Over the last two hundred years everything in our philosophy, cosmology and society has shifted away from the past Christian paradigm of thought: the ideas that dominated for fifteen hundred years, since the great Christian councils of the fourth century that formulated the doctrines of the church. Modern and postmodern Western society walked away from the church, and the idea of God as an ‘all-powerful man in the sky’ died… as is poetically imagined by Thomas Hardy, in his 1908 poem ‘God’s Funeral’*. It was not that poets and philosophers wanted this to be the case; they just observed that, for the vast majority of people, religion had ceased to be the primary motivation for their lives, or the place where they found meaning and purpose.
A recent sermon or two on this topic…..
https://www.buzzsprout.com/271204/1127858-wisdom-calls-in-the-market-place
The Temptations
This new Haven Ecochurch initiative recognizes this revolution has taken place but notices that, despite that, there are many people who find that, at some point in their lives, questions of meaning and feelings of longing nudge them towards seeking spiritual nourishment.
The poem*
I
saw a slowly-stepping train —
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed
and bent and hoar —
Following in files across a twilit plain
A
strange and mystic form the foremost bore.
And
by contagious throbs of thought
Or latent knowledge that within
me lay
And had already stirred me, I was wrought
To
consciousness of sorrow even as they.
The
fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,
At first seemed man-like,
and anon to change
To an amorphous cloud of marvellous size,
At
times endowed with wings of glorious range.
And
this phantasmal variousness
Ever possessed it as they drew
along:
Yet throughout all it symboled none the less
Potency
vast and loving-kindness strong.
Almost before I knew I
bent
Towards the moving columns without a word;
They,
growing in bulk and numbers as they went,
Struck out sick
thoughts that could be overheard:
‘O
man-projected Figure, of late
Imaged as we, thy knell who shall
survive?
Whence came it we were tempted to create
One whom
we can no longer keep alive?
‘Framing
him jealous, fierce, at first,
We gave him justice as the ages
rolled,
Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,
And
longsuffering, and mercies manifold.
‘And,
tricked by our own early dream
And need of solace, we grew
self-deceived,
Our making soon our maker did we deem,
And
what we had imagined we believed,
‘Till,
in Time’s stayless stealthy swing,
Uncompromising rude
reality
Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning,
Who
quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.
‘So,
toward our myth’s oblivion,
Darkling, and languid-lipped, we
creep and grope
Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon,
Whose
Zion was a still abiding hope.
‘How
sweet it was in years far hied
To start the wheels of day with
trustful prayer,
To lie down liegely at the eventide
And
feel a blest assurance he was there!
‘And
who or what shall fill his place?
Whither will wanderers turn
distracted eyes
For some fixed star to stimulate their
pace
Towards the goal of their enterprise?’…
Some
in the background then I saw,
Sweet women, youths, men, all
incredulous,
Who chimed as one: ‘This figure is of
straw,
This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!’
I
could not prop their faith: and yet
Many I had known: with all I
sympathized;
And though struck speechless, I did not forget
That
what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.
Still,
how to bear such loss I deemed
The insistent question for each
animate mind,
And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed
A
pale yet positive gleam low down behind,
Whereof,
to lift the general night,
A certain few who stood aloof had
said,
‘See you upon the horizon that small light —
Swelling
somewhat?’ Each mourner shook his head.
And they composed a crowd of whom
Some were right good, and many nigh the best….
Thus dazed and puzzled ‘twixt the gleam and gloom
Mechanically I followed with the rest.
The Haven Eco-Church 