Our Long Journey with Mystery - Introduction

Our Long Journey with Mystery

Reflections on Spirituality and Religion

These reflections were initially undertaken as a result of as request from my local Church to write something on Christianity and the other main Faith Traditions that co-exist in the UK. We live in a Global Village and , despite the many racial, ethnic , cultural and religious differences, we are part of one great  human family. We also live in times when fundamentalists and extremists strive to focus on difference and suppress our unity in diversity

This is the first in a series of reflections on Spirituality and Religion. It is based on personal experience and I ascribe no expertise to myself. It is designed to set the scene on humanity’s long journey with spirituality and the Mystery we call ‘God’ by so many names and to lead on to a series of  reflections on six of the world’s major Faith Traditions.

We live in a world where science and cosmology is almost daily adding to the revelation of creation, the cosmos and life itself. We know about the ‘Big Bang’ that occurred 14 billion years ago, the formation of the star we call the Sun followed by the birth of our Blue Planet almost 4 billion years ago.  Creation is proving to be exciting, mysterious and mind boggling. Creation is, in a sense, the first and on-going revelation of the Mystery or Oneness that lies at the heart of everything. After billions of years and a slow and constantly changing evolution our planet developed an amazing variety and diversity of plants and living things.

Human beings arrived approximately 7 million years ago and 200,000 years ago Homo sapiens, the Wise Ones, appeared. Our species has many attributes but three very important ones are iinnovation, creativity and curiosity. These have fuelled our search for meaning both in the external and internal worlds.  For at least 70, 000 years, doubtlessly much longer, we have evidence of our search for spiritual meaning. For the next 50 to 60,000 years we adopted a spirituality focused on creation and the environment, a spirituality that sensed and used imagination, intuition and ritual to celebrate the sacredness of all creation. Our ancestors also knew that our world was, and is, enmeshed in the great web of life.  They were in touch with both the masculine and feminine aspects of our humanity.

About 10,000 years ago the Agricultural or Patriarchal Age commenced. It led to a rapid expansion in our ability to grow crops and to domesticate animals. It resulted in the rise of kings and warriors and the establishment of kingdoms, the dominance of the male and a relegation of the female and the feminine. About 5000 years ago, the first of the great  modern Religions – Hinduism- arose along the Ganges River in North India. A second part of these reflections will focus on this great treasure house of wisdom and spirituality and its contribution to our inherited Universal Spiritual wisdom.

However, it is important to remember that Spirituality is much older than the formal religions.  Although we have made rapid advances in science and technology we have lost some of our intuitive experience of the Mystery. Arguably our task is to re-discover the true potential of our humanity, to recognise how every strand of nature is interconnected and to find a spiritually fulfilling way of living that is environmentally friendly and one that delivers social justice for all.

Future reflections in this series will explore spirituality and religion as we look at Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Sikhism.

Part Two :-    Hinduism – the Eternal Journey ( coming soon)

' We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience'