Seasons are Changing – How about you?
The Canadian Church calendar indicates that tomorrow is the last Sunday after Pentecost. The season after Pentecost is the longest and last liturgical season of the church year. That means that just one week from tomorrow we’ll mark the first Sunday of Advent and with it the beginning of the first season of a brand new church year. The church year is composed of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and the season after Pentecost (Pentecost Sunday marks the culmination of the 50 [Penta] days of Easter). Now all of this might not mean a great deal in an allegedly post-religious world was it not for the fact that Advent and more so Christmas have managed to become well embedded in our culture over the centuries.
Consequently the arrival of a brand new church year can be particularly exciting and engaging, for those looking forward especially to annual celebrations of Advent and Christmas. Today I would like to offer that there’s an even more exciting change happening in churches at this present moment. This more engaging and hope-filled change has to do with our evolution in theological thinking. Theology, essentially our study of the nature of God, is giving birth to change within faith traditions all over the world. Through ongoing exploration of the nature of God in a 21st century context people of faith are experiencing deeper and more connecting understandings the divine.
For many, God is no longer the distant and disconnected deity – you know, the one with humanlike characteristics (and too often only male characteristics) who lives in a place called heaven, located somewhere above the stratosphere, and who sometimes intervenes in the affairs of humans and at other times not so much. For many Christians and others, their present day understanding of the nature of God has evolved. Their experience of divinity has situated the holy more locally. Their experience of holy mystery has emerged in a myriad of ways including during times when people have been making serious efforts to work together for the good of all.
Dianna Butler Bass, author of nine books on religion, including Christianity after Religion, Christianity for the Rest of Us, and A People’s History of Christianity, published a new book in 2015 titled Grounded – Finding God in the World – A Spiritual Revolution. Butler Bass (2015, p. 16) contends “the most significant story in the history of religion at this time is not a decline in Western religion, a rejection of religious institutions, or the growth of religious extremism; rather, it is a changed perception of God, a rebirthing of faith from the ground up.” As this rebirthing of faith from the ground up continues and as 21st century understandings of what the nature of God now looks like continue to emerge there will be exciting, moving and deeply connecting changes appearing in the words of hymnody, prayers, creeds and liturgies to better reflect humanity’s deepening sense, awareness and appreciation of holy mystery.
These are exciting times offering many opportunities for each of us to be agents of positive change as we embrace, ponder and discuss the spiritual revolution we are observing, feeling and experiencing. I am really grateful for the recent published offerings (in this newspaper) from one of our local citizens, Carmel Higgins, who has been sharing some of her insights arising from her wide range of reading (and wrestling) with the works of many modern day thinkers, theologians and mystics.
Dianna Butler Bass (2015, p. 26) wraps-up the introduction to her new book with a worthy conclusion about the changes we are experiencing in churches and faith traditions: “this revolution rests upon a simple insight: God is the ground, the grounding, that which grounds us. We experience this when we understand that soil is holy, water gives life, the sky opens imagination, our roots matter, home is a divine place and our lives are linked with our neighbours’ and with those around the globe. This world, not heaven, is the sacred stage of our times.”
Lots to ponder as one of our many faith traditions is about to begin a brand new church year with a hope-filled celebration of Advent – then followed by Christmas.
Butler Bass, D. (2015) Grounded – Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution. New York: Harper Collins.