In his popular lectures on the topic, Joseph Campbell would frequently start out with a definition of mythology as “other people’s religion.” Curiously the assumption of insiders is that the depiction of their god in the sacred stories of scripture came by supernatural revelation, while stories of other deities outside their tradition are quickly dismissed asContinue reading “God Beyond Belief”
Author Archives: tractsofrevolution
The Lullaby of Belief
Look out into the galaxies, into a seemingly infinite darkness splashed and speckled with nebulae and stars beyond number. Cosmologists estimate that our universe is somewhere between 12 and 15 billion years old, born from an energy burst in which the primary structures of matter were forged and then flung, stretching the horizon of space-timeContinue reading “The Lullaby of Belief”
Sinking into Being
If you are somewhere in your forties there’s a good chance that you are experiencing a major life-shift. You might be engaging this shift in a spirit of fully conscious participation, but more likely you have noticed it creeping outside your windows at night and scratching at your screen door. Things that once motivated youContinue reading “Sinking into Being”
The Seduction of Identity
The average person is obsessed with identity. We come through childhood with all the instructions and labels that have been put on us by our tribe, and we can spend our entire adulthood trying to justify and live up to them, reverse them and prove them wrong, or we simply allow these programs to push us alongContinue reading “The Seduction of Identity”
Naming Mystery, Talking about God
Religion didn’t just fall out of the sky fully assembled but evolved over many thousands of years. It emerged as a way of securing the everyday world of human concerns to the deeper mystery supporting all things. The experience of this mystery – what I call the present mystery of reality, or Real Presence –Continue reading “Naming Mystery, Talking about God”
Jesus Against Christianity
The biblical deity Yahweh has a deep history going back to the habiru, which is a generic term used in reference to a migratory population of nomadic tribes that swept down from the north into the Fertile Crescent roughly between 1800 and 1100 BCE. These northern invaders were resisted as outlaws by the settled cities andContinue reading “Jesus Against Christianity”
As If
God has a plan and is in control. Everything happens for a reason. You have an immortal soul, but … Don’t trust yourself. A better place awaits those who obey God. I do not mourn because his soul is very much alive. God has a plan for each person. Mine was to hide in thisContinue reading “As If”
God and Ground
There is a very interesting paradox at the heart of healthy religion. Our notions of God – just looking across the landscape of world religions, and then deeper into the private religion of individuals – are practically innumerable and infinitely diverse. God is represented as a personality, a force of some kind, a supreme intelligence, orContinue reading “God and Ground”
The Quadratics of Transformation
This is a blog about creative change. My posts on the whole have been exploring creative change along several distinct trajectories – personality and life experience, spirituality and religion, individual and community. Working the angles on transformational change has gradually clarified what I now take as the essential dynamics of what’s involved in the transformationContinue reading “The Quadratics of Transformation”
Philosophy of Tears
Any theory of what life ultimately means, if it means anything at all, must take into account the reality of loss. We can contemplate things at some high level of abstraction, safe in the refuge of logic and ideas, or we can grapple with what’s really going on in life as we live it. AndContinue reading “Philosophy of Tears”
Tracts of Revolution 