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Sacred Presence: In Search of the New Story

by Robert C. Wild; Cover Design or Artwork by Margaret Cameron

166 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-0945; ISBN 1-4120-3118-4; US$19.00, C$19.00, EUR13.00, £10.00

Public morality is in disarray and creative living needs integrity. What is the sacred story to guide us, uniting wisdom of science, religion and the arts.

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about the book      about the author      excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book Sacred Presence: In Search of the New Story- Robert C. Wild, Trafford- $21- a review by Don Vipond At Walker Hook on Salt Spring Island there lives a lively and thoughtful man in the evening of his life. He was for many years a priest in the Anglican Church but, in my opinion as an old friend, he long ago left behind the dated and sadly restricting language and perspective of orthodox Christianity. Bob Wild has been a careful listener and a thoughtful student who had devoted much of his time over the years to reflecting on what he sometimes calls "the interior life," that mysterious and evolving other world in our heads and hearts which moves us to do this or that. A relentless activist for social justice, he is also a scholar with a rare gift, the ability to take the often murky offerings of other scholars and present the best snippets of what they have to offer in language of great clarity and beauty. What Wild does in Sacred Presence is pour a lifetime of study and thought into how Christians got from there to here and where they (and the rest of us) could soar to in the future, emboldened by a much richer, contemporary and inclusive faith story. He extracts the treasured essence of the Jesus movement and blends it lovingly with the exciting insights he has found on matters cosmic, environmental and social, as he sketches a framework for this new sacred story, one all of us can hold dear because it embraces each of us, without insisting on someone else*s ground rules. I think Sacred Presence is a rich read for a number of groups. First, despairing and disheartened Christians, who feel that way for whatever reason. Second, that huge body of people of no named faith who have been put off by the exclusivity and imbedded antiquity in many rituals and ancient sacred writings. Third, if I was a Buddhist or Sikh or a Hindu or Pagan, I think this book of modest size would inform me sympathetically about interesting movement at the forward edge of what is really a Christian community of wildly disparate views. Don Vipond is a former Victoria newspaper editor ... Sacred Presence: In Search of the New Story, by Robert C. Wild, Th.M. Robert Wild is a retired Anglican priest, community activist, serious thinker and experienced writer with two deep and abiding concerns: the inequities and social injustices of so-called "civilization," and the decline of the Christian church in our time. His new book, Sacred Presence: In Search of the New Story, is a remarkable achievement that succeeds in integrating these two concerns while pointing a practical way forward. Why is it that "...contemporary church teaching is failing to engage the urgent religious questions of ordinary people?" asks Wild. His answer is persuasive. The physical sciences have "revolutionized our perception of the cosmos," while the social sciences have shown us that "everything on Earth is inter-connected." Therefore our consciousness today, so permeated by science, is a very long way from the world view of the ancient Hebrews and early Christians, who lived on a flat earth in the centre of the universe, under heaven above. How, then, to make the heart of the ancient teachings vital again? To address and ultimately answer this huge question, Wild ranges over a vast field of information, supporting his own observations and conclusions with many others gleaned from his years of reading and study. He discusses: * The "new cosmology" as the "necessary context" for our time; * The legacy of ancient Israel, with her "social vision" and evolving image of her God; * Jesus' understanding of God as "compassionate, vulnerable and generous," and his own commitment to "active loving"; * The "dominant tradition in Christianity" which exalts Jesus as the Lamb of God, vs. the persistent "prophetic impulse in the church" which honours him as "servant prophet, healer and teacher"; * How the "new cosmology" offers an opportunity for finding new ways of linking Christianity's mystical tradition, its consciousness of Sacred Presence, with renewed respect for our life-giving Earth; * Seeing the Earth as a gift from a generous God which therefore requires us to live responsibly; * An "Agenda for Christians," with suggestions for revising the language of worship and meaningful prayer. To pull all this together and what's more, to pull it off, is no mean feat! Well aware that Sacred Presence may be few people's idea of light reading, Wild has helpfully provided summaries of each chapter's main points, two important appendices and an extensive bibliography. His book builds a sturdy bridge between science and religion that invites "new enquirers" as well as readers with Christian training to cross over into exciting new territory. As for "conservative believers," Robert Wild has this message: "In view of the long history of our tradition, can we not trust the God of biblical faith to lead us to insights for new times....? Surely we can expect that the wisdom of past and present together can speak with vitality to the unfamiliar landscape which lies ahead." (Pat Barclay is a free-lance writer/editor of many years' standing. She wrote a syndicated weekly newspaper column on Canadian books for 11 years, as well as reviewing books and interviewing authors for CBC-Radio and various national magazines.) paper reporter and editor. SACRED PRESENCE calls attention to the decline of one of humanity's great sacred Stories and proposes that a new and universal Story is emerging. A God who needs to be reconciled to humanity through the death of Jesus is no longer credible-though Jesus' life and work remain very significant. On the other hand, the biblical image of God as generous and compassionate is a source of spiritual renewal. As well, our realization that humans are in danger of destroying Earth's living systems is awakening in us a sense of the sacredness of Earth. These are two vital elements in the New Story struggling to be born among us. The new Story also draws upon another movement of thought, a new cosmology, based in research by science into both the macro and micro cosmos. This cosmology emphasizes the inter-connectedness of everything, resonates with the heart of many religious traditions, and challenges the resurgent fundamentalisms now plaguing our world. As the new Story emerges, it will embrace all of Creation and seek to open humanity to the divine power of love for healing and new life. In all of this, Christians are being presented with a challenge to recreate their faith tradition. A sequel to this book by the same author, SACRED JOURNEY: Gift of Earth and Spirit, is also available from Trafford Publishing.

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About the Author Robert Wild was born and educated in Montreal, including McGill B.A. After three years in industry he studied theology and was ordained to ministry in the Anglican church. For 36 years he served in parish, diocean and university work. He did post-graduate studies at St. Andrew's College, Saskatoon, the Toronto School of Theology, and the Vancouver School of Theology, earning a Th.M. He has five children and nine grandchildren. From his youth he has enjoyed sports and outdoor recreation, and in retirement is also occupied in woodworking.

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Excerpts from Sacred Presence

Pages 1-4

Everyone who has a common desire to observe the Christian worship may now freely and unconditionally endeavour to do so without let or hindrance.
Constantine, "Act of Toleration"

In the year 313 of the Common Era, the Roman Emperor Constantine recognized Christianity as the official religion of his domains. Leading up to this event, a gradual and somewhat underground process of conceiving, elaborating and consolidating the church's faith and worship had taken place. But now, with the emperor's sanction, an emerging Christian orthodoxy was free to become a unified and officially recognized system of belief and religious practice. Henceforth, deviations from the norm would be suppressed as heresy. The religious culture known as Christendom began to take definite shape, and by the year 800 had secured hegemony throughout much of Eurasia. During ensuing centuries its indelible mark extended everywhere on that continent and into lands colonized by Europeans. A way of faith and life became established and it endured more or less intact for more than a thousand years.

This has now changed irrevocably. Many, perhaps most, contemporary Western people experience orthodox Christian faith and liturgy as being at least problematic and possibly obsolete. This book is written in response to this development and seeks to engage with the many creative responses which are contributing to a new statement of the traditional faith story.

In Chapter One I review briefly some of the main issues under discussion. Also included is a brief introduction to the 'new cosmology' as a necessary context for any attempted restatement of Christian belief and practice.

Chapter Two introduces Israel's national 'myth', a Grand Narrative which tells of the heroic age of that nation. Within this national story particular attention is paid to two elements. First we notice a radical social vision which was legislated within the Mosaic covenant. Second we trace the evolution of Israel's image of God, developing from a warrior image early in its history to the image of the compassionate God of prophet and psalmist.

Chapter Three is a reconstruction of the meaning of Jesus of Nazareth's life and work, making extensive use of contemporary biblical scholarship.

Chapter Four suggests that a pursuit of power by the Christian church throughout its history is rooted in the classical Christian Doctrine of the Atonement. This teaching affirms that Jesus of Nazareth's death on a cross brought to humanity the possibility of salvation from eternal death, a fate which came upon us as the bitter fruit of sin. This chapter provides a careful and critical consideration of the doctrine and suggests reasons why it must be abandoned.

Chapter Five returns to the theme of the new cosmology. The old, traditional cosmology provided a basis for classical Christian thought. However, as that cosmology is seen now to be obsolete, traditional Christianity is found wanting. I propose ways in which insights of the new cosmology might creatively engage with biblical religion.

Chapter Si
lls our attention to Earth as the originating source of and continuing support for human life, the supreme sign for us of the divine generosity. I discuss the appropriate response for us to make to that generosity. I also note how radical injustices in society mock the true meaning of the divine generosity.

Chapter Seven considers many ways in which the implications of the issues raised in this book impact Christian faith and life as they are expressed in our liturgical gatherings and personal devotions. To assist readers I have supplied summaries at the end of each chapter.

There are overlapping meanings among a few of the terms frequently used in this book. The terms elude exact definition because they seek to point to Ultimate Reality which is beyond our ability to describe and can only be named through symbolic words and deeds. I see these terms as holding a 'continuum of meaning', moving from the most familiar to the most sublime.

GOD...is the word most often used by us to name Ultimate Reality as we encounter it. But the word is used among us so lightly, casually and frequently that it is often difficult to know what meaning is intended. Sometimes the word carries heavy anthropomorphic overtones, which risks idolatry and false familiarity. On the other hand, I recognize that the word 'God' can carry a strong sense of spiritual communion with the universal Other. The word 'God' can signify our sense of a divine Companion who walks the dusty way of life's journey with us. I tend to use this word when none of the others below fits comfortably into what I am writing.

THE DIVINE...is a name I use to point to our experience of a cosmic reality, conceived by human imagination and reason to be the indwelling force, power or energy which sustains the universe. Our experience of this reality can be so vivid that people speak of themselves as being in the presence of the Divine. We say then that this relationship is 'personal'- but this does not mean that the Divine is a person reduceable to human categories. Symbolism of all kinds has been used to represent the Divine in social life and in personal thoughts and feelings.

THE HOLY ONE...pertains to the Divine as being morally and spiritually pure. Holiness is an attribute of the Divine, but can also stand for the Divine when that attribute is being accented. Thus, I speak of 'the Holy One' when referring primarily to the sublime righteousness of the Divine. But holiness is also a general category and can be used to refer to any person or thing which we regard as approaching moral and spiritual purity.

THE SACRED . . . points to depths of the Divine beyond all human experience. That aspect of the Sacred which presents Itself to us as personal I name 'the Divine'. Sacred is the more diffuse term, Divine is the more specific term; and both refer to the same Reality. The Sacred and the Divine form a continuum, with the former signifying Ultimate Reality as remote, mysterious, ubiquitous, and the latter signifying Ultimate Reality as intimate, particular, specific, personalized.

MYSTERY...signifies a postulate of faith. It is Ultimate Reality which lies beyond everything our faculties- spiritual, mental and physical- can access. Perhaps it is a way of saying that there is a limit to what we can experience, intuit, imagine, reason- that the full range of our human perceptions does not and cannot exhaust Reality. Mystery is opaque, obscure, postulated; but the Sacred shines, blinds, amazes, brings wonder.

Pages 94-98

A SENSE OF THE SACRED

Christopher Smart was irrepressible, he was unguarded, he was willing to play the holy fool, to proclaim that God was in his cat and therefore in everything else, too. He was writing from the far side of daily life where the world appears mysterious and unfamiliar, where everything trembles with divine presence, where every routine seems marvelous and every action is imbued with the sacred.

Edward Hirsch, "How To Read a Poem"

SCIENCE AND THE NEW COSMOLOGY

One of the most significant scientific discoveries in the last 125 years is the mutuality and interchange between energy and mass throughout the universe. We are accustomed to think of matter as solid. But science now teaches us that matter in its basic molecular structure is an extremely high-speed process in which energy and mass are constantly interchanging. At the micro level of the universe, mass is being created and destroyed in an endless exchange of energy. Energy is also a central determining factor in the macro cosmos, in the formation and behaviour of galaxies, stars and planets. Science now documents four fundamental kinds of energy which appear to determine how the universe continues in existence. Two of these relate to the macro cosmos of the expanding universe and two to the micro cosmos of molecular structure.

An equally significant development in scientific theory is the realization that the universe has been constantly evolving over some fifteen billion years. Everything in the expanding universe, from the smallest to the largest, was already present within the originating flaring forth. Everything was implicit in that beginning, each phenomenon waiting for its turn to appear throughout eons of time. Philosophers of science speak of the exquisitely beautiful and dramatically eloquent manner in which the universe has evolved itself through successive stages, each of which is still being documented in detail by scientific investigation. "The story of the universe is a story of majesty and beauty as well as of violence and disruption, a drama filled with both elegance and ruin" (Swimme and Berry, "The Universe Story", 47). There has been a wondrous unfolding of succeeding patterns of energy/mass, from elementary gases to the formation of billions of galaxies, and then trillions upon trillions of stars, among which is our sun with its planets, including Earth.

The evolution of Earth from its beginning to the present has taken about four billion years. The first segment of this time was taken for the cooling of flaming gases and molten rock, a gradual calming of a seething cauldron of activity to form land masses and seas. Chemicals present in the seas produced organic material from which emerged myriad life forms of increasing complexity. About 114 million years ago the first placental mammals appeared, with the species homo appearing about two and one half million years ago.

We have heard much about the struggle for survival in the evolution of Earth, a so-called 'survival of the fittest'. This, however, is not the only way to speak about the emergence of each species from its predecessors. The process can also be described as a delicately designed collaboration in which species becoming extinct yield their existence to provide the material base for those which follow. Though nature appears to be 'red in tooth and claw', a more profound reading of the process may reveal a constant series of creative sacrifice so that later forms appear from the earlier or, in more mundane terms, may provide the material foundation for the later. The biologist William Trager commented, "the 'fittest' may be the one that helps another to survive."

In this model of the cosmos, evolution is understood to be a process of continuing diversification, of increasing complexity and differentiation. The process moves constantly from simpler to more complex forms. For example: the cosmos, at least within Earth's systems, shows itself to be constantly achieving ever higher forms of psychic activity. Elementary neural matter evolves into nervous systems which require specialized cranial structures. These in turn promote more complex cranial matter. Eventually the brain of mammalian life appears, bringing to Earth a high form of consciousness. There seems to be an insistent thrust in this process which propels cosmic reality toward increasingly explicit consciousness, and ultimately to the self-consciousness of homo sapiens. Some philosophers of nature suggest that 'inwardness' was implicit from the beginning: Teilhard de Chardin named this 'the within'. The danger in describing evolution in this way is an implication that the cosmic process intended to reach fulfilment in the human species. A more objective claim states that through rational creatures, on Earth and perhaps elsewhere, the cosmos becomes able to reflect upon itself and thus to create the potential for intelligent choices to be made about its own future. In this way humans are seen to be part of one Story which has been unfolding for eons of time and will continue into the future, with or without us. This is a radically new cosmology within which to ponder human existence and its meaning.

Philosophers of nature who are not engaged by religious questions find the new cosmology a self-sufficient account of the universe as we experience it today. For them, to raise the question of God is both unnecessary and intrusive. But for other seekers after truth, cosmic reality points to an intrinsic mystery of the Sacred and they ask how the new cosmology relates to traditional religious faith. In pursuing this question in the context of European culture, however, a major obstacle appears because traditional Hebrew-Christian discourse is deeply marked by a cosmology which is now obsolete. The symbolism of our religious culture has become alien to the symbolism being generated by science. The Hebrew-Christian religious tradition emerged within the culture of the ancient Near East. The cosmology of that culture visualized a flat Earth with a concave heavenly firmament above and a dark underworld beneath. The heavenly bodies, sun and moon and planets, were set in a series of spherical layers between Earth and the heavenly firmament which was the realm of the Divine. It was a closed system. The gods lived in heaven; between the gods and Earth were many levels of supernatural powers with varying abilities to influence human affairs. The God of the ancient Hebrew people, Yahweh, through the triumph of Hebrew- Christian religion in the Roman Empire, eventually came to be seen as superior to all other divinities and to reign on high as Lord and eternal King, Judge and Saviour of the world.

All the biblical images of the Hebrew deity and of the way He (firmly patriarchal) works are premised on this cosmology. In time these images became central also to the Christian religion. God is 'up there', and He dispenses divine wrath against human sin and bestows divine beneficence at least in part in response to human petitions and acts of devotion. God is eternal, absolute, sovereign and arbitrary; humanity is temporal, contingent and dependent. And the distance between God and humanity is not only one of essence, of quality of being; it is also one of moral distance. God is holy and we are sinful. To overcome this separation, the Christian church elaborated a doctrine of salvation through the divinely-appointed self-sacrifice of Jesus the Christ on a cross, who now lives as God with God on high.

Everything in the religious imagery of classical Christian teaching, liturgy and devotions is coloured by classical cosmology. Consequently, some modern people, who know themselves to be part of a very different cosmic Story, find in the classical imagery of the Hebrew-Christian tradition a disconcerting lack of meaning. Traditional symbolism no longer works for them.

Though classical Christian faith is frequently expressed in archaisms which have lost their meaning for some contemporary people, we can and should distinguish between the external forms and the spiritual content which those forms intended to convey. We must distinguish between the heart and the husk. For example, the language, music, dance and drama of prayer (the forms in which prayer is expressed) are deeply conditioned by images of the Divine present in the believing community in each time and place. And thus, the outward forms of prayer today continue to be determined by cultural forces now lost to us. So, for at least some of us, the inner forces which drive us to pray no longer find adequate expression in the external forms which are provided by our tradition. We are pressed to invent new vehicles for the expression of our spiritual energies. When we pray, we find it necessary to change our symbolism of the Sacred.

The heart of spiritual wisdom lies deep in humanity's encounter with our physical environment. The spiritual fruits of that encounter constantly seek appropriate forms in which to articulate themselves. And when an existing mode of symbolism fails to be adequate in power and eloquence for that task, humans struggle to find new symbolism which can express their sense of the Sacred.

What is unsaid above is that each generation is tutored in spiritual life by its predecessor. Tutors expect that pupils will find the received forms for expressing spiritual experience just as eloquent for themselves as it continues to be for the tutors. But periodically there is discontinuity- bringing dismay to the tutors and challenge to the pupils. And unfortunately, even mutual respect between tutors and pupils does not necessarily lessen the inevitable confusion, nor the potential for misunderstanding and hurt.

Our forebears in faith had little choice in the symbolism they used to express their experience of the Sacred; they were restricted to the rich cultural images which were at hand. How, then, shall we receive the spiritual wisdom which for centuries was conveyed more or less effectively in the old symbol system? To the extent that this is possible and desirable, we can accomplish this transition only by finding symbolism suitable for our own time in which to express the wisdom of the past as part of our own spiritual experience. There is, of course, no guarantee of coherence between past and present- there is always a risk that something will be lost. Nevertheless, we must find effective ways to express what we are experiencing or it will lie mute within us. Since the old symbolism is no longer adequate we must invent the new. As we today attempt to mythologize our own inner Truth- Truth which is always evolving and can never stand naked before us- we are restricted to the cultural options of our own time. One source of help for this task comes from the new Story of the universe, the new cosmology, from its vital images and symbols. Here we shall find new religious language, liturgy, arts and actions to guide our response to Sacred Presence and bring new fulfilment to ourselves as part of planet Earth.

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