Cyber Spirit Cafe

In his New Year’s Day blog post, Matthew Fox shared his “one wish for humanity” in 2025. I think it’s marvelous and I want to share it with you.

If I could have one wish for humanity this year, … it would be that we could rediscover our relationship to the cosmos, for it is from that relationship that our generosity, our gratitude, our wonder, our sense of reverence and of the sacred are rediscovered and energized anew.

Today there is a steady stream of proposals for dealing with the climate and other environmental crises. Those that seem to have the best chance of success have little chance of being adopted. Those that can be or have been adopted are too meager to make a real difference. For those like Fox who come at these problems from a spiritual perspective, the answer can’t begin with legislation or technology but a change of heart. It’s our attitude towards the world in which we live that first has to change.

Fox relates that he was once told in a dream that “there is only one thing wrong with the human species today: You have forgotten the sense of the sacred.” It is our misunderstanding of the natural world that is causing us to abuse it, coupled with our projection of God, our sacred origin, out into some great beyond. He quotes Thomas Berry (1914-2009), Catholic priest, scholar, and self-styled “geologian”, to explain this idea.

We will recover our sense of wonder and our sense of the sacred only if we appreciate the universe beyond ourselves as a revelatory experience of that numinous presence whence all things come into being.  Indeed, the universe is the primary sacred reality.  We become sacred by our participation in this more sublime dimension of the world around us. (emphasis added)

Realizing the truth of the sentence I put in bold is the essence of the spiritual transformation the world needs. So long as God is “out there” somewhere, nature remains just “stuff” for us to use and abuse as we choose. But when we recognize the sacredness of all that is, and especially the world and everyone who lives in it, our attitudes and behavior have to change.

So, as ridiculous as it may sound to some, our environmental crisis is, in fact, a theological and spiritual one, and needs a theological and spiritual solution. But where is that to come from? Most religions today are absorbed with their institutional survival and defending their doctrinal version of “the God above”, who is presumably the source of their authority.

Fewer and fewer people, however, share that concern or belief. While the church was not receptive to Berry’s assertion that “the universe is the primary sacred reality”, this has become one of the central tenets of the so-called “spiritual but not religious”. And what is important to realize is that this is not an intellectual conclusion but a spiritual experience. God, then, is not known primarily through doctrine or holy books, but an awakening to the sacred presence that pervades all reality.

I’ve just come back from a short trip to Arizona, including a visit to Sedona. It’s red rock cliffs and mountains were even more spectacular than I expected. Yet I could not help being affected by their incongruous relationship to the ever-expanding town spreading up and down the valley. Above the roof tops was amazing natural beauty while at eye level was the tourist staples of t-shirt and fudge shops, stores selling soap, candles, crystals and bad art, and countless restaurants and hotels.

Of course, I only know this because I, too, joined in the tourist parade. But I left wondering how places like this lost the sacredness experienced by indigenous people of the past (and often of the present) and became such commercial enterprises today.

It does seem we are approaching a tourism tipping point. We’ve all heard the stories (and perhaps have our own to tell): Mt. Everest polluted by equipment cast off by climbers waiting in line to ascend, cities banning or reducing tourist flows, park facilities worn out by visitor use and abuse, the search in our shrinking world for evermore distant and exotic locations to visit, seemingly to be able to say, “Oh, I’ve been there.”

The early Renaissance poet Petrarch claimed to be the first person since ancient times to climb a mountain (1336) just for the view. While he boasted of this, today I think it’s hard not to see this as a step backwards. For our ancestors, mountains, rivers, lakes, valleys, and other natural phenomena were often viewed as places where the sacred was especially present. The Celts called them “thin places”, where the normal separation of the sacred and mundane could be crossed more easily and profoundly. They were visited not to take pictures or get a stamp in a passport, but to have a deeper appreciation of one’s place in the universe.

Tourism and souvenir collecting have become one of the odd ways modern people create identity and self-worth. “See where I’ve been and what I brought with me from there.” It’s said that the bullets had barely stopped flying before people raced across the Gettysburg battlefield to collect discarded hats, pistols, rifles, and swords, even off the yet unburied dead, to have some memento of the historic, grisly event.

Ken Burns’ PBS special on the National Parks tells multiple stories of early park proponents being just barely ahead of developers wanting to exploit the country’s natural beauty, and not always succeeding. The overdevelopment of Niagara Falls became the symbol of what the park system was designed to avoid. I have to wonder why the stunning valley in which Sedona lies did not get the protective park status is clearly deserved.

The world’s development and growing population are making trips to “status destinations” increasingly untenable. Like the environmental crisis in general, the need is not for technical solutions to “ration” the experience of the world’s natural marvels. Rather, the need is for a new relationship with our planet and a new understanding of what our experience with it provides us.

To encounter the sacredness inherent in nature, we do not need to go to the travel guide books’ “great places.” Nature’s spiritual marvels are all around us, if we can tune our awareness to recognize them. If we step into a local park or our own backyard and really watch a bee pollinating a flower or birds building a nest, we can have a profound experience of the mystery and wonder of life.

It’s said no one can be an atheist after seeing the Grand Canyon. Yet the play of the natural world around us, in any place and at any time, can just as easily open our mind and heart to what Berry calls the “numinous presence” that surrounds and fills us. The rhythmic waves on any shore contain as much mystery and can inspire as much awe as those on the beach of a five-star tropical resort.

Matthew Fox, Thomas Berry, and many others have said that our lives will be disordered if our relationship with nature is disordered. Knowing our true place in the world, and thereby healing that relationship, is the necessary first step to steering our culture’s course away from disaster. Indeed, we need to come to understand this is what culture is primarily about. Fox quotes Albert Einstein’s belief in this.

The most important function of art and science is to awaken the cosmic religious feeling and keep it alive.

Spiritual healing and rebirth are not solely the tasks of organized religion but life tasks and the ultimate goal of any society. We are far from that understanding, yet we also seem to be increasingly far from knowing true peace and contentment in our daily lives. Hopefully, that pain and discomfort is causing us to look in new directions for our life’s meaning and value.

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