Today’s Post

Last week we began a final look at happiness by recognizing that in spite of the confusing, often negative and frequently irrelevant nature of our Western religious lore, much can still be found that provides insight into both our personal development and our social welfare.

Over the past several weeks we have looked at the concept and experience of personal happiness from three viewpoints: material, evolutionary and ‘spiritual’. As we have seen, this term, ‘spiritual’, loses its religious connotation when put in the secular evolutionary context of Teilhard de Chardin and seen in the daily posts of Richard Rohr. In this context, spirituality is simply the agency of continued complexity, the sap of the tree of cosmic evolution, as it manifests itself in the branches of our own human and societal evolution.

Last week we looked a little deeper at how Paul’s ‘repacking’ of Jesus’ teaching, while couched in the religious vernacular of the time, can be reinterpreted into secular terms which reflect the presence of the ‘agency of continued complexity’ in our lives. We saw how Teilhard’s essential mapping of the three fundamental ‘vectors’ of cosmic evolution (forward, upward, inward) are succinctly captured in Paul’s ‘Theological Virtues’ of Faith, Hope and Love.

This week we will look into another example of such exploration.

The “Fruit of the Spirit”

As we discussed above, the term ‘spirit’ is used here to refer to that current which rises through cosmic evolution in which all things increase in complexity as they evolve Restating Teilhard’s understanding of ‘spirituality’,

“Spirituality is not a recent accident, arbitrarily or fortuitously imposed on the edifice of the world around us; it is a deeply rooted phenomenon, the traces of which we can follow with certainty backwards as far as the eye can reach, in the wake of the movement that is drawing us forward.  ..it is neither super-imposed nor accessory to the cosmos, but that it quite simply represents the higher state assumed in and around us by the primal and indefinable thing that we call, for want of a better name, the ‘stuff of the universe’.  Nothing more; and also nothing less.  Spirit is neither a meta- nor an epi- phenomenon, it is the phenomenon.”

   Thus ‘spirituality’ can be seen, as Paul Davies puts it, as the ‘software’ by which the ‘hardware’ of matter increases in complexity over time.

This is the ‘hermeneutic’ which we have used throughout this blog to ‘reinterpret’ the tenets of Western religion as we approach the ‘filtering’ of it in search of how this ‘software’ is at work in our lives.

That said, the ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ is Paul’s term that sums up nine attributes of a person or community living ‘in accord with the Holy Spirit’, which of course in our lexicon is reinterpreted as ‘in accordance with the evolutionary agency of complexification’.  As Paul lists the facets of this ‘fruit’: “..the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  Among the many attempts to objectively quantify the attributes of a ‘full’ or complete human life, one in which some degree of happiness could be expected, these seem high on the list. From our approach to the concept of human happiness, such completeness is an essential factor.

Love –  We have addressed the attribute of love several times in this blog, contrasting the traditional understanding of it as the emotion by which we are attracted to each other and Teilhard’s insight that it is a manifestation of the universal evolutive energy by which things become more complex, and hence more united over time in such a way to recursively become more complete.  By participating in love we become more complete, more whole, and as we do we increase our capacity for love. Love is the evolutionary ‘glue’ that unites us in such a way that we ascend the spiral of evolution.

Peace –  It is hard to imagine anything more conducive to happiness than peace, which comes from the recognition that our efforts to grow more complete are underwritten by a universal energy which rises unbidden and unearned within us.  From this standpoint, God, as Blondel understood ‘Him’, is on our side. Life, as it is offered to us as a gift, is guaranteed to be open to our strivings, and welcoming to our labors.  As the Ground of Being is uncovered as active in our own personal ground of existence, it is understood more as father than as fate.

Patience – Patience becomes more than long-suffering, teeth gritting endurance necessary for ‘salvation’, but the natural acceptance of what cannot be changed in light of Teilhard’s “.. current to the open sea” on which we are carried when we “…set our sails to the winds of life.” As we have seen, John Haught sets great store on patience as a stance or attitude that we begin to master as anticipation replaces dread as our sense of the future. Recognition of the Cosmic Spark within us, the ‘gifted’ nature of it, and confidence in where it is taking us, can instill in us a patience with the vagaries of life that would have been previously considered to be naive.

Kindness – As an essential building block of both society and personal relationships, kindness is prescribed by nearly every religion as the basis of the ‘Golden Rule’.  Beyond this prescription is the natural emergence of kindness as a recognition that not only are we underpinned by the Cosmic Spark, but others are as well.  Treating others as we would be treated requires us to be aware of how our own Cosmic Spark is the essence of being by which we all participate in Teilhard’s ‘axis of evolution’.

Goodness –  Goodness, of course, is that tricky concept which underlays all the ‘fruits’ of Paul.  In Paul, as echoed by Teilhard, that which is ‘good’ is simply that which moves us ahead, both as individuals and members of our societies.  If we are to have ‘abundance’ of life, whatever contributes to such abundance is ‘good’.

Faithfulness – As we saw in our look at the Theological Virtues, faith is much more than intellectual and emotional adherence to doctrines or dogmas as criteria for entry into ‘the next life’.  Faith has an ontological character by which we understand ourselves to be caught up in a ‘process’ which lifts us from the past and prepares us for a future that while unknown is nevertheless fully manageable and completely trustworthy.

Gentleness – As a mirror to ‘goodness’, gentleness, once we have become aware of the Cosmic Spark not only in ourselves but in all others, becomes the only authentic way of relating to others.

Self-Control – Self-control acknowledges that while we might be caught up in a process by which we become what it is possible to become, its continuation is dependent upon our ability and willingness to choose.  Being carried by Teilhard’s ‘current’ (‘Patience’, above) still requires us to develop the skills of ‘sail setting’ and ‘wind reading’.  The instinctual stimuli of the reptilian and limbic brains do not dissipate as we grow, but the skill of our neocortex brains to modulate them must be judiciously developed. As we develop the skill of ‘thinking with the whole brain’ (6 July) our responses to the many stimuli of life become more appropriate to a universe which evolves as ‘the elaboration of more eyes in a world in which there is always more to see”.

Thus Paul’s ‘fruits’ aren’t independent. They represent the kaleidoscope of facets of being that emerge when we are ‘in synch’ with the ‘axis of evolution’. As Yuval Harari would have it, they result from our finding a ‘better fit’ into the milieu of human evolution, and overcoming the ‘existential angst’ resulting from our speedy departure from pre-human evolution. (August 1).

The Next Post

This week we took a second look at how traditional Western religious insights in to human life can be extracted from their traditional religious vernacular and understood in a secular context. This week, just as we saw last week, those insights proposed by Paul are easily placed in a secular evolutionary context when seen from the perspective of Teilhard’s evolutionary world view.

This, of course, is another example of Blondel’s approach to religion: in the light of evolution, religious tenets can be reinterpreted in terms of human life. Or, as John Haught puts it

“…every aspect of religion gains new meaning and importance once we link it to the new scientific story of an unfinished universe.”

   This permits us to move, as John Haught suggests, from the “nonnatural mode of causation” fostered by traditional religion to one which not only is “linked..to the scientific story” but retains traditional religion’s emphasis on the human person (as understood by Thomas Jefferson). This emphasis can, in turn, sharpen the focus with which the human person is treated by traditional science.

Next week we will sum up our exploration of the human attribute of ‘happiness’.