“Superficiality
is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary
spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of
intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.”
—Richard Foster
The obstinate fact that so many turned out to see and hear the Dalai Lama in Vancouver in 2004 speaks volumes about a spiritual thirst in our time. This spiritual longing by many in a post-Christian and post-scientific era should alert us to the perennial fact that a hunger from greater depths in the human soul will not quit nor depart. When the ancient and time tried paths to the well of the Christian tradition are overgrown, denied or forgotten, the honest and thirsty turn to other wells to ease their restless and parched hearts.
The popularity of Thich Nhat Hanh and Deepak Chopra, also, can tell us much about a longing for depth in the inner life, and the need to find the places and people that can point us to the life giving sites of meaning. The growth of Banyen’s Books and Sound in Vancouver from its small nook in the wall in the 1970s to its immense space today illustrates yet again the fact that spirituality, mysticism and the contemplative are very much on front stage. Banyen’s, like the Hollyhock Retreat Centre on Cortes Island, is a centre of inter-faith spirituality. Both Hollyhock and Banyen’s are lightning rods for spiritual pilgrims in search of greater depth. Magazines such as Common Ground and Shared Vision speak to such a longing for more, also.
The fact that James Redfield harvested a bumper crop with The Celestine Prophecy in the 1990s, and the modern equivalent, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, has done the same, speaks a clear message about a spiritual hunger in our time. The fact that Tom Harpur’s
The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light has drawn and mesmerized many should alert the attentive to the reality that spirituality is very much alive and well in our time. The content of these books may be paper thin, and such missives do appeal to the naïve, trendy and uncritical, but there is no doubting the fact many are wed and bed by them.
The sensitive and probing insights of Trevor Carolon’s Return To Stillness: Twenty Years with a Tai Chi Master (2003), Peter Emberley’s Divine Hunger: Canadians on a Spiritual Walkabout (2002), Susan McCaslin’s A Matter of Spirit: Recovery of the Sacred in Contemporary Canadian Poetry (1998) and Douglas Todd’s Brave Souls (1996) cannot be missed or ignored. Canadians are searching for something deeper than the churches are offering, and if the churches do not speak and live from the depths of their spiritual and contemplative tradition, the honest seekers will go elsewhere. And, can they be blamed?
Trevor Carolan, Arnold Shives and I went, in the late autumn of 1994, to Bellingham, to hear Gary Snyder read from his newest book of poetry, Danger on Peaks. Snyder is the last living of the North Cascade Beat poets, and more than 800 turned out to hear him read. Snyder has embodied, in his thought and life, an integrative depth that merges evocative meditative Eastern practices with ecological responsibility. Gary Snyder, like the Dalai Lama, speaks to a generation of spiritual seekers that long for depth and insight rather than religious thinness and hyper-activism all cooked up and served religious chiefs. The turn by some of the brightest and most sensitive to the contemplative and meditative practices in the East is understandable. The soul and spirit craves and longs for more than many churches (that are more interested in church growth) can offer.
There are two concerns we need to flag before we move on in this journey, and these need to be faced or much can go askew and astray.
First, there is a tendency by some of the more thoughtful on the spiritual path to idealize and romanticize the East and caricature and demean the West. This simplistic dualism will not do. There are distortions in both East and West of the highest aims and ideals, and there are those in the West and East who embody such integrity and authenticity. If our restless hearts are ever to find an inner centre and peace, we need to seek the best in each of the spiritual traditions.
Second, there is also a worrisome tendency to pit spirituality, mysticism and the attraction of the contemplative way against the repressive and oppressive nature of religion. The world and ethos of dogma, doctrine and institutions are seen as the problem, and inner liberation is seen as a flight from such a debilitating way. The spirituality is good, religion is the problem dualism and syndrome disconnects an honest seeker from the complex and historic communities that make for substantive transformation. Needless to say, this shortsighted dualism becomes its own predictable doctrine and all sorts of reactionary and self-styled radical institutions are created to support such a dogmatic ideology.
There is no doubt we live in an age of spiritual thirst and hunger. We should never mock the desire even though we should question the places some go to slake the thirst and ease the gnawing hunger. Hearts are restless both within and outside the church these days for greater depth and insight. What can the contemplative tradition within Christianity both hear and speak to such a situation?
The next few articles in this series will address, in a suggestive way, how a deeper and more contemplative Christianity can respond to the restless hearts and longings of those both within the church and the world. Perhaps this deeper apologetic is what we need for our time.
rsd
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