Spiritual Life and the Social Order

The inward spiritual journey always impacts life in the outer world.

A deepening connection with God (the inner work) always makes a difference in who we are with (and how we see) God, self, others, and the world (the outer work).

The spiritual dimension of life should always impact the social order in which we live.

In fact, the spiritual life gives you and me a different way of being in the world, a way of swimming upstream against the prevailing current of the social order, without having to adopt the means by which society plays the game.

To “play the game” by the rules of society is merely a way of granting legitimacy to those rules and to the social order that created them.

“The ‘team’ with the most votes wins . . . or the side that has the strongest argument is right . . . or this election is a referendum on _________.”

The social order acts – and throughout history, always has – as if it holds all the cards, as if it is the most powerful order in the world. The prevailing social “wisdom” assumes that because it creates the rules, passes the legislation, and determines what is important and unimportant, that it must be the most powerful aspect of life, whether that social wisdom represents “the Left” or “the Right”.

On the other hand, those given to the spiritual world and the spiritual realm of life bet their lives that there is a Spiritual Presence that undergirds all of life, a Divine Source present always and everywhere to which the prevailing social order is largely oblivious. Further, underlying the spiritual life is the conviction that the real authority and power in life is this Spiritual Presence, that all social claims to power and authority are mere pretenders.

So I’m pondering what it means to be a contemplative presence in the kind of world in which we live (and in which we have always lived). What is my life about as I seek to live in the world from the Center, tethered to the Source of all things?

I recognize that for centuries, when the Church was complicit in society’s corruption, those who carried forward the way of Jesus had to do so underground, in ways and in places that were quiet, unseen, and out of the mainstream. In fact, in those centuries, the mainstream expressions of religious faith were just as corrupt as society at large, filled more with the messages of the social order than with the Gospel. So it was up to mystics, monks, and holy women to carry – and live into – a way of being in the world that was healing and regenerative, rather than divisive, hostile, and hysteric.

In the Middle Ages, Popes, Cardinals, and Bishops were a part of royal courts, in the service of monarchs, and a part of the corruption that comes with power. In those settings, the religious authorities offered widespread blessing of the very corruption that served some well, but oppressed most. In those days, it was up to mystics to speak of an authentic connection with God that ran deeper than political influence. Monasteries became places where simplicity and poverty of spirit symbolized a stance against the power structures of the day. But that kind of resistance flowed mostly underground.

In the 1930’s, the Church in Germany so totally adopted the platform of the Nazis that Christians could no longer see what was real. Persons who carried forward an authentically Gospel message – like Dietrich Bonhoeffer – had to do so through an underground Church, so totally had the mainstream Church and clergy adopted the prevailing social order.

So today, the calling of those who would be awake, who would seek a deepening connection with God that makes a difference in the world, may take an underground, almost subversive form. That is not to say contemplatives or those who lean into the spiritual dimension of life should not be active in the social order, in political systems, government, business, and so on. Always, part of the Divine invitation is to work and pray for a more just, more merciful and compassionate world (“on earth as it is in heaven”). So we do not “sit this one out.” However, we also acknowledge that trusting in elections, legislation, capitalism, and policies to change hearts is misplaced trust.

Your spiritual journey makes a difference in the world.

Your practice of prayer impacts the circumference of your realm of influence.

Your openness to a deepening connection with God creates healing space within you and around you that touches the world with wholeness and generosity.

Your soul’s tether to the Source of Life is stronger and more real than all the power, control, and legislations of the social order.

And in your intention to live from a life-giving Center, you carry on an underground tradition that no power of the world can curb.