Lovely video below on Bede Griffiths in his gentle, declining years with words of wisdom for us all.
The perfect antidote to news of the Pope's visit to Germany -which I've been ignoring. Giving it too much attention (ala John Allen of NCR) only serves to increase it's negative energy -which is best left to dissipate like clouds of dust. Nice news about the young Catholics at the event, however, enjoying the fanfare and symbolism of the event, but almost completely ignoring the message -from Bilgrimage blog. The real work of the Spirit is hidden, subtle, unobtrusive - gentle, humble and wise. At this point in history, I think it is both unwise and unhealthy spiritually to get too caught up in any one institutional manifestation of the sacred. They are now all incomplete on their own, and only find meaning and substance in complementary unity. Where is the Spirit truly leading us? Not into an obsessive examination of the minutia of a crumbling institution.
"As long as (religions) remain on the surface they will always be divided in conflict. If they discover their depth, then we converge on the Unity. ...As you go deep into any religion, you converge on the center. And everything springs from that center, and everything is converging on that center.....90% of the people in the West are leaving the Church today not because they don't believe in religion or faith or Christ, but because they cannot accept they way it is presented to them....
"I think Hinduism taught me, above all, the sense of the sacred. I had been searching for it, but you see the Western World is profane. We've deliberately eliminated every sign of the sacred, except in some churches and some places. But in India, there are holy temples and places, but the earth is sacred and the air and the water. We are living in a sacred world."
Find the Video here: A Human Search: The Life of Father Bede Griffiths
Merton as Buddha
2 comments:
Thanks Jayden for reminding me of the utter bigness of God in the face of a contracting church that is grinding so many of us down with its stifling sense of life. I pray for change...
Blessings
Thank you as well, Philomena, and for your recent postings on Inter-Religious dialogue and Francis of Assisi. I live "next door" to Assisi, so to speak, and visit several times a year to imbibe it's springs of living water. Change is happening all around us, I believe, in the most surprising places, just not in those most prominent places where we might wish it to be manifest. The Spirit has her lovely ways,who can fathom them?
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