SPIRITUALITY:

ENCOUNTERS WITH GODDE

'Our lives are so short, but there is still time to love'

1. Introduction

1.1 The provisional nature of spiritual writings. I set out to write about spirituality from a christian perspective. Writing about spirituality, writing about Godde (in her feminine traits, in his masculine traits, in traits that are just… 'person' and 'personal') is bound to be provisional. It is provisional because we are limited and fallible. Therefore my writing is exploratory - and just one expression of a journey and relationship. In the same way that others before me have written about their encounters, I seek to "make sense" of Godde's purposes and love, and how to live my life.

1.2 I set out to write with a quiet spirit, trying to listen, trying to be open, in quietness and gentleness. My writing is limited by my experiences, my personality, my society, and the limits of my knowledge. And yet, if you feel any resonance or recognition in anything I write, then I hope that it inclines your heart towards your own life with Godde, on your own journey, in your own way.

1.3 Relationship and Encounter. Spirituality from a christian perspective involves relationship, and can be seen in various ways: in the flow of love from Godde to people; and in the experiences, encounters and responses of people, individually or in community, during their lives and through history (which is what our lives so soon become).

1.4 Relationship at the heart of spirituality may be considered from two perspectives: from the perspective of Godde, and from the perspective of people.

1.5 Godde's Unchanging Love: Jesus. From Godde's perspective, which is the primary perspective, perhaps this love is no less than the central flow of creation and life. Indeed, I feel convinced that it is, in a multiplicity of expressions. From Godde's perspective, a relationship of love seems central to his dealings with each one of us. I believe Godde seeks to reveal himself to us, and that Godde chose to reveal himself as a personal, feeling Godde in the person of Jesus Christ. In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, Godde demonstrated that his love and commitment to each individual is total, to the point of death for each individual's sake. However much we change, in a changing world, Godde does not change. That does not mean, however, that our perceptions of him must remain fixed-state and unchanging. Each generation and each society has to try to "make sense" of Godde's love in the context of its own experiences and its own encounters and its own inherited or emergent insights. But Godde's part in relationship with us is, I believe, unchanging, faithful love reaching out to us.

1.6 Godde's Unchanging Love: in the World. From Godde's perspective, this love is also revealed and made manifest in the flow of love between people, in the grace and characteristics of Godde that colour and touch our lives, in the beauty and dignity and splendour of nature and creation, reflecting the deeper eternal beauty and love that emanates from Godde and her everlasting country. So that we receive, not only direct and personal love from Godde to us individually, but also the love that is spread out through all creation and all people in life, light, joy, hope, beauty.

1.7 For though we are confined within the coffin of time and space, with the inevitability of physical decay and bodily death, the death too of stars over millions of years; and confined within the vastness of a universe which renders us like a minute glimmering of atoms that converge for an almost invisibly small time, then scatter, and we are gone: yet, Godde calls us into life, and reveals love and creation and feelings and beauty - reflections in our sometimes dark and always transient life of an eternal splendour, of a reality and permanence beyond this time-trapped world. He invites us to say 'Yes' to love, and he calls us out of darkness to open our hearts and respond and be part of the eternal 'Yes' that is reality and relationship with Godde. He shelters us, and protects us, and holds us for ever, treasured and loved.

1.8 The human perspective: encountering the love of Godde. From the human perspective of individuals and communities, the love of Godde and relationship with Godde is experienced through who we are, and how we encounter her love. Therefore, in "trying to make sense" of our lives and our relationship with Godde - in the development of this theology, for example - we depend greatly on experience and encounter, since our understanding and reception of the flowing love of Godde is framed by what we have encountered and what we do encounter. For this reason, I sometimes call my writings 'Encounter Theology' although this is just one approach to the understanding of Godde's love, one approach among many.

1.9 The human perspective: variety of encounters. From the human perspective, our relationship with Godde and our awareness of Godde's love is based upon what we have encountered and what we do encounter, day by day, and over the years. Such awareness and encounters may sometimes be quiet convictions, sometimes overwhelming experiences, sometimes sought, sometimes unsought, sometimes arise in prayer, sometimes occur in meeting other people. Sometimes our relationship and encounters seem to build up step by step in an evolving understanding and recognition; sometimes knowledge and encounter seem to be imparted whole, not all worked out, but just there, and recognised, and understood.

1.10 Limitations to our understanding. And yet, in any discussion of human understanding of Godde, and in the "making sense" of our encounters with her, we need also to recognise that our knowledge, understanding and language itself is conditioned by our own life experiences, our parental or cultural influences, our social context, our inherited values, our psychology, our own individual traits, prejudices or personality. In short, each one of us - throughout history - has been 'conditioned' in a variety of ways. Additionally, science indicates that we are an evolving species that changes in response to changing circumstances, and knowledge itself evolves, so that insights or explanations once founded upon limited understanding may need 're-defining' in the context of emerging science or psychological insight or social changes. This does not, of course, change the essential nature of Godde, but it is a factor to be considered when considering spirituality from a human perspective, as people past and present have tried - in fallibility and within their own limitations - to "make sense" of their experiences and encounters.

1.11 Methodology: evidence of encounters and acknowledgment of limits, conditioning, fallibility. My methodology, therefore, is to try to look at the ways in which people (largely in the christian tradition and context of my study) have encountered Godde and attempted to express those encounters and "make sense" of them. In looking at this evidence, for example the evidence of the biblical authors, I am trying to identify 'key' elements. At the same time, I am trying to look at such evidence realistically and honestly - not attributing it with idealised status or infallibility - but separating those aspects, that may be the outcome of social conditioning and limited insight, from the actual eternal encounters themselves.

1.12 Is the Bible True? My methodology, therefore, is questioning and open-ended - rather than assuming that fallible humans have an infallible 'body' of truth. Our own human experience suggests that infallibility is at odds with the way our lives work. So, for example, in approaching the Bible and its many authors, I see its various histories and evolving insights as the sincere attempt of ordinary people (possibly with the influence of religious communities in places) to "make sense" of profound encounters, but to do so from within the constraints and in some cases prejudices of their own times. I hope that this approach - which avoids 'idealising' the Bible with a mantle of infallibility - may actually afford it greater dignity and respect, and perhaps in the process inspire greater respect from a secular world sometimes alienated by fundamentalism or those parts of the Bible that are in conflict with the world as we actually know it today.

1.13 The relevance of spiritual texts. At the same time, I regard the Bible, and other spiritual writings from various religious traditions, as profoundly meaningful because they arise from the reality of encounter. In this sense, such writings may be Spirit-inspired and Spirit in-breathed. The writers' encounters with Godde (in various ways) have opened their hearts and, in turn, may help us open our hearts. In this way, the Spirit of Godde seems to me to be alive and active when people write about their encounters… alive then and alive now… and capable of changing people's lives. So although my methodology is not uncritical, it still maintains an elevated view of spiritual writings, taking them seriously, as part of what we might call the Word of Godde, that logos that creates and renews; the Bible, part of the language of Godde's love, drawing us to encounter with himself, drawing us toward Jesus, the living Word.

1.14 Helping people to take the Bible seriously. I am not trying to undermine the Bible but to give it the respect I believe it deserves to be taken seriously, not as a kind of 'magical' dictation from Godde with literal accuracy, but as a collection of sincere writings that can be read responsibly, and intelligently, in the light of our own time, and in the context of its own times and it own limitations. In an age when millions may challenge the fundamentalist application of christian or muslim texts, to the extent of putting them off the good contained within them, I believe the Bible seen as encounter and fallible sincerity can gain dignity and the right to be taken seriously by the secular mind.

1.15 Personal Experience and Pre-Conceptions. Finally, my methodology is defined as well (as it is inevitably bound to be) by my own personal experiences and encounters. These encounters have persuaded me of the supernatural intervention of Godde in our world and our lives. Therefore my preconceptions allow for reason beyond the reasonable, and meaning beyond the purely scientific.

1.16 At the same time, I believe that being truthful means we need to confront incompatibilities and error, both in the face of biblical myth and the limitations of our present scientific knowledge to adequately account for Godde. I see the Bible, and all human writing, as vessels of clay that may contain treasure although they have imperfections. My own writing, my own preconceptions, this work: need to be appraised in the same way. Others can judge its limits and frontiers, I cannot.