What is Creation Spirituality

A movement rather than an organization, Creation Spirituality focuses on the original blessing from God rather than like the more well known traditions which are preoccupied with the concepts of original sin, fall of man from grace, and redemption.

• Redemption comes to us followers of Creation Spirituality,) not as a power alien to our natures, but as an “aha” experience that puts us back in touch with our authentic natures. Redemption also reconnects us with our relational nexus. We reconnect with the relationship of reason and intuition, consciousness and embodiment, ourselves and others-humans, animals, plants.[1]

To those that practice Creation Spirituality, this “aha” experience, this personal moment of awakening or epiphany in which we realize that this paradigm offers so much more than the narrow fear based system we grew up with, (and) leaves us in the position of walking away from the experience muttering to ourselves, “Gee, I never knew Christianity could be like this!” We learn of the beauty, the glory, and the mystical experience of the original blessing. We learn that God is not a God of wrath and destruction.

In one of his daily e-mails wherein Bishop John Shelby Spong responds to letters sent to him, he responded to a reader that still yet holds on to the concept of the original sin and a jealous wrathful God. Bishop Spong wrote;

• (Your thinking) transforms God into a parent figure who delights in rewarding goodness and punishing sinfulness. This portrays God as a supernatural, judging figure and it violates everything I believe about both God and human life.[2]

Fall, original sin, redemption theology tends to use fear of eternal punishment as a motivational factor to encourage the faithful to accept Christ, after all who wants to die and burn in hell for eternity? Whereas Creation Spirituality celebrates God’s blessing and grace, allowing the practitioner to experience God’s love. The practitioner then can walk a path of righteousness here on Earth in the hopes of a glorious immortality after death without fear of final judgment and eternal damnation. It allows for a path of personal soul ascension, the repression of the lower self in favor of elevating the inner soul. A path of walking as Christ outlined versus following the convoluted doctrines and dogmas of mankind.

It is generous, mutually affirming of diversity, and non-competitive. Unlike fall-redemption spirituality, it does not set up competitive dualisms between males and females, celibate and married, heterosexual and homosexual, white and black, Christian and non-Christian, us and them.

Creation Spirituality teaches that God permeates all things and that humanity is created blessed, not tainted by original sin. In this paradigm we embody God’s love, we become the Creation that God intends. Creation Spirituality becomes an experience in which the practitioner, seeks redemption through the acceptance of Christ, not out of fear of burning in hell but from a burning desire to experience the light of his teachings and the blessing of a loving God.

The critics of Creation spirituality routinely try to discredit the concept by falsely claiming that Creation spirituality is Pagan in nature as (they claim) it leads the follower to worshiping creation itself. However Creation spirituality seeks to revitalize religion and culture through honoring all of God’s creation as part of the original blessing. It seeks to bring about the end of theism and reestablish of panentheism, (not to be confused with pantheism) which says the image of God or divinity is immanent in all things but that God transcends or is greater than, the created order. The hand of God and his blessing is apparent in all of creation but creation is not in itself God.

• Creation Spirituality, while exemplified in one line of Christianity, is truly as old as creation. It is found in all the great mystical traditions of Hasidic Judaism, Sufism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism. It is even more fully expressed in the nature religions of Native peoples that have been conquered and almost exterminated by patriarchal dualistic religions: the spirituality of ancient Celts, Africans, Australian Aborigines, and Native Americans. Creation Spirituality calls for a “deep ecumenism” which brings together these traditions of Creation Spirituality from every culture. Creation Spirituality seeks a wholistic spirituality that overcomes the dualism between religion and science, between spirituality and social justice and between psyche and society. It is a justice-seeking spirituality. It is fundamentally feminist and anti-patriarchal. The affirmation of women’s power in religion and society is central, but not simply in order to integrate a few individual women into a male-defined world. Rather, to reclaim feminine values for men as well, in order to create a new culture rooted in “right-brain” capacities for intuition and relationality. The tragedies of abusive relations in our own society:the abuse of the young, of women and of the poor, the gross expenditure of wealth, of militarism: all this is part of the story of a patriarchal alienation of human and planetary life. [1]

Defining Creation Spirituality adequately could possibly require voluminous works, however in conclusion of this essay, let us take note of how since time immemorial humans have had to search at finding their true self, their inner self. This search for the proverbial Holy Grail in itself is an act of translating an idea into action (spiritual praxis) through prayer, study, meditation and involvement with the community. If we do not seek change or spiritual praxis we live superficial lives, lives of individualistic anarchy, in fear, often succumbing to greed for the material that supplants or replaces the spiritual, and often focusing on false propositions or programming from a society, both sectarian and secular that implants false ideals of performing to their expectations rather than the expectations of God.

[1]Internet Theological Seminary

http://www.theoblogical.org/dlature/itseminary/creaspir/whatis1.html

[2]From Bishop Spong’s daily newsletter; If anyone pursues goodness in the hope of gaining rewards or avoiding punishment, that person has not escaped the basic self-centeredness of human life and it becomes obvious that such a person is motivated primarily by self-interest.