Posts Tagged ‘self’

Lately, I’ve been thinking of the boldness of it all, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the Morrigan wanted, desperately wanted Cuchulainn to reject her offer.

I wonder if it would be possible, in this late hour, to redefine the word religion. There are those who would say it is not necessary, that religion is in the proper box, where it belongs and needs no new definition, but I think it does.

Caging them in threats of eternal damnation or salvation, religion has stolen the story of mythology, the story of science, our human freedom. I think we need a new definition of religion that includes the mysticism of mythology and the understanding of science; one that embraces them within the arms of the natural process of becoming. This, rather than painting it as do or die and decorating it with sin and dogma and stiff ceremony, will be my definition of religion divorced from any denomination or dogma.

Or perhaps rather than a new definition of religion, it would be more appropriate to say that we need a better way of describing and engaging the process of maturation from a guided childish religion into a responsible and natural human way of being in the world.

That is where I take issue with the stigmatisms of religion. It doesn’t allow us to grow out of the spoon fed way of being a child religious and in to the spiritual responsibility and obligation of adulthood. Religion may well be in the proper pedantic box, but it is a box that few ever can break out of.

So let us now reject that form of being of religious and open the door to becoming Human.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of the boldness of it all. The boldness of deconstruction. The boldness of the void. The boldness of reconstruction. The boldness of healing of our enemy, religion.

It starts when we are born into this age, into the inherited ways of being, the historically determined meaning of religion.
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But imagine if Amhairgin had gone through the nine waves instead of over them. Even more, imagine this:

Fintan, in the shape of Amhairgin, coming ashore through the nine waves.

What would that homecoming be like? Amhairgin coming ashore, reciting his “I am’s”, and meaning it?

Even more, imagine this:

Fintan, coming through the nine waves, coming ashore through each of us as we recite our “I am’s,” as we recite our “we are’s.”

What would that homecoming be like?

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But so that I may reveal
The secret of this island
to you
inquire of me.

-The Woman of the Fortress

Do not be alarmed.

Most of us in the western world today are in trouble even before we are in trouble. We are in trouble because of the greatest secret in our society. The greatest secret for most of us in the western world is simply “who am I?” This secret causes most of the problems we have in our world.

When we are raided, this trouble is in trouble. And that is the trouble.

Put away blissful ignorance.

Put away the safety of religion. Put away petty obsessions and reckless addictions. Forget the hiding places you have sought out and furnished comfortably over the years.

It is time to put away blissful ignorance and come out of hiding.

With no more blissful ignorance, we can no longer act as if we are not in trouble. We can no longer hide. We know we are in trouble.

This, then, is our ordeal.

The beast on this island is turning, revolving. Its skin rotates around its bones. Its bones churn around within its skin.

Do not be alarmed.
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Is there a way to talk about it? Can we talk about it without the language of guilt and shame? Without the language of sin and salvation? Is there a way to talk about it without the language of giddy missionaries?

Can you tell me the story separated from Sunday morning finery and lies? The story that happens every day and every night, every minute and every second; the story that never closes, the story that is not created but creates? Can you tell me that one? Have you heard it?

Can you tell me the story of the earthy Christ? The radical? The wild? Yes, the astonishing.

When I thought about it – this earthy, wild Christianity that isn’t Christianity – when I thought about it, the ambitions of the many through the millennia to live as the Christ became incredibly absurd.

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