of the poor and the voice of the earth, as it were. They both come from the same direction. And both of them are that what would you call it, that repressed dimension of ourselves. And we can never get it together until somehow we integrate that. Somehow we listen to that. Open ourselves to it. I wanted to read you something related to that. This was a talk that Cousins gave at the Parliament of Religions three years ago. There was another talk there. I heard that one. I didn't hear this one. This was by Paul F. Knitter. And his title is significant. Pluralism and Oppression. Dialogue between the many religions and the many poor. He says there are two world-spanning realities that confront and challenge the relevance of any religion in today's world. The many other religions and the many poor. Now that's the horizontal and the vertical of Cousins. The many other religions are the matter of this dialogue between religions, between traditions,

[41:21]

which was what the Parliament of Religions was involved with. And he's saying that that can't go anywhere until you hear the other voice, until you engage in the other dialogue, which is the dialogue with the poor, the many poor. I thought his, what he had to say was extremely cogent, so I want to read a little bit of it to you. It's a different language than Cousins. He sounds much more like a preacher. And his gospel actually is pretty cogent. In other words, Christians, together with persons of all religious communities, today must respond to the realities of pluralism and oppression. Those are his two words. Pluralism and oppression. Now we can enjoy the pluralism. We can enjoy the diversity. But he says we're kidding ourselves enjoying that diversity. The diversity, as it were, of the third dimension there. The opening up of the metaphoric, of the plural, of imagination. And of the, what would you call it, the rainbow of traditions and of cultures that we encounter today. He says we're kidding ourselves if we do that without listening to this

[42:24]

other dimension, this other voice, which is the voice of the oppressed. That is our fourth pole there. Different though they indeed are, both of these challenges must receive the concern of believers, theologians, and religious leaders. What is now needed is a coordinated joint response to these two different but equally pressing issues. Religious diversity and global responsibility, or inter-religious dialogue and socio-ecological liberation. There's one for you. Or in more Christian terms, a theology of religions and a theology of liberation. So the theology of liberation is what I'm trying to get at here. And that belongs to our fourth pole. It's interesting that a commentary on the Gospel of Mark was written from a liberation theology perspective. Mark's Gospel, remember, corresponds to our fourth point. Mark's Gospel, which has been called a passion narrative with an introduction because the cross is so central in it. And the core of Mark's Gospel actually, I believe, is Jesus teaching his way of the cross and predicting his own passion.

[43:25]

Mark's Gospel, in which the resurrection and the glory of Christ is completely veiled, as it were, in ordinary human realities. Now this, Chet Myers was able to write a commentary presenting Mark as, what do you call it, a manifesto of radical discipleship against oppression, against the structures of power which are particularly embodied there in the scribes and the Pharisees and the chief priests and the people that put Jesus to death. Now that's possible to do in Mark's Gospel, so Mark is really at that point. I don't want to develop that too much at this point. See, we talked about the four Gospels expressed in these four points. It's strange that they do, but they do. I think that goes pretty deep in the four Gospels. John expresses the pure unitive. When Jesus says, I am the Father of one, when Jesus says, I am, you could see that unitive light flashing right through him and it's pure. If John is about incarnation, that seems almost sometimes a corrective to this unitive thrust, this thrust

[44:28]

into pure spirit of John. The Gospel of Matthew, we said, presented Jesus as teacher, presented Israel as, presented the Church as the new Israel and the Gospel as the new Torah, the new law. So it's really this word over here. The Gospel of Luke, on the other hand, presents Christianity as movement, presents the Church as movement and energy, as the movement of the spirit rather than as a structure or an institution or something that stands. It's not something that stands, it's something that runs. It runs like fire. The Gospel of Mark, on the other hand, is like the ground from which these other three come, it seems. Remember that Mark's parables are all agricultural parables. They're all parables of the earth and of the seed. The seed that falls into the ground. It's almost like the seed of the Word falls into this ground and that's represented by Mark. And then remember how the seed comes up to produce 30 fold and 60 fold and 100 fold. It's almost like the three other Gospels are developments out of that original

[45:30]

reality of the seed in the ground which is Jesus in the tomb. Which is Jesus, the seed of God which has fallen into the ground. And it's hardly visible coming out of the ground in Mark. Mark's Gospel is an anti-climax because you don't even see there isn't Jesus. Remember the women go to the tomb, the tomb's empty. That's the original heming of Mark. Whereas in the other Gospels you tend to have elaborate resurrection appearances. It's not in Mark. The seed stays in the ground, as it were, and you've got to find it there. Now this has to do particularly, I think, with Eucharist. Okay? With Eucharist. Mark is a very sacramental Gospel in a hidden way. ...versity is dominant. You know, the kind of relativism of the post-modern mind. What's there is that it's almost as if the logos or meaning has broken up into so many facets that you can't find a single meaning any longer. And you can delight in the very movement, the very diversity. But he says

[46:32]

there's another kind of post-modernism, post-modern consciousness, and that's the southern variety. And what dominates there is oppression. In a southern post-modern awareness one can say that the suffering of oppression not diversity is dominant. And not the enjoyment of diversity either. Either the suffering of it but oppression. To balance pluralism and oppression properly is two terms. In our inter-religious dialogues we're going to have to afford the oppressed of the earth and the oppressed earth itself a priority, a place of preference around our dialogue tables. I remember Donald Nichol saying I don't know if any of you know Donald Nichol, do you? Donald has got cancer now, by the way. And it's serious. It seems to have spread. He may not have long to live. He was a professor up at the University of California Santa Cruz. He was a real prophet. A prophet of social justice, a kind of very courageous

[47:34]

gospel that he preached, even while he was teaching history or English literature or whatever it was he was teaching. It was marvelous. And he used to say that the ecumenical movement will never work until they bring the poor into the dialogue. As long as you're sitting at the table and you don't see the people that are under the table or around the table or excluded from the table, it's never going to work. Some way the dialogue has to be total. And that's what we're talking about with the gospel. The gospel, see, has that range, that total range. Manifested in a way that Jesus brings in all the outsiders, and especially the underdog, especially the publican or the sinner or the leper or whatever it be. That's the one he brings in preferentially. And manifested ultimately in this resurrection of the body, resurrection of the poor dead body of inert matter. Here he talks about oppression as suffering. He thinks that the presence of

[48:38]

the reality of suffering communicated in the presence of victims can provide the interfaith dialogue such as common ground with a common ground. Suffering can also provide common ground because of its immediacy to our experience. As post-modern scholars remind us all experience is interpreted but if there is any experience where the gap between the experience and the interpretation is as short or transparent as it can be it is suffering. So that's right there. It doesn't call for any, it interprets itself. Your nerve system interprets it. Suffering has a universality and immediacy that makes it the ideal and necessary site for establishing common ground for inter-religious encounter. Suffering brings us to the bedrock of human existence cuts through the hermeneutic circle. Suffering is so to speak at the seam between interpretation and reality. The oppressed

[49:39]

The oppressed, the quality of the experience of oppression that enables the oppressed to know things that the comfortable and powerful can never know by themselves. This has to do with the victim's greater experience of negativity. He's quoting somebody. Victims therefore have an insight born of radical negativity not experienced by the more elite centrist groups. The oppressed can be the mediators who will help the differing religions to understand each other and to work together. By first listening to the oppressed of the world the religions will be better able to listen to one another to each other. I'm reading that a little bit at random. These are sort of random shots in the same direction and they're all downward. They're all towards that fourth pole which I say is so hard to understand. From a completely different angle Jung wrote about the trinity. He wrote quite a long treatise on the Christian doctrine of the trinity with which he had a problem. He said it was

[50:40]

always incomplete, that our thinking had always been incomplete because we didn't incorporate what he calls the fourth. The fourth for him somehow is the ground and the body and the inferior function, remember? The suppressed or inferior neglected function in Jung. To integrate the fourth we don't have time but there's a marvellous passage by him on that where he asks what would Plato's philosophy be like if he had been his own servant, if he had been his own slave? What kind of vision would he have had? In other words the whole vision of Western thought, of Western intellectualism and of Western Christianity largely has been a second story vision which has not incorporated the ground. So he insists on recovering the fourth and the reason why he goes for alchemy and gets so much of his inspiration so much of his raw material from alchemy is that he contends that's what alchemy was trying to do. It was trying to incorporate the fourth

[51:41]

matter, the earth, the ground the body, the stuff of humanity, the raw material the materia prima as it were. So Jung finds the mandala then to be the figure not the triangle, not the trinity but the mandala, the quaternity to be the figure which incorporates everything. So Christianity has never been very happy with that because obviously the ground, the earth is not on the same level with the three persons of the trinity, is it? And yet, and yet, and yet the Rubla Vykon where the three persons are sitting at a table which is open to the fourth and the fourth is yourself and the fourth is the creation itself I think that's exactly what it is that the creation is brought into the communion, the divine communion and becomes somehow an equal partner in it If you read John of the Cross a very different author, you'll find him talking about the incredible fact of divinization

[52:42]

by which we breathe the divine spirit, we breathe the breath of God by which we live the very life of God we're brought into that Now that's a personal or interior expression of this same thing that the grace of the Gospel the grace of Christ, the music of the Gospel is precisely this that it brings everything into it brings everything into the choir as it were, everything into the song and that's what I mean when the music turns into dance, it's when the energy of God, which is the life of God has permeated the created reality the body itself the body is the bottom line we're not really redeemed until the body is redeemed so much of our spirituality I think has tended to ignore that it's not that we're going to find some practice either that's going to do it for us in this life we're not going to find a special kind of yoga that will enable us to live forever and always be healthy and so on it may help, but it ain't going to do it

[53:44]

the only way somehow is right through the bottom right through death and resurrection and yet there is an incorporation there is a realization of that already in this life that's what the saints have realized somehow they've anticipated the resurrection the glory and that what would you call it, fullness of the spirit by being willing somehow to anticipate the passion, anticipate their death um we're running a little bit late I wanted to say more about the importance of the body in Christian scheme of things it's very surprising how important the body is for instance in Saint Paul or look at the letter of the Hebrews that Jesus had to share flesh and blood so that he might be one with us or when Paul says that we're one body because there's one bread it's because there's one body of Christ somehow our salvation is bodily when Jesus

[54:45]

when Paul talks about what happens with Jesus that movement from old covenant to new covenant the before he talks about as slavery as darkness, as death as the letter, as life under the law he puts all that in the shadow maybe in a somewhat unfair way but the after is the body of Christ the after the thing that exists after the change, after the resurrection of Jesus is simply Christ, this person of Christ and the body of Christ and Paul's favorite language is in Christ or in him for us that is our condition after the resurrection of Jesus after our baptism is in Christ and that means in the body of Christ he doesn't say it every time, but it means in the body of Christ so this physicality is very important one could talk about that a lot there's an expression of tertullian in Latin caro cardo salutis the flesh is the hinge of salvation

[55:48]

and that is true in Christian reality think of the importance of the sacraments the two physical sacraments very physical sacraments of baptism and Eucharist there's an insistence on the physicality there's an insistence on the body Christianity doesn't let us get away from that not that we like it, I don't like it very well but it's there, but the more you return to it the more you find it really is at the center but the body is not just the exterior but somehow it's the core in some way of what we are we don't have time to develop that very far but it's Teilhard actually who carries that notion of the body of Christ to a cosmic scale and also inserts it into the time scale of a progression of an evolution of something that's happening so that what's happening actually is the building of this body of Christ which somehow in some way contains the whole cosmos but very particularly

[56:51]

contains all of humanity and especially we who are conscious of it as Christians by virtue of baptism so that ends up to be the final term somehow in what we're talking about a bodily reality of a kind of physicality that we don't and don't know because we know what bodilyness is that's what we are and yet we don't know what that spiritual body is what that mode of life is in the body which has acquired the mobility and the freedom and the spontaneity and the joy and the radiance the luminosity of the spirit we have glimpses of it or tastes of it from time to time but we can't say what it is I think it's beyond language in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul says well you're foolish to try to imagine this because the seed is not like what comes out of the ground afterwards the tree is not to be glimpsed in the seed and yet it's present in the seed and we are the seed now to conclude let me read just a couple of poems

[57:53]

which express the general drift of all this if not with precision there's a book of Robert Bly the Christ of the News of the Universe which some of you probably know what he was trying to do was express what happened to in the West between our mind and nature, how we got so separated from nature and so he collects a bunch of poems along the line, poems which express what would you call it? a contempt of nature, a distance from nature a kind of exploitative attitude towards nature and then the gradual revolution so that we're re-approaching nature and even find somehow what would you call it? a movement, a circulation between nature and our own consciousness he calls them poems of two-fold consciousness where there's a consciousness as it were in nature itself it's one of his ways of thinking about it it's a marvelous collection of poems Bly is very good when he's commenting on poetry I think and selecting poems this is a poem called

[58:54]

On the Road Home by Wallace Stevens and it expresses this movement away from mind away from idea away from, even away from some kind of explicit faith and I'm certainly not sponsoring that but I'm trying to show this movement in its own, what would you call it? its own home country, its own purity it was when I said there is no such thing as the truth that the grapes seemed fatter the fox ran out of his hole do you get that movement? it was when I said there is no such thing as the truth because somehow the truth had been hiding the fox the truth was keeping the fox in his hole and the truth had somehow shrunk the grapes the truth somehow the way we had the truth had turned the wine back into water you said there are many truths but they are not parts of a truth then the tree at night began to change smoking through green and smoking blue we were two figures in a wood we said we stood alone

[59:55]

it was when I said words are not forms of a single word in the sum of the parts there are only the parts the world must be measured by I these are skeptical statements now Stevens doesn't believe them at all he moves around into these different positions but this is the position which enriches life which enriches this life for us he says our paradise, imperfection is our paradise it was when you said the idols have seen lots of poverty snakes in gold and lice but not the truth it was at that time that the silence was largest and longest the night was roundest the fragrance of the autumn warmest, closest and strongest that's a marvelous poem it's somehow by turning away from these spiritual realities for him he's presenting the pure position this is a moment of experience of life for Stevens it's not the whole thing, he can just as well be on the other side talking about the mirror in the core

[60:56]

of the heart but when he turns away from all of those other positions and moves towards the earth itself and lets it be itself lets it sparkle, lets it grow to its fullness before him, this is the way it is it was at that time that the silence was largest and longest, the night was roundest the fragrance of the autumn, warmest closest and strongest all of this has something to do I think also with the image of childbirth of the child at this basic point somehow there is the child for Irenaeus it's the human person, it's humanity the child which God is raising up as earth raising up and breathing his spirit into so let me conclude with that text from Romans 8 I'll mark my papers

[61:57]

for the creation waits with eager longing, now he's talking about suffering he's talking about very much suffering in the body and very much this life of the earth I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, futility is all the weight of mortality for instance it's like the daily newspapers not of its own will, it's yesterday's newspapers, not today it's yesterday's news, that's the futility not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God the cosmos, the creation itself

[62:58]

will obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God and we're in the middle of the creation somehow and it's waiting for us to come into this we know that the whole creation has been groaning and travail together until now, groaning in childbirth, the whole thing and not only the creation but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, adoption as children the redemption of our bodies so the ultimate thing the last act here is the redemption of our body, the transformation of our body now obviously for Paul it's not something that's going to happen completely in this life it's the resurrection of the body but the resurrection of the body is the transformation of the cosmos, of the universe in some way the human person is in the middle of it humanity is in the middle of it and humanity is the key to the destiny of the world in some way the whole creation has been groaning and travail together until now, not only the creation but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit, what roams within our own hearts, the spirit, the energy

[63:59]

moving within us, this divine energy is the same energy that's moving in history, that's moving in the heart of the world, bringing it to this final point grown inwardly as we wait for adoption as children the redemption of our bodies so I leave that final point, that point of the body and of the earth as a kind of conundrum for us, which will be a conundrum for the whole of our lives but that's the last question, the final question do you have any questions? that's it ok, thank you very much

[64:44]

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