The Madawaska Institute for Culture and Religion        Where Spirit & Life Meet - Series on Transforming Theology for the sake World and Church    Jay McDaniel, Nov. 12-14, 2010
Dwelling Musically in the World:
The Renewal of Church with help from Jesus, Buddhism, and Jazz: A spirituality for the sake of sustainable community.
If we listen deeply to the sounds, harmonies, melodies, beats, and soulfulness, we learn more about God.  We become the kind of people who build beloved communities: communities with bread, a clean sky, and no hand raised in any gesture but greeting.
Four Faces of the Sacred. The word sacred is used in different ways. Some use it to refer to a domain of reality separate from the profane, or the world of ordinary experience Others use it to refer to whatever is most important in a given religious tradition, whether
identical with, or different from, the world of ordinary experience. If we use the word sacred in the latter sense, then from a process point of view there are at least four faces of the sacred: that is, four ultimate realities to which different religions have awakened, each of which is
irreducible in its own way: (1) the creative abyss from which all things emerge moment-bymoment; (2) the interconnectedness of all things; (3) the present moment of experience; and (4) the divine reality, understood as a reservoir of pure potentiality (the primordial nature) and a
boundless empathy (the consequent nature). In mystical traditions, the ultimate to which mystics awaken is the creative Abyss, a bottomless well-spring of creativity, neither good nor evil in itself, which is manifest in everything that happens. In indigenous traditions the ultimate is the community of life itself, as experienced in relations of kinship and community. In Zen Buddhism and certain forms of this-worldly mysticism, the ultimate is the present moment of experience, understood as the primary “place” where the sacred is discovered. And in many theistic traditions the ultimate is the divine reality, variously called “God” or “Adonai” or “Vishnu” or “Amida.”
Three kinds of Truth. The world’s religions typically yield three kinds of truth, all of which
can be listened for: (1) truthful belief, which consists of ideas that illuminate one or another
dimension of the way things are; (2) truthful awareness, which consists of feelings which are
responsive to, and illuminate, the way things are; and (3) truthful living, which consists of
various ways of living with integrity, each of which has its own kind of sincerity and beauty.
Often when Christians engage in dialogue with people of other religions, we are interested
almost exclusively in truthful belief, whereas it may be that various forms of truthful awareness
and truthful living are what is most important to the others. A sensitivity to the fact that “truth”
can be in what a person feels and does, and not simply in what a person believes, can widen a
Christian’s horizons of appreciation and also give rise to fresh understandings of Christianity.
Two Kinds of Learning. When Christians engage in dialogue with people of other
religions, they can be open to the possibility that though they (the Christians) might disagree
with the ideas of the other person, they may nevertheless find something true in the awareness
and ways of living of the other person, and they can be converted by these truths even as they
remain firm in their theological convictions. A Christian engaged in dialogue with a member of
an indigenous tradition, for example, may be moved by the feelings of kinship with other
creatures that is part of many indigenous traditions, finding great truth in the feelings. The truth
of a given religion may be discovered not only from mind-to-body but also body-to-mind. This
means that inter-religious dialogue may best proceed not simply by sitting at a table of dialogue
engaging in discussions concerning truth, but in undertaking common actions aimed at
reducing suffering and promoting well-being, amid which the dialogue partners may themselves
be converted by one another.
Dr. Jay McDaniel Professor of Religion, Department Chair Hendrix College
Director, Steel Center for the Study of Religion and Philosophy
Cost: $225 -includes one lunch: $175 for members of the Institute.  For more information & to register www.georgehermanson.com or  613 432 8852 or george@hermanson.ca