Thursday, March 23, 2006

Ten principles of Creation Spirituality:

  1. The universe is basically a blessing, that is, something we experience as good.
  2. We can and do relate to the universe as a whole since we are a microcosm of that macrocosm and that this relationship "intoxicates" us. (Aquinas)
  3. Everyone is a mystic (i.e., born full of wonder and capable of recovering it at any age; of not taking the awe and wonder of existence for granted.)
  4. Everyone is a prophet, i.e., a "mystic in action" (Hocking) who is called to "interfere" (Heschel) with what interrupts authentic life.
  5. That humans have to dig and work at finding their deep self, their true self, their spirit self; thus the role of spiritual praxis and meditation and community confrontation which can itself be a yoga. If we do not undergo such praxis we live superficially out of fear or greed or addiction or someone else's expectations of us. That salvation is best understood as "preserving the good." (Aquinas).
  6. That the journey that marks that digging can be named as a four-fold journey:
    Via Positiva: delight, awe, wonder, revelry
    Via Negativa: darkness, silence, suffering, letting go
    Via Creativa: birthing, creativity
    Via Transformativa: compassion, justice healing, celebration
  7. Everyone is an artist in some way and art as meditation is a primary form of prayer for releasing our images and empowering the community and each of us. Art finds its fulfillment in ritual, the community's art.
  8. We are all sons and daughters of God; therefore, we have divine blood in our vein, the divine breath in our lungs; and the basic work of God is: Compassion.
  9. Divinity is as much Mother as Father, as much Child as Parent, as much Godhead (mystery) as God (history) as much beyond all beings as in all beings.
  10. That we experience that the Divine is in all things and all things are in the Divine (Panentheism) and that this mystical intuition supplants theism (and its child, atheism) as an appropriate way to name our relation to the Divine and experience the Sacred.

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