Looking Westward

Forces are at work on the Pacific rim that wash over and influence the rest of the world. Just think how Hollywood, Silicon Valley and recognisably West coast ideals have ruled modern culture in the past half-century through popular and sub-cultures! Why do these new ideals and impulses rise up from the west coast? Is there something rearing up, leftover from those ancient lunar forces?

Is there something from the Pacific that is calling for healing, for a role in the creation of a new world, a new order?

Can we recognise this and acknowledge its role? Is it possible to meet the adversarial spiritual tsunami, so that the west is not swept away by its influence before North America has fulfilled its mission in the evolving of cultural periods? Does religion, the ultimate bridge-builder connecting heaven and earth, also have to work to build protective walls?

No wall can protect against the adversary, or prevent conflict – not in Berlin, nor in Israel, nowhere. Walls invite breeching. A translucent veil may be more effective as protection, a fine veil that does not try to block what is rising up, but meets it, may filter it. What means do we have to filter and focus these up-rising forces so that they may ultimately be incorporated into a healthy process of evolution?

Perhaps we can metamorphose the gesture of the monks in Ireland of the 9th century, who built their chapels on the cliffs facing the east, with no windows to the west. They worked through prayer and meditation spiritually to ward off the influence from the west until Europe and Christianity had developed a certain strength. And then the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration could open the way westward.

In strengthening our westernmost Christian Communities, we too can strive to direct the formative religious life of our continent towards the rising of light, towards the dawn of the return of the Risen One. And we can seek to recognise what is washing over the world from the west, to find a way actively to include this power in the healthy shaping of the future. We would be lifting up a veil of spiritual renewal in the far west to catch the Word spoken with the rising sun across all the continents from the east: “Christ in You!”

We need Christ in us in order to turn with strength towards the future, to focus spiritual peace on the “anti-Pacific.” And when we have “caught” this word from the East, it may strengthen the Word in us and become a force for working in the meeting and transforming of adversarial forces. And in the future, we can begin to reflect back to the rising sun a transformed and transformative power for Renewal.

With thoughts and ideals like these, I prepare to move at the end of the summer.