Meister Eckhart and The Great Turning:
Creation Theology as Ecological Model
by: Paul McNees
Creation Theology as Ecological Model
by: Paul McNees
Introduction:
The memory is as clear as if it had happened yesterday. It was Sunday and I was attending church service. It was just something that I did. I was all of 18 years old. I had been doing this for as long as I could remember. I was standing up and sitting down with all the rest of the congregation, reciting the words written out for me on the pamphlet I was handed as I walked into the sanctuary. I was doing what I was told just like everyone else. But this day was different. There is nothing in my memory that I could particularly chalk it up to, it was just different. That Sunday I began to look around at the other members scattered about the pews and what I saw was terribly disturbing. I saw a people who no longer really cared. They were doing their Sunday duty and after the service was done and the doughnuts were eaten and gossip was exchanged, they would all go home and live their lives exactly as they had before. God really didn’t change anything. That was the moment of my fall from faith.
I’m not exactly sure what my faith rested on before that moment, but I think it had something to do with community. Once my community had gone off to college I found myself unmoored and could rely only upon the teachings and the ritual. Perhaps it was the rebelliousness of teen-hood or perhaps something more insightful but by the time the year was out I was only seeing the hypocrisy. I never went back... much to the chagrin of my family. I began to cringe at the mention of God and especially Jesus (whom I had wanted so badly to love) and refused to call myself a “Christian”.
Recently I found a note my father had written to me but never sent. It said something to the effect of, “I hope you can find Jesus and accept Him into your heart, Paulie, so that you can join your mother in Heaven.” It was a heartfelt message from a devout Christian and it broke my heart. My father truly believed that his son would not be spending eternity with him and my mother. What an incredible burden that could be remedied so easily¬ - all I had to do was accept Jesus as my personal savior and it would all be ok. Why could I not give him that? Well, for one thing, I did not believe it and I found it reprehensible to lie about something that important. I suppose the next question might be – why is it important if I believed it to be a crock? The answer to that question may lie in the fact that I still cried during Amazing Grace or Lord of the Dance. My tears meant that I was touched by something ineffable in the Christian story, something true, something important. But it was not to be found in Heaven in some hypothetical afterlife, it was to be found right here, right now. Odd that I would begin to find my answers through the veil of tears shed for our planet.
Religion and Our Relationship to the Environment
It is no great secret that Christianity (at least the Augustinian form) has been partly to blame for the dualistic nature of humankind’s relationship with the planet and the natural world. As Lynn White said in his 1967 essay, The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis, “What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them. Human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny – that is, by religion.” (Gottlieb, pg. 188) He goes on to say that, “By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects.” (ibid) It is not my intention in this paper to place blame or indulge in a litany of historical references regarding the Church’s interpretation of the Bible as God’s plan for humans to dominate nature. I will instead take that as a given (One could refer to This Sacred Earth, mentioned above, for a number of critical essays on the subject.) and move on to what I see as a possible path for religion to participate in, rather than thwart, a fruitful relationship to the natural world. I am not suggesting a return to primitive Neolithic roots (animism) or an undermining of the basic teachings of the Church. What I am suggesting is a radical revision of modern Christianity’s eschatological philosophy and a broadening of the basic teaching of compassion. As we will see later, these two are linked through one primary shift: the shift from anthropocentric monotheism to ecocentric panentheism. The beauty of this shift is that nothing is lost and everything can be gained. The thoughts and concepts of this approach will be encapsulated in the superimposition of the fourfold path of Meister Eckhart through Matthew Fox and the fourfold path of The Great Turning as illustrated by Joanna Macy. The paper will be divided into four parts: 1. Creation (via positiva) and Gratitude, 2. Letting Go and Letting Be (via negativa) and Grief, 3. The Breakthrough (via creativa) and New Identity, and 4. Re-creation (via transformativa) and Going Forth.
In each section I hope to illustrate the striking similarities of Macy’s compassionate vision of Deep Ecology and Eckhart’s profoundly modern teachings of Creation Spirituality. One key point that I would like to remain cognizant of throughout is this: Facing our Hubris – Can we allow ourselves to experience the mystery and beauty of nature, recognize our own guilt for participating in its destruction and still hold on to the miracle of what it means to be human? This may be our most profound challenge.
Creation (via positiva) and Gratitude
Grace
etymology - Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin gratia - favor, charm, thanks, from gratus- pleasing, grateful; akin to Sanskrit grnāti- he praises1 a: unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification b: a virtue coming from God c: a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine grace
If one were to truly allow this idea to sink into the fabric of their being, there would be no option but to feel connected, to understand one’s place in a web of mutual dependence, to borrow a phrase from Macy’s lexicon. Most of us, however, especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition, have been indoctrinated with a sense of separateness, of springing not from a fountain of generosity but from the filth of Original Sin. I believe that Macy and Eckhart would agree that gratitude from such a place would be next to impossible, but were one to look around oneself at all creatures and see in them, and oneself, the nobility of the seed of God, one would be hard-pressed to feel anything but a sense of grace.
Letting Go and Letting Be (via negativa) and Grief
“What is it that we do? We fear. We do not fear ghosts but we fear the ghosts of ourselves.” -Loren Eisley
“We will journey into God as we journey into ourselves. If we can face the darkness within, we can face the darkness that is God.” (Fox, 2000, 170) And from Sermon Twelve: “...when all images of the soul are taken away and the soul can see only the single One, then the pure being of the soul finds passively resting in itself the pure, form-free being of divine unity, when the being of the soul can bear nothing else than the pure unity of God.” In ancient Buddhist traditions it is taught that the further we explore our inner world through meditation the closer we get to finding... nothing. {Gate, Gate, Paragate, Para Sam gate Bodhi svaha! - Gone, Gone, Gone beyond Gone utterly beyond Oh what an Awakening!} There is nothing to be found at the core of our being, no self, no ego, nothing to hold on to at all, just pure emptiness. So also as we move further and further into our exploration of matter – as we delve into the molecular world what we find is space, emptiness. But before that, before the emptiness, what do we encounter? Most of us who are honestly engaged in self-reflection or meditation find pain, grief, anger, attachments and cravings. Herein lies the Letting Go. It is what Macy would call Positive Disintegration - honoring our pain, despair and grief.
This is Eckhart’s via negativa. In order to become truly effective in the world and to give birth to divine knowledge we must empty ourselves and pass through a dark night of the soul – a night where we face our pain, anguish, fear and guilt and let it go. Most of all, it seems to me, we have to let go of our hubris and our desire to know. For as we approach this emptiness there is little to know and there are no whys. There is simply isness. But never in Eckhart do we find simplicity, even here, in the emptying out he plays with the paradox of something verses nothing. In Sermon Fourteen he illustrates this dialectic in a most creative manner. In addressing the issue of purity of heart he says “...that heart is pure that has put an end to all worldly things...you must be free of nothingness,” (emphasis mine). He goes on, “Let a burning coal be taken and placed on my hand.
If I wished to say that the piece of coal was burning my hand, I would not be correct. If I were to state accurately, however, what is burning me, I would say that ‘nothingness’ is doing it. For the piece of coal has something in it that my hand does not have. Beyond, this ‘nothingness’ is burning me. If my hand, however, had in itself all that the coal is and can endure, it would have quite completely the nature of fire... I say quite truly that, to the degree that you are grasped by ‘nothingness,’ you are imperfect. Therefore if you wish to be perfect, you must be free of ‘nothingness.’” (Fox, 2000, 200)
Even as we empty ourselves of all the obstacles to experiencing our interconnectedness and divine grace, we must also let go of the very experience of emptiness! Any attachment it seems would reek of purpose and to be completely pure we must also let go of purpose. It is important to experience our grief for its own sake, strictly for the emptying of it, otherwise we run the risk of facing our pain to absolve our guilt, which would place us on the wrong track. As Eckhart states above, to truly have everything we have to let go of everything, including nothingness. Once we have everything there will no longer be desire and therefore we will become a clear channel for divine creativity to flow through. According to Macy, “positive disintegration occurs when a person courageously confronts anomalies and contradictions of experience. It is like a dark night of the soul, a time of spiritual void and turbulence. But the anxieties and doubts are, Dabrowski maintains, ‘essentially healthy and creative.’ They are creative not only for the person but for society, because they permit new and original approaches to reality.” This point is key: that the process of letting go presupposes the process of letting be which allows for true creativity to take place, which is our very nature!
Humans have spent the last five hundred or so years in an unbridled quest to subjugate nature, to discover her secrets, and eventually to completely separate from her processes. We now find ourselves at a crossroads. The old way leads to more destruction, alienation and suffering. The new way is a radical new awareness of interconnectedness and healing. There may be no way for humans to slow the tide of cataclysm now enveloping the globe but it is possible for us to heal the spiritual rift between our planet and our species. As Matthew Fox puts it, “Consequent on letting go, there occurs a deepening experience of reverence for all things – God, self, others, creation. It is a process of letting be...Here lies the crux of this journey: letting God be God (and not just our preconceived ideas of God) in us. It is for this reason that we abandon even the names we have given to God. ‘I pray God that he may quit me of God.’” (Fox, article) Would not the ultimate creativity spring from a well so deep that it has even abandoned or at least brought into question the very preconceptions on which we have structured our lives? And so we find in Macy’s work, “What ‘disintegrates’ in periods of rapid transformation is not the self, but its defenses and ideas...We do not need to protect ourselves from change, for our very nature is change. Defensive self-protection...makes it harder to adapt. It not only reduces flexibility, but blocks the flow of information we need to survive. Our ‘going to pieces,’ however uncomfortable, can open us up to new perceptions, new data, and new responses.” (Macy, 2007, 96)
The Breakthrough (via creativa) and New Identity
It is here in this third phase where the tension of phases one and two come into an important dialectic. As Eckhart explains, “A great master says that his breaking through is more noble than his flowing out, and that is true...In the breakthrough, where I stand divested of my own will and of the will of God and of all his works and of God himself, there I am beyond all creatures and I am neither ‘God’ nor creature, but rather what I was and what I will remain now and ever more.” (Fox, article) Fox relates the idea as follows, “To create, the artist needs to let go radically of living; and to live, the artist needs to let go radically of creating. The via negativa, then, becomes the bridge that heals and links Paths One and Three and thereby encourages rather than discourages further birth and creativity. The first of the births that occur is that of the individual: an awakening, a rebirth, a birth of oneself. For this awakening Eckhart invented a word. He called it ‘breakthrough.’” (Fox, 2000, 292)
The very same dialectic occurs in Macy’s deep explorations. Through the process of facing our separateness, our pain, our darkness, a new identity is forged. But this new identity is imbibed with the breakthrough to our oneness with the planet, with other beings, and with all of creation. “What happens for us then is what every major religion has sought to offer – a shift in identification, a shift from the isolated ‘I’ to a vaster sense of who we are...As living things evolve on this planet, we move not only in the direction of diversification, but towards integration as well.” (Macy, 2007, 107) I believe that it is here that one encounters the full radiance of Eckhart’s (and I believe Macy’s, though she practices Buddhism) panentheistic vision. If we take as a given that all is in God and God is in all things, including and interpenetrating them, then subject/object relationships no longer exist. Viewed from a strictly ecological/cosmological perspective, if everything is made from the same star-matter whose source is the seamlessness of all creation, then our experience and the universe’s experience are one and the same; each of us is unique and yet totally inseparable from the whole. There is no subject, no object, only us.
From this place of equality and emptiness creativity can flower forth. It is living like a true mystic - without a why, without justification, creativity just for the sake of creating. But the tension still exists in the perpetual process of letting go. Though an artist creates something tangible outside of herself, the essence of the creation still resides within. As long as the artist is continually divesting herself of her attachments and preconceptions there will always be room for more inspiration. This is, for Eckhart, a key to understanding our relationship with God. Though He has created us, we still remain within Him. So however distinct we may feel, we are still included the greater whole. Applied to ecology this concept would create a profound shift in our relationship to the planet. In fact, this shift in consciousness is crucial to our survival as a species. Anything short of this level of radical transformation will be like trying to dig our way out of the problem with the same tools that got us here in the first place – linear, mechanistic, hubristic thinking.
Re-creation (via transformativa) and Going Forth: Compassion
At this juncture in history, it is imperative to do everything we can to usher in a new planetary era. I believe, as do many other contemporary scholars, (Richard Tarnas, Christopher Bache, and Joanna Macy to name just a few) that the human species is on the threshold of a planetary initiation, one that will wake us up to our interconnectedness with each other, the planet and, eventually, the cosmos. This shift is already manifesting in the collapse of global financial structures, climate change, and mass extinction of species. Humans are becoming acutely aware of their impact on systems previously seen as eternal, unchanging and only remotely connected to one another. As mentioned above religion plays a huge role in determining people’s relationship to nature and destiny, and therefore it is the responsibility of institutionalized religion to play a role in this new ecology. “There are divine implications in the decisions we make in this life since in a certain sense God depends on people to carry on the work of re-creation. ‘Just as little as I can do anything without him, he cannot really accomplish anything apart from me’. Without the hard work of humankind God is not continually reborn and therefore God dies. ‘We slay God.’ and we, human history die in the process.” (Fox, article)
Paths One, Two and Three of Eckhart and steps One, Two and Three of Joanna Macy’s work toward the Great Turning have led to the same peak – compassion. Armed with gratitude we have the fortitude to enter into the dark, face our pain, grief and hubris and let it go. Once emptied, there is room for the creative breath of inspiration to flow unobstructed from the very core and essence of our being. From this place we no longer need to imitate nature because we are nature. Interconnection implies generosity, because if nothing de-termines you from me how could I possibly withhold? “It simply requires a flow of energy from the truth of the unity of things in God and God in things. It is a logical consequence of the consciousness of panentheism and of the new awareness that letting go affords us. There is no dualism in this love of God and neighbor.” (Fox, article) And according to Macy, “Do not think that to broaden the construct of self in this way will eclipse your distinctiveness or that you will lose your identity like a drop in the ocean. From the systems perspective, the emergence of larger self-organizing patterns and wholes both requires diversity and generates it in turn. Integration and differentiation go hand in hand. ‘As you let life live through you,’ poet Roger Keyes says, you just become ‘more of who you really are.’” (Macy, 2000, 154)
So as I think back on the story of my youth from the Introduction to this paper, I wonder, what was it that destroyed my faith? Was it simply what I perceived as unenlightened, cattle-like behavior, or was it something deeper, perhaps a deep seeded fear of becoming “one of them”, of losing my identity? I, like so many other human beings, have valued my character, my originality and my distinctiveness above all other qualities. I have held this in such high esteem, in fact, that I believe that I have sacrificed the development of true compassion. This is a difficult pill to swallow indeed. Yet, perhaps this is my own hubris and, more important, has been my path for a reason. At this stage there is not much point in turning around to look back because there is too much to look forward to. It does not really matter anyway, because as Eckhart might say, it is not a matter of Will to stay on the path, we are already, and have forever been, on it whether we know it or not.
I believe that it is so with the planet as well. We are being initiated into planetary consciousness; the choice lies in whether we wish to be on the ride consciously or unconsciously.
References
Eisley, Loren. The Star Thrower. New York, NY, Harvest Books, 1978
Fox, Matthew. Meister Eckhart on the Fourfold Path of a Creation-Centered Spiritual Journey. Article, Handout
Fox, Matthew. Passion for Creation; The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart. Rochester, Vermont, Inner Traditions International, 2000
Gottlieb, Roger S. (editor) This Sacred Earth; Religion, Nature, Environment. New York, NY, Routledge Press, 1996
Macy, Joanna. World as Lover, World as Self. Berkeley, CA, Parallax Press. 2007
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