Pussy Riot Uproar

Am I missing something? The world has gone into overdrive in protest about the sentences imposed on the members of Pussy Riot, turning the whole episode into an issue of free speech and Russian tyranny. But isn't the main point that they were sacrilegious and blasphemous - their act extremely offensive to the religious amongst us? They did after all stage this "punk prayer" against President Putin in front of the altar in Christ the Savior, the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow? Is no one outraged about that?

They have said that their protest was against the endorsement of Putin by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, who has since seemingly "forgiven" the group, and asked the authorities to show clemency to them. And they did apparently realise that their act would be deeply offensive to millions of Russian Orthodox worshippers. But did they realise how much further the shock waves would travel.

The subsequent world-wide media hype seems to have largely ignored, brushed aside, this religious aspect of what is admittedly a complex issue. 

This whole incident does though beg the question: What would have happened if, for whatever reason, the protests had been within a mosque?    

Hooray - what a sense of relief as I touch the Enter key and my final manuscript has winged its way to the publisher. All those months of slog and research and writing. What a sense of satisfaction. I hope to now have time for my regular blogs again, that have been somewhat neglected of late. To my readers, Mea Culpa. But the garden is also beckoning me. It too has felt neglected! 
And of course the book work is not finished. Copy editing, cover design, text design, marketing, etc, in the months ahead, before the book hits the shelves.

Meanwhile...I say to all my readers - "let our differences not cause hatred and strife between us. Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works. Let us respect each other, be fair, just and kind to [one] another and live in sincere peace, harmony and mutual goodwill."


From A Common Word Between Us and You, an open letter to all leaders of the Christian churches and denominations worldwide, signed by 138 leading Muslim scholars and intellectuals, October 2007.

All Religions are True

"After long study and experience, I have come to the conclusion that (1) all religions are true; (2) all religions have some error in them; (3) all religions are almost as dear to me as my own Hinduism, in as much as all human beings should be as dear to one as one's own close relatives. My own veneration for other faiths is the same as that for my own faith; therefore no thought of conversion is possible."

M. K. Gandhi

Healing the Split 3

It is hard to disagree with the aims of any mysticism that calls for love and compassion in all we do, for unconditional forgiveness, and that understands our innate need to live in joy and peace, with total respect and love for all sentient beings. 


But this is the message of Jesus Christ. We don’t need another religion based on His teachings!


I've recently written of the philosophies of both Stuart Kauffman and Henryk Skolimowski. Now I come to modern mystic and visionary Andrew Harvey - who arrives from a different direction altogether with his ideas on psychic free radicals of collective unconscious, which he claims are penetrating our individual psychic fields. This clearly has some common features with what certain scientific studies now tell us about consciousness and psi. Harvey's book Sacred Activism is a call to bring consciousness of the sacred into everything we do, to be agents of profound change. Harvey lectures on his idea and has founded his Institute of Sacred Activism, from which he is setting up Networks of Grace and a Global Curriculum, extolling the virtues of his own particular brand of Divine Transformative Power and evolutionary mysticism.
Harvey shows a respect for the faiths and religious beliefs held by others, for the wisdom of elders and his love for Jesus Christ, the greatest love of his heart throughout his life, he claims. But this is the Jesus Christ of the Gospel of Thomas, and many may be unable to reconcile the Gnostic teachings of Christ with their own faith.
Nonetheless 'hope for our survival lies in massive spiritual transformation and radical action,' he writes, and I cannot disagree with that, although the reader will by now understand that I think this should be the domain of the established religions. After many years of study and immersing himself in different mystical traditions and their sacred texts, which he uses generously throughout his book, Harvey forms a vision of a new mystic spirituality.
The problem I have with Harvey and his Institute of Sacred Activism is that his ideas are already put into practice in churches everywhere;
the prayer, bible study Lent and other church based groups I attend seem very similar to his Networks of Grace by another name. In fact I am not sure that the world needs another spirituality or mysticism when most of his ideas can be found, albeit perhaps expressed differently, across all the great faiths, in the teachings of the mystics and in ancient wisdom, as he will know from his own spiritual explorations.

Healing the Split 2

The other day I looked at the ideas of Stuart Kauffman, American theoretical biologist and bio-complexity expert, calling for a new scientific worldview of God in his book Reinventing the Sacred.
The Polish Philosopher Henryk Skolimowski seeks different answers to the increasingly urgent call for a new worldview, for a revival of spirituality and transcendence, in another inspiring book Let there be Light.
Skolimowski’s philosophy is of cosmic creativity and evolution and light that unite us all as the source of all life. To understand the cosmos and its evolution and the part we play we must understand the nature of light, and its evolutionary role along the path to enlightenment. Skolimowski thinks of traditional religions and science as both having filters. In religion these prevent us experiencing the full spiritual transcendence needed for this world. Science also has its filters, becoming totally reductionist, and its rationality has become limiting and crippling. It has used Darwinian evolution as a hatchet against religion, but has never tried to understand religion and finds it hard to accept that there can be any theories of evolution beyond Darwin. And physics, he argues, makes preposterously arrogant assumptions about the laws of life. And he sees profanity in modern science and technology. He calls this 'mistletoe technology,' which he says is strangling the whole tree of life.
We are in the midst of a gigantic struggle between the old mechanistic consciousness and a new spiritually inclined consciousness, and the latter needs to assert itself. We have come to the point where we must choose madness or sanctity, and we have only been saved so far from madness by the great and beautiful art and music and literature, sacred and otherwise that is available to us. But much of our art is now ugly; perpetuating the ugliness we have created around us. And ugliness is carcinogenic. Without beauty we wither. Artists therefore have a responsibility in this. 'We can and must re-articulate human nature,' Skolimowski writes, 'away from the ugly and destructive; and towards beautiful, transcendent and noble.' Furthermore, 'the violence done to beauty has been violence done to our souls and lives…the loss of spirituality is one of the consequences.'
We need wisdom and an essential task before us is to nurture the seed of the spirit and the divine. Skolimowski therefore includes meditational practices of mind and body and light, to nurture our spiritual being. It is clear there is much wrong with our present social contract, and the need to design a new one is urgent. But this needs a leap of transcendence, which must be spiritual. Religions, he says, need a renewal at source. And unless we rise to that challenge to change ourselves, politicians and political scientists will continue in their old ways and the world will not heal. Because they will not change by themselves, conditioned as they are by the past and possessed by the 'collective un-wisdom of our time…The institutions only reflect who you are, including your indolence and lack of responsibility.'

This sets an important challenge for us all.

How to Heal the Split - New Philosophies for a New World

How do we heal the split, heal the schisms, between faith and reason, between science and arts, between reason and other sensibilities?
Philosophers will always want to challenge the status quo with new and sometimes exciting ideas, and creative thinking is going to be at its most astute and best when we seem under threat from forces that stretch our understanding, that are beyond our comfort zones.
And if the threat is serious, that is when humanity is steered most towards co-operative behavior and away from competition.
I hope that sooner rather than later enough people on this earth will truly take on board the enormity of the task ahead of us, that a sufficient critical mass will be achieved, to make a real difference to the way we live; so that all humanity, 7 billion now and rising, will have access to adequate food, water, healthcare, education, and justice for all. Could that happy state of affairs be in sight, with the help of the enormous strength of the world’s religions and with the genuine spirituality that they nurture, that could connect all people? Remember the awesome scale of religion across the world, which no amount of atheist campaigning is going to dent.
Let’s start with Stuart Kauffman, American theoretical biologist and bio-complexity expert, calling for a new scientific worldview of God in Reinventing the Sacred.
He proposes that we are all members of a natural universe of 'ceaseless creativity, in which life, agency, meaning, value, consciousness and the full richness of human action have emerged.' He describes this concept as awesome, stunning and worthy of reverence, something we can all view as sacred. He believes, from the evidence of the origins of life in the universe, that we do not need a creator God. (But what about the origin of the universe itself?) Instead he calls for one global view of a common God as being the natural creativity itself in the universe. Kauffman’s vision is that by harnessing our personal and collective responsibilities we have the wisdom, ability and knowledge to develop a new global ethics, and steer our evolution forwards through his proposed 'reinvention' of the sacred.
Kauffman describes four injuries of the modern world; the artificial division between the sciences and humanities, the need for more value and meaning in our lives, the need for spirituality for all, atheists, humanists, agnostics as well as those of faith, and finally the need for a global ethic. He believes that his ideas, based as they are on a broader scientific world-view than current conventional science, may provide a shared religious and spiritual space for us all, within which he hopes we can heal those injuries.
Kaufman offers ideas for a future evolution steered by us for a safer and better global place to live, aiming to address the schisms set out above. It is time, he writes, to 'heal the split,' for the sake of our world. He is absolutely right. But he can also be controversial and provocative, and as a Christian who believes in an Abrahamic Creator God I cannot agree with all he writes But it’s a jolly good idea nonetheless! And I have a respect for his beliefs and ideas.

Where the Blazes does Dawkins' love of the universe come from?

Have found a lovely clip on You Tube - Archbishop Rowan Williams was asked: If you could ask Dawkins one question what would it be?

The response:
In one of his books, Dawkins describes, as he is so good at doing,  the excitement of seeing the complexity and loveliness and interaction of the universe. "Richard, you're not just describing the wonders of the universe, you're in love with it.
Where the blazes does that come from?"