1 God is both Mother and Father.
2 At this time in history, it is important to bring gender balance back.
3 God is always new, always young, and always “in the beginning.”
4 God the Punitive Father is a false god and an idol that serves empire-builders. The full nature of the Godhead is as much female and motherly as it is masculine and fatherly.
5 “All the names we give to God come from an understanding of ourselves.” (Eckhart)
6 Theism (the idea that God is ‘out there’ or above and beyond the universe) is false. All things are in God and God is in all things (panentheism).
7 Everyone is born a mystic and a lover who experiences the unity of things and all are called to keep this mystic or lover of life alive.
8 All are called to be prophets, which is to interfere with injustice.
9 Wisdom is Love of Life. “I have come that you may have life and have it in abundance.” (Gospel of John)
10 God loves all of creation and science can help us more deeply penetrate and appreciate the mysteries and wisdom of God in creation.
11 Religion is not necessary, but spirituality is.
12 “Jesus does not call us to a new religion but to life.” (Bonhoeffer)
13 Spirituality and religion are not the same thing.
14 Christians must distinguish between God (masculine, history, and liberation) and Godhead (feminine and mystery, being and non-action).
15 Christians must distinguish between Jesus (an historical figure) and Christ (the experience of God-in-all-things).
16 Christians must distinguish between Jesus and Paul.
17 Jesus, not unlike many spiritual teachers, taught us that we are sons and daughters of God.
18 Ecojustice is a necessity for planetary survival and human ethics.
19 Sustainability is another word for justice.
20 A preferential option for the poor is far closer to the teaching and spirit of Jesus than is a preferential option for the rich and powerful.
21 Economic justice requires the work of creativity to birth a system of economics that is global, respectful of the earth, and that works for all.
22 Celebration and worship are key to human community and survival and deserve new forms that speak in the language of the twenty-first century.
23 Sexuality is a sacred act and a spiritual experience. It is holy and deserves to be honored as such.
24 Creativity is both humanity’s greatest gift and its most powerful weapon for evil. All religions agree humanity’s most God-like activity is compassion.
25 There is a priesthood of all who are doing good work and this priesthood ought to be honored as sacred. Workers should be instructed in spirituality in order to carry on their ministry effectively.
26 Empire-building is incompatible with Jesus’ and Paul’s life and teachings and with the teachings of holy religions.
27 Ideology is not theology. Ideology endangers faith because it replaces thinking with obedience and distracts from the responsibility to adapt the wisdom of the past to today’s needs.
28 Loyalty is not a sufficient criterion for ecclesial office—intelligence and proven conscience are.
29 The pope is not the church, but has a ministry within the church. Papalolotry is idolatry.
30 Creating a church of sycophants (“servile self-seeking flatterers”), whose only virtue is obedience does not represent in any way the teachings or the person of the historical Jesus, who chose to stand up to power rather than amassing it.
31 Vows of secrecy are a certain way to corruption in the church, as in any human organization.
32 Original sin is an ultimate expression of a punitive father God and is not a Biblical teaching. But original blessing (goodness and grace) is biblical.
33 “Original wound” better describes the separation humans experience on entering the world, a world that is often unjust and unwelcoming, than does the term “original sin.”
34 Fascism and the compulsion to control is not the path of peace or compassion and those who practice fascism are not fitting models for sainthood.
35 The Spirit of Jesus and other prophets calls people to simplicity in order that “the people may live.”
36 Dancing, whose root meaning in many indigenous cultures is the same as breath or spirit, is a very ancient and appropriate form in which to pray.
37 To honor the ancestors and celebrate the communion of saints does not mean putting heroes on pedestals, but honoring them by living out lives of imagination, courage, and compassion.
38 A diversity of interpretation of the Jesus event and the Christ experience is expected and welcomed, as it was in the earliest days of the church.
39 Unity of church does not mean conformity. There is unity in diversity.
40 The Holy Spirit is perfectly capable of working through participatory democracy. Hierarchicies can interfere with the work of the Spirit.
41 The body is an awe-filled sacred Temple of God. All its dimensions, well named by the seven chakras, are holy.
42 Our connection with the earth (first chakra) is holy; our sexuality (second chakra) is holy; our moral outrage (third chakra) is holy; our love that stands up to fear (fourth chakra) is holy; our prophetic voice that speaks out is holy (fifth chakra); our intuition and intelligence (sixth chakra) are holy; and our gifts to the community of light beings and ancestors (seventh chakra) are holy.
43 The prejudice of rationalism and the mind must be balanced by recognizing the lower chakras as sources of wisdom, truth, and Spirit.
44 The central chakra, compassion, tests the health of all the others, for “by their fruits you will know them” (Jesus).
45 “Joy is the human’s noblest act.” (Aquinas) Is our culture promoting joy?
46 The human psyche is made for the cosmos and will not be satisfied until the two are re-united. Awe, the beginning of wisdom, results from this reunion.
47 The four paths named in the creation spiritual tradition more fully name the mystical/prophetic spiritual journey of Jesus and the Jewish tradition than do the three paths of purgation, illumination, and union.
48 Thus it can be said that God is experienced in experiences of ecstasy, joy, wonder, and delight (via positiva).
49 God is experienced in darkness, chaos, nothingness, suffering, silence, and in learning to let go and let be (via negativa).
50 God is experienced in acts of creativity and co-creation (via creativa).
51 All people are born creative. It is spirituality’s task to encourage holy imagination, for all are born in the “image and likeness” of the Creative One and “the fierce power of imagination is a gift from God.” (Kaballah)
52 If you can talk you can sing; if you can walk you can dance; if you can talk you are an artist. (African proverb and Native American saying)
53 God is experienced in our struggle for justice, healing, compassion, and celebration (via trans-formativa).
54 The Holy Spirit works through all cultures and all spiritual traditions and blows “where it wills.”
55 God speaks today, as in the past, through all religions and all cultures.
56 Therefore Interfaith ecumenism is a necessary part of spiritual praxis and awareness in our time.
57 Since the “number one obstacle to interfaith is a bad relationship with one’s own faith,” (the Dalai Lama) it is important that Christians know their own mystical and prophetic tradition.
58 The cosmos is God’s holy Temple and our holy home.
59 Fourteen billion years of the unfolding of the universe bespeak the intimate sacredness of all that is.
60 All that is, is holy, and all that is, is related. The universe began as one being, just before the fireball erupted.
61 Interconnectivity is not only a law of physics and nature, but forms the basis of community and compassion.
62 The universe does not suffer from a shortage of grace and no religious institution’s task is to ration grace. Grace is abundant in God’s universe.
63 Creation, Incarnation, and Resurrection are continuously happening on a cosmic as well as a personal scale. Life, Death, and Resurrection (regeneration and reincarnation) happen on a cosmic scale, as well as a personal one.
64 Biophilia or Love of Life is everyone’s daily task.
65 Necrophilia or love of death is to be opposed in all its forms.
66 Evil can happen through every people, every nation, every tribe, and every individual human, and so vigilance and self-criticism and institutional criticism are always called for.
67 Not all who call themselves “Christian” deserve that name just as “not all who say ‘Lord, Lord’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven” (Jesus).
68 Pedophilia is a terrible wrong but its cover-up by hierarchy is even more despicable.
69 Loyalty and obedience are never a greater virtue than conscience and justice.
70 Jesus said nothing about birth control or homosexuality.
71 A church that is more preoccupied with sexual wrongs than with wrongs of injustice is itself sick.
72 Since homosexuality is found among 464 species and in 8 percent of any given human population, it is altogether natural for those who are born that way and is a gift from God and nature to the greater community.
73 Homophobia in any form is a serious sin against love of neighbor and a sin of ignorance of the richness and diversity of God’s creation.
74 Racism, sexism, and militarism are also serious sins.
75 Poverty for the many and luxury for the few is not right or sustainable.
76 Consumerism is today’s version of gluttony. We need to create an economic system that works for all peoples and all earth’s creatures.
77 Seminaries as we know them, with their excessive emphasis on left-brain work, often corrupt and even kill the mystical soul of the young instead of encouraging the mysticism and prophetic consciousness that is there.
78 Inner work is required of us all. The spiritual practice of meditation helps in calming the reptilian brain. Silence, contemplation, and learning to be still ought to be taught to children and adults.
79 Our outer work needs to flow from our inner work.
80 A wise test of right action is this: What is the effect of this action on people seven generations from today?
81 Another test of right action is this: Is what I am doing beautiful or not?
82 Eros, the passion for living, is a virtue that combats the lack of energy to begin new things, also expressed as depression or sloth.
83 The Dark Night of the Soul descends on us all. The proper response is not addiction, such as shopping, alcohol, drugs, TV, sex, or religion, but rather to be with the darkness and learn from it.
84 The Dark Night of the Soul is a learning place of great depth. Stillness is required.
85 Not only is there a Dark Night of the Soul but also a Dark Night of Society and a Dark Night of our Species.
86 Chaos is a friend, a teacher, and a prelude to new birth, so it is not to be feared or compulsively controlled.
87 Authentic science can and must be one of humanity’s sources of wisdom, for it is a source of sacred awe, of childlike wonder, and of truth.
88 When science teaches that matter is “frozen light” (physicist David Bohm) it is freeing human thought and reassuring us that all things are light. This same teaching is found in the Christian Gospels (Christ is the light in all things) and in Buddhist teaching (the Buddha nature is in all things).
89 The proper objects of the human heart are truth and justice (Aquinas) and all people have a right to these.
90 “God” is only one name for the Divine One. There are an infinite number of names for God and still God “has no name and will never be given a name.” (Eckhart)
91 Three highways into the heart are silence, love, and grief.
92 The grief in the human heart needs to be attended to by rituals and practices that, when practiced, lessen anger and allow creativity to flow anew.
93 Two highways out of the heart are creativity and acts of compassion.
94 Since angels learn exclusively by intuition, when we develop our powers of intuition we can expect to meet angels along the way.
95 True intelligence includes feeling, sensitivity, and beauty. Humor is a gift of the Spirit and paradox is its sister.
Back to Center Post Contents | Home