Yesterday I had the privilege of hosting Ben Edson of the emerging church fellowship sanctus1 as he did some training for us and then spoke at our BLAH Birmingham event. Ben has just come back from a week of research in the New Age eco community of Findhorn and his reflections were incredibly stimulating. I won't repeat his story here but Ben's blog plays out the scenario of joining in the ritual of the birth of the new moon here and it has created quite a stir. Ben is an incredibly thoughtful church leader with, at heart, a truly missionary vocation so we would do well to hear him out and listen to the challenge of a constructive engagement with New Age and neo-Pagan spiritualities.
Coming from the more acceptable inter-faith perspective it's fascinating for me to reflect on Ben's approach. I'm not sure that there are definitive judgments to be made here. On one level, it's far easier to know when to say "no" and when to say "yes" to a shared prayer when working with traditional religions with their corpus of language and theology that can provide for a sifting of the good, the bad and the blandly benign. When we encounter the New Age, we are engaging with a meld and mix that, to some extent, accomodates whatever the participant wishes to read into the experience. I wonder too that in Ben's sharing in the birth of the new moon festival that what you have here is a ritual, divorced from worship. It seems to be more like a rite of passage, a marking of the seasons that can become an act of worship for us as we recognise the faithful sovereign God who governs the seasons.
Reflecting on Paul's engagement with the religions of his day, I recognise three understandings of "what is happening" that require discernment: something of God, something false and dangerous, and something empty and redundant. The risky challenge for everyone of us (whether we are mixing it with the secular, Islamic, Hindu, New Age etc) is to to stay faithful and true in relationship when we are not entirely sure what we are discerning.
Anyway, Ben, thankyou for the stimulus of your thoughts and your considered practice.
good to spend the day with you too, and thanks for the encouragement. I hear that you have been telling the story of the pagan festival at st. Johns! how did they respond?
Posted by: benedson | November 15, 2007 at 07:54 AM