The Challenge of an Interspiritual Age
by Rev. Dr. Rodney Romney
August 20, 2006
About six years ago, shortly after my retirement
from the Seattle First Baptist Church and before
Beverly and I moved back to Idaho, I was walking
around Green Lake in Seattle, when I met a
friend, Jamal Rahman, who was a minister from the
Islam community. He was accompanied by a tall
man I did not know, and as we approached Jamal
greeted me and asked if I would mind escorting
his friend around the lake while he ran some
errands. Assuring us we needed to get acquainted,
Jamal dashed off, leaving the two of us to
introduce ourselves to each other. We exchanged
first names and continued to walk. It was a bit
awkward at first, because our only connection had
just deserted us and left us together as total
strangers.
Gradually, as we walked, we revealed more than
just our first names. I told him my full name
and that I was a recently retired Baptist
minister. He told me that he had formerly been a
member of a Roman Catholic monastic community but
had left that order to become a monk in an
interreligious community called Sanyassa. When I
asked what brought him to Seattle, he said he was
on a tour for his most recent book, "The Mystic
Heart."
At that information, I would have dropped my
teeth had they not been securely rooted to my
gums. "You're Wayne Teasdale," I gasped, as
though he might not have known it. "I'm reading
your latest book right now, The Mystic Heart. I
can't believe I'm having this walk with you."
He smiled and said, "And you're Rod Romney,
pastor of the First Baptist Church. I've just
read your book, Wilderness Spirituality, and I
can't believe you're a Baptist." In the middle
of the path we stopped and embraced like old
friends reunited, even though we had just met.
On the rest of that walk, we chatted like
longtime friends. When we returned to the spot
where we had first met, Jamal, the one who had
dumped us off on each other, was waiting with a
big smile. "I knew you two needed to meet," he
said. "You both have a great deal in common.
For one thing, you have each outgrown your
religious traditions for something more
universal."
Wayne Teasdale died a few years ago from cancer.
It was in his book, "The Mystic Heart," that I
first read about the age of interspirituality, a
radically new approach to our life as a human
family in a world that grows increasingly more
divided. He outlined this age with the following
seven qualities:
1. The emergence of ecological awareness and
sensitivity to the natural, organic world, with
an acknowledgment of the basic fragility of the
earth.
2. A growing sense of the rights of other
species.
3. A recognition of the interdependence of all
domains of life and reality.
4. The ideal of abandoning a militant nationalism
as a result of this tangible sense of our
essential interdependence.
5. A deep, evolving experience of community
between and among the religions through their
individual members.
6. The growing receptivity to the inner treasures
of the world's religions.
7. An openness to the cosmos, with the
realization that the relationship between humans
and the earth is part of the larger community of
the universe.
These shifts have slowly become part of the
religious thought and culture of the third
millennium. Perhaps the spirit of Wayne Teasdale
is hovering about and that he is aware of the
seeds that he has sown for the common good of the
inhabitants of this planet, particularly during
this violent and uncertain time in which we are
now living.
Thomas Berry, a popular writer of our time,
referred to himself as a geologian, meaning a
theologian for the earth. This is spirituality
attaching itself to ecology. The Hindu and
Buddhist, the Sufi, the Jewish, the Muslim, the
Christian, and indigenous peoples-all are slowly
but surely becoming united in a movement that
links ecology and spiritual traditions together
in a common enterprise that today is called
interspirituality. An aphorism from the Hindu
tradition says it well: "The paths are many, but
the goal is the same." We are trying to save our
earth and expand our sense of spiritual
connections.
My question regarding interspirituality is this:
if ecology and religion can be yoked together,
can politics and religion find some common
ground? I agree with what Senator Ted Kennedy
said recently, "Our current 'stay the course'
strategy in Iraq is a failed strategy. The
bloodletting shows no sign of letting up. Recent
weeks have brought warnings that the situation
may be even worse. Once we said that we were
there for the liberation of Iraq, but it now
appears that what might emerge is an all-out
civil war… Prime Minister Tony Blair in Britain
has agreed that Iraq could fly apart at any
moment. Yet President Bush responded to these
warnings by saying: 'You know, I hear people say
civil war this, civil war that, but the Iraqi
people have decided against a civil war.'"
Senator Kennedy concluded his remarks by saying,
"So President Bush continues to whistle past the
graveyard, and will continue to do so as long as
Congress ratifies his failed strategy."
I think what I am most saddened about is what
must be happening to the souls of own young men
and women who are fighting in Iraq, as they learn
to kill, demean and torture other human beings.
I wonder if we will ever be able to turn this
current tragedy into a higher realization, where
we can move beyond politics and be touched by
something ultimate.
Teasdale wrote this in his book, "In experiences
of tragedy, in the death of a loved one, for
example, we leave our local awareness for a while
and are brought into a higher realization…it
takes us beyond ourselves, into a mystical
experience, where we are touched by something
ultimate." (page 70)
I had that experience this past week. Before my
older brother died about a year ago, he asked to
be cremated and to have his ashes scattered in a
canyon in the Little Lost River Valley, where we
had grown up. We (his two brothers and one
sister) agreed to do that. So this past week,
about twenty members of our family met and camped
out in Sawmill Canyon at the head of Little Lost
River Valley. On Saturday we drove over the
rough, nearly impassable mountain road leading up
to Bell Mountain canyon.
In that canyon my father, a native of Utah, had
spent all of his adult life prospecting for gold.
During that time, he met my mother, a daughter
of a rancher in the Little Lost River valley, and
when they were married, he took her up into that
isolated canyon to live in the log cabin that he
had built. In that canyon, my two older brothers
and I were conceived, and there we learned to
talk, to walk, and to explore a world that was in
many ways our own private Garden of Eden. When
my parents were divorced, our Garden of Eden
ended, and we left that canyon, only going back
on rare occasions to visit our father. He died
in l952 at the age of 53, and was buried in
Murray, Utah, after which there were no more
trips to the canyon.
I was totally unprepared for what happened to me
when we went back to that canyon this past week
to carry out the last wishes of my brother. As
we stood in front of the cabin which my dad had
built, which was now starting to fall down, I
felt an emotion welling up inside of me that left
me totally speechless. The family was gathered
around, waiting for me to say the appropriate
words, but instead of words, all I had were
tears. Tears for the broken dreams of my father,
who had lived all his life in a futile search for
gold in that wilderness canyon. Tears for my
parents, whose marriage had lasted only a few
years. Tears for the brother who was no longer
with us. Tears for that tumble-down cabin that
had once sheltered all of us. Tears for that
rough mountain trail where I had taken my first
steps as a child and where I had awakened to the
beauty and mystery of this world, as well the
pain and separation that often marks the human
path.
When I was finally able to speak, I tried to
share a bit of what it had been like to grow up
in that wilderness, where all we had was each
other. I tried to pay tribute to my brother who
had asked to have his final remains brought to
that place. But no words could express all that
was in my heart at that moment. I had entered
into a state of interspiritual awareness, and an
old Hindu aphorism came back to me, "The paths
are many, but the goal is the same." I was
finally able to say a brief prayer of commitment
and scatter the ashes of my brother around that
old cabin that had been our first home.
We all want to go home, to the place that
resonates with our temperament, our
understanding, and our capacity. We all want to
be where we know we belong, the place where we
are fully loved and where we can love fully. For
a moment in that wilderness canyon in front of
that old tumble-down cabin, I felt I had come
home. Yet I knew the feeling was only temporary.
I am on my way home, but I am not yet fully
home.
Wayne Teasdale said that spirituality is the
whole inner movement of the heart to seek the
divine. It is a commitment to the process of
inner change, and a personal attachment to a
spiritual way of life and the transformation it
brings. Spirituality is a way to travel, not a place of
arrival. And interspirituality is the common
heritage of humankind's spiritual wisdom: the
place where we share mystical resources across
boundaries of different religious traditions.
Teasdale said that we are now entering the
interspiritual age, where more and more people
are no longer isolated within their own homes or
native traditions, but are exploring other
traditions, finding what is useful in their own
growth. Life, I think, always seeks to change us
into more compassionate and concerned human
beings. If the war in Iraq could do that, then
perhaps it will have been worth it.
I was interested to read recently that Billy
Graham, the famous conservative evangelist, in
his final years has now become more moderate and
inclusive. He is no longer a literalist,
believing that every jot and tittle in the Bible
has come directly from God. He now believes that
God loves everybody, regardless of what label
they have. As he has come to his journey's end,
he has found refuge in a new hope and humility.
This marks the beginning of interspirituality for
him, whether he calls it that or not. It is a
journey I believe we will all take sooner or
later, if we keep our minds and hearts open.
Teasdale said there is a threefold summit and
goal of the spiritual life, which is the found in
all religious traditions: nonduality (from the
Hindu tradition), enlightenment (from the
Buddhist tradition), and love (from the
Christian, Sufi, and Jewish traditions).
Together these three qualities take us to the
mystical summit, the cosmic shore, or whatever we
wish to call it, where we all differences
disappear, because we have become one. Any
individual who arrives at this final integration,
says Teasdale, is a mystic. He or she has found
a deep, inner freedom to reach out to everyone
and everything that is. Jesus said when we
become one, we have reached the inner kingdom of
God, the highest attainment in life.
Each evening, when we are here in Idaho Falls,
weather permitting, I sit out on our deck looking
out across a golf course to the foothills of the
Teton Mountains and the grand expanse of the sky
that marks the close of another day. I have no
requests, no desires, and no demands. I observe
no particular form of worship. I simply sit in
silent appreciation for the God who has given me
life and who loves all creation, human and
non-human alike. I am grateful for the journey
that has brought me to this awareness of the
interspirituality of all religions and the
interrelationship of all life. My silent prayer
is that the journey will widen and expand to
include more and more people, for I believe it is
the only way to peace and good will on this
fragile earthship.
As you may know, the Golden Rule, do unto others
as you would have them do unto you, exists in
every religious culture. Confucius speaks of it.
The Buddhists speak of it. The Bhagavad-Gita
speaks of it, and Jewish and Christan teachings
speak of it as central to life. What would happen
if we would more fully and consciously honor that
rule as the universal mandate? We would see a
dramatic improvement and change in the world.
Wars would end, and we would find our way home to
each other and to the essential truth of
universal being.
Spirituality for me today, like prayer, is the
breath of the inner life. As Teasdale said, "It
is an essential resource to the transformation of
consciousness on the planet, and it will clear a
path for us to build a universal society where
the transformation of consciousness will help us
embrace all that is and assist us in building a
universal age of peace for the good of all
humanity and all creation."
To that end, to the building of a new world of
freedom, respect and love, I would dedicate the
remainder of my life, and invite each of you, as
you are moved, to do the same. We are all on a
journey home, to the place of our belonging, the
place of our freedom, and the place where we are
fully known and completely loved. Let us journey
in love and gratitude.
posted by Rev. Rick Mitchell, PhD @ 6:27 PM
0 comments
