Contemplative prayer is the practice of learning to be open to the sacred in everyday life. In my religious upbringing, I was taught to think of the sacred as something external to myself. The central way that religious institutions exercise power is by controlling access to the sacred. They organize themselves like corporations with something to produce and sell. The professional clergy are turned into salespeople and we are turned into consumers of the sacred. What do we have to offer to gain access to the sacred? Mainly, obedience to the institution and its official representatives, doctrines and rituals.
Jesus didn’t attempt to control access to the sacred. If you read the stories of his miracles, he regularly said that a person’s own faith was the source of the miracle they desired. Jesus’ recognition of the sacred within a particular individual was the beginning point of a new relationship between God and that person. He taught people to recognize the sacred within themselves.
Have you ever heard someone say, “I’m not artistic?”
Their statement about artistic creativity reflects the same disempowering process we see in religious institutions in which people are alienated from the sacred within themselves. Other institutions, particularly educational systems, teach us that we aren’t creative. Why? It’s pretty obvious. Our society doesn’t put a high value on artists. Think about all the denigrating images that society uses to portray artists. Crazy. Suicidal. Poor. Promiscuous. Outcasts. Who would want to be an artist if this bleak fate awaits them?
Don’t get me wrong. Our society places a high value on creativity. But it has to fit into the capitalist system to have value. The economic institution of capitalism has invested heavily in gaining access to people’s creativity. It’s a source of profit. Just as religious institutions exercise self-interested control over access to the sacred, economic institutions exercise self-interested control over access to creativity.
There is an alternative to lives of alienation from the sacred and creative sources that exist within every one of us:
Once we recognize our own sacredness and creativity, miracles happen.
TimN
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!