'...Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'
Thus states Hamlet, who has seen the ghost of his father telling him secrets about his uncle's murderous affair with his mother. We don't know whether the Elizabethan audience of the play would have taken the ghostly appearance at face value, as a bit of 'supernatural' dramatic license, or as a projection of Hamlet's mental anguish. But it stands today as a small act of resistance to the dominant worldview of science, in which even consciousness is a strange and accidental byproduct of cold and purposeless physical, chemical and bioogical processes.
Scientists of all kinds who adhere to this materialist worldview struggle to explain the evolutionary purpose of faith. It's clear that they have little to no understanding of spirituality when they suggest that religion is just a hangover of a child's need to obey its parents (Dawkins) or early humans' attempts to explain how things came to be (Wolpert). At least neuroscientists take seriously human experience of something beyond themselves. It's possible to induce spiritual experiences by stimulating certain parts of the brain, but that doesn't explain what induces them normally. Spirituality is a regular human experience, with around 75% of British people willing to answer the question, 'Have you ever been aware of or influenced by a presence or power, whether you call it God or not, which is different from your everyday self?' in the affirmative. It won't surprise you to know that Richard Dawkins, when subjected to the stimulation of the 'Koren Helmet', didn't feel very much.
The fact that the majority of us sense the presence of something beyond what science can describe doesn't mean that there is anything there, but it is a pointer. For me, personally, I would be hard pushed to commit my life to a set of ideas, however beautiful, that described a reality that is purely speculative and hypothetical, with no chance of verifying its existence, even subjectively. Beyond that, the Christian claim is not just that there are other dimensions, but that there are entities from these other dimensions that are constantly influencing life as we know it. When put like that, it sounds like a weird new age conspiracy theory, which means that I certainly could do with some sense that what I belief corresponds to reality.
A mature Christian spirituality, by my definition, would give attention to this reality. I don't think this is the same as the 'falling in love' feeling of the newly converted, but I think it should probably feel like love in its more mature forms. Amazingly, Protestants don't really have a strong tradition of being able to articulate this, and Roman Catholics tend to domesticate it with religious movements. The Orthodox Church is the only major Christian tradition to honour the contribution of mystics as equal to that of theologians.
The fact that the majority of us sense the presence of something beyond what science can describe doesn't mean that there is anything there, but it is a pointer. For me, personally, I would be hard pushed to commit my life to a set of ideas, however beautiful, that described a reality that is purely speculative and hypothetical, with no chance of verifying its existence, even subjectively. Beyond that, the Christian claim is not just that there are other dimensions, but that there are entities from these other dimensions that are constantly influencing life as we know it. When put like that, it sounds like a weird new age conspiracy theory, which means that I certainly could do with some sense that what I belief corresponds to reality.
A mature Christian spirituality, by my definition, would give attention to this reality. I don't think this is the same as the 'falling in love' feeling of the newly converted, but I think it should probably feel like love in its more mature forms. Amazingly, Protestants don't really have a strong tradition of being able to articulate this, and Roman Catholics tend to domesticate it with religious movements. The Orthodox Church is the only major Christian tradition to honour the contribution of mystics as equal to that of theologians.
The fact that the majority of us sense the presence of something beyond what science can describe doesn't mean that there is anything there, but it is a pointer. For me, personally, I would be hard pushed to commit my life to a set of ideas, however beautiful, that described a reality that is purely speculative and hypothetical, with no chance of verifying its existence, even subjectively. Beyond that, the Christian claim is not just that there are other dimensions, but that there are entities from these other dimensions that are constantly influencing life as we know it. When put like that, it sounds like a weird new age conspiracy theory, which means that I certainly could do with some sense that what I belief corresponds to reality.
A mature Christian spirituality, by my definition, would give attention to this reality. I don't think this is the same as the 'falling in love' feeling of the newly converted, but I think it should probably feel like love in its more mature forms. Amazingly, Protestants don't really have a strong tradition of being able to articulate this, and Roman Catholics tend to domesticate it with religious movements. The Orthodox Church is the only major Christian tradition to honour the contribution of mystics as equal to that of theologians.
It's in my personality to never commit completely to any particular theory, but I like Christian Schwarz's scheme of 9 different types of spirituality (seen in the image at the start of this blog). Not because I think there are 9 different types of spirituality, but because he suggests that whatever our natural approach to God, that is just a start. If we are to grow in our spirituality then it can't just be about getting better and better at singing worship songs or studying the Bible or going on silent retreats; rather we need to learn how to approach God from angles that are not so comfortable. In that, I feel like a beginner.
I don't want to describe spiritual maturity as a set of practices, because those practices vary so much. So I think I'm left saying that I think there are two key elements: one is sense of oneness with God, and perhaps others and creation, and the other is that attention to the spiritual aspect of life is not limited to religious activities, but becomes 'The Sacrament of the Present Moment. Thinking again about Richard Dawkins, I wonder if spiritual awareness is analagous to musicality: there is a bell curve of natural ability, but everyone can improve with practice.
It's in my personality to never commit completely to any particular theory, but I like Christian Schwarz's scheme of 9 different types of spirituality (seen in the image at the start of this blog). Not because I think there are 9 different types of spirituality, but because he suggests that whatever our natural approach to God, that is just a start. If we are to grow in our spirituality then it can't just be about getting better and better at singing worship songs or studying the Bible or going on silent retreats; rather we need to learn how to approach God from angles that are not so comfortable. In that, I feel like a beginner.
I don't want to describe spiritual maturity as a set of practices, because those practices vary so much. So I think I'm left saying that I think there are two key elements: one is sense of oneness with God, and perhaps others and creation, and the other is that attention to the spiritual aspect of life is not limited to religious activities, but becomes 'The Sacrament of the Present Moment. Thinking again about Richard Dawkins, I wonder if spiritual awareness is analagous to musicality: there is a bell curve of natural ability, but everyone can improve with practice.
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