Co-creating a Brand New World
This is our moment, our time. We will be held accountable for what we did with our lives. For how we responded to Aboriginal deaths in custody. To how we voted once we learned that Australia is the only Commonwealth nation who doesn’t recognise its First Peoples in its constitution, or in any kind of treaty. We will be held accountable for what we let slide by us because we felt overwhelmed, too tired, or worried we would get it wrong.
Hurry Up, Its Go Time
Wake up. We have no more time for dilly dallying. The world needs you to show up, break the mould you were poured into by virtue of your family of origin, your religious conditioning or your gender role. It needs you to wake up and sing your song, write your book, tell your story, make your art, plant your garden.
Spiritual Authority
(For Doug, Helen and Carrie, who taught me to trust myself.
And for Brian.
The ocean looks beautiful tonight.)
Spiritual Formation for a Quantum Age of Intuitive Intelligence
When we read religious texts (including the Bible) archetypally and mythologically, they become *more* meaningful, true, applicable and real – not less. It does not diminish a text to call it myth – it exalts it. It sets it on the pedestal of shared imagination, it lays it out as a smorgasbord and invites all to feast on it. It cracks it open in ways that may have been unimaginable beforehand. It makes it meaningful and meaty and relevant in any dimension, timeframe, religious context or epoch of time. It welcomes deep engagement with other fields and disciplines, because an archetypal and mythological framework has holographic and multidimensional meaning-making devices – eliminating surface level divisions on the minutiae of issues like transmission, translation, and doctrine.
Annihilation and the Cross of Christ
One of the many reasons I am still so awestruck at the cross of Christ, is that it cuts to the marrow of what it means to be truly free. For this reason, I believe that current approaches to biblical literacy and scholarship can only take us so far, because the inherent mysteries around the cruciform pattern can only be entered into experientially or holographically.
Of Tidal Waves and Ancient Texts
I lie in the flickering dawn light taking all this in, letting it settle deep into my heart space as I allow room for wonder and exploration. I hold the dream like a stone in my hand. Putting it in my pocket as I pry my tired body up out of the bed and shuffle sleepily to the kitchen to tend to the kids, brew coffee, kiss my baby nephew who is gurgling away happily in his highchair in the middle of the bright yellow kitchen of the holiday home I’ve rented with my sister.
Steering by Starlight
I have learned to discern where the fibres of bone and marrow meet at the intersection of spiritual abuse and underlying mental illness. I have deeply studied the connection between evil and stupidity, and noticed how the capacity for addiction often indicates a commensurate capacity for spiritual power and awareness. I have made detailed notes about where intent ends and consequences begin, where family of origin patterns lay the groundwork for enabling harm, and where that groundwork overlaps with the safety and survival of individual members. I have mapped the subtle but discernible differences between a psychotic break and a spiritual awakening. I have circumnavigated the delicate meeting place between shamanic power, spiritual anointing and energetic intelligence.
Shadow Dancing
In the end, I finally found the strength to gamble on this song. I did this slowly, beginning to trust its resonance and frequency because it came to me in my dreams at night, and echoes from starlight and from the flames in the fireplace, in the leaves floating to the forest floor and in the river. It came to me like echoes from many lifetimes, like something deeper and more powerful than I had ever suspected. It came to me in stories from the Bible, about tongues of flame and shapeshifting divine beings, in ancient Hebrew poetry and political drama tableaus, in revisiting Eden and the exile which followed. In the end, it was the Biblical witness speaking in harmony with the created order and my own beating heart which formed the narrow trail that I began to walk on.
Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost: The Deconstruction Movement Part 1
The church has been fostering unholy soul-ties to the world of empire since the second century, when the grandfather of Catholic theology, Irenaeus insisted that the Roman (Catholic) church was the only trusted source for salvific sacrament and ritual. In reaction to both the geo-political instability in the region at the time and the persecution of Christians as well as the propagation of gnostic sects purporting to have secret knowledge of oral tradition traced back to Jesus, he wanted to stabilise and unify The Church, bringing it under the powerful protection of the Empire. To do this, he brought to the tumultuous and contested arena the powerful trifecta that the church is still bound by: the authority of the scriptures, church tradition and the priesthood as apostolic succession.
Beyond Gender Wars: Deconstruction Part 3
A whole generation of people are walking away from external reference points offered by faith communities, and developing their own soul-esteem. I believe this is what Jesus was talking about when he compared the Kingdom of God to treasure buried in a field. The narrative goes that when the person realizes this, they sell everything they own in order to purchase this field that they might be able to dig for, find and legally take possession of the treasure. Soul-esteem is the treasure which is the germinated seed of the Kingdom of God inside every human heart, and ironically, many of us have to walk away from the scaffolding of the faith community, selling everything we have in order to buy what we need to finally lay hold of it.
