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I just returned from five days with Diarmuid O' Murchu in Saskatoon. We had a very good group, nearly all women and nearly all women religious. I was the only priest, although there were a few at his opening lecture on the first night. They eventually departed. The opening lecture was an overview of spiritualities, and the clergy present eventually became combative. O'Murchu's material is far more exciting for me and far more impactful than anything Vatican II said. I think I was intoxicated with Vatican II. His material goes far beyond it and because of this, I find it so much more challenging to personal and spiritual growth. The topic of the retreat/workshop was "Spirituality in an Age of Change". It began with a discussion on two different paradigms of spirituality. The mind-set I am most familiar with is a very boundried linear movement from this world up through the church world and into the next world - basically, the three tiered model of Trent. However, our time was spent on a second paradigm, based not on the church but on the Reign of God. The Kingdom, the Reign of God, the new world order marked by right relationships of justice, love, compassion, and liberation, and a profound inter-connectedness. It is a non-boundried spirituality. The theological implications of this emerging Kingdom theology around prayer, ritual, sacrament, ministry, and our very sense of God are immense! We looked at the New Cosmology that sees the universe as a living organism where independence and paradox seem to be the primary laws; where key words are destruction/integrity of creation and evolution; where what is needed is spirituality and not religion; where what is needed is the rediscovery of the feminine, and working for justice, and looking at a whole new sexuality, a new inferiority and contemplation. We are understood as co-creators, not patriarchal manipulators. Creation itself is the primary revelation of God to us. Thus, our investment is not just Christian faith, but Faith! Jack Sproule,
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