Researching the Spiritual Elements
A good author has experienced his subject. When the subject exists in another universe, that can be a challenge. So I start by putting myself in that universe through thought exercises. Voila! The alien universe suddenly doesn't seem quite so remote!
Through most of my life, spirituality was as irrelevant to me as an alien universe. As I've explored it through the characters in "The Twilight's Ashes", I've grown comfortable with my own personal spiritual elements. It's a bass-ackwards way of getting there, having to travel all the way to an alien ficticious universe, but that has been my path toward a real life, practical spirituality.
During the long absence from this blog my personal spiritual advancement has continued as I've contemplated some significant further revisions to "The Twilight's Ashes". The journey has been aided by interactions with my UU congregation and through a two-month-long elightening discussion thread on Brain Den's "other topics" forum about the philosophy of religion and about forming a modern, useful religion.
SUCCINCT SPIRITUAL CREDO à CREED (?), draft 9/5/09
Background:
The UU Church is my chosen umbrella organization. I describe our fellowship in blunt terms, which are both scathingly critical and inspirationally liberating in their raw idealism. We endeavor to engender:
Loyalty without Authority
Faith without Belief
Trust without Guidance
Unity without Common Purpose
Morality without Foundation
In my view, all that unites the UU Congregations is that we choose to call ourselves family: a functioning community (village) working cooperatively to make the world and the lives of our members better. Though families and villages do not aspire to be exclusive, they are so by default. Evolution of humanity as a social being fosters cooperation within such social units but requires competition among them. The UU ideal, as I see it, is that our competition with “non-believers” in the UU movement should be exercised following a framework of high ideals of justice and rightness (the “Noble Course”) that strives to be as universal as it is possible to be.
One of the most valuable benefits of membership in the UU movement for me is the spiritually nurturing environment: the individual is encouraged to, and feels safe to discover his/her own spiritual path. This has allowed me to freely explore, seek, ultimately find and then work to strengthen my own sense of Authority, Belief, Guidance, Purpose and Foundation. These are expressed in my Personal Credo: the basis of an evolving faith formulated from personal inspiration with essential continuing guidance from a forgathering of the best ideas of many wise and thoughtful people. (The parenthetical comments in italics within the credo are explanatory, not explicitly part of the simple credo statement itself.) To this I give my heart:
I believe in the CIKXID Word (pronounced “seeks it”: Collected Inherited Knowledge EXceeding Infinite Demesne, akin to the Greek concept of “Logos”): the evolving design of Heaven and Earth, which is passed to us from beyond the veil of the unknowable (e.g. the Big Bang) in the same way that DNA passed to me through the veil of my personal conception and awakening.
I seek The Word always, at it seeks me, through the ponderings of my heart and mind, through reason and prayer, through raw experience and precise repeatable experiment.
I believe in the power of Dalle and Her Heavenly Hosts (a pantheon of Spirits, visualized, for convenience, in anthropomorphized form, but with very real voices speaking to me through my DNA, my instincts, my conscience), my Ancestors all, who personalize and actuate The Word, making it simple for me to understand and apply.
I seek and trust in Phronesis (the Aristotelian virtue of Prudence, also called the “Noble Course”), firmly rooted in The Word, which guides my choices toward righteousness in every living act and deed and thought.
I believe that every living thing, indeed the Universe itself, seeks, responds to, and manifests The Word naturally and in its own way. Thus I honor and respect all beliefs and traditions as if they were my own.
MORE DETAILED PERSONAL CREDO, draft 4/11/09
I believe that the really, really big setting for our existence—the outermost shell of reality—is a place devoid of meaning: a random, indifferent maelstrom where Paradox reigns supreme. Yet even there I find meaning, or at least pleasure: A good Paradox gives me great joy!
I believe that the really, really tiny building blocks of existence are similarly beyond purpose and blend into a veil of pure Paradox. Science can probe ever deeper but it will not reach an end.
I believe that in between these infinite extremes finite pockets of purpose and meaning naturally form, if only for a time. Simple example: flipping a coin and getting 10 straight heads. I believe that we (I and the reader) dwell in one of these shared “sacred spaces.”
I believe that the choices I make through life either build, strengthen and nurture the quality of the sacred space, or diminish it through benign usurpation or through actively pursuing selfish, evil or sinful ends. I believe that if I do nothing, the sacred space will decay. It requires active support; thus it calls me to witness for good—to radiate it like light, to manifest it through love, and to work for it daily. And I am likewise called to be vigilant for and to quarantine evil—within my heart, my mind, my actions, my community, my world, indeed my universe.
I believe that I was given consciousness (the capacity for prayer) in order to more efficiently strengthen the sacred space that begat me. I tap into the noble channel, that which will enrich and nurture our shared sacred space, through outreaching prayer—prayer that seeks the best of living example and the vast embedded wisdom of the “Hosts”: the wide community beyond my mortal reach that has sustained and built this sacred space over the time of its existence.
I believe I am then called to follow this noble course in all my daily affairs, witnessing for it to all whom I meet. I believe that my personal primary call to social action is to convey by the written word the noble course for humanity as I have recognized it. I do so through story telling; because it was through story telling that I came to understand this noble course in the first place.
I believe that via the noble channel I make the sacred space more welcoming for those to come. And I believe my imprint on that sacred space endures: my descendents will reach to me in prayer, just as I reached to my ancestors. Thus I will join the community of the “Hosts.”
Finally, I believe that our sacred space encompasses, in its largest manifestation, the entirety of our observable universe. And I believe as John Burroughs once said: “There is a constant becoming; there was no beginning, there can be no ending.” Therefore I believe that my choices ultimately make a difference in the very fabric of our present universe; moreover they contribute to the design of the coming Cycles: the universe(s) that our present one will somehow beget.
Meanwhile, in the fullness of time our universe seems destined to fade: our sacred space must come to an end. I believe all things must die because the reality of dying is what makes growth possible. Yet I believe that the patiently fashioned noble design for our sacred space (“The Word”) came to us through a veil of birth already well formed, like DNA; and I believe it endures beyond the veil of death. Our currents shall congregate and move to fresh horizons!
At Heaven’s fading
The Word gathers in rivers.
My current seeks it.
www.seeksit.org
Categories: Paradox and Spirituality,Unitarian Universalism
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