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18Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old.
19Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
20The wild beasts will honor me,
the jackals and the ostriches,
for I give water in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,… (ESV)
We cannot grow up individually or collectively if we seek to define the possible by the past. And the movement of spiritual evolution in community cannot happen without enough persons within the group accepting the challenge to grow up and onward in Spirit. We are to honor our past, but we cannot live in the past. To go with God means to quit crying about the challenges ahead and to accept the “new thing.”
In the opening story the Buddhist master provided an answer to satisfy the immature faith of the seeker. His second answer, however, was to lead the student beyond what De Mello calls “baby crying.” The master was saying, essentially, “Okay, you asked again, now I will give you an answer, not to please you, but to push you to grow beyond the elementary answers you are seeking. Growing up means you do not have to have those same old answers anymore, answers from the past. I challenge you to live beyond the answers.”
The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, like De Mellow, addresses the stuck state of the Christians he addresses: By this time you ought to be teachers yourselves, yet here I find you need someone to sit down with you and go over the basics on God again, starting from square one—baby's milk, when you should have been on solid food long ago! (Hebrews 5.12, The Message)
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What do we need to keep growing up? Bernard Glassman, in Instructions to the Cook, writes of five main courses essential to a diet for spiritual growth. The courses for the meal are spirituality, study and learning, livelihood, social action or change, and relationship and community. Other writers present other lists of ingredients, however, these differences remind us that growing up entails working the means of grace to serve up a daily nourishment. This nurturance will lead us to grow into a more mature faith that is able, as example and contribution, to advance the over-all spiritual emergence of all peoples.
Spiritual Exercises
1. Reflect on the opening saying by Rabbi David Cooper. What does it imply about spiritual growth?
2. What ingredients do you see as vital to daily spiritual growth? Come up with your own course of ingredients.
3. Can you recall a time when God was calling you beyond the previous boundaries of your life journey? Explain.
4. Do you have a group that encourages you by word, listening, and example to keep growing spiritually?
5. What is the relationship between Divine Grace and Human Choice in spiritual growth?
6. Do your daily meditation and spiritual reading…
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