Dear Friends of Veriditas,
I have a message for you. These are my reflections as I left Chartres in June, and I'd like to take a few minutes of your time to share them with you.
Most of us who gravitate to the practice of labyrinth walking hold an ambivalent relationship with our religious communities--sorry to say, but I think that's a lot where a lot of us are. Some continue to go to church, wishing the services were more pertinent to our lives, hoping the leaders would decide to end exclusionary language, but often we leave disappointed. We find ourselves restless, disengaged, even annoyed, while a deep spiritual hunger lies heavy in our hearts.
Others have stepped away entirely. We show up at weddings and funerals and other threshold moments, calling ourselves spiritual but not religious, and yet this brings its own challenges. We can drift without anchor. We stagnate, often unaware that our souls are still seeking, still longing to grow. We allow ourselves to be distracted from the important human task of spiritual maturity through self-reflection-- nurturing self-knowledge that leads to empathy, kindness and compassion.
The search for community that supports our values, encourages our maturing process, and offers honest friendship often becomes our main goal. Some of us are lucky enough to find these communities. For me, this search led to an unexpected rediscovery, one that rekindled hope and deepened my spiritual framework.
Over the last two years, I feel that I have found the continuing path to spiritual maturity, found a kind of 'what's next' on my journey. It started with my work with Brian Swimme and Cosmogenesis. Surprisingly, his work led me back to my own library. There I found several heavily underlined books by an author I now realize I wasn't quite ready to receive at the time. His name is Diarmuid O'Murchu.
O'Murchu is a retired Irish Roman Catholic priest of the missionary order. He's an author of sixteen books and a social scientist who has a counseling background rather than a parish orientation. His one statement, "Spirituality is 70,000 years old and traditional religions are 4,500 years old" from his early book Reclaiming Spirituality lit a spark in me!
He loves the Roman church and its worldwide diversity yet is brave enough to step out of the patriarchal viewpoint that unknowingly hinders so many of us. Rather than a transcendent Sky-God who we are taught as omnipresent, omnipotent and all-knowing, he places the unfolding mystery of God in the evolving creation of the Earth and the evolutionary mystery of the Universe.
Brian Swimme is exploring the creation of the Cosmos, the container of all life as we know it, while Diarmuid O'Murchu offers the spiritual implications for human evolution. Both move beyond Greco-Roman theological scaffolding and outdated Newtonian science and embrace a worldview informed by new scientific insights from quantum physics, along with indigenous knowledge and feminine wisdom... a lineage also central to the work of Thomas Berry.
This evolutionary approach reframes our fears of death and steps beyond pathogenic teachings about guilt and the three-storied world: Heaven, Earth and Hell-- that pervades the Christian and religious imagination. It sets our Christian beliefs in a much broader, more compassionate, and, yes, scientifically-grounded context for understanding both human consciousness and the vast unfolding transformation we sense is happening within us and on planet Earth.
Are you ready to take this step? If so, join me for Diarmuid O'Murchu's week this September in Chartres. The theme of the week aligns with his newly released book Divine Radiance in Human Evolution. I believe the Veriditas community is ready to embrace this life-altering perspective. I know pastors who are frustrated with their congregations and seekers who don't know where to look. Others don't know how to step out-of-the-box because they don't know they're in a box except for their restlessness. Often people say to me, 'I'll come to Chartres someday' or 'It's on my bucket list,' but friends, we've been gathering in Chartres since 1998. The world is shifting dramatically, and we don't know the changes ahead. Perhaps now is the time?
https://veriditas.org/event-6044227
Please consider joining us,
Lauren Artress
Veriditas Founder
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