Quest Magazine

Prayers to an Evolutionary God

By William Cleary
Woodstock, VT: Skylight Paths Publishing, 2004. Hardback,178 pages.

William Cleary's Prayers to an Evolutionary God contains eighty prayers and some mighty big ideas, The latter are not just profound concepts to satisfy one's intellectual appetite; they are ideas the author expects the reader to engage with. Engaging with them, in fact, is the point. In his introduction he defines prayer as "a substantial thought turned into 'something to do." Cleary has produced his book to give people something to do "about the astonishing revelations of mystery found in evolutionary physics: say a prayer." For Cleary, prayer creates a path through mystery. These are evolutionary prayers for a universe seen from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the perspective of whose God, Cleary says, "was unapologetically an evolutionary God ... An evolutionary God is the one whose fingerprints and embraces and music we find in the evolutionary patterns in the unfinished world around us, the elusive mother and inventor of this ever-changing milieu," Cleary argues for a cosmic perspective: "Seeing earth from outer space redefines our global self-identity forever."

Teilhard de Chardin is one of two muses for the author. The second is Diarmuid O' Murchu, upon whose book Evolutionary Faith Cleary based the prayers and who wrote the afterword in Cleary's book remarking that it is the secular sciences-not religion and rituals-that are awakening us to mystery in the universe. Prayer needs to reflect the new paradigm. Formerly our prayers focused on a God who was "out there." Now science highlights not the absence but the presence of God-"in here" (in each of us).

Each prayer fits on one page; the facing page contains a prose explanation or expansion on the idea of that prayer. Each prayer is titled and has a subtitle as well. "Toward the Future-in Hopeful Times," for example, or "God of Closeness--Doubting Everything," (The titles, by the way, are alphabetized for a handy index.) Four sections of the book consist of prayers of listening, of questioning, of ambiguity, and of intimacy. They are addressed variously to Holy Mystery, Evolutionary Mystery, Holy Life Force, Mysterious God, and so on.

At first the language seems to jar. It definitely takes getting used to; it isn't poetic. For example: "Holy Mystery, our relational spirit-creator allow us to feel nonplussed/ by your evolutionary strategies'; so far beyond our present comprehension." Probably that is the point, though-to jar a bit. There is no comparison to the language of the King James Bible or to the prayers in the old Anglican prayer book, whose cadences and images Christians are comfortably familiar with. Cleary suggests we need new metaphors—“musical, aromatic, colorful, pleasure some." He demonstrates the aromatic when he says that "verbal prayers make sense if you know in advance that talking to God is like talking to your dog. You use words with your dog but it's likely he responds to your smell. God hears your words but probably ignores them in favor of the aroma of your heart, i.e., your kindness and compassion."

Contrasting the music of an older worldview that is exemplified by Gregorian chant, he notes that modern jazz reflects "a world concept full of improvisations and purposeful dissonance: an evolutionary world." Later, noting that we are surrounded by many kinds of musical energy, he says, "The least we can do is hum along."

Happily, a sense of humor crops up more than once. We humans long for "cosmic companions." If they do not exist, Cleary prays, "Please God, create them." And in the future, we will not sing of Brother Sun and Sister Moon, but of Brother Chance and Sister Chaos, Cousin Surprise and Uncle Randomness. In one essay he wryly notes, "If there is a God, God does not consider clear self-disclosure very important." In fact, he is not beyond importuning God with the qualifier "if you can." He prays we be recipients of God's own loving attitude-if He can provide it.

Again, praying for serenity, in a prayer titled "In Pain When Life Skills Fail," he says, "You are God: can you make it happen?"

He doubts. He questions. He ponders. He exults. He grins and his eyes twinkle. But underlying all, he worships. A humble awareness of the majesty of the Divine is reflected in these lines: "We give thanks, inadequate and almost preposterous as that seems."

Some of his penetrating insights are offered in the essays accompanying each prayer. The implications of evolution are that the world is creative, ever-changing, becoming. String theory implies uncertainty behind any order. The nonexistence of space, the nature of reality, the part dissonance and randomness play in the creative process, the bedrock of faith-the themes are varied and provocative.

This is a book probably not to be read through in one sitting (unless one is reviewing it! ) but: rather rifled through at different: times, choosing a prayer to suit one's mood and as a starting point for one's own meditation. But regardless of the use to which it is put, this volume by a former Jesuit priest is sure to intrigue thoughtful readers.

-JOANN WOOLEN

May/June 2005

Cycles of Faith: The Development of the World's Religions

By Robert Ellwood
Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2003, Paperback, viii + 215 pages.

In Cycles of Faith: The Development of the World's Religions, Robert Ellwood, a retired professor of world religions, proposes a common developmental framework of five stages, lasting roughly five hundred years each, for the world's major extant religions-Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and the Chinese religions Confucianism and Taoism.

In this detailed and wide-ranging book Ellwood is careful to distinguish his framework from the historical meta-narratives and predictive schematizations of many social philosophers who, he declares, often reveal "more about the hopes and fears of their own age than about the veiled future." Rather than depending on a "grand mystical idea of meaning in history or the evolution of Absolute Spirit," Ellwood declares that his outline is based simply on "rational, empirical observations of how religions work and by extrapolation will work in historical time."

Ellwood notes that the great traditions emerged in response to the sea change of consciousness and culture that marked the Axial Age, a period beginning around the fifth century B.C.E. and characterized by the advent of urban culture and empire; heightened emphasis on individual salvation and the consequences of free will; the invention of writing; and, through its correlate, recordkeeping, the "discovery” of history that shifted humanity's religious focus from an emphasis on cosmic realms and connections during prehistory to a much greater concern with temporal events.

The first period Ellwood describes is characterized by the appearance of a charismatic founder (Hinduism lacks this aspect) and the development of sacred scripture and organizational structure. The second phase witnesses the co-opting of religion by empire (e.g., Christianity and Rome), and the expansion of religion's political and geographical base, and its doctrinal exaltation into the sphere of the timeless. This period is followed by one of "statues, temples and pageantry" in which religious expression experiences a burgeoning of forms. The fourth, or reformative, stage finds religion asserting its waning power by attempting to "rediscover what its essentials were and press them to the exclusion of all else." During the final stage, Axial religions, as entities in time, die  “in historical time and under exposure to historical awareness," and the cosmic impulse finds primary expression in the quasi-tribal realm of family and community where faith is informed by myth, mysticism, and personal experience. Ellwood writes that this last stage may very well last indefinitely, but he makes no conjectures about a possible sixth stage.

Ellwood contends that Buddhism and the Chinese religions are just now finishing the cycle, Hinduism and Christianity are at the beginning of the final period, and Islam is in the reformative stage.

Writing that during its period of reform a religion experiences deep anxieties about its place in the world and is often inclined "to let right prevail by might," Ellwood asserts that Islam's "bloody borders" may be more convincingly explained by its stage of development than by the charge that it is an inherently violent religion. It should be stressed that Ellwood does not intend his framework to apply to religions in general, but only to those that came of age under a particular set of historical circumstances (Zoroastrianism was on course to join their ranks until it was overcome by the Islamic conquest of Persia; also, Ellwood writes, that "Judaism always seems to be the exception to every rule."). He notes that the modern world is so radically different from the preceding age that any new world religion would likely be unrecognizable according to our present definitions.

-PAUL WINE

March/April 2005

The Song of Songs: A Spiritual Commentary

By M. Basil Pennington
 OCSO, Woodstock, VT: SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2004, Hardcover, 136 pages.

The Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon, is a unique book in the biblical canon. More than one reader has wondered how a powerfully erotic poem made its way into the Bible. In conventional religious circles, it is often left aside, lest some Sunday school teacher have to confront verses like: "Oh, give me the kisses of your mouth, for your love is more delightful than wine," (1:2) or, "Your breasts are like twin fawns, the young of a gazelle, among the lilies.'.' (4:6)

Despite the embarrassment it causes to those of a puritanical nature, the Song of Songs has given rise to something approaching a Jewish/Christian Tantra, an erotic mysticism of the union of the soul (and/or the spiritual community) with the Divine Lover. This path was nowhere more powerfully explicated than in the commentary on the Song of Songs begun in 1135 by Cistercian monk Bernard of Clairvaux, continued by Gilbert of Hoyland, and finally completed in 1214 by John of Ford.

Basil Pennington is a contemporary Cistercian monk and a present-day heir to the mysticism of the Song of Songs. He is best known as one of the founders of the Centering Prayer movement, which has carried contemplative practice out of the monastery and into the world. In this latest book, we join Father Basil as he muses and meditates on the potent, earthy images of the Song, often drawing on the works of his Cistercian forebears. It is a book meant for slow pondering. As Father Basil points out in his introduction, it is not an academic commentary but a "sharing of some of what this celebration of love has evoked in the soul of an artist and a contemplative, a layman and a monk, a Jew and a Christian."

As this prior quote indicates, Father Basil has a collaborator in this project-the acclaimed Jewish artist Phillip Ratner, whose evocative illustrations lend additional depth to the text. Ratner also contributed a short afterword, in which he draws connections between the Song and "the sacred, spiritual, and sensual awareness of human love in a covenant relationship," through his own marriage. This is a vital dimension that we could not expect Father Basil, as a celibate monk, to address as fully.

Gilbert of Hoyland instructed his readers: "Write wisdom on the breadth of your heart. For the heart is broad that is not shriveled by cares." Father Basil invites us to share this breadth of heart, filled with a blazing passion in which our petty cares are consumed, that we may know the ecstasy of union.

-JOHN PLUMMER

March/April 2005

Limitless Mind

By Russell Targ
Novato, CA: New World Library. 2004, Paperback, xxix +209pages.

Retrocausality. Prestimulus response. Retrocognitive dreams. These are some of the exciting new psychic abilities currently explored in the field of remote viewing, discussed in Russell Targ's book, Limitless Mind.

Targ begins by presenting the history of remote viewing, which dates back to 1972; experiments were funded by the CIA and other government organizations but conducted by the Stanford Research Institute. In the classic remote viewing experiment, a remote viewer and an interviewer remain in one location while a second interviewer goes to a location unknown to the other two. After fifteen minutes, the remote viewer attempts to describe or sketch prominent features of the second interviewer's location. The second interviewer then returns to the laboratory, and the remote viewer's responses are analyzed for accuracy.

How does remote viewing work? Does the viewer have an out-of-body experience (OBE) and follow the second interviewer to the secret location? Does the viewer read the second interviewer's mind using telepathy? Or does the viewer have the ability to skip ahead in time, clairvoyantly, and discover the true location? No one knows.

The second part of Limitless Mind describes various forms of precognition that are presently in the forefront of remote, viewing study. Retrocausality, for example, is the ability to change the past or present after perceiving a possible future event. An example of this would be dreaming of being in an automobile accident as a result of a faulty component in your car, then the next day bringing your car to a mechanic and discovering a problem with the car that, if not fixed, could have led to an accident. Some, thing you became aware of in your future has led you to change the present. Targ also explains prestimulus response, an effect that occurs when a subject is given mild electrical shocks at random and develops the reflexive ability to anticipate the shock three seconds before it is administered. In precognitive dreams, a person dreams that a future event can or will take place, and retrocognitive dreams occur when a person dreams about something that happened to someone else a few days prior, but with, out knowing that it happened.

In the final part of the book, Targ deals with psychic healing. One of the more astounding discoveries currently under study is that a psychic healer can often go back in time to ward off or ameliorate a patient's malady. Limitless Mind is a fascinating book and definitely worth reading if you are interested in the powers and capacities of the mind.

-JACK MACKAY

March/April 2005