“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