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The Christian monk Bruno Barnhart, in Second Simplicity, remarks that biblical fundamentalism and reductive biblical criticism “encounter one another as opposing literalisms,” for neither of the two is “open to the symbolic and unitive depths of a scriptural text.” I can add to Barnhart’s words, “… and both are not open to the symbolic and unitive depths of everyday experience, either.” This monochrome approach to Scripture arises from a monochrome consciousness, one that denudes the landscape of Mystery, or reduces Mystery to mentalism. Of all the talk, for example, of many about God being mysterious, it seems that usually such is little more than talk. Mystery has become, then, a mentalism, a brainism, rather than something that lives in the bones, so to speak.
In a recent correspondence with Swami Abhayananda, founder of the Vedanta Temple in Naples, Florida, and author of History of Mysticism, he responds:
As you point out, Non-Dualism is clearly the only conclusion to be reached by philosophical reasoning. But for the mystics it is more than a consistent theory; it is a directly perceived reality.
This that Abhayananda speaks of is what I mean by the Mystery being more than a mentalism. Mystery "living in the bones" means that one directly experiences, or is encountered by, the All-Pervasive God. The consequence is one begins to see everything, including Scripture, from what Barnhart calls "the symbolic and unitive depths." And these are not just the archetypes of a Jungian psychology. This, yes, This, is before archetypes. This is not psychology, the unconscious, or the subconscious, or the psyche; rather, This is the Substratum of all unseen and seen.
Truthfully vague means that Scripture, as well as the whole spiritual Journey, will not submit to our rational minds or our traditions, our politics, our epistemology, our philosophy, our prejudices, our preferences, … And much discussion and debate of Scripture is little more than a mess of I-thinkism, an I-think utterly closed to opening to different intuitive and symbolic meanings arising out of engagement with the material of Spirit. Then, we starve while trying to satisfy our deepest longings on the bread of rationalism; we long for the depths, while we slide across the surfaces. Reasonable comes to mean what I can fit in my little brain, because others have said it is meant to fit in my little brain. But Truth is meant to breathe in me, through me, and outward in the eternal Circle of Love, including all beings of all realms, here and everywhere.
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I extend this to refer to another aspect of Barnhart’s teaching. He refers to a theological term “monotropic.” He uses the word to denote a “Christianity that exists in only one authorized form, so that the natural richness, freedom and pluralism of gospel and Holy Spirit cannot be expressed.” Notice his words “natural richness.” Roman Catholicism has been the classic Western sample of monotropicism, though there are Protestant examples. Within the Christian tradition The United Methodist Church and the The Episcopal Church are two classic examples of non-monotropicism, or inclusiveness.
I extend “monotropic” to apply to “Godtropic” or “theotropic.” This is a one-dimensional god-image. In the West, partly due to modernism and its rejection of the more subjective premodernism, this often manifests in a religion of literalistic theology, in which God is seen in the image of the religion itself or the particular communion of the larger religion. Meaning is what something means “literally.” This is related to the suppression of the "feminine" and dominance of the "masculine" in the West. Again, observe communions who refuse the right of women to serve as Pastor or preach the Gospel. Look at these communions. Generally, it is my estimation, they are ascending faiths, rather than whole faiths integrating the all of Creation.
Note, likewise, that my coinage of “truthfully vague” is not a denial of objectivity. Truthfully vague is the lived admittance that Truth cannot be reduced to the objective, alone. The objective is only the articulation of a Mystery. The Mystery is only reflected, in many refractions of the One Supernal Light, through reason, applied in a context of tradition, Scripture, and experience. While Scripture is a beginning point, in the engagement with Truth is seen, soon, a lively dance among the four, for the Truth in one must be the same in each and all, together.
However, notice another matter pertaining to the above movie scene. The existing theater, its tradition, and its authority provided the context for Barrie and his marvelous work. Barrie set out to prove, within context, the truth he could see inwardly and feel, likewise. He believed in his work. He delighted, though with trepidation at times, in the challenge to create innovation in the situation of his vocation. He never resisted the authority of the producer; he took it upon himself to prove his giftedness to the producer and the patrons. Much would have been lost had Barrie given up and not sought to flesh out his imagination within a context that was not, initially, hospitable to his giftedness. If he had given up, no one would have been the better.
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