A Reconciliation of Religion & Science

The overstory of cultural evolution features a complementarity of visions known as religion and science, which in the last 2,500 years or so have been competing for dominance, with religion on a dramatic decline in the West since the 1800s – but starting long before. Many will argue that this decline of religion in theContinue reading “A Reconciliation of Religion & Science”

The Quest Mandala

By now, a returning reader is familiar with my “dancing” style with things I regard as essential to understanding the human journey. I prefer to keep words flexible and their contextual frames almost always moving, which makes it hard to pin me down and hold me to account. I don’t do this to evade responsibilityContinue reading “The Quest Mandala”

*Click*

Existential disorientation is an apt name for our diagnostic condition as a species, what’s called “the human condition.” We wake up and find ourselves here, but we don’t really know where we are. We feel lost, homeless, in exile, stranded on a remote island, alone in the middle of everything. There is some comfort inContinue reading “*Click*”

Waking Up As You

Let’s see how far you are willing to go with me here. Proposition 1: The physical universe emerged abruptly out of a singularity of quantum energy, in an event that cosmological science names the “Big Bang.” Proposition 2: After approximately 10 billion years, on a planet thrown into orbit around a medium sized yellow star,Continue reading “Waking Up As You”

Meditation on the Snow Cone

In Religion and the Snow Cone Universe (October 2014) I offered this simple image as a way of understanding the relationships among science, spirituality, and religion. The ball of our snow cone, I suggested, can stand for the great cosmic environment arching overhead and surrounding us. This is the realm of scientific research, also calledContinue reading “Meditation on the Snow Cone”

What’s Really Going On

Each of us is rather caught up and fixated on our own personal life – making it through today, cleaning up from yesterday, and getting ready for tomorrow. There’s barely enough mental bandwidth to pay attention to all the details and passing concerns. Catching up on global events is out of the question, and thinkingContinue reading “What’s Really Going On”

One Song

An important challenge for contemporary cosmology – referring to our present-day theory and general picture of reality – involves finding a place for the higher mysteries of mind, ego, and spirit. Like Odysseus steering his ship between Scylla the six-headed dragon on one side, and Charybdis the crushing whirlpool on the other, we need toContinue reading “One Song”

The Mirror of Religion

If god is not “up there” and heaven is not “after this,” then why would anyone get involved with religion? One obvious answer might be to make money – speaking primarily on behalf of TV evangelists and other hucksters who exploit our fantasies of immortality and our craving for absolute answers. They hook us inContinue reading “The Mirror of Religion”

Romancing the Inner Child

Jesus is said to have held up the model of a child in helping his audience appreciate what is required to “enter the kingdom of God,” by which he did not mean an afterlife in heaven but the liberated life here and now. Preachers have been exhorting their congregations to be like children ever since,Continue reading “Romancing the Inner Child”

Idols of Orthodoxy

Religion is notorious for confusing its representations of God – our conventional nickname for ultimate reality – with the present mystery which, as they say in the Orient, is beyond names and forms. These representations, falling inside the general category of symbols, typically have their origin in experiences that can’t be definitively rendered in language.Continue reading “Idols of Orthodoxy”