TODAY IS THE FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST.
Pentecost, a.k.a. “Ordinary Time,” reminds us that God’s Spirit is everywhere, active in and through the world. The extraordinary dwells with us; we live in the sacred ordinary.
I’m at the beach enjoying the final days of summer. I asked my friend and fellow author, John Philip Newell, if he’d fill in for me this weekend and share an excerpt from his brand new book, The Great Search. (An aside: we’ve discovered that we may well be distant kin — our families both came from the same tiny Scottish village and parish hundreds of years ago!)
He was glad to do so. Instead of a reading from the Gospel, I’ve shared a poem from the Scottish poet, Kenneth White, whom John Philip quotes in this selection. Both The Great Search and the White poem emphasize the point I’ve been making this month about Jesus and bread. It really isn’t that great a miracle to imagine that Jesus is found in bread. After all, the Sacred is everywhere.
I hope you’ll enjoy today’s special guest post. I did!
If you appreciate The Cottage’s thoughtful commentary on faith, society, and spirit, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
There are no ads, no corporate sponsors, and no institutions behind this work. The Cottage only happens because readers who love it support the newsletter and online community.
Your financial help is greatly appreciated and keeps me scribbling grace into the world.
You can also support The Cottage by inviting your friends to sign up. Social media can no longer be trusted with sharing this sort of content — only word of mouth helps The Cottage grow (the old-fashioned way!).
Or you can give a gift subscription.
This is the summit of contemplation, and
no art can touch it
Blue, so blue, the far-out archipelago
and the sea shimmering, shimmering
No art can touch it, the mind can only
try to become attuned to it
To become quiet, and space itself out, to
become open and still, unworlded
Knowing itself in the diamond country, in
the ultimate unlettered light.
― Kenneth White, A High Blue Day on Scalpay
The Great Search (Turning to Earth and Soul in the Quest for Healing and Home) by John Philip Newell. Excerpt from “The Conclusion.”
Religion, as we have known it in the Western world, is dying. We are in a time of transition, not only religiously but politically and ecologically.
What is the spiritual vision at the heart of our religious inheritance that we have forgotten or neglected? The Spirit is urging us to remember that we are to do to others, including Earth and every species, what we would most want done to us. This is the teaching of Jesus at the heart of our Christian inheritance, with its equivalent in the ‘Golden Rule’ of nearly every great spiritual tradition in the world. It is the teaching that can lead us into new beginnings.
In our Great Search of today, we are searching for what will bring healing, not only for ourselves, whether as individuals or nations or races, but for all people and for every species. And it is for all things that we are seeking a new sense of home address, not only physically but spiritually. We are longing for a deeper sense of shared origin and spiritual kinship, including a sense of family responsibility for everything that has being.
Our search will be served by the vision of love at the heart of our religious inheritance, but our search must never be confined by the boundaries of religion.
During this time of transition, many of us, as we have been emphasising, are in religious exile, whether that be literally as fugitives from our religious tradition or simply as dissatisfied members of it, longing for more depth and vision.
The modern Scottish poet, Kenneth White, says that “exile is the mark of any deep and far-going creativity.” By this he means that leaving home, whether that be the home territory of our nation or race or religion, either willingly or by force, presents us with the possibility of expanding our vision beyond what it has been. His emphasis is not on what we are losing in exile, which may be painful and unsettling, but on what we are being invited to open to in exile in new and creative ways. And those who are in exile, he adds, will often take with them more of the essential vision of home than what is prevalent in the places they have left. Exile, therefore, whether individually or collectively, can be a time of great openness to new vision and creativity.
This time of spiritual exile in the Western world is a moment in which we are being invited to find relationship with Earth and one another in ways that surpass anything we have known. It is a time of opening to the Spirit in our own depths and the depths of every human being and lifeform. And it can be a time of liberation from the closed boundaries of nationhood or race or religion that have confined us in the past.
We are being invited to remember what our souls, at some level, have always known which is that our true spiritual centre is not Rome, for instance, or Jerusalem or Mecca or any of the other places that religion has claimed to hold special authority over us. Our true spiritual centre is Earth and the human soul. Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca, and so on, have occupied a significant place in our faith traditions over the centuries but, essentially, they exist to serve Earth and the human soul, not the other way round.
The source of truth is deep within each one of us and deep within everything that has being. Just as new science enables us to know that physically we live in an omni-centric Universe, so it is spiritually.
The centre is everywhere.
Our cherished places of religious authority from the past, including our local churches or temples or mosques, can serve us at this moment in time but only if they remember that the centre of the divine is everywhere. It is deep in my soul and your soul, and it is deep in Earth’s soul and every soul….
We are longing for an expanded vision of the Universe, a reawakened love affair with Earth, and a deepened sense of spiritual presence in every moment and encounter of life. We are yearning to grow in awareness, to find wellness, and to delight in love. And we are longing for the recovery of wisdom, for meaning in the both the joy and pain of life, and for a reimagined faith in the immortal light that shines in all things.
These are the yearnings of the Great Search today.
If we are true to them, we will be blessed with graces of healing, both individually and collectively, and together we will be graced with a new sense of home address deep in Earth and the human soul. It is this that will bless us and Earth in our shared journey. And it is this that will bless those still to be born, for our children and our children’s children.
INSPIRATION
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
— John O’Donohue, “Blessings for a New Beginning”
Read more about or order John Philip Newell’s The Great Search — Turning to Earth and Soul in the Quest for Healing and Home on his website.
John Philip will be at The Cottage for an online conversation with PAID SUBSCRIBERS in September. Details will be announced soon.
SEPTEMBER is one of the biggest renewal months for paid subscribers at The Cottage.
I’m so grateful for those of you who have been here for a year or more. Your support and encouragement have meant the world to me — and I trust these words and community here have strengthened your sense of wonder and joy.
Of course, I hope you’ll stick around for another year! This fall will be full of beauty, newsy analysis, amazing guests, and companionship through the election season. And remember: The Cottage always hosts a beautiful Advent series in December.
About a week in advance of your renewal date, you’ll receive a notice from SUBSTACK alerting you to the upcoming renewal and any actions you might need to take. You can also update your credit card or check on other subscription needs by clicking the button below. Just look for the “Payment” section on the page:
📣 Please DO NOT contact your bank about your subscription. If you see an unfamiliar charge to Substack, The Cottage, DBBASS, or a series of numbers ending in 7491, it is ME — not a fraud! You can always reach out to us via the email address on The Cottage support page (see the Menu Bar on the website) to answer your questions.
If your renewal expired while you were on vacation in August, you can go to any of these pages for help. Also, you can email us.
We’ve got the best old-fashioned customer service on the internet — my husband, Richard! 😁
This touched me in so many ways... Such food for thought and meditation! You were meant to have John Philip Newell post this today. Thank you, Diana!
Yes to Earth and soul as center. But also yes to community, family, loving relationships.