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This is a blog entry from March, but one which I believe is being lived out here on TLS.
Imagine standing in front of a Mt. Everest-size crystal. It has been polished and shaped so its facets cast rainbows in the sunlight. Endless angles gleam and twinkle. It’s so huge that the weather isn’t consistent all the way around, or from bottom to top. My viewpoint shows me a stunning array of violet and rose shades emanating from an outcropping bathed in gentle sunshine. A dear friend is standing near enough for us to communicate verbally, but what she sees are hues of turquoise and teal. Another friend, who is on the other side of the mountain entirely, texts me that he sees millions of tiny rainbows dancing on the rain-polished ledge above. Yet another friend is swamped in fog, and isn’t even sure the mountain exists at all. We could launch endless heated debates over what this crystal “really” looks like. I could insist it’s purple. My nearby friend would insist it’s blue. We could agree that we have slightly different perspectives, but similar enough that we could accept one another, but also agree that the guy who is seeing rainbows is just too open-minded and therefore, well, just wrong. OR I can revel in my purple view, and appreciate the variety provided by the others. I may never see the rainbows for myself, but I can still accept that seeing them is a valid perspective. As for the guy in the fog, he doesn’t have to actually say the words, “The crystal exists”. As long as he’s willing to hang around in the vicinity, I can learn from his experience in the fog. Life has taught me that I’ll have my own experiences with uncertainty and confusion. In other words, the crystal is bigger than all of our perspectives combined. Insisting that any one or two views are the only correct ones dilutes the majesty of the whole. I don’t have to share the other perspectives. I need only acknowledge that the crystal is big enough for all of us to have our own way of seeing it. What I see and how I see it doesn’t change the most fundamental truth that the crystal exists in a realm of magnificence too huge for my puny brain to fully and completely comprehend. This is humility.
You can read more of my ramblings at http://www.soulquestservices.com/blog/
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This topic was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by
JCSchneider.
again… beautiful!
AnonymousGreat piece of writing! It truly is an accurate picture of what goes on in the TLS community. Thanks for sharing it.
I read this last night and was reminded of a picture that a friend shared several years ago. This morning I sat down and started putting my thoughts in writing (I have said on a number of occasions that I sometimes think with my fingers – and this was one of those – I had no idea that the outcome would be what appears below – it took about 2 hours).
Imagine a globe representing the earth suspended in a theatre from floor to ceiling with seating some way away from it, at every height all the way round so that individually we can only see a very small part of the globe. Many years ago (I’m 77) those of us who considered ourselves to be Christians viewed what we could see of the globe through the perspective of whatever denomination we were a part of. During the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s there was a falling away (especially in Europe). It was in the early 1970’s that I walked away from the Anglican church because of what I saw as a lack of radical Christianity. It was about 7 years later that I was ‘caught up’ for almost 20 years in a Sabbath-keeping church that believed it was the one and only true church (because nobody else kept the Sabbath and the biblical Holy Days properly). With hindsight I can see that from the early 1990’s thousands of people began to be drawn away from churches that they may have attended for many years, including many in leadership positions. While many of these people were disillusioned and wanted nothing more to do with religion of any kind, there were a significant number who have sometimes been referred to as spiritual but not religious.
A friend painted this picture of the earth suspended in a theatre several years ago when those of us who were ‘with it’ actually had dial-up internet. We were beginning to be able to share our stories from around the world as members or former members of different denominations. Some of what we were seeing appeared to be contradictory. Some were expressing their anger at God (if he existed) for deceiving them. Some were becoming convinced atheists. And all the time some were wondering why the churches themselves had no answers to some of the questions that were being raised. There were plenty of people who recognised the validity of the questions being asked but felt unable to walk away from their own ‘spirituality’.
I have a sense of having been sitting in this theatre since 2003 getting to know something of the stories of hundreds of people who have been drawn into the theatre by the connections made possible by broadband. As I look back I can see how much I have learned about why people believe what they believe, often as a result of divisive, denominational theology. As a Brit I have long had an interest in the rise and fall of empires. There seem to be parallels with the rise and fall of denominations. More recently there has been a recognition of the significance of ‘cognitive dissonance‘ – the feeling of uncomfortable tension which comes from holding two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time.
It wasn’t that long ago that anything that was loaded to YouTube was limited to 10 minutes. There have been stories of how our knowledge base is increasing rapidly – a recent estimate suggests that it doubled in 9 months and 27 days!
Towards the end of last year I watched a BBC TV series entitled ‘A History of the World‘. Some of the latest thinking about the age of homo sapiens (maybe 65,000 years) was very interesting. But what struck me particularly was the suggestion that civilisation as we know it can only be traced back some 10,500 years. The series also traced the place of the various religions in the developments since then.
It was around 2006 that I really began to understand that my faith over the years had been based almost entirely on ‘head knowledge’ rather than ‘heart awareness’. By 2010 I had reached a point where I felt that I had a faith that I didn’t have to defend. I was aware of a spiritual relationship that while making sense, left a lot of unanswered questions. That faith – the faith of Jesus – can be summed up as knowing God as a God of LOVE, and recognising that a real faith involves allowing Father to live his life in and through us.
Back to the theatre – the seats are filling up as more and more people are being drawn into a spiritual but non-religious environment. We are all seeing small parts of the overall picture, but because of technology we are able to share other perspectives from friends who have been on different journeys, and who have seen and experienced different parts of the story. I have long understood how we have misunderstood some of the myth and symbolism of Genesis – that has many similarities with the stories from the other world religions. Could it be that God created man in his image (whatever that means) knowing that without the proper guidance we would ‘miss the mark of what we were created to be’ (my understanding of the meaning of ‘sin’)?
This is where it becomes hard to put my thoughts into words. We are looking for a world at peace. The theatre has been open perhaps 25 years – maybe the theatre is expanding to accommodate an increasing number of visitors. Civilisation as we know it has been around for some 10,000 years – there was and is a lot to learn – not least that warfare is not the answer. Then consider what we have learned in just the last 50 years . . .
As someone who love iridescent gems, this is a beautiful perspective!
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