by Bruno Barnhart,
OSB Cam
The attraction that we experience in the Eastern spiritual
traditions today is the magnetism of wisdom: a knowing
which is life, inner experience and union. This wisdom was
the 'golden string' which drew Bede Griffiths to India, and
it is what Bede has communicated to us in his talks and writings.
This spiritual wisdom is not foreign to Christianity, though
it has long been unfamiliar in the western world. Within
the New Testament there is a depth and fullness which has
largely disappeared in the many succeeding centuries, but
which is always there to be rediscovered.
Bede Griffiths, in dedicating his life to the 'marriage
of East and West,' was working toward the rebirth of Christian
wisdom in the light of the Vedanta: of nonduality or advaita and
of the discovery of the inner Self, or atman. Contemporaries
such as Abhishiktananda and Raimon Panikkar have worked along
the same frontier of unitive experience, or the 'perennial
philosophy.'
Today Christianity finds itself confronted
not only by the wisdom of the East—Hinduism, Buddhism,
Taoism—but
by other wisdoms as well. Jungian and transpersonal psychology,
modern art and poetry, tribal shamanism, hermeneutics, ecology
and feminism, literary theory and the history of thought—on
every side, the sharp edges of western consciousness are
rounded and silvered by an invisible river of psyche
and
spirit.
At this critical threshold, the container of Western and
of Christian consciousness is opening to a fresh encounter
with reality on every side. At this moment, wisdom signifies
an epistemological quantum leap from our culturally contracted
mind, an awakening to this larger, multidimensional reality. Christian
wisdom, at this moment, is the rediscovery of the Christ-Event
in the context of this larger, dynamic and interrelated world
of reality.
Our 'Wisdom Christianity' page will move around this point:
the re-emergence of the Christ-Event at the center of the
larger world in which we find ourselves today, whether on
the level of spirit, of mind and psyche or of the body.
Wisdom as we are using the word is
intended to signify not only depth, but fullness and vitality.
We are dealing,
finally, not with a specialization but with a breaking out
from the confinement of our over-specialized consciousness—whether
secular or religious. It is a question of recovering the
fullness of the Beginning—in the energy of the
Spirit which impels us toward the end. Today the word 'wisdom'
connotes the critical breakthrough into a greater consciousness,
which has been long beginning in the modern West.
In the New Testament, the divine fullness bursts forth in
Jesus Christ. This fullness in the human person who is Christ
becomes a fullness in those persons who participate in him
through faith and baptism, and form a community in his name.
This is the principle of a Wisdom Christianity. The fullness
is not only wisdom; it is life and power, and 'that which
has not entered the human heart.' The way of wisdom is
one path to this fullness, however. The invitation to it
is heard in the Pauline and Johannine writings of the New
Testament.
...For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,
and you have come to fullness of life in him, who is the
head of all rule and authority. Col
2:9-10
That which was from the beginning, which
we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we
have looked upon
and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the
life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it,
and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father
and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen
and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship
with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his
Son Jesus Christ. 1 Jn 1:1-3
__________________________
Bruno Barnhart is
a monk of New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California,
USA.
His chief area of interest is the Christian wisdom tradition
and its
contemporary
re-emergence.
Fr. Bruno
has
edited The
Golden String newsletter since
its beginning, and is the author of The
Good Wine: Reading John from the Center and
Second
Simplicity: The Inner Shape of Christianity. Email: bruno@contemplation.com
