Sunday, April 7, 2019

The Universal Christ

4/7/2019--I wonder sometimes why my Christian and Jewish friends don't live fuller, more meaning-filled lives. After all, they believe in a wonderful reality of hope and love that I don't inhabit. Or don't inhabit fully.

Richard Rohr's book, The Universal Christ, is an introduction into everyday mysticism that attempts to capture just such experiences. We can be on the bus and suddenly we become award of the presence of God--aware of a hidden depth of reality right there.

The process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead taught that we were always perceiving God but that religious experiences were just that constant awareness occasionally coming into conscious awareness.

The point of hallowed secularism--this blog, my book, my hope for the future--is that this consciousness of the depth dimension of life, as described by Rollo May, could be a common inheritance.

Secularists just don't tend to talk about these things. That is part of the reason that secular life is so flat and unsatisfying. You need mystery and depth to live.

Rohr is a panentheist. I am seeing myself more and more as that.

Here is a review of Rohr's book.

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