An inclusive, creative, and a Spirit filled approach towards the future centers us on this pneumatic and soulful truth: That we are prophetically called, and that we are mystically invited into the fullness of life.

We are prophetically called by our ethical concerns and our humane principles that encourage equality, dignity, and being a compassionate witness. We are mystically invited into greater spiritual participation by our courageous inner seeking aspirations to live more fully in the light of God.

Being prophetic or mystical requires our willingness to have faith in the face of uncertainty- for no one can know for sure how anything will turn out. … We live by faith, and it is often a faith that is against the odds and so it forces us to live near the margins of our understanding, close to the bone, when it comes to any sense of security. Only by possessing a compelling guiding vision and having a vital purpose that can be shared and celebrated, can any person, family, or community come through to the other side of any dilemma, risk, or life trial.

The value of a religious community or any spiritual gathering is to unify and repair all the broken and split parts of our humanity. Then its purpose becomes to gather together to listen attentively as the Spirit educates, inspires, and moves us.

At the very last, I believe that there is planted in every human soul, an urgency to live:

To build character, to forge, and to refine the quality of our relationships, to reach beyond previously held limits, and to face the asking years of our uncertainties with faith and courage. The importance of our future rests in the assurance that we have reached out, that we have been willing to risk, and when looking back, in all humility and self knowledge, to be able to say that we have done our best…

Closing Words and Benediction:

The Spirit is brooding over the world (Deuteronomy 32), and She is ready to hatch her offspring— the women and men of God who will fully recognize and embody her.

On the positive and transformative side, Spirit is manifest whenever the heart is warmed and whenever the will is informed. I believe that our lives can be activated to receive the spiritual impulses of grace and change, and then we can, as a result of that leavening, act to make those effects evident in our personal lives. Then as an outgrowth of our individual transformations, we can come together and apply its wisdom as a dynamic and gracious social force throughout our culture.

UCC Jazz Vespers Service  7/10/11

Reflections on Jazz And The Spirit:

When I was first asked to do this Jazz Vespers, I was struck by how awkward it first appeared to me- yet the challenge was intriguing! I was asked to try to link my research into new inclusive definitions of The Spirit, and the need for a spiritual transformation of church and culture to… Jazz?

How could that be possible?

Well, after mulling it over in prayer and reflection, and after reading what noted jazz musicians have said about the core and vitality of jazz, I feel that there are certain valuable parallels that can be made…

To paraphrase the famous saxophonist Charlie Parker who defined music in these words: ["Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you do not live it, it won’t come out of your horn. [Society, and the rules of our culture] teach you that there are definite boundary lines to your music. But, man, there are no boundary lines to art [or the Spirit.]”

The unconventional, and controversial qualities of the Holy Spirit can be connected to and be descriptive of the fierce, dynamic flow of notes and feelings we can find in jazz. Both resist limitations of form, and the strictures of polite conformity.

 Ray Brown concurs when he defines jazz this way:

“Jazz, is to me, a complete lifestyle. Its bigger than a word. It’s a much bigger force than something that you can say.

It is something you have to feel. It is something you have to live.” And Charles Hayden puts it this way: “I want [people who listen to my music] to come away with an ability to discover the music that lives inside them. “

Jazz might well represent the dynamism of the Spirit in the work and art of life because it is transformative, and while it can appear intense or chaotic, it flows purposefully to its internal harmonics that seem to blend into the music of the universe itself.

Jazz and The Spirit can both be summarized here as being too prophetic to control, too mystical to be harnessed, and too transformative to lend any sense of safe security to the listeners or to those who can perceive the deeper resonance and rhythms of life that each represents. It is emotionally passionate and it is thoughtfully reflective… It is lively, and it is pensive… Jazz is one of the rare art forms that can embrace the many dimensions and facets of the human paradox, and allow its many expressions to have a resonant voice of its own…

 The depth psychologist who best understands these challenging metaphors and their potential meanings was Carl Jung, who gave us this observation:

“The action of the Holy Spirit does not meet us in the atmosphere of a normal bourgeois (or proletarian!) sheltered regular life, but only in the insecurity outside of the human economy, in the infinite spaces where one is alone with the providentia Dei. (Divine Providence) We must never forget that Christ was an innovator and a revolutionary, executed with criminals. The reformers and great religious geniuses were heretics. It is there that you find the footprints of the Holy Spirit, and no one asks for the Spirit to work in them or guide their life without having to pay a high price“ (Jung, 1975b, paragraph 1539).

It could be said, that our very origins at the time of the Creation were instilled with the harmony of the Spheres, and like the rhythms in jazz, possess a incessant melodic freedom that express relentless creativity and an abounding, abiding grace in that brings life into being…

Jazz is like the creative Spirit.  It is a musical style that gives birth to a flowing expression of human inspiration, one that is often intuitive, and containing just such a multifaceted harmonic structure that gives each note its vitality, expression, and purpose as a part of the gracious, flowing whole.

Like no other genre of music and composition, there is no one right way, and even missed notes can lend a human value and credence to the remarkable creative flow and its impressionistic force. It is a vital form of music- essentially creative and ultimately expressive of its own free and gracious forms. It will not be fenced or controlled by tradition, nor will it be limited by our personal expectations. Each time it can be brand new; each time the creative and gracious energies of sound can shape our hearing and our knowing in ways that open up our feelings, and broadcast our sentiments- placing them in a new frame of reference, for all to hear, for all to grasp and know intimately, and then to share universally.

From this and other such allied points of reasoning, I would boldly conclude that the Spirit, as the dynamis of God, is a constant, ever present, unfolding reality, [Playing the jazz of the universe and it is heard with our hearts as well as our ears...]

As such, it is the Spirit that has the capacity to assist humanity in shaping the understanding of its history, and it is Spirit that will positively prepare us for its future.

However, it is our participation that is needed. It is up to every person to pay attention! It is required of us to learn how to listen, and then how to reverently and responsibly act on Spirit’s behalf. Given our indispensable gift of free will, and the awesome ethical responsibility to use it for the greater good, it becomes our core task to take the Spirit’s message of wholeness, integrity, and salvation seriously. We are to learn how best to apply those gracious, challenging, and transformative experiences and insights in our lives.

Then it is up to us personally, reinforced by our churches and spiritual communities, to share it broadly among us and across our world culture. From this melodic impulses, we can move consciously together towards an inclusive, peaceful, and compassionate future.

Introduction: A New Pentecost Awaits

The Holy Spirit has within her presence and potentials, a restless, powerful, and urgent expectation of continually giving birth to a new reality. This new Spirit-infused reality is both inclusive and paradoxical; Its effects are both individual and social, personal and cultural. The impulses and directives once they are actively acknowledged and released can be experienced as either gracious or tense. These urgings can be genuinely inspiring, and once they are felt, are life changing and undeniable.

At times, the release or re-birthing of these energies and principles can appear dramatic and challenging in its chaotic, alchemical, and transformative demands. As Spirit, the omnipresent energies and gracious expressions of God can be universally experienced. Succinctly, She can best be experienced and understood as the source of vitality, wisdom, and compassion. However, while available to all, most often it is the willing and the receptive who acknowledge this truth most readily. They are the more open and vulnerable to sensing and to experiencing God’s omnipresence as being a sustaining and loving reality that lives within and among us.

The new Millennia has dawned, but it has not yet become a conscious and widely acknowledged part of our dominant culture. The activity of The Spirit has not been perceived widely in our prevailing religious church practices. She has not been given serious regard in our current theological and liturgical understandings. It is also true that tracking carefully the turns of time and calendars does not guarantee the Spirit’s appearance as a growth in awareness or an advance in consciousness. While it remains true that the greater manifestations of the Spirit are continually available, yet most often they will lie latently within time or go ignored and unused in our lives.

Despite the intense and unsettling struggle we can easily witness all around us, we need not give up hope. When we consider the continual wrestling we encounter with the imposing ethically dark forces of human whim and will, the entrenchment within resistant and powerful patriarchal systems and as condoned by cultural inertia, we are tempted by feelings of resignation. However, by looking deeper, and searching heartfully, we can find that we are continually supported by those glimpses of increasing awareness. Our sense of hope can be restored by acknowledging the increase in spiritual investigations, and by our willingness to actively question and to reverently wonder. In that searching, and by that willingness, we promote a more constant access to supernal qualities of light, hope, and truth.

The evidence for establishing a new consciousness is becoming more available and more widely recognized in contemporary culture. If it is true that a new awareness is dawning, then as more people consciously attune their lives and actions to its insights and demands, it will certainly become progressively better known. Across the wide spectrum of human thought and spiritual practice, we can be assured that this new manifestation of Spirit will be revealed and Spirit will invite and extend Her influences into every home, and into every heart.

The Spirit is brooding over the world (Deuteronomy 32), and She is ready to hatch her offspring— the women and men of God who will fully recognize her, will see the Spirit as a tripartite source: First, as a world creating, Spirit acts as our indwelling vital and dynamic presence; Second, as a sustaining source for a shared relational wisdom and social experience; Third or lastly, as an ethical imperative for meaningful social reform and for ecological repair/transformation.

When individuals invite these energies and heed the influences of the Spirit, they open themselves to those life- transformative explorations and move consciously towards a greater commitment to pneumatic living or participating in a Spirit centered life.

To the degree that this Spirit’s invitation is welcomed, affirmed, and embodied, there will be an increase in compassionate awareness. This inbreaking spiritual energy will broaden and deepen our social conscience as well as enliven our spiritual imagination. From our receptivity, we can reinforce our insights personally and then work together to courageously transform them into necessary and ethical actions. The result will be an alchemical and gracious reordering of spiritual perceptions and baseline ethical realities. This realignment to Spirit will work collectively to foster a large scale cultural re-birthing- bringing forth a broader, and deeper comprehension of the Spiritual dimensions of our daily human existence.

How this Spirit centered effects are to manifest themselves, or how they will become more widely known and then more easily assimilated is not yet fully clear. What we can witness and affirm is that the cracks in our world’s icy indifference, in our rampant Western egotism, and all the deep veined fissures of cultural isolation that previously divided humanity from itself, are cracking open more readily than the polar ice caps! The indifference and isolation are giving way to the need for developing more cultural interdependence. Such compassionate cooperation will be a hallmark of this new age or coming consciousness. Because of the increasing cultural disillusionment that we can see running blatantly throughout our society, a tipping point or a crisis point is rapidly becoming necessary. Perhaps we can say, as a supernal counterbalance or as a gracious response to them, Spirit and all her ameliorative effects will be brought closer and become more available to our daily social awareness.

One author, Donald Gelpi,² puts it in these words:

“A contemporary pneumatology faces then a formidable task. In order to counteract those forces that stifle Spirit awareness, it must prophetically challenge individuals and communities to rend their hearts and open themselves to the illumination of the Spirit.”

It is our crisis and our opportunity, our social demands and our soulful urgings that will move us into confronting this formidable task. One of the intentions of this book is to contribute to the background information and to the greater understanding of these powerful and dynamic forces. It is my goal to begin to outline how the Spirit works, and to clearly acknowledge the cultural changes that would be necessary to usher in a genuine Age of the Spirit.

Increasingly over the recent decades, our contemporary culture has written about the dramatic and idealistic possibilities of cultural change. Accordingly to current forecasts, these changes are thought to commence or to correspond to the date and time that is outlined in the Meso-American Mayan calendar. The time when such culturally predictive signs and expected wonders will seemingly occur will be on December 21, 2012. Now it is important to state that this wish for change or cultural transformation is not new! Similar to the recent, vain imaginations and hopes for a new spiritually inspired the social order linked to the Harmonic Convergence in 1987. (And even without appealing the wildly speculative and obtuse claims of the latest group of Nostradamus interpreters) We can easily see this American cultural and religious tendency dating as far back in Protestantism in North America and most notably with the Millerites³ in 1834. They were the religious sect who assembled on a New York Mountain-top; It seemed as if there was an expectation of calamity or collapse, of some impending doom, accompanied by celestial catastrophes, and at the end of such tribulation, there would be some arcane but nonetheless some Scripturally predicted and religiously assured form of divine deliverance! Each century, or so it seems, arrives with its own version of a Second Coming! These largely erroneous predictions abound in Western Millennial literature, and are wrapped up in the personal revelations of religious leaders who are “enraptured” ⁴ with their own world-view! Somehow, they are able to cajole and convince their followers into believing in its imminent appearing! Modern media has often been a willing, uncritical, and enthusiastic ally to these controversial and often unfounded assertions.

Without going into an extensive Biblical exegesis, or a rigorous religious examination of comparative texts, let me state clearly that there are no dangerous religious books per se, only dangerous interpretations. Those who lack a historical, and most importantly, an imaginative and metaphorical understanding of Scripture, are primarily to blame for being the source of such fear and apprehension! Those who would take a literal or fundamentalist approach to any text are the same ones who are most prone to insult and alarm. These same panicked individuals or the same fear fueled groups, are the ones who are the most likely to proclaim their distress to others. There is an uncanny and unfathomable desire to sound the alarm- particularly when the warnings are based on their own version of all the disastrous effects that are to come!

As for the current dire warning about 2012, even the Mayans themselves are at odds with the current rash of books and predictions that offer dramatic warnings and portents of doom. As the long, extended article ⁵ cited in the end notes of this paper names it, our Western Christian understandings of the religious life, its examples and archetypes have been “exhausted.” This observation is one of my key concerns. Our Western religious language has been stripped of its power to proclaim dynamic and transformative messages. Because of this accepted infirmity, and the inability for conventional approaches to Western spirituality to inspire our culture, as I see it, the time is ready, even overripe, for a “New Pentecost” among us….

It is my contention that these changes are not literally connected to a specific time or place; they are not limited to a specific date in calendar or hour of clock time. When we are dealing with all the dire and scary predictions that we have been popularly given, first we have to make objective and scientific allowances for those uncontrollable events such as shifts in the tectonic plates that cause earthquakes, etc. That should quell some of more fantastic fears based on some supernatural punishment or fear. Next, comes the humble and honest admission that there are some events and changes that remain well beyond our human control. This humility and honesty can encourage the responsible and ethical imperative to learn how to cooperate, and to learn how best to prepare ourselves to respond to these cataclysmic events as effectively and as compassionately as we can.

However, there is a larger, more harsh admission to be made: Most, if not all of the social crises and environmental dilemmas we now face are humanly authored, and they are culturally created. These systemic imbalances and the shifts in our planet’s ecological extremes are primarily perpetuated by our dominant myopic social priorities. It is a case where our ethics controls our climate, and that our weather imbalances are being directed by our secular and monetary values.

On the positive and transformative side, Spirit is manifest whenever the heart is warmed and whenever the will is informed. I believe that our lives can be activated to receive the spiritual impulses of grace and change, and then we can, as a result of that leavening, act to make those effects evident in our lives. From our individual transformations, we can come together and apply it as a social force within our culture.

The aim of this book is to be an updated, expanded consideration of the depth and dimensions of the Holy Spirit. It will offer new perspectives without losing sight of its original, linguistic definitions and will recount some of the wider understandings that are to be found within our Western Judeo-Christian heritage. This concern for keeping a consistent dialogue with theology, however, is not a defensive, turgid, or a brittle one. It will align itself with a progressive working definition from both theological research and the writings of depth psychology that holds to a more inclusive and universal understanding. As such, it freely goes beyond the traditional dogmatic definitions and any of the narrowly accepted orthodox scope of language and its conforming beliefs. Consequently, the ideas expressed will be along a line of thoughtful consideration that never loses touch with its foundational integrity. As an inclusive theological overview, this research affirms that the Spirit always has been and will remain an omnipresent correspondent with every archetype that affirms and honors her place, her possibilities, and her potentials.

Exam Question: Is Hell Exothermic or Endothermic?
 

The following is from Dr. Schambaugh’s Chemical Engineering Test given at the University of Oklahoma in 1997….
 
Concerning the rules for Heat and Mass transfer, the following question was posed:
 

Is Hell exothermic or is it Endothermic? Support your answer with the truth!

Most all of the professor’s students wrote their proofs using some variation of Boyle’s law. One student, however, wrote the following explanation:

He said: First we postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls can also have mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into Hell and at what rate are they leaving?

I think we can safely assume that once a soul goes to Hell, it stays there! Therefore, there are no souls that are leaving. As for souls entering Hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state confidently that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell! Since there are more than one of these religions, and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls will go to Hell! With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect that the number of souls in Hell will increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of volume in Hell. Boyle’s law states that in order for the temperature and the pressure to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and the volume needs to stay constant.

Case 1: If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose!

Case 2: If Hell is expanding at a rate that is faster than the increase in souls in Hell, then the temperature and the pressure will drop until Hell freezes over!

Q: So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by my classmate Theresa Banyan who, during my freshman year told me that it will be a cold night in Hell before she would sleep with me, and if we take into account that now, as a senior, I still have not succeeded with her, then Case 2 cannot be true!  Thus Hell is exothermic!

The student, Tim Graham, got the only A in the course!

Story:     Sanity and Sanctity

How do we learn about our differences, and how one person’s talent or skill is not to be envied, just as another person’s spiritual beliefs are not to be shunned or put down? Here is a story form the famous Black theologian, Howard Thurman that offers us an answer:

“I dreamt that God took my soul to Hell. To my right, there among the trees, were men and women hard at work making a garden. And I said, looking at them, ” I should like to go and work with them. Hell must be a very industrious place, filled with lots of personal success and much individual accomplishment.”

Then God said,” Nothing grows in the garden they are making.” Together we look more carefully: And I saw those people working among the bushes, digging holes, but instead of planting anything, there was nothing to fill these holes. The workers covered the holes with sticks, straw, leaves, and earth, and I noticed that each man as they walked back behind the bushes, they watched their footsteps very carefully, then the men hid themselves and intently watched their holes…

I asked God, “What were they doing?” And God said, “Oh, they are making pitfalls for any man or woman to fall in.” I said to God,” Why do they do it?” And God said, “Because each person who lives in Hell thinks when his brother or her sister falls, then they will more easily rise or succeed.

And then I asked, ” How will he or she rise?” God said,” They will not rise, but instead, they will fall into egotism and fail to truly succeed”

And I asked God,” Are these people sane?” God replied, ” They are not sane; there is no sane person in Hell.”

As I understand it, life requires us to accept with gratitude, the gifts and talents of others, and not seek to feel superior or inferior. Also, we are to honor all the different ways of understanding God, or what is good or what is considered to be Holy- We are not to sharply criticize the differences, but we are to compare, and to appreciate so that we can learn from them.

After all, if we are to trust the intent of World Scripture, we are given the view that God created humanity so that we can bless and care for one another, not so we could harm or judge each other- No one truly gets ahead when another person fails, and no one is made better by trickery or deceit, envy or revenge.

In fact, it could be said that only as we learn to tolerate and accept one another’s differences, and not try to create pitfalls, can we begin to find a genuine and lasting sense of inspiration within the diverse communities that we build, …

And only then, does even a glimpse of heaven become possible.

You and I are in the business of building kingdoms and queendoms together- to build the realms of wonder and sustain the structures of integrity and worth in which all of our sisters and brothers of the liberal and lively spirit work together and dwell….

This is ideal of community- It consists of the blessings and grace we can experience in caring for one another, and the that can be found in sharing our life’s journey with one another, thereby enriching and supporting each other all along life’s way….

Story:     What Heaven and Hell Are Really Like?
 

One day, a young monk brought a perplexing question to his Abbot, the head of the monastery. He said” I have been studying all the theology about heaven and hell, but its all so complex that I am confused… Is there any easy way I can know what the difference between Heaven and Hell is ?

The elder Abbot paused for a moment, and then told the monk this story: He said Heaven and Hell are, in some ways, similar, the difference is found in how we treat people…
Picture a large ornate dining hall, you know fine china, flowers, soft linen… And now see all the people surrounded by the most delicious foods you can imagine- tasty meats, sumptuous desserts… But the people gathered there were gaunt, tired, listless, severe, miserable…. You see the only silverware they had were long forks and spoons- so long that they could not load up and bend their arms to get the food into their mouths… So all the food was wasted, and the people remained painfully thin….
That is Hell…  Now Heaven is exactly the same… A beautiful dining hall, great food, but there the people were happy, well fed, laughing, and truly enjoying one another… You see, said the elder Abbot, the difference between Heaven and Hell is this: In heaven, the people learned to take the long forks and spoons, and instead trying to put themselves first, they learned to reach across and to feed one another…. Heaven is found in unselfish, loving service to others….”