Some of us read in newspapers this week of an Anglican priest
frankly acknowledging he is atheist. He isn’t the only one, I have heard.
It is deeply puzzling that they should continue as clergymen,
unless it is for the base practical reason that the salary, if not handsome,
is at least a pension with the promise of a further pension later to boost that
offered by the state. In a way the logic would be that since there is no God neither
are any ethics attached to being paid in his name.
Presumably such priests had believed at one stage and had
been willing to offer their lives in service to Christ. What had they expected
in return that this faith gave out? The profession was a male bastion and its’
stronghold has been taken over to a large extent by women whose style and type
of faith (if even that exists) is very different. Christianity was a man’s
religion. The female clergy seem to adhere to that premise since they wear token
male garments.
But what about spirituality? What is that? I think it is a
slow transition from the base to the refined. And if one were in a crucible
under a bunsen burner one would find the process entailed much anguish. The
rubble has to be burnt away. Are we the rubble or the refined ore?
In christian language this is the process of crucifixion. We
need a narrative and that is the one given to us by Christ, who himself
underwent the process. He was born a human baby with all that is entailed in
any human life ahead of him. He showed us how it is done.
What for? Well for the reason that the reality is there is
only spirituality. A spiritual universe and a spiritual body. That’s all there
is. We are to be transmuted from water of the earth to wine of the gods.
Essentially we already are spiritual entities, but a journey or a process is the
movement of the spirit. We are heading somewhere whether we like it or not.
This isn’t a bus we can get off.
If you think the idea that Jesus rose from the dead is
preposterous, think transmutation. He showed us before our eyes that the world
is not what we think it is. It is part of an eternal spiritual entity. We are
of its essence. What we think we can see (and remember Einstein – things are not as we
see them even with these eyes) is not as
it looks. It isn’t. Jesus demonstrated on our earthly level that all that we think we
see is not as it looks.
We are part of something wonderful and we need a compass.
Jesus is a compass.
Think rebirth. Why should this process be limited to one
earthly experience. Why not many? Try past-life regression to discover what has
happened before. This world seems to be a sort of gym for spiritual work-outs
and training.
It may also be a means by which less refined levels of the
spiritual universe are also refined by the action of the spiritual entities
which choose to spend lives here, and usually really try to improve and help things
along. Nearly everyone has some small ambition to make things better in his or
her small corner. Such efforts are heartening.
Clergy who are all at sea without a compass can go back to
their New Testament, or maybe look around them to discover all the signs of
green shoots sprouting up, and wonder from whence they receive their nutrients.
