A New Contemplative, Prayerful, Philosophical Practice

I am starting a new blog in order to provide a place for my thinking to focus itself. Beginning a master's degree in philosophy at The Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto has blown wide open my excitement for thought. This excitement, though, easily leads to unfocused and sporadic bursts of intellectual energy which soon are cut adrift as my over-stimulated intellect flies from one half-considered thought to another. So as I progress through my degree here at ICS I hope that this blog can narrow my broad and unintelligible thoughts into something which is (hopefully) slightly understandable. This recent phenomena of blogging, which provides a place for countless people to express their thoughts on countless issues, will then also become a place for my own interests to find a foothold and perhaps blossom into something fruitful. I am not particularly concerned whether that potential fruitfulness serves only me or happens to also provoke something positive in others. So, to any friends and family reading this, I would be delighted if my publicly expressed thoughts were of some value to you, but I have no desire for your engagement with this blog to be a sign of the strength of our relationship! As I mentioned earlier, this will serve as a place for me to focus my otherwise scattered thoughts and so I am perfectly content with however much or little interest everyone else shows.

I shouldn't fool myself into thinking that I am blogging because I have something of extreme importance to say. I like to think that I will keep writing until I have said something. One of my undergraduate professors once told me that some people talk when they have something to say, other people talk until they have something to say. It might be that this blog serves both ways of saying something, though I would flatter myself if I didn't say that I tend towards the latter. In any case, talking or writing until one has something to say isn't necessarily a bad practice, particularly if it is not imposed upon others! 

Now that I've blathered on about this blog, I want to do what I hoped it would do for me: focus my thoughts. So, what have I been thinking about? What sort of questions has the beginning of my degree at ICS sparked for me? I suppose that the interests which are emerging while at grad school certainly have their roots in the years prior to setting out on this particular educational journey. I am thinking of the writings of Fr. Richard Rohr in particular, which have been a massive influence on me. Rohr is situated within the tradition of mystical spirituality and explores that tradition from a Roman Catholic perspective, though freely draws on the wisdom of other religious traditions as well, Christian or otherwise. I risk taking Rohr out of context here, but I think what he writes will be a sort of launching pad for much of my further philosophical and spiritual explorations. This is from one of his most recent books entitled "Immortal Diamond": 

"The spiritual wisdom of divine-human union is first beautifully expressed in writing in the Vedas (the oldest source of humanism, around three thousand years old). The phrase in Sanskrit is Tat Tvam Asi, which is a though so condensed that I am going to list all likely translations.

-          YOU are That!

-          You ARE what you seek!

-          THOU art that!

-          THAT you are!

-          YOU are IT!

The meaning of this saying is that the True Self, in its original, pure, primordial sate, is wholly or partially identifiable or even identical with God, the Ultimate Reality that is the ground and origin of all phenomena. That which you long for, you also are. In fact, that is where the longing comes from.

Longing for God and longing for our True Self are the same longing. And the mystics would say that it is God who is even doing the longing in us and through us through the divine indwelling of the Holy Spirit. God implanted a natural affinity and allurement between God’s self and all of God’s creatures, all of God’s creation."

These are, of course, highly controversial claims within Christian theology. However, I consider it part of my work in the next few years to explore deeply what this notion of divine-human union really means and in what sense it can be seen as either orthodox or un-orthodox. There are so many levels that I want to explore with it. First of all, I need to spend time deciphering and describing what "it" really is, so exploring the writings of mystics will be essential. Secondly, I am interested in exploring the points of overlap between mysticism and postmodern philosophy. Within and beyond such an exploration of mysticism and postmodernism, the implications for such an understanding of God and humanity would be fascinating. What would such a philosophical anthropology/theology have to say on the topics of ethics, ontology, epistemology, hermeneutics, politics, aesthetics, and psychology? And how could it reshape specific topics in Christian theology such as Christology, ecclesiology, and eschatology? 

If God is infinite, then these explorations would likely be infinite as well. Not infinite in a hopeless sense of never achieving answers, but joyfully infinite, as the ineffable silence of worship and prayer before God is infinite.