Preface
I am very aware of my own failures, but I still aspire to
surrender my heart daily to this mystery we call God, or Allah, or whatever. I
was a Benedictine monk for 16 years. Now I am a married Catholic priest, ordained
55 years ago, affiliated with an Old
Catholic church in the Celtic tradition . I live with a grateful heart,
determined to keep on giving back for many underserved blessings received. I
still have an active prison ministry and storytelling ministry. Most recently I
have completed a spiritual memoir, written primarily for my disabled veteran
family to help coping with loss, Resilience of a Dream Catcher. My VA diagnosis is “Catastrophically
Disabled.” However, the second word in that phrase should be “challenged.”
This new writing project is envisioned as a threefold
offering: 1) what went wrong in the development of Christianity so that we Christians
killed and murdered millions; 2) What is the message of Jesus all organized
religion has missed; and 3) where we can find the mystery we call God today.
Mostly I shall use stories and am inviting others to participate. With stories.
The shortest distance between humans and truth, someone said, is story. This is
why the parables of Jesus still, after two thousand years, remain strikingly
perceptive about his message.
This project is deemed urgent because organized religion
still emphasizes the external and does not teach the message of Jesus.
Christians are still trapped in an internal prison which does not allow or
encourage them to accept their own inner beauty, understand how they are
created in God’s own image and embrace the challenge of Jesus. So, yes: this is
about Jesus and how he is not only relevant but urgent for us today. I have
already published one view of how we have misunderstood, Did
Jesus Die for Our Sins? Moreover, my Resilience
memoir has many reflections where belief and setback found grace. .
Orthodoxy, or “right teaching,” as the way to God and the
way to separate ourselves from Christians who believe differently, is a profound
pervasion of Jesus teaching. The emphasis on right teaching as the way to God
cannot be found either in the gospels or in the letters by Saint Paul. This
emphasis, it will be seen, began with Emperor Constantine and the Nicene Creed
in the 4th Century. When we Christians had state support for a creed
is when we began active persecution of others, even burning synagogues and
ostracizing our Hebrew brothers and sisters.
It was not orthodoxy that fueled the exponential growth of
Christianity from a small Hebrew sect in Palestine to a majority of the Roman
Empire in only three centuries. Demographers
estimate the growth was 25% per year. It
was instead, “See how those Christians care for the widow, the orphan and the
poor.”
Change is occurring faster than any of us can keep up with.
Stress is found everywhere. Some reflective practice is urgently needed for
humans to survive, cope and thrive. Organized religion has, in the main,
neither taught nor encouraged the development of the inner life. Although Jesus
said, “The Kingdom is within,” (Luke 17:20-21) no church ever taught us to go
inside ourselves to discover the Kingdom. Yet, some form of mindfulness
training is taught as a standard practice today. Also membership in
mainstream Christian denominations is
dropping consistently while numbers grow in charismatic and evangelical communities.
This is particularly true in South
America, but also is found world-wide.
I take my permission from the inspired life or Henry Nouwen,
exemplified in the title of his book: The
Wounded Healer. It is through our own traumas that we receive the gift of
understanding and healing. This insight was expressed in psychologists at the
Union Retreat of Ohio Psychologists on the interface of psychology and
spirituality. I have been privileged to be inspired by this yearly event for
nine years. For a report on this focus see Report
Hyperlink. (almost ready)
This project is published in chapters, one by one, monthly. I
am inviting friends whose faith practice I know to have been the result of a
person search to contribute to this project. Each would take as their topic:
Where I find god today? And write about how their faith has changed. My aim is
within a year, to have 15-20 chapters.
Paschal Baute
Please add your communts
Please add your communts
