A Few Random Thoughts on Christianity

Donald Grayston shares some thoughts on the place of Christianity in a pluralistic society. Christianity in our time is in a state of decline, and in a state of renewal - one in which Christians are looking for ways to accept themselves as part of a pluralistic society.

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Donald Grayston on Thomas Merton

Donald calls Thomas Merton his “spiritual advisor in absentia”. Merton’s ideas of contemplation & a contemplative life … his visit with the Dalai Lama, and most surprisingly … how Merton’s long-censored book on peace is startlingly relevant to the current Iraq situation.

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Medicine Wheel

..when you’re in the center of the circle, which is the place of creator in that system, you are the human being that’s at the cross-point between the life and death earth-walk and spiritual beings that can come through our experience of this earth walk; there is a point of integration of those two, and we can embody that.

Judy Evaski continues her conversation with Carol Sill on the Medicine Wheel Path

C: Hi, we’re continuing our conversation, this is Judy Evaski and I’m Carol Sill, and we’re here in Vancouver talking about Judy’s spiritual path and her relationship with nature. I think that’s our next topic, right?

J: Yes. I would add that when I was working with, and I’m still working with, the Native elder, one of the first teaching tools that was used with me, aside from offering tobacco, was the medicine wheel. I was able to construct a medicine wheel, with his guidance, and began to learn some of the basic teachings in that path through that vehicle.

It was a wonderful tool for me to integrate all the paths that I had been exposed to. I’d always had a strong link to nature, to the other creatures in nature, not just us two-leggeds, as we are called, but also with the winged ones in particular. Also with the stones and the rocks, which are called ancestors. What my goal was, I’ve come to realize, in pursuing that path, was to try and learn the manner of speaking to all my relations, which the Native path teaches.

There have been millennia of time that humans have understood their place in creation, their relationship to all the other beings that we share this time and space with. And so my deepening has been in learning the language that promotes communication between all my relations and two-leggeds.

And one of the most wonderful things in the medicine wheel that I began to learn, this is just a simple thing that I think it’s okay to share in this format, is that you have the crossed axis. You have the north-south axis and you have the east-west axis. And in that tradition, and probably in many others, such as the Christian with the cross symbol, the east-west path is often considered the spiritual path. And the north-south is actually the earth walk.  So I’m just realizing as I speak that it’s maybe reversed in the Christian path, where I’ve heard the cross described as the horizontal is our outreaching to other beings, other humans, and the north-south or the up-down axis is our connection to spirit.

Anyway, the point is: when you’re in the center of the circle, which is the place of creator in that system, you are the human being that’s at the cross-point between the life and death earth-walk and spiritual beings that can come through our experience of this earth walk; that there is a point of integration of those two, and that we can embody that.

And I think that’s the purpose of the practice, and of all practices, is that we train ourselves to be more and more ready and more able to allow those energies that we can call divine sometimes, or we call inspiration, to flow through us and to stimulate us in some way to express what those divine energies are.

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Spirit and Social Action

Nancy Zimmerman goes deep into her spiritual views of Service, Action, and Social Justice from her perspective as a devoted Christian and Anglican.

” …every human being is made, is valued and  treasured by God, whether or not they believe in God, or believe in a different God, every human being is absolutely priceless. And yes we are our brother’s and sister’s  keeper, and we do need to be accountable for the fact that we are living in these neighborhoods and find ways to do what we can to come alongside people who are struggling.”

See the text version of this conversation

*Sorry for the audio lag, we had connection problems.

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