Fast
Changing World
“The
world is changing so fast that some days I feel dizzy from it. I am a
youthful spirit living in an aging body, trying to keep up with the
changes around me. In one way or another, religion has always been a
big part of my life, and that, too, is changing in ways I couldn't
have predicted ten years ago.”
Thomas
Moore (A Religion of One's Own)
The
opening lines of Thomas Moore's newest book speak directly to my
soul. The world is changing so fast it is dizzying. Some days I feel
like I'm standing somewhere in space watching our little blue planet
reeling away into the vastness of the cosmos like a run-away train.
There is no keeping up with it. Those of us, whose brains have not
been hardwired from birth to multi-task on multiple layers of
abstractness, feel ourselves receding into the background at light
speed. Take the internet for example; just when I'm getting
comfortable with the likes of Gmail and Facebook, along comes
Twitter, Hulu, Youtube, Snapchat, Twitter and on and on and on. Did
you know you can even search such questions as “who loves orange
soda” (though I can't think why you'd want to know) on Google and
get a list of sites to visit! If I wanted to, I could spend my entire
life wandering from site to site and never have to interact with the
real world at all. And that begs the question, what is the “real”
world? Do we even know? I'm not sure I could define it nowadays.
What's real is only real to the person experiencing it.
Like
Thomas Moore, religion, specifically Christianity, has always been
part of my life. When I think of Jesus, who loved the poor and
disenfranchised, who ate with tax collectors and beggars and
prostitutes, and then I try to lay it down beside the gospel of
affluence and entitlement that I see in Christianity today, I wonder
who we follow. Have we forgotten what Jesus stood for; do we just go
into our churches to socialize and fraternize on Sundays? Has our
satisfaction with mere belief replaced the command to go into the
world and do likewise? Now the social gospel, complete with rock
bands and swaying congregations, has replaced the soul's quest for
solitude and sanctuary and deep reflection. And there's a hard edge
to Christianity that perhaps has always been there, though I cannot
remember it. We have now attached “God-fearing” to gun-toting,
and righteousness to militarism. Where, pray tell, is the gospel of
peace, of respect for one's fellowman, of love for one's enemy? It is
no wonder our young people are opting out!
Thomas
Moore is coming to Birmingham the first weekend in May. My Jungian
group, Friends of Jung-South, and the Southern Progressive Alliance
for Exploring Religion, are sponsoring a two day seminar based on his
new book, A Religion of One's Own. I am looking forward to
asking him some of these questions. Like him, I am a youthful spirit
living in an aging body, trying to keep up with dizzying change. I
wonder whether you are, too.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
P.S.
Information about Thomas Moore's seminar in Birmingham can be found
on either website: SPAFER, or Friends of Jung-South.
No comments:
Post a Comment