Each Wednesday,     Tim Carson shares 
the wonderings of heart and mind and the inspirations and quandaries of the spirit. You are invited to wonder along with him through the telling of stories, reflections on faith and observations on the events that shape our lives.  

Tim Carson

 

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Wednesday Wonder
February 15, 2017

I recently received a message from a director of a program in which I trained. The note was sent to all of my training peers and shared that one of our classmates had fallen gravely ill. From the description her condition sounds life-threatening. The director enjoined us to settle in on particular schedule of meditating on her from a distance and while doing so to repeat a series of particular clearing words that would ostensibly heal her.
 
This understanding and practice is quite common for those in the energetic healing arts; there is a strong conviction that energy is ubiquitous, everything is connected to everything, and the power of mind/spirit is non-local, not limited by distance.
 
Indeed, all of that is verified in the strange world of quantum physics. Though outcomes can never be absolutely predicted, the effects often seem real enough. One of the now classic demonstrations of mind and energy is the clinical measurement of the molecular structure of water when treated differently: A Buddhist monk meditated with pure love toward one beaker of water while an angry person directed their feelings toward another beaker of water. The results were shocking; the molecules of H2O in the two beakers acted entirely differently. External influence of mind and consciousness changed their behavior.
 
We know just how integrated are the invisible and visible realms, the mind and body, spirit and matter. So what my good energetic psychology friends suggest and practice is right in line with that.
 
What does surprise me, however, is how these very same people - in a most predictable way - ignore, reject and sneer at the very same claims and observations made by the spiritual masters of the great religious traditions over the centuries. When I hear of all these "new" and "revolutionary" discoveries in the mind-body-spirit matrix I am ... amused. There is nothing new about it.
 
The rationalism and materialism of the Enlightenment attempted to scour all of this non-rational, non-material experience out of the religious equation, leaving a structure of morals. Some churches became institutions that carried culture and its truths. A dry rationalism in Protestantism and questionable superstition in Catholicism sent modernists fleeing from the Church.
 
But here we are again, this time buoyed up by the new physics and not weighed down with the unnecessary dogma or ritual or authority structure of religious tradition.
 
Oh, but new ornaments have taken their place. And new prophets and new canons of sacred writ. Whenever I suggest that there are direct parallels between, say, the new physics and Jewish and Christian mysticism, I am ignored among this bunch. I am simply squawking like a strange arcane bird. But the truth is that there is nothing new under the sun. The same material and non-material aspects of the universe, the same energy fields, the same mystery, has always been and indeed is now.
 
And what of our dear friend who is so very ill and teeters on the edge of life? For centuries practicing Christians and those of the other great traditions have prayed, touched, anointed, and marked with sacraments, outward signs of inward graces. They believed and believe that there is a powerful unseen spiritual force that exerts great influence for healing. And in addition to this, these traditions hold transcendent views of life and death, joining them together in an eternal way.
 
Soon enough, we can hope, those who are so enamored with their new religion of energy will simply realize that they are the most recent incarnation of what has always been. And soon enough, we can hope, those who inhabit the great religious traditions will realize that they have no monopoly on the ways and action of the Spirit, that it is everywhere in everything, even among those who really believe they have discovered the great mystery for the first time ever in the history of the planet.





 

@Timothy Carson 2017

 

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Broadway Christian Church
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