Peacebang points us to Matt Stone's Eclectic Itchings, an "emerging spirituality" blog with several cool icon collections, including my two new favorite Jesii, Jesulope and Alien Jesus. Good content too. A generously ecumenical take on spirituality — Christianity, paganism, Judaism, Buddhism and more — that doesn't get bogged down into a gooey New Age melting pot.
He also keeps a second blog on meditation, Ekstasis, which is just as spiritually diverse. His critique of Zen meditation reminds me of conversations with my Buddhist friend kermit_is.
Is his take on spirituality one that could mesh with the univeralism that Atlanta Unitarian wrote about, a universalism of radical welcome to all?
Thanks for the generous write up. I am curious though. I have always tended to associate universalism with gooey New Age melting pot inclusivism (this is grounded in my personal experience as a former New Ager) so your differentiation between the two suggests to me that we understand the term differently. Would you care to elaborate? I personally don’t identify with universalism, but I am not sure we are using the same word to men the same thing.
For the record I was involved in the New Age Movement before I embraced Christian spirituality. I do believe the Spirit lives, moves and breathes amongst all religions (maybe that’s what you mean by universalism?) but I would not have embraced Christianity if I saw it as merely one path amongst many. I do see deeper spiritual depths in Christ’s teachings and actions which are not reached in other religions, things which are merely foreshadowed in alternative spiritualities and which remain elusive without him. We all experience the Spirit in the sense that we are all created and sustained by the Spirit. But the resurrected life, the grace sustained hope - that is a dimension of Spirituality that is more elusive.
You ask a good yet difficult question.
I am both a unitarian and a univeralist in the classic sense, or at least in terms of the doctrines they deny: hell, damnation, the divinity of Christ, original sin, and the Trinity.
But you suspect correctly that I mean a universalism that encompasses all (or most) religions. To be more precise, I am a unitarian of the Third Person, not the First. So I too see the Spirit working in all of them.
I also see something unique in Christianity, but not only in Christianity. All the world’s major religions have unique gifts to offer us. Each is its own path in its own right, to its own worthy destination.
The challenge for this type of universalist is to become a religious cosmopolitan without becoming a mere tourist or dilettante. This is where New Ageism errs.