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Good evening. It's a wonderful evening. Thank you for being here. My name is Joel Lore. I'm the new president of Hartford Seminary. Actually, I can't say new anymore. I just celebrated my one-year anniversary of my first day. It still feels new, and yet it feels so familiar. And for those of you who know, I'm going to say a little bit about Hartford Seminary in a minute. But this really is a family of people who are trying to live out deep spiritual traditions and lives that now, that are making a difference in the world, hopefully. And those are kind of clichés, but we really do hope that's true here. So we are delighted you're here.
I first would like to acknowledge our sponsors. We have co-sponsors, of course. Hartford Seminary is here. But first, I'd like to acknowledge First Church of West Hartford. If you are connected with First Church, could you wave or just let us know? And let's give them a round of applause. Thank you. Also, I'd like to acknowledge St. John's Episcopal Church of West Hartford. If you are from that congregation or group or connected, could you wave? That is the place I call home. So I'm glad you're all here with me tonight.
I'd like to say a few quick words about Hartford Seminary. Not all of you will know us as well as others. I'd like to say that we are standing, or I guess sitting, on sacred ground. Founded in 1834, we are a place of firsts. Maybe you know this, maybe you don't. Way back in 1889, we were the first seminary in the country to open its doors to women. Yeah, I think that's worth. We're also the first seminary in the country to start a center for Muslim-Christian relations and Islamic studies. That was in 1973. But it needs to be said that actually our tradition of studying Islam and Islamic studies and Arabic goes way back to the 1800s. 1893. We're very proud of that, and that continues to animate our history today. So why don't we just acknowledge that to our Muslim friends and brothers and sisters? There are lots more of these. I won't give you anymore. I'll give you one more. In 2001, we're proud that we started, through the work of Ingrid Matson, you may know her, she was a professor here for many years, and in 2001, we started the first accredited Islamic Chaplaincy program in the country. And nowhere could Muslims go to be a Muslim chaplain and be accredited in that until we started that program. And we're very happy and proud of that. So Hartford Seminary does have a strategic focus on interfaith dialogue, and we educate people of different faiths: Muslim, Jewish, Christian, other. And in a way that's unusual for a seminary, we have a unique and relatively new master's program, the MA in Transformative Leadership and Spirituality. If you happen to be a fan of John Philip Newell, maybe this program really is for you. We are honored that our program director, the renowned Miriam Therese Winter, Dr. Winter, is here tonight. If you like, she is here, and she is teaching a course this fall. You have some information on your desk. I know there's a lot of paper there, and there's this tension in my heart about whether we should print and put so much paper out. We will reuse it if you don't want to take it, but I encourage you to take it with you. We have found that our best way to bring people to Hartford Seminary and tell our stories, through word of mouth, social media is important, all of those things are important, but it's really through people like you. So take it with you, give it to a friend, tell them about Hartford Seminary. We'd really appreciate that. So thank you all. So Tina Demo is here tonight, our admissions director of admissions. If you want to learn more about programs, please talk to her at the end. She's over there. So enough of this adieu. Nobody likes to do. I do need to say, please, if you haven't already, either turn off or silence your cell phones. And with that, I would like to introduce our speaker, the Reverend Dr. John Philip Newell. The celebrated author of "Listening for the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality," is one of the most prominent Christian teachers of spirituality in the Western world. Formerly the warden of Iona Abbey in the Western Isles of Scotland, he now divides his time between Edinburgh, where he does most of his writing and teaching, on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as leading international pilgrimage weeks on Iona. In 2016, Reverend Dr. Newell founded the School of Celtic Consciousness in the belief that we need to access our Celtic Christian inheritance for this moment in time, urgently. Robert Dr. Newell is an ordained Church of Scotland minister with a passion for peace among the great wisdom traditions of humanity. In 2011, he received the first-ever Contemplative Voices Award from the Shalem Institute in Washington, D.C., in recognition of his work in spirituality and peacemaking. His PhD is from the University of Edinburgh, and he has authored over 15 books, many of which, I hear, have changed your lives. I was at a reception recently. I think I had three people, probably the three people I spent time talking to, who said, "No, he's changed. His work has changed my life." He really is one of the most prominent Christian teachers in the Western world. Who were so honored to have him. Many books he's written. I'll just list two or three here: "Christ of the Celts," "Praying with the Earth: A New Harmony," and his most recent title, "The Rebirthing of God: Christianity's Struggle for New Beginnings." Please join me in welcoming our esteemed speaker, John.
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Thank you, Joel. Good evening to you.
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May I begin with a prayer? A prayer for clarity of heart. Clear our heart, O God, that we may see Thee. Clear our heart, that we may truly see ourselves. Clear our heart, that we may know the sacredness of this moment and in every moment seek Thee, serve Thee, as the living presence in every presence. Clear our heart, O God, that we may see. Amen.
May I say how good it is to be among you? Thank you for the welcome. Given the temperature in this room, I thought that I thought maybe there was concern about whether you'd be staying awake during my lecture. So, all, all except all the help I can get.
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I've just come from three days at Mercy by the Sea in Madison, Connecticut, where every year, at around this time, we have the School of Celtic Consciousness, a three-year program of annual study. Yeah. So I want to say, if, if what is offered tonight resonates with you, know that you'd be very welcome to join. It's a collaboration with these wise Sisters of Mercy, and it was a very blessed number of days.
One of the most cherished images in the Celtic world, from which I draw so heavily in my life and in my teachings, is the image, or the memory, of John the Beloved leaning against Jesus at the Last Supper. And it was said of him in Celtic legend that he had therefore heard the heartbeat of God. And he became a symbol of the practice of listening: listening deep within ourselves, listening deep within one another, listening within the body of the earth for the beat of the sacred presence. I invite us into that posture tonight, and that deep listening. And I invite us to listen within, perhaps for what we've never heard before, or perhaps for what we have forgotten. The deepest sound of our being, of God.
One of the things the Celtic tradition does is remember that the first thing that is said about us in our Hebrew Scriptures is that we are made in the image and likeness of God. That's like a foundational statement. Everything else that is said about us needs, I believe, to be said in the light of that foundational truth, that we are made in the image and likeness of the One from whom everything has come. For as Julian of Norwich, in the 14th century, puts it so simply but so radically, when she says, "We're not just made by God, we are made of God." That says we're not simply fashioned from afar by a distant creator, but she sees us as coming, at their essence, or out of the very womb of the One. Which is one of the reasons why Julian so loves to refer to God as mother as well as father, because she sees this is coming out of the very substance, or out of the womb of God.
Now, what does it mean to say that we are made of God? In part, it is to say that the wisdom of God is deep within us, deeper than the ignorance of what we have done. It is to say that the creativity of God, something of the essence of the creativity that is at the heart of the expanding universe, forever finding new form, new expression, something of the essence of that creativity is deep within us, deeper than any barrenness in our lives or relationships, deeper than any apparent dead ending in our nation or in our world. This capacity, pure gift of God, this capacity to bring into being what has never been before. But to say that we are made of God is to say, above all else, for Julian, it is to say that we, the deep within us, is the love of God, or that what she calls the yearning love, longings of God, the yearnings for oneness, the holy desire for union. And these are deeper in us than any of the fears or hatreds that lead to the tragedy of fragmentation and separation that we now witness in our world, and that we know in our own nations.
So, part of what I'm inviting us to do tonight is to ask, what would it look like for our of Godness to come forth again in radically new ways? Or to use one of Jesus's favorite mantras, what would it look like if we were to be born again? Now, this mantra is so central to Jesus's wisdom that we need to reclaim this phrase. It's been hijacked by one end of the religious spectrum, and it's been hijacked to give the impression that we need to become something other than ourselves. But let's be clear, Jesus was a rabbi. So his starting point was not the fourth-century Imperial Church's doctrine of original sin. That's a Christian problem. It's not a Jewish problem, nor is it a Muslim problem. These great traditions remember that what is deepest in us is sacred. And the doctrine of original sin has propagated by the religion of Empire, when Christianity got into bed with power, was a convenient truth to Empire. I believe we need to ask many questions about what was happening in the fourth century when our religious household moved from being a persecuted minority to wielding power and prestige and privilege.
So, Jesus's starting point was not the doctrine of original sin. This doctrine that has been used to give the impression that what is deepest in us is opposed to God, rather than what is deepest in us being of God. I was part of an interfaith dialogue a number of years ago in Richmond, Virginia. There was a rabbi and an imam, and I was there as the Christian teacher. I mean, it sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn't it? At one point, there's someone in the audience asked if we would speak about the doctrine of original sin. And the rabbi was the first to respond. And he said, "Original sin?" He said, "To most Jews, that would mean that was a really original sin, that was a really creative sin." At that point, I thank God for interfaith dialogue. Here, this rabbi had got a whole room full of primarily Christians laughing about this absurd doctrine. And I am very intentional about that word. It's an absurd doctrine. And it could also be described as perverted. The one only has to hold a newborn child in one's arms to know how absurd this teaching is. I regard the births of my four children as the most sacred moments of my life. In their face, I could see glimpse something of the countenance from which all life has come. In their skin, I could smell something of the freshness of life's origins. I believe we know this at a deep level. The doctrine of original sin, I often describe as our obsessive-compulsive disorder in the Christian household. We can hardly get through a liturgy without going on about what shitbags we are. I mean, if, if every time I entered the presence of my wife, I felt I had to go on about how horrible I was, I mean, she might like it once, but if I did that every time I entered her presence, it would be a very sick, very sick relationship. So we know the sacredness of the newborn. We know it in a deep way, even if our religious tradition has not told us this. We know it.
Many years ago, I was giving a talk in Lynchburg, Virginia.
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And at the end of my talk, in which I was exploring some of these themes, a woman, I think in her 80s, came very purposefully up the central aisle with a copy of "Listening for the Heartbeat of God" in her hand, this book in which I explore the Celtic tradition. She was coming up the aisle so purposefully that the naughty boy and me thought she's going to hit me over the head with that book. And I was quite wrong. When she got up to the front, she said, "I want to show you what I wrote in this book after reading it."
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She opened the cover, and inside she had written, "I knew it. I knew it. I knew it." I so often wish I had asked her for that copy, because she has said so beautifully, so simply, so succinctly, what our deep response is when we hear ancient wisdom that we've lost sight of. That when we hear it, there's a, "Oh, I knew it. I knew this. I may not have been taught it. This may not have been explicitly spoken, but I know this. I know this to be true."
Since that encounter with the Lynchburg woman, and many similar encounters over the years, I've increasingly come to believe that this is exactly how we should see what it is we're trying to do when we try to articulate wisdom and truth. That we're simply trying to give expression to what the soul already knows. We're not trying to deposit a foreign truth in the heart of the listener. And of course, it's a very dangerous practice. And religion, the religion of Western Christianity, has often pursued this very dangerous route of thinking that it has truth and lets us generously tell you what it is. Our role as teachers, as a teaching community, I believe, is to utter defined articulation for what the soul of the listener already knows. Our work is liberation work. It's about giving expression to what's already there, in ways that can help translate that deep wisdom into action, into compassion.
In the Celtic world, it is often said that we have forgotten who we are, or that we suffer from soul forgetfulness. So Christ is celebrated and spoken of as our memory. We have forgotten who we are. Christ as our memory. Or he's sometimes spoken of as our revelation. This word that comes from the Latin root "rebel," "re," which just means to lift the veil. So Christ is celebrated as lifting the veil, not to show us a foreign truth, but to show us the deepest truth of our being, that we are made of God. There, what is deepest, is of the sacredness of the Holy One.
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Many years ago, I was leading a retreat on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne in Northumbria.
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It's a beautiful title island, Lindisfarne. So when the tide is in, Lindisfarne is an island. When the tide is out, it's possible to walk over or to drive onto Lindisfarne. It has that lovely tidal rhythm. But on the first night of the retreat, in which I was exploring Celtic themes, I had a recurring dream that kept coming at me all night. And in the dream, my second daughter, a beautiful young woman, objective father, but a beautiful young dancer, she was in the dream. She was being told that she was ugly, that she was stupid, that she knew nothing. And to begin with, in the dream, she would look, look perplexed. Why was this being said? The more it was said, she began to look hurt. And the more it was said, she became inarticulate. The definition was finding its way into her, and at some level, she was believing it, and in a sense, becoming paralyzed by it.
This is exactly what we've been doing in the Christian household, to the extent that we've given central place to the doctrine of original sin, in which it has been taught that what is deepest in us is ugly, or what is deepest in us is ignorant, or what is deepest in us is without creativity, and the list goes on and on. This is exactly what we've been doing in the Church of England tradition for centuries. We have that evensong been praying, "There is no health in us." In our Church of Scotland inheritance, our confession of faith, our statement of faith, says, "We are made opposite to all that is good, holy, defiled in body and in soul." Shall we laugh? Shall we weep? I think we need to do both. And it's laugh at the absurdity of this teaching, and we need to weep at the terrible wrong it has done, and it is doing, in the hearts and minds, in the bodies of our sisters and brothers. And many of us in this room know those haunted places that we go because this is what we have been given the impression of, or explicitly taught.
Towards morning on that long night on Lindisfarne, when the dream just kept coming at me, towards morning, I moved into a half-consciousness and found myself speaking my daughter's name out loud to myself: Kirsten Margaret Iona. Kirsten Margaret Iona. And the more conscious I became, the more I realized I was saying her name because that is who she is. She is Kirsten, which means Christ-bearer. Jared Manley Hopkins, the poet, says, "We are what Christ is, immortal diamond." He lifts the veil to show us the diamond essence of our being. She is Margaret, which means pearl. She is beyond price, a jewel. And she is Iona, that island in the sea to which people come from all over the world for healing, for renewal. She carries within herself the sacred wellspring of the Holy One, as part of the healing of the world. One particular name, but of a universal family.
Now, I pay enough attention to my dreams to realize that this is not primarily a dream about my daughter. This is a dream, I believe, about a part of myself, maybe a feminine part of myself, that doubts my beauty, that doubts my sacred feminine wisdom and intuition. We must, I believe, exorcise our household of this absurd doctrine. It has done enormous damage, and I believe it inhibits our relationship not only with the deepest parts of ourselves, but it often inhibits or taints or distorts how we view the so-called other. We assume that what is deepest is opposed to the sacred, rather than of the sacred.
I often think about the edifice of Western theological inheritance from the fourth century onwards. This great construct of theology. And if one takes out the doctrine of original sin, peace, the whole edifice collapses. Because nearly every major, every other major doctrine is built on that starting point, including the sickness of a doctrine like substitutionary atonement, in which we have allowed our household to continue to give the impression that God somehow requires payment to forgive. Who are the people who have loved us in our lives, truly loved us? Could we imagine them needing to be paid to forgive us? So, so much of the construct is based on that fourth-century doctrine.
I'd like to spend a bit of time tonight on the first historically recorded teacher in the British Celtic world, a monk by the name of Pelagius. P-E-L-A-G-I-U-S. You might have heard of him, and if you have, it will likely have been in an entirely negative light. He is the most misrepresented and the most misunderstood Christian teacher of all time. And tragically, that misrepresentation continues in most of our Western seminaries. In Edinburgh, for instance, where I studied, generation after generation of theological student was required to write an essay comparing Pelagius with Saint Augustine of Hippo, and it was known for well in advance who the hero was to be and who the villain was to be. And we were given three misrepresentations of Pelagius. We were told there were no writings from his hand, so all we could learn about him came through the mouth of his theological opponent, Augustine, which of course led to a very fair analysis. Well, we know now know that there are plenty of writings from his hand, and guess what? He was not saying what Augustine said he was saying. History has been written by the conqueror, the Imperial religious tradition. Second misrepresentation: we were not told where he was from. He could have come from anywhere in the cosmos, the way he was taught. Well, we now know that he was one of us. He was a Celt. He was from Wales. And what he was teaching was not some idiosyncratic heresy. What he was teaching was the norm in the Celtic world. Third misrepresentation: we were told that he taught that we didn't need grace, hmm, that we had the capacity to somehow save ourselves. Well, in looking at his writings, it's very clear that he knows that we need grace. But he speaks about the sacredness of our nature. So he sees grace not as opposed to our nature, but rather grace is given to reconnect us to the heart of our nature, our essence of God. The grace is given not that we might become something other than natural, or more than natural. Grace is given that we may be truly natural, that we may live from our true nature of God. And he offers a wonderful, succinct saying when he says, "Nature is the gift of being, and that's a sacred gift. Nature is the gift of being, and grace is the gift of well-being." Grace is given that we may reconnect with the holy essence of our being.
So, Pelagius arrived in Rome around 400. Almost immediately, he was criticized on three fronts. First of all, he was criticized for spending too much time with women, teaching them how to read and to interpret the Scriptures. Already, the place of women had been so subordinated in Imperial Christianity that it was considered unacceptable for women to be reading or interpreting the scripture.
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Pelagius was simply doing in Rome what the norm was in the Celtic world, and that was an honoring of the Sacred Feminine and a celebrating female leadership. The second criticism directed at Pelagius was concerning his hairstyle, which doesn't sound a very profound criticism, but behind it there is a fear. Because what he wore was not the Roman tonsure, which was shaved up on the crown of the head with a ring of hair, symbolic of the crown of thorns that were placed on Jesus's head.
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Pelagius wore what was known as the Celtic tonsure, the Celtic tonsure. But the Celtic tonsure had been the Druidic tonsure. So Pelagius arrived very clearly reverencing the pre-Christian wisdom. And Christ was seen not as opposed to the pre-Christian wisdom, the Druidic wisdom, the new, the harmony of the spheres, the new, the healing elements of the plants and the earth, that celebrated the wisdom of the human soul. Christ was seen not as opposed to the pre-Christian wisdom, but rather as bringing it into integration, an expression. It's an exact parallel to what happened in Palestine when Jesus was celebrated not as opposed to Hebrew wisdom, but as, in a sense, a New Testament, not opposed to the, what we call the Old Testament, but rather bringing it further forward. The third criticism directed at Pelagius, and this is the one that we hear most of, is he taught that when we look into the face of a newborn child, we are looking into the face of God freshly born among us.
Some of you know that three years ago, I was elevated to a new status in the universe. I became a grandfather for the first time. And my daughter Rowan gave birth to her first firstborn and named her Ember. E-M-B-E-R. Ember arrived like a shining in the middle of a darkness, dark winter. This conscious winter. I got to hold Ember in my arms just a few hours after she was born. And as I drove into the hospital that night, I realized I was going in with my Pelagius text: "When we look into the face of a newborn child, we are looking into the face of God freshly born among us." And that's certainly part of the grace of what happened for me that night. But I'd like to share with you what I was not expecting. When I held her in my arms, she was so peaceful, and she was just gazing up towards my face. And in that moment, I experienced God looking into my face. And I wept, as we do when we are most deeply seen in love.
I was sharing this with a pediatrician in Colorado a couple of months ago, and he said, "When exactly did you hold Ember? I mean, tell me, how long was it after?" So I said, "Well, it was probably about two hours." He said, "If the birth has been straightforward, no sort of medicine complications, he said, the child has that peace." So he said, "That was God looking into your face." I knew that already, but it was, it was good. So we know this. This is a deep knowing.
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My son-in-law, Graham, is a deeply spiritual man. He is emphatically not, he does not define himself in religious terms, like so many of his generation. He has been deeply disenchanted by his religious inheritance. So he rarely uses the word God. But I spoke to him the day after Ember's birth, and I was asking him how he was doing. And he said, he said, "You know, last night when I left the hospital, and Rowan and Amber stayed in hospital, and they said, after that long, long labor, and when he eventually went home, he said the drive home should have taken me 20 minutes. He said, but he said it took me 45 minutes to get home because as I was driving, every time I thought of Amber's face, I began to weep, and I'd have to pull off the road and sit and weep at the side of the road. And then he would think, 'I can do this. I can drive home.' Let me get back on the road and think about Amber's face again." We begin to weep. And he said, he said, "In Amber's face, I saw the face of God." Now, where did he get that? He hadn't read Pelagius. Well, he hadn't then. I've given him "Pelagius" just now, but he got that because we know that.
Three weeks later, our second grandchild was born, and Kristen gave birth to a little boy and called him Santino, which means "little saint." And thank God, he is not that yet. In fact, if I could just give you a little glimpse into how he is not a saint yet. I was at, not too long ago, walking with Santino, and he knew I had a biscuit, a cookie, in my pocket. And he said to me, he calls me Baba. He said, "Baba, I want a biscuit." And I said, "Since you know we say please in this family." He did not look happy with me at all. It was like, "If you think I'm going to say please, yeah, you've got another thing coming." So the biscuit was already out of the package, and I put it back in. And I said, "Well, maybe later you'll want to say please." Or he was not happy. He was scowling at me, but he was not going to say please. Good, good strong ego in that way, man. And so about half an hour later, in the walk, we were in the Botanical Gardens by the stage, and I had long since forgotten about the biscuit episode. But he had not forgotten. What he wanted to raise the subject again. But he's such a beautiful little man. And when he, at intense moments like this, he doesn't want to look here in the face. This was too intense a matter. So he, he didn't want to look me in the eyes, but sort of looking down to the side, he said, "Baba, it won't come out. The 'please' will not come out." I mean, is that not fantastic? And often in life, we know we should be doing something, it will not come out. So I said, "Well, it'll come out if you want." Did not come out. They never got the biscuit. So, you know, he will either become a saint if he, if he gets a hold of his ego, or he'll do a terrible menace, you know, he'll be a terrible menace. But this wonderful. I remember meeting Bede Griffiths, that great Benedictine monk who spent most of his life in India. And I spent a really life-changing three weeks in his company. And I was a young father at that stage. And Bede was so interested. He kept asking about the children. And he said, he said, "Make sure they have strong egos. Make sure they have a very strong sense of self, so that when the time comes, they will know how to die to themselves in order to truly live, to live from the soul at the heart of their being." Not that's not to disparage the ego, this amazing faculty of consciousness and willpower that we've been given. But it's to say that the ego is given to serve the center, not to be the center. To serve the holy center at the heart of one another, and at the heart of all. And that's just to speak of the individual ego. But think of the ego of this nation. Think of the ego of the British Empire. Think of the enormous ego of our Christian household at times. Think of the enormous ego of the human species.
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That we think it's just about serving ourselves and not the holiness at the heart of every creature and every life-form.
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So we, as a family, within three weeks, were graced with a little feminine face of the divine, a more masculine face of the divine. We need both within us, among us, between us. Our Western world and culture, and so much of Western religion, has been dominated by a shadow form of masculine power, which is arrayed itself over against the earth, and often over against the feminine. And so many of us are longing for a deep integration of the sacred masculine and the Sacred Feminine within ourselves, and within our communities, within our nation, within our religious households. We need desperately to recover the Sacred Feminine within us, both as individuals, as men and as women, as communities. Only then will we truly know again what the sacred masculine is, because these energies are given to dance together. They're given to make love within us and among us. And only then will we be well.
A couple of years ago, in my research, I came across what appears to be an ancient Iona prophecy. It would be interesting for me to see, show of hands, how many of you have been to the island of Iona? Yeah, great. Well, the rest of you need to come. Not all at once. It's a small island that we have these weekly, week-long pilgrimages on Iona. People come from all over the world, and love to welcome you there. Often a time of real change, real deep challenge, and blessing. But I discovered this, what appears to be this ancient Iona prophecy. I haven't been able to date its historical strands yet, but it appears to be an early one. And the Iona prophecy says that just as the masculine face of God were shown to us in Jesus, the feminine face of God will be made known to us through Iona. And on that day, says the prophecy, the world will know peace.
Now, I don't believe this prophecy is to be interpreted literally or limitedly to Iona. But I understand this prophecy. I understand why it came into being. I understand why it was expressed in the Celtic world, because this is a stream of wisdom in which the Sacred Feminine and the sacred masculine have been robustly and deeply celebrated as both essential to our well-being, that they're given to conjoin within us and among us. This, I believe, is the day we are longing for. So the Celtic tradition is inviting us to look for the sacred in all, in every child, and every man and woman, in every creature and life-form, to see this sacredness, to adorn it, to serve it, to be part of liberating it in one another.
Many years ago, I was giving a talk in Ottawa, in Canada, and a Mohawk elder had been invited to make observations about any parallels between Celtic wisdom and his First Nations spiritual wisdom of the Mohawk people. At the end of the evening, he stood, this strong and humble man, with tears in his eyes, and he said, "As I've been listening, I've been wondering where I would be tonight. I've been wondering where my people would be tonight. I've been wondering where we would be as a Western world tonight, if the mission that had come to us from from Europe centuries ago had come expecting to find light in us." The true light that enlightens every person coming into the world, says John. We can't undo this tragic part of our Western Christian inheritance. Perhaps humanity has never seen, never witnessed such an arrogant form of religion, conquering, triumphing in the name of the so-called humble one. We can't undo it. We can, however, be part of a new birthing, a new beginning.
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Allowing our devotion to the light that is in Christ to lead us to be devoted to the light, that same light that is deep within every human being and every life form. Will we continue to tolerate the impression being given that the light that we love in Christ is somehow essentially foreign, or is somehow essentially an exception, rather than disclosing or revealing and calling us to add or to reverence and to serve that light, that light of life that is at the heart of everything that has being?
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Before we do some hearing from one another tonight, I invited us first of all into a simple chant. This is a recorded chant that I've created with some Scottish musician friends. In this particular project, we have taken words from the Quran, words from the Hebrew Scriptures, and words from the Christian scriptures to pray, especially on themes of peace. And this chant is based on a Quranic text. The words will be chanting in English: "Or whichever way you turn, there is the face of God. Whichever way you turn, there is the face of God." You'll hear an Arabic descant running through the chant. What you'll be hearing is the words, "His eyes everywhere." "Whichever way you turn, there is the face of God." I invite you to join the chant as soon as you become familiar with it. It runs for about five minutes. There are a couple of instrumental interludes in the chant, and when those occur, we can just silently listen to the words within us. And when the lyrics come back in, feel free to join the chant again. "Whichever way you turn, there is the face of God."
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[Applause]
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For a few minutes now, I invite you to do some hearing from one another, just in groups of two or maybe three. Just turn to someone next to you, on one side of you, an opportunity to to utter or to express what's been calling your attention tonight, what's been stirring for you. And if you could do that, just for a few minutes, and keep half an eye up here, and when you see me raise my hand, if you could raise your hand and bring to a close what you're sharing, then we can move back into the whole. And there'll be opportunity then for you to share anything with the group, the whole group, you would like to. This can be an in the way of a question, but it doesn't need to be anything you'd like to bring into the whole group. But first of all, just in in small groups for a few minutes. Thank you.
So, an opportunity now to bring anything to the group that you'd like. And this can be a sharing, an observation, a question, whatever you feel moved to offer. And if you would raise your hand if you'd like to offer something, and we'll bring a microphone to you. And I'm afraid the outer reaches of the universe, you can come down if you want to make her, you'd be welcome down here. So, is that a question? Are you waving to fans in the dark? Okay, yes, Molly. So, when you're teaching this morning, because I was at Mercy by the Sea, you talked about Kenneth White suggesting that to dream the way forward, we not define, we not even necessarily make it Christian. What it is we're trying to do is group building, community, empowering people's gifts. I really think Pelagius had it. So my question to you is, can you say a little more about that? Because to be Celtic seems to me to be Christian, and so I'm wondering what you're thinking and what Kenneth White is thinking.
I think you all need to come to the school. Yeah. I think, just to back up a little bit and to speak about Kenneth White, this Scottish poet that I was presenting on this morning. He has a sort of threefold focus that can be found in his writings. One is what he calls rediscovering the earth. That is coming back into true relationship with the earth, coming back into our primal or deepest relationship, and into relationship with the earth. And then the second pathway or focus is what he calls re-wording the world. That says when we come back into true relationship with the earth, we are being invited to see in new ways. We're being invited to speak and to act and relate in new ways. And he calls this rewording the world, allowing our language and our action to be shaped by that essential relationship. Then his third path is what is what he can sometimes calls journeying towards a new found land. That is a new to-found land. That is journeying into what we have not yet known, into territory that we have not even yet imagined, and how in terms of how we may live and relate with one another across the boundaries that we have created, and with the earth. So, in one of his poems, he, he often in his poetry imagines journeying towards this newfound land. And his journey figure is often Brendan, or Brendon, the sixth-century Irish saint. And he describes Brendan entering or coming close to the newfound land, and not wanting to name it, not wanting to tame it, not wanting to over-define it, and certainly not wanting to Christianize it, or to turn it into something that we've already known. So I think White is inviting us to, to primarily pay attention to this moving back into relationship, true relationship with what is deepest in one another, and with what is deepest on the earth. And that will give rise to what we haven't known before. So that in that journey into the new, let's not bring all the, the labels and terms and definitions that have characterized the old land, or what most of us are coming, coming out of, or have been born, born into. That's why its perspective, and I find it a very important one to engage with. I also, I have tremendous respect for Kenneth White. He is way beyond the bounds of the four walls of Christianity. And I believe we, those of us who are within, who with in somewhat with him, the walls of our inheritance, I believe we desperately need to be in relationship with Kenneth White's, or with the vast diaspora of our brothers and sisters who began their life within a defined religious household, but are now so deeply disenchanted that they don't come within the four walls to look for deep, that nurturing of soul and vision. So I end, and I count Kenneth White's, and men and women of that diaspora, as among my closest soul mates and friends. So I respect their decision to remain in the diaspora until something new, until a new vision emerges that they can, in fact, rally around, and that will feed their soul. The path that I have chosen, as the son of the Christian household, is to strive, is to try to say, in in attention of relationship. I love what Paul Tillich says in that collection of sermons called "Shaking the Foundations." The last sermon, I think, in that collection is based on the prophecy of Isaiah. The words, "I am about to do a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?" Until excels in that sermon. As long as we think that the new thing can only come through the old thing, then we are in danger of missing the new thing. He does not say that the new cannot be born and cannot come in part from within. But he's saying, as long as with so thought that we have control, or that we've somehow domesticated the sacred within the four walls of our inheritance and our sacraments and our teachings, then we are in grave danger of missing the, the new birthing of what's trying to come forth within the human soul. So I honor Kenneth White. That's, whatever it is that's trying to come forth at this moment in time, in the midst of the collapse of so much of the Christianity that we have known, let's not rush to over-define it. Let's not say it's ours. Let's not say it just comes from within one particular stream. Let's have the radical humility of not over-naming it, not over-defining it, but pay attention primarily to the bringing of the heart of my being into the heart, and into true relationship with the heart of European, and the heart of all. And I think that's what he's pointing to.
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Any other questions from the lecture this morning? I feel obligated to do this, and I promised myself I was going to wait for more questions. But so, Hartford Seminary, we started with these wonderful firsts that we're so proud of. The first first, which you may or may not know, but I think you'll be interested to know, is that the seminary was founded by a religious leader who felt that Yale had fallen into error. And the error at Yale was that they did not have a firm Calvinist view of original sin, and not just original sin, but total depravity, and the larger idea that you are born sinful. And so the seminary in 1833 started, eventually founded in 1834, to essentially fight the prevailing error. So we're standing on ground that was started essentially in, you know, complete opposition to what you're talking about tonight, which is interesting. Happily, this, this doctrine is not what defines us today. In fact, it seems to be at much importance after a very short time, which is interesting. Yeah. And I mean, that really did its, I mean, the Taylor-Tyler debates, and you can look them up, it's kind of an interesting story. But I have a question about this, because I myself came through this tradition, a Calvinist. If we think Augustine is hard, you know, if you're raised in a Calvinist tradition whereby you're but dust and and so on. So I listen to you tonight, I'm so moved and just so blessed. And yet, I also said to in our moment, I'm speaking with this person who I see God in beside me, I said to her, I'm struggling with, is there anything salvageable in this tradition that has given life to me and has blessed me, and as I think taught me something about humility? And even if it's not where you are, and hopefully I'm going to be liberated more fully to get there, but is there anything we can salvage from these traditions, or how do we get there from those who are in my place? You having been raised in it, and you have any thoughts on that? Yeah. Or is that your books? This has them, you know, I think this is such an important question, and thank you for bringing it into the whole. I am passionate about carrying, finding ways of carrying a deep gratitude from the traditions that we've that we've come from, been born from. And I, if I, if I could just speak personally to begin with, to try to offer an analogy to, I think what you're asking. So I was, I was reared in a very conservative evangelical family and tradition. And what I carry with me with tremendous gratitude from that inheritance is the attention to the heart. It was a very heartfelt piety, and a great emphasis placed on attention to the heart, and really quite a radical sense of relationship with the divine. I never, I could never accept the boundaries, the theological boundaries of that tradition, but I'm so aware that I carry with, that I have been, part of me shaped by it. And in the part of me wants to say a deep word of gratitude about that inheritance. And a couple of years ago, I was, I was part of a dialogue in Minneapolis, and I was being interviewed afterwards by someone I love interviews, and in part because when you're asked a question in a recording situation, even if you've never thought of the subject before, you just have to open your mouth, and I'm often surprised at what I find myself saying. And on this occasion, someone said, "You know, what is it that really characterizes your commitment to interfaith relationship? What do you bring to that that really characterizes it?" And I found myself saying, "I bring my conservative evangelical attention to the heart." That when I meet with my imam, or with my rabbi, or native leader, I'm looking to their heart first and foremost, and paying attention to their heart. So I'm deeply grateful for that. And I think that that, it's possible with all of these great streams of our inheritance to be doing parallel things. Because I don't think that we're being invited primarily to sort of trash our inheritance. And one of the reasons I'm so respected in many of the women's religious orders of of the Catholic tradition is many of them show us how to faithfully let go of our many parts of our inheritance. But that's not a careless letting go, and it's not a trashing of it. It's a faithful letting go in order to move into something more expansive that is freeing us from any of the restrictions or limitations of that inheritance. So I think in my sense, in the Calvinist tradition, and that, you know, that's part of the tradition that that of course the Church of Scotland stands, stands in. And I think that the emphasis on grace is what is to be very fully celebrated. But I do not believe that that means putting in of nature, or seeing grace as opposed to our nature. But by all means, let's fully and radically celebrate grace as what we are in need of in our relationships with one another, and in our relationship with the divine. And someone like Pelagius, although he's tarred with the brush of, you know, he says we don't need grace. In fact, when we look at us as work, we see that he sees everything as grace. This moment is pure grace. This breath, the rising of the sun, the birth of our children, everything is grace. So let's not, you know, let's find ways of saying, "Yeah, when, you know, when Calvin really focuses on our need for grace, yeah, amen." But I don't want that to turn into putting, putting down of the divine gift of nature. Yeah. I think we have time for for one more. Yes. We'll bring the mic to you. Well, I hope this is right, what relevant, relevant. It's just come to me. I have read two books in the last week, but one expected. Both were by the first one was leaving a church. But the second one is the world I want to bring into the cognizance of this group. It's called "Holy M.V." Yes, the first group. But the first book was written about her life as an Episcopal priest. This book is written about her years of teaching world religions. It's a wonderful book, and it says it all in "Holy M.V." It is what she has learned and where she is growing, and the invitation she gives to us. Yes. So, yes, and it's a wonderful combination of words, "Holy M.V." And she's really speaking about, you know, what, what does it, we're soul of another wisdom tradition in another religious tradition? What is it that we so love that we think, "Oh, I want that," or "I want to find an expression of that in in my tradition"? You know, emphatically, Barbara's not talking about aping the practices of other great traditions, but when we see something, you know, when I am, and have the opportunity to be in prayer with Muslim communities, particularly the Sufi Muslim tradition is the one that I've had most experience of. You know, when I see this placing of the head down to the ground in prayer, and really sort of bringing the whole body down to the earth, I, oh, I want to be connected to the earth in my prayer posture. And I think so, Barbara is really accessing very beautifully how do we pay attention to the practices of other traditions and think, you know, we have something to learn from that. But emphatically, it's not about just co-opting or or aping, so much as, yeah, let's, let's look with with utter respect at what is developed and in others, and let's ask ourselves, well, what are we needing to imagine as as part of the way forward in in another and religious stream. Thank you. Thank you all.