Introduction

Highlights

"Faith must not be blind, but responsible. We ought not to be mentally coerced, but rationally convinced, so that we can make a justifiable decision of faith. Faith must not be void of reality, but related to reality. We ought not to have to believe simply, without verification. Our statements should be proved and tested by contact with reality, within the present-day horizon of experience of individuals and society, and thus be covered by the concrete experience of reality."

Hans Kung in "On Being a Christian"

The primary purpose of churches and fellowships is to help people become intelligently and devotedly religious, to be so convinced of the truth and rightness of a particular way of life as to be compelled to place oneself under Its command, to live with It and for It, to dedicate to It all that one has, all that one is and all that one may become.

Such a total dedication of oneself is obviously dangerous. One may give oneself to a way that is evil, indifferent, small, inadequate, idolatrous, irrational.

The power of religious dedication is great, the danger equally so.

Faith is too dangerous and too important to be accepted on anyone's say-so, whatever the source of authority.

All of us must be convinced that our faith is sound, true, reasonable, just, and that its rightness is ascertainable by some external, objective criteria, evidence drawn from our own and shared human experience.

Faith may venture beyond the limits of reason and hard, scientifically-validated evidence; it should never be irrational or anti-science.

Henry Nelson Wieman, forty years ago, introduced me to the concepts of process theology - God in and as the universal process.

"God," says Wieman, "is the integrating process at work in the universe."

It is the upbuilding process, pulling and pushing parts into more and more perfectly harmonized wholes, serving more and more effectively the Whole. It is seen in the process of evolution which has produced more and more complex, more and more highly integrated organizations of atoms and molecules, more and more perfectly harmonized for survival within the Totality of the Universe. It is the dominant characteristic of the Universe. It is its character, or nature.

"It is that which makes for increasing interdependence and cooperation in the world. . . . The principal of integration at the human level is love."

Love is that quality of relationship in which the best interest of all partners to the relationship is served, consonant with the well-being of All, of the Total Process.

"Integration fulfills itself in human life as we become members one of another with conscious mutual understanding. . . . At the level of human society we mean the process by which (1) we are made increasingly interdependent and (2) our behavior is so changed as to make us more cooperative and mutually helpful one to another. This process goes on whether we will or no. It is more than human in the sense that it goes on independently of human purpose . . . The process goes on whether we will or no, but we must 'get right with it' if we would escape catastrophe. . . . God is that which progressively and in greatest measure increases the value of existence. The progressive integrating process of the universe is what does this. Hence it is God."

Paul Tillich's assertion: "God is not a being, but Being Itself,"

psychologist Gordon Allport's definition of God as "the Universal Being-Becoming,"

Charles Hartshorne's "The Unsurpassable-except-by-Itself."

This God's laws were part and parcel of His/Her very character; dependable, categorical, not governed by personal whim, in the very nature of the universal process. Their imperative was in the direction of more and more inclusive harmonies of relationship, the more and more perfect functioning of each part in the whole. They, and She/He were worthy of our supreme devotion, and would reward it with the harmony which is true at-one-ment with the divine Being.

The Wieman readings are taken from:

Henn Nelson Wieman and Regina Westcott Wieman, Normative Psychology of Religion, Thomas Y. Crowell, New York 1935.

Henry Nelson Wieman, Methods of Religious Living, Macmillan, 1929.

Henry Nelson Wieman, The Growth of Religion, Willett, Clark and Company, 1938.

Prompts

Title of the Lenten manual based on the theology of Henry Nelson Wieman and Regina Westcott Wieman. :: Outstretched Wings of the Spirit

Outstretched Wings of the Spirit was prepared by Donald Szantho Harrington.

Outstretched Wings of the Spirit by Donald Szantho was inspired by the theology of Henry Nelson Wieman and Regina Westcott Wieman.

Per Harrington, the rightness of our faith is ascertainable by what? :: External, objective criteria based from our shared human experience.

What is process theology? :: Theological approach that views reality as a dynamic process of change and becoming.

Founder of process theology ::: Alfred North Whitehead

According to Wieman, "God is the integrating process at work in the universe."

According to Harrington's understanding of Wieman's theology, what is the dominant characteristic of the Universe? :: Parts integrate into complex harmonious entities.

Per Wieman, the principal of integration at the human level is love.

Per Harrington, when love is present in a relationship, what happens? :: The interests of all partners are served, while the well-being of the whole is preserved.

The First Day (Ash Wednesday) - A Way of Growing

Highlights

The two great basic concepts dominating religion are devotion and supreme value.

Religion, . . . is devotion through adoration and service, to that which is supremely worthful. It is a way of growing.

Religion develops in the child (or adult) as all else develops, through processes of growth. It can be facilitated or retarded, normalized or perverted, by the conditions under which growth takes place, but the process of growth itself is one with life.

Life is sensitivity and responsiveness to the materials, orders and forces which sustain and prod it, and which give it meaning.

Growth is the increase in the complexity and organization of sensitivity and responsiveness to such materials, orders and forces as foster and promote life and give it value.

Sensitivity and responsiveness are the media through which all growth takes place. They provide the only avenue by which the outer life of nature and society can enter the inner life of the individual, living organism.

What we may call conscience does not appear until values begin to function as habits and ideals in the child. It takes much training to help the child develop the ideals and value-habits with their corollary standards of good and bad, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, true and false. When once established, these function as conscience.

Religion is a way of growing. Growth is the increase in the complexity and organization of sensitivity and responsiveness to such forces as foster life and give it value. Sensitivity and responsiveness provide the avenue by which the outer life of nature and society can enter the inner life of the individual. Conscience appears when values begin to function as habits and ideals.

We begin, then, by consciously cultivating a spirit of devotion, an ever increasing sensitivity and responsiveness to the universal forces which surround us and operate within us, in order that we may accommodate our lives to their requirements. A feeling for these requirements becomes our conscience.

There is no escape from religion. All human beings are inevitably religious. Their religion is what they are living. The only question is whether it is thoughtful or inane, deep or superficial, good or evil.

only when we stop growing into harmony with Your Larger Life do we begin to die. Open us to what this implies in all our relations with living beings, near and far.

The Second Day - All The Glory

Highlights

The greatest conceivable value would be the organization of this cosmos into that sort of system where every activity in it would be sustained by every other, and each activity would have all the meaning, hence all the value, all the glory, of the total system.

existence is always changing and the maintenance of such a cosmos would require a constant interplay of ever-changing activities.

All would be changing constantly, yet the complete and perfect mutuality of all with each, and each with all, would never change. Throughout the extreme and never ceasing changes, there would be the changeless perfection of mutual support, mutual enhancement and mutual meaning.

Value . . . is always a combination of what is and what may be. It is always a combination of actuality and possibility. When these two are combined we have what is called growth. Growth is not merely what is, not merely what might be, but it is that kind of change which increases what is, so as to approximate what might be

The complete and perfect mutuality of all with each, and each with all. The changeless perfection of mutual support, mutual enhancement and mutual meaning. Growth in this is what makes life good and worth living.

Here is an ideal worth living and dying for. It is also a command of nature and nature's God, the bent of the universe. It is a judgment upon all our partial loyalties and selfish indulgences. It is a beckoning joyousness, an appealing hope. It is worthy of our tireless endeavor and supreme devotion.

The Third Day - Growth of Meaning in the World

Highlights

What, then, is supreme value? It is growth of meaning in the world. . . . This growth of meaning and value in the world is God.

This growth of meaning in the world is super-human. Super-human does not mean supernatural. Neither does it mean something outside of human life, for humans obviously can never experience or know anything that is wholly outside their living. Growth of meaning can occur only in and with human experience.

So growth of meaning occurs by re-ordering human life.

It is super-human because it operates in ways over and above the plans and purposes of people, bringing forth values people cannot foresee, and often developing connections of mutual support and mutual meaning in spite of, or contrary to the efforts of people. . . . Growth is always super-human, although it is not super-natural."

Supreme value is the growth of meaning and value in the world, the increase of loving relationships among us, and mutuality within our common life. This growth of meaning is God, God at work in human and all other being.

Love, then, commands our highest loyalty. The urge to share, to help, to spare, to unite is God, and demands our uttermost responsiveness to its call.

"God is love, and they who live in love live in God, and God lives in them."

The Fourth Day - More than a Scarlet Poppy

Highlights

A human can seek out the conditions that are required for this growth and for its greater abundance. Above all, we can yield ourselves in blessed abandon to the transforming power of it. But we undergo it; we do not do it.

But these higher reaches must come as the flowers do, when one has done all one can to provide for them.

Persons must choose. They must seek to create the conditions, personal and social, in which growth of mutuality of life can take place. They must find the courage to overcome selfish aims and personal profit, and yield themselves to Love’s transforming power.

Can I not do more to help create conditions in which all might grow in the ability to love?

The Fifth Day - New Threads for the Weaving

Highlights

intelligently and devotedly religious

recognize the fact that this creative interaction is going on.

search out this creative interaction in all the specific forms in which it may be found

one yield oneself to this creative interaction in those specific forms in which it is most accessible, and let oneself be used by it and transformed by it, to the end that it may enrich the world in ways which no one could foresee nor plan nor intelligently direct

clear the way for this growth

this growth is an extension and multiplying of connections between activities by which they control one another. This involves increasing interdependence.

when diverse activities become interwoven and interdependent, the persons and groups involved may fail to reorganize their lives to meet the requirements of these new connections. Then great evils ensue. We see this very markedly in the modern world where interdependence has increased very rapidly but without a correlative reconstruction of habits, sentiments, loyalties, customs, laws, institutions. All these were developed to fit connections which had meaning and value when there was far less interdependence. But today they are anachronisms. They are like old broken threads which were once of service but now obstruct the weaving. They keep interdependent activities from interweaving into connections of mutual support, enhancement and meaning.

Would nationalism be among them -—- my country first, above all? Would so-called “free enterprise,” every one for oneself, and the devil take the hindmost?

If God commands interdependence, what changes must I make in my life, and our nation make in its common life? What will happen if such changes are not made?

The Sixth Day - Getting Free of the Debris

Highlights

anyone who thinks that God will do it all and we have nothing to do is wrapped in a blanket of delusion. It may be that we will refuse to do this work. If so, it will never be done and the great opportunity of this age to experience the superhuman flowering of meaning and value will pass.

creative growth can be uncomfortable

during and after that arduous process, it is extremely vulnerable. Yet it is imperative for further growth and development, and even for continued life!

What is the “obstructive debris” in the institutions of our time which must still be cleared away by us, if God is to be free to do creative work among us?

The Seventh Day - A Path Through the Maze

Highlights

A belief becomes a faith when it shapes the way of one’s living, when it determines what one shall live for. It is not a faith merely when it is accepted as true.

A worthy and workable faith will be a hierarchy, with a most general belief in supreme control over the living of the individual,  and less general ones in subordinate places of control. The controlling belief. . . will be that there is a reality that is most inclusive of all values and hence supremely worthful. This last is a general belief about God. It should be supplemented with many more particular beliefs.

But a faith becomes productive of much evil when it allows any of these particular beliefs to take dominance over the general one.

When we learn to distinguish between the valid and invalid grounds of belief, we can survey undismayed the vast medley of religious beliefs and find a path through the maze.

Take for example the very important proposition: Love is better than hate. There are three concepts here to be clarified: Love, Hate and Better. Of these three the most important and most difficult is Better. The concept of Better puts us at the very heart of the problem of value. . . . The Better is that activity which has more connections of mutual support, mutual enhancement and mutual meaning with other activities.

What we believe is important, but our beliefs do not become religious until they transform our ways of living.

They transform our ways of living only when we find them convincing, and can organize them into hierarchies of supreme and lesser goods.

When lesser goods are made paramount, such as, for example, serving one’s own family -— as each of us must and should — the lesser good becomes an evil, for it stands in the way of the large love of humanity and God. It prevents the growth of mutual support and enhancement, and thus of meaning, in the wider reaches of life.

The Eighth Day - Grounded Faith

Highlights

Religious faith is a belief which organizes and integrates our activities and hidden impulses, and connects them with an ongoing movement of life which reaches higher than I have yet explored.

But if there is any one belief above all others that should be subjected to rigorous tests it is that which changes my way of living and directs or misdirects me toward what is most important for all human fulfillment.

What we call our faith is the total, integrated structure of all of our beliefs, made coherent and rational, and constantly tested out and either reaffirmed or corrected by continuing life experience. It becomes the foundation for our personal morale and morals as we confront the challenges of daily life. Faith is our character.

The Ninth Day - A Manner of Humbleness

Highlights

Consciousness of superhuman power in the universe.

shows itself in some degree in a manner of humbleness, a subjecting of the self to what is felt to be the commands, the laws, ‘the word’ of the powers.

When belief becomes faith, religion becomes real.

God is felt deeply within and can be noticed and identified at work all around us in the environing world.

The Tenth Day - Reinforcement through Fellowship

Highlights

The sense of belonging to a noble, larger whole marks religious behavior.

What we all want more than anything else in the world is for our lives to have some genuine significance — to be part of something greater than ourselves.

For the truly religious person that something is to be part of the evolving “City of God,” the growth of mutual support, enhancement and meaning among all humans and all parts of the living universe.

The Eleventh Day – A Joyous Quality

Highlights

Religious living is oriented and integrated toward one supreme area of worth.

Consequently all living is measured and ordered with reference to that which the devotee holds to be The Most High.

There is an accentuated emotional element because everything that occurs makes much more difference to the religiously integrated person than it does to the unreligious person.

To have a clear sense of direction, a definite hierarchy of loyalties so as to be able to put first things first, is fundamental to real enjoyment of life. We want to know that we are accomplishing something, getting somewhere worth while, if we are to be happy. In the light of such an o'er arching commitment every smallest detail of life gains an eternal significance.

Prompts

Per Wieman, religious living is oriented and integrated toward how many area of worth? :: One supreme area of worth

Per Wieman, what is the benefit of having an overarching commitment? :: Every smallest detail of life gains an eternal significance.

The Twelfth Day – Self-criticism—Dynamic Patience—Aspiration

Highlights

An open and constructive attitude toward limitations of the self characterizes genuine religious living

self-criticism grows out of an awareness of the greater possibilities for growth ever glimpsed in the search for value and Supreme Value.

Patience has been a predominant characteristic of religious living

Aspiration is a thoroughly essential characteristic . . . It is the inevitable consequence of loyalty to that which one holds to be The Highest.

The realization of one’s own limitations, perhaps to the point of feelings of inferiority, sets up a process of projection of the self toward the great rich possibilities on beyond present realizations

Growing requires a certain balance of dis-ease, of dissatisfaction with one’s self and present accomplishment and a sense of the great potential within which remains awaiting realization. It takes unremitting faith and patience to keep the balance on the positive side. Religion can do this for us.

The Thirteenth Day - Sudden New Light

Highlights

The 'world' does not have power over devotees, for they are in, but not entirely of, the world. They have selected that which they believe to be the Supremely Worthful

_Detachment involves perspective, it enables us to see things _somewhat in the whole.

Having a supreme objective, we see different situations relative to this. We are not so panicky in the presence of certain aspects because we see them as connected with some greatly larger aspect.

persons who are marked by a worthy type of detachment tend to arrive at a more original evaluation of things and processes. They do not so readily accept the current or formulated interpretations.

Again, perspective tends to imply a sense of humor, an ability to look objectively upon experiences, including our own.

Humor, laughter, many times are announcements of sudden new light upon value or of true interpretation of life.

To be non-self-referent, to be able to stand off from oneself, and see oneself from an objective viewpoint, is a good worth cultivating. It invites insight, humor, self-correction, increasing self~confidence.

that we may laugh at our foolishness and not be afraid of being lost in it, knowing that we can overcome.

The Fourteenth Day - Spontaneity--Emotional Verve--Effectiveness--Artistry

Highlights

The interconnectedness and mutual support between all the acts and situations of living which genuine religion fosters (make all life more meaningful).

Routine and instrumental acts escape being drudgery because of their symbolic meanings.

Behavior is thus more marked by spontaneity, emotional verve, effectiveness and artistry.

The crusading spirit enters into religious behavior at the point where the sense of mission grows strong within the individual.

As a person grows secure in an understanding of, and feeling for, his or her relationship with the vast, quiet upthrust of growing mutuality in the universe, he or she becomes transfused with it and transformed by it.

Mighty God, grasp us with Your glory, transform us by Your goodness, touch every moment and every aspect of our lives with Your light and love.

The Fifteenth Day - Dynamic Peace

Highlights

the devotee, regardless of the turmoil and disappointment and tragedy going on near or within her or his own living, sustains a poise that keeps her or him from destruction of faith and spirit.

there still stands The Highest, and that the paramount thing is to keep in functional relationship to it, to orient the self all the more completely toward it.

Three forms which this dynamic peace may take are important.

First, there is the ability to relax, to sleep, and to sleep deeply.

Second, there is freedom from unresolved conflict, harmony, release.

_There is an inner sense of unity following the experience of a relatively integrated reaction. There is a feeling of a harmony of _communion unbroken by inner conflicts or outer interferences.

One of the chiefest values of the religious way of life is its capacity to give us peace of mind and soul in the face of all of life's unpredictable confrontations and heartaches. There is always a Power greater than oneself to fall back upon.

Your greatest gift, the knowledge that in You is our peace, that as we spend our lives for Yours, you take possession of us, and no harm can come.

The Sixteenth Day - The Great Surging Sea

Highlights

the sense of glory which behavior may reveal now as awe and wonder

Religion originated in our sensing the great forces and beauties and values not attained nor even yet served.

_This experience of glory does not imply that the devotees know and discriminate all the great forces and beauties and values, but they sense them. They feel the great surging sea of infinite value, existent and potential, in which humanity lives. They know it by faith, and this gives the sense of glory. This faith _that there is this great, dimly discerned wealth of potential values and possibilities shapes their feeling and action.

The thinking, feeling and action of the genuine religious person are imbued with the sense of the presence of the more-than-I-can-behold~or-hear.

Human life can be terribly small, mean and selfish. Sometimes it seems totally to circle around ME. Worse it can be humdrum, dull, meaningless, just plain boring. But human life under the command of growing mutuality must reach out to others and to the world, must touch, take hold, share, respond, unite and rejoice. Then comes the glory, glory realized, more glory glimpsed.

The Seventeenth Day - Disloyalty to God

Highlights

sin is the insubordination of any interest or impulse to the complete sovereignty of God.

sin is any state of being which is not completely dominated and controlled by one mastering devotion to the whole reality of God.

Religion is loyalty to God.

God working in human life and the world is the growth of meaning and value, with all the unknown and unlimited possibilities of this growth.

Sin is disloyalty to this growth.

The disloyalty that is sin has four different forms. There is the sin of incomplete loyalty; there is the sin of divided loyalty; the sin of no loyalty or indifference; and, finally, the sin of idolatry. This last is most damaging of all, most subtle, yet most deadly. It is the sin that is incurred in the steadfast loyalty to some one specific object in lieu of God.

The moment we become deeply aware of the potential for growth in mutuality between ourselves and others, both near at hand and far away, and realize God’s will as commanding such growth, we cannot help but have a sense also of sin. We become acutely, painfully, aware of how far we ourselves fall short and how great is our need to grow. This is inevitable and entirely sound. It prepares and motivates us for us for further growing, for richer broader loving.

Dear God, who is the growth of love everywhere, make us aware of our too frequent smallness and selfishness. Help us to learn how to give, and not be afraid. For when we give with love, we discover there is always more to give, and we bind ourselves to ourselves, and to one another, and to You, the Most High. Amen.

The Eighteenth Day - The Sense of Guilt

Highlights

The more vividly one senses the reality of that wholeness of God which infinitely exceeds the scope of conscious envisagement of values, the more deeply will one have the sense of guilt.

the sense of guilt is altogether wholesome and noble when it arises from the depth and breadth of our appreciation of values.

It springs from the realization of the glory that might be and ought to be.

Only when it comes from one's awareness of high values that ought to be, is sense of guilt an awareness of reality and a form of clear discernment that is necessary for noble and intelligent living.

As we become aware of the reality and insistent urgency of God's will for the creative oneness of the world, we become equally conscious of how we ourselves may be obstructing its realization. We are not ready to sacrifice some of our affluence to help the poor at home or abroad to help themselves; we are slow to turn our hearts towards the things which make for peace, if this may cost us even a little of our comfort. We have put our loyalty to multi-national corporations, to all kinds of things, to our own country above our loyalty to God, the growth of mutuality and meaning. We are in sin, each and every one.

God, keep us strong and brave enough to be able to feel and face our guilt, to acknowledge where we have not loved as purely or shared as fully as we easily could. Stab our spirits broad awake to where we are and where we ought to be, and goad us towards a higher, holier way. Amen.

Our immortal task is great,
Greatly must it be achieved;

Hoping for the greater day,
Hoping for the larger light --
Day that shall endure for aye,
Light that yieldeth not to night.

The Nineteenth Day - Sin Unconfessed and Unforgiven

Highlights

Confession of sin is vital to religious health. Only through confession and repudiation of disloyalty can one reinstate and preserve one's loyalty in the midst of that constant and inevitable unfaithfulness which life imposes. . . . The act of confession is itself an act of loyalty which neutralizes the disloyalty.

Confession . . . keeps the conscience sensitive and keeps living and growing the fine powers of discrimination of better and worse. Without confession of sin, sensitivity and appreciation for the noblest values of living and of God are gradually atrophied.

Sin unconfessed and unforgiven is death to the powers of appreciation.

To be aware of one's guilt is not enough.

We need to confess our sin -- before God -- and honestly and diligently search for ways to change the evils we acknowledge.

The Twentieth Day - God's Forgiveness Is

Highlights

God's forgiveness lies in the fact that this growth of meaning and value is forever reaching out to take us and weave our activities into a growing system of meanings, eliciting in us new responses, new interests, bringing us wider and richer vision and more profound appreciation.

The gentle, innumerable, persistent interactions which work upon us to this end, are the work of God. It is God's forgiveness extended to us.

But we cannot have it, we cannot be taken up and absorbed into this growth unless we confess our sins against it.

the evil consequences of our wrongdoing are not nullified by our confession. Only the psychological barriers are removed, so that we can enter again freely and fully into the growth of meaning and value which is God.

The forgiveness of God is the renewal, after disloyalty, of the interplay of innumerable activities weaving connections of meaning and mutual support between us and our physical and social environment, healing and building anew the maimed and broken connections caused by the disloyalty."

There is no way for any of us to make right all of our wrongs, done to others or to ourselves. Nor can we escape the consequences for us or others of our failures. What we _can _do, is to acknowledge them before God, and thus clear away the obstacles and thus clear away the obstacles to our correcting them.

God's forgiveness is in getting us back onto the track of growth in love and mutuality, and that is always available

The Twenty-First Day - As A Plant Is Ready To Burst Into Bloom

Highlights

All genuine conversion is an incident in the process of growth of meaning and value

Since it is caused by growth of meaning and value, and since God is that kind of growth, conversion is caused by God

Conversion is that change of personality by which the individual is received into the life of God.

One develops to a certain point where the personality is ripe for some new venture in living. But this new way of living cannot begin until certain further conditions are provided. When these arise one finds oneself quite suddenly and gloriously in the midst of this new way of living. As a plant is ready to burst into bloom when the warm sun and rain come, so a personality may be already to flower when certain needed conditions are brought about.

We find ourselves living abundantly with interests, loyalties, sensitivities, appreciations we never knew we had. Prior growth had developed in us the capacity for them, but they could not blossom until we began this kind of work, made this kind of personal contact, read these books, had the fellowship of this group, entered this kind of discussion, or whatever the required conditions may be . . . This kind of transformation may come suddenly. It may seem miraculous. In a day, in a night, we are living in a new world.

One may undergo an emotional experience which one and others may think is conversion, but in which no important change in personality and way of living takes place. This is a false conversion . . ., there is no genuine reorientation of personality.

Some liberal religionists think they have outgrown the traditional concepts of sin and salvation, that they have no need for conversion, no need to be "redeemed." But the truth is that all of us have repeated conversion-type experiences when some new insight destroys our previous philosophical orientation and opens us to new and broader loyalties.

God of growth, Your Larger Life within our little lives keeps bursting the comfortable bonds of habit we cherish. You cast us into crises of uncomfortable opportunity again and yet again. You break us open to more and more glorious loving.

Collations

Conversion is caused by God.

• Conversion happens within and is caused by the process of growth of meaning and value, which is Wieman's definition of God.

Conversion is a change of personality where an individual becomes part of God.

• In other words, a person is converted when they become part of the process of growth of meaning and value.

Our previous growth gives us the capacity for conversion.

Conversion happens only when certain conditions are met.

• Wieman provides the following triggers: personal contact, reading books, being part of a group, or engaging in a discussion.

Conversion happens suddenly, appearing as if a miracle.

An emotional experience could become a conversion only when an important change in personality and way of living follows.

All of us have repeated conversions. This happens when a new insight breaks our perspective and opens us to new ones.

The Twenty-Second Day - Living For The Highest Fulfillments Of All Time

Highlights

To be converted in the noblest sense is to undergo that transformation of interests and loyalties by which one can live not only for the highest fulfillments of one’s own time, but for the highest fulfillments of all time. It is that reorganization of the personality which enables one to live for those unexplored possibilities which transcend all time but are nevertheless possibilities of existence because they can be approximated to an indefinite degree by reason of the indeterminate nature of existence and through the growth of meaning.

For example, Jesus stands out in human history pre-eminently as living for a realm of value called the City of God that was highly impractical. His highest loyalty was given to values which cannot be actualized in any one particular form of existence or any one epoch of history, nor, perhaps, in the entire history of the human race. Nevertheless the City of Love for which he lived was and is a possibility of existence in the sense that it can be approximated to some indefinite degree. The indeterminate nature of existence makes it impossible to set any limit to the degree of approximation.

Thus Jesus stands before the world, as (an) incarnation of this growth of meaning and value which is not limited to any specific form with its limited perfection. He embodies that way of living which strives beyond itself toward the continued perishing and new growth of further forms of value to the end that the infinite possibilities of value on God may be actualized to the maximum.

One becomes an instrument for the accomplishment of higher and higher and more and more complex forms of mutuality — mutual support, enhancement and meaning in the whole.

There is almost no limit to the perfection towards which one can aspire.

continue to strive for ever more nearly realized perfection of our growth in actual, lovingly mutual relationships.

Collations

Conversion is a reorganization of personality that moves one to live according to unexplored possibilities.

The possibilities in existence is indeterminate.

Seemingly utopian possibilities are still possibilities because existence is indeterminate.

Some values can never be actualized.

While some values can never be actualized, they remain possibilities.

Jesus lived for a realm of value called the City of God or the City of Love.

Jesus is an incarnation of God, which is this growth of meaning and value.

Jesus strived to actualize as much as he can the possibilities of love.

Like Jesus, I could be an instrument for the growth of mutuality and meaning in the universe.

The Twenty-Third Day - In The Midst Of All Ruin

Highlights

To be converted . . . is to learn that every specific organization of existence is an obstacle to the realization of further possibilities. After it is achieved it must be gotten out of the way to clear the path for these further values.

success and failure, fulfillment and frustration, life and death, take on a different significance to one who is converted to high religion.

every form of existence must perish in order that further possibilities of value and meaning may be realized.

Supreme conversion is to have that redirection of interests by which we can perish and see our work perish and our loved ones, without loss of hope or courage or zeal.

In the midst of all ruin there is a glory which abides. In the midst of all success there is a tragedy which lingers.

To be saved means, first, to be controlled by a loyalty which integrates the personality and releases all its powers in adoration and service of a cause that gives most inclusive meaning to life for that individual. To find such a cause and live for it in this way is to be converted.

To be saved means, second, to belong to a unity of life in which one functions as a member, being sustained by the whole and helping sustain the whole. When one becomes a functional member in such a sustaining and inclusive organization of activities, one is converted.

It means, third, to be held to this loyalty and in the keeping of this unity by a power greater than ones own voluntary effort. To find oneself in the keeping of such a power is to experience conversion.

to be lifted beyond all disillusionment because one lives in a growth which moves on to new fulfillments with the perishing of the old.

Jesus once asked, “What shall it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your own soul?" Yet, it may be possible to gain the whole world, and thereby win one's own soul, if the gaining be by entering into a fully shared, mutually supportive relation with as much of the cosmos as one at any moment can encompass. To aim for this, and to work for it with all one’s might is to enjoy supreme conversion.

Questions

• What does "organization of existence" mean? Is it referring to biological or social entities?
  • I think Wieman is referring to both.
• What is being referred to as "high religion"?

Collations

Conversion is seeing that all forms of existence must give way to new ones and new possibilities.

Seeing that all forms of existence must give way to new ones for continued growth gives new significance to positive and negative experiences in life.

Conversion means we can see our work, loved ones, and ourselves perish without losing hope, courage, or zeal.

Salvation per Wieman

1. To give one's entire life to a meaningful cause.
2. To see oneself as a member of the unity of life that sustains one and one helps sustain that whole.
3. To be held to a loyalty to the whole by a power greater than oneself.

One can live beyond disillusionments if one sees all things and ever-changing and developing.

It is possible to live a fulfilling life while being part of a mutually supportive relationship with as much of the cosmos as one can encompass.

The Twenty-Fourth Day - Every Objective A Prison House

Highlights

When our interests and activities are woven into meaningful connection, a wide and growing system of activities which give meaning to life, we are held in that unity by the total organization of which we are a part, and not by our own voluntary effort.

We have no power to break away from such a fellowship and unity of meaningful activities.

The redemptive process is progressive deliverance from bondage to limited objectives, inner conflict and stagnated spirit

To be redeemed is to be awakened to responsiveness.

Every objective is a prison house to the human spirit it if falls short of the infinite possibilities of meaning which inhere in the cosmos.

Nothing less than the wholeness of God can house the human soul with a dome so vast as to release all these potentialities for living.

The redemptive process is the way we are released into this freedom and fullness of God.

“The freedom and fullness of God.” It is this we all supremely seek, and would serve, for it alone can give the greatest meaning to our lives. As we grow older, if we are sensitive, we begin to ask, “Have I lived enough, loved enough, given enough, shared enough? Have I contributed enough?" And the answer is always, Yes and No. Perhaps I have done all I could at any particular moment, but there still remains an unfulfilled potential beckoning ahead. To feel that pull towards perfection, and to mark some progress along that path is life’s greatest joy and reassurance.

The Twenty-Fifth Day - An Illimitable Realm

Highlights

from specific objectives that imprison and perish, to a total objective that is eternal; from bondage to an established social pattern of life to a pattern that opens out into an illimitable realm of possible value and meaning.

The institutions and prevalent ideals of modern society represent an order which at one time connected the activities of people in mutual support with one another and the physical processes of nature so as to give meaning and value to life. But machinery and scientific techniques have elicited new activities, and put us into new relations of interaction with the physical processes of nature, so that this old order no longer connects activities in mutual support. It no longer gives the meaning and value to life which once it did. But the older order is still with us, unfitted though it be to modern conditions

A new order expressed in new institutions and ideals of society must be developed and is being developed. But the development is not fast enough. Human activities and their interactions with physical nature keep changing faster than the new order is developed. Hence the established order becomes more and more obstructive to the growth of meaning and value in life, and more and more obstructive to that mutual support which is required by human beings.

The redemptive process for society would be a reordering of institutions, ideals and customs which would restore mutual support and release growth of meaning. In such a reordered society the redemptive process of the individual could occur more readily and more completely.

The Twenty-Sixth Day - Practice

Highlights

We do not form ideas about prayer until after we find ourselves practicing it.

It is one of the vital functions of human living, like talking and tool-making, which spring up quite spontaneously.

Our first prayers would scarcely be recognized as such by one who has learned to pray from socially established patterns. Rather they were impulsive cries of joy and need, appeals for help and for sympathy.

prayer is an attempt to address the personality in such a way as to attain community of interest and creative interaction -> meaning?

The efficacy of prayer depends on the adjustment of the personality to some reality in such a way as to attain desired ends.

Since prayer is an adjustment of the total personality seeking community of interest in creative interaction, it is a moral and religious undertaking.

We all pray, whether we know it or not. Prayer is natural to us, for we instinctively feel ourselves to be part of Something far greater than ourselves, to which we need successfully to relate. In times of crisis, we pray spontaneously.

The important skill to learn is how to pray intelligently and seriously daily so as to grow gradually into mutuality with the Superhuman Reality.

Collations

We form ideas about prayer after doing it.

Prayer happens spontaneously.

Our first prayers are impulsive expressions of joy and need.

Per Wieman, prayer involves adjusting one's personality to attain community of interest and creative interaction.

Prayer is religious.

Everyone prays, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Prayer is natural to everyone.

Practice prayer to get closer with God.

Questions

What is "community of interest"?

What is "creative interaction"?

The Twenty-Seventh Day - Outstretched Wings Of The Spirit

Highlights

Prayer is adjusting the personality to God in such a way that God can work more potently for good than otherwise, as the outstretched wings of a bird enable the rising currents to carry it to higher levels.

The idea of prayer is inextricably involved in the idea of God. The present confusion in thought and practice of prayer is due to the present confusion in thought about God

God is the growth of meaning and value in the world. This growth consists of increase in those connections between activities which make the activities mutually sustaining, mutually enhancing and mutually meaningful

Prayer is the conscious attempt directly to adjust one's own personality to God, often to the end of attaining some specific result.

Prayer, in one form or another, has always been the heart and soul of the deeply religious life.

Once one regains an intellectually acceptable concept of God, the ability to pray, to enter into an emotional relationship with our deepest, dearest Being-Becoming, returns full-blown and ready for daily use.

Collation

Prayer boosts the happening of God.

Prayer is tightly related to God.

Once one regains an acceptable idea of God, one can enter into a relationship with this God through prayer.

The Twenty-Eighth Day - The Choir of Heaven and Furniture of Earth

Highlights

Prayer is not subjective but objective

prayer is objective in the sense that it reaches a reality that is not only greater than the single personality, but is greater than humanity.

The Reality is a growth which weaves all manner of activities into a system of mutual support and meaning.

This includes not only the activities of many personalities, but also the activities of wind and sea and trees, and coal and machines, and much else of the choir of heaven and furniture of earth. It weaves them all into a meaningful system.

There is nothing which reaches a powerful good extending so far beyond human power as does prayer. In that sense prayer is objective.

Some of the conditions of effective prayer are the following. (1.) One must earn the right to pray (a) by facing the situation or problem squarely, formulating it as clearly and analyzing it as fully as possible; and (b) meeting all other conditions for its solution that one can . . . One must get into the problem as far as one can, grapple with it until one has the true sense of it, before one is able to pray about it with any understanding or in such a way that God can help in the form of increased connections of mutual support.

When God answers prayer, God transforms persons, institutions and ideals into a higher unity of richer value

We must seek what is genuinely and greatest good and not merely the specific things which will satisfy our present wants.

_'Not my will but Thine be done.' _

One must have faith if prayer is to be effective. That means one must be alert, responsive, outreaching and anticipative toward the growth of good wherever and however it may appear.

the connections of mutual support and meaning can hardly form unless one is sensitive, responsive, outreaching and anticipative.

One must have faith if growth is to work, weaving activities, new and old, into a higher order of value. God can do very little for and with anybody in any way unless such a one has faith after this manner.

It is an exercise of the imagination by which we deliberately try to accord ourselves with that which made us and sustains us, the upthrusting order of the universe. It works when we let it change us so as to become more and more the image of its mutually reciprocal Being-Becoming. But often we don't want to change. We are comfortable as we are. It is then we most need truly to pray.

The Twenty-ninth Day - A Little Time Each Day

Highlights

A little time taken each day, with occasional longer periods, for clarifying our function in the integrating process of God, and cultivating the personal attitudes adapted to it, will develop a slowly growing propulsion which will increase in power as the years pass, like a stream swelling to a river as it gathers the drainage of a watershed.

There are three preconditions which must be met before effective worship is possible. The first is that one must go out into deep water. One must take life seriously.  One must not shirk the heavy responsibilities. One must venture out to depths where wading is difficult. No one ever worshipped profoundly and with largest results who was not struggling.

one assume the tremendous responsibilities that inevitably fall upon every one who lives earnestly and has sufficient insight to discern the tragedies in human life.

The second precondition is sincerity. That means that we will not take into our worship and beliefs which we doubt.

Whenever any belief or word puts us under a sense of constraint, or gives us a sense of unreality, we must set it aside.

Worship is preeminently probing down beneath all the sham and pose which inevitably accumulate in every one’s life with the daily routine. Worship is struggling to cast off all this unconscious and unintended but inevitable hypocrisy and getting down to reality about ourselves and our world, as we are able to experience it.

Absolute sincerity, completest honesty, is indispensable to help worship, and ultimately it will lead to more adequate and well-established beliefs.

The third precondition has to do with time and place and surroundings. The time may be any hour of the twenty-four; but the best time, we are very sure, is just before retiring at night and soon after the rising of in the morning. Some room will serve, especially if it can be shut so that one need not fear others will hear even when one speaks, aloud, and where the mind will not be distracted by any sights, sounds or apprehensions. The purpose of worship is to turn the minds away from the lesser things and give the whole attention to the supreme thing.

but to become really effective it must become also a daily home habit

The Thirtieth Day - Steps and Stages of Worship

Highlights

The first step in the act of worship is to relax and to become aware of that upon which we are dependent

The point is that we are sustained; and in so far as we rise to higher levels of living we do so by adaptation to that which lifts us.

In this first act of worship we fill and suffuse our minds with the sense of this encompassing presence that sustains and lifts and works toward the organic community of each with all.

The second step in worship is to call to mind the vast and unimaginable possibilities for good which are inherent in this integrating process called God.

_No matter how we may doubt the possibilities of personal improvement and social transformation and reconstruction of physical conditions, there is that noblest kind of personality, that highest degree of health, that clearness of mind and largeness of purpose, that measure of equality of opportunity, of cooperation _and mutual understanding and deep organic community of heart and mind between all beings which may be attained by the best possible adaptation of means to ends. It is this possibility which we now bring to mind.

The third step is to face the chief problem with which we are struggling

The fourth step is self-analysis to find what change must be made in our own mental attitudes and personal habits.

No problem was ever solved, no desired result ever attained, by worship or in any other way, which did not require some personal readjustment on the part of the person through whom it was attained.

Worship has practical value and is a way of doing things only because it enables us (1) to discover what personal readjustment is required of us and (2) to establish that readjustment in ourselves.

The fifth step in worship is to formulate in words as clearly and comprehensively as possible the readjustment of personality and behavior which I have discovered is required of me if l am to close the circuit between certain disconnected factors in the world round me. This verbal statement of the needed readjustment is very important. It should be accurate, comprehensive, concise. Above all it must be affirmative; not negative. For in worship we are not primarily trying to break a connection, but to establish a connection. We are trying to do something constructive, not destructive.

The Thirty-First Day - Cooperative Worship

Highlights

In the public worship which we here have in mind we gather together to help one another find God each for oneself and in one's own way

As a group we try to cooperate with each to help all make that adjustment which is most helpful to them personally.

This kind of public worship might be called cooperative worship as distinguished from collective worship.

In collective worship conducted by a crowd the chief end is to produce the emotional glow and satisfaction that comes from feeling that we are all together and having the same experience.

The kind of public worship we now wish to consider, on the other hand, is that in which each individual member conducts his or her own personal worship under the stimulus and cooperation of the group.

Public worship of this kind is a gathering of people who have come together to provide for one another those conditions which one cannot provide for oneself but which are most helpful in enabling us to worship according to the unique requirements of our own personal need.

In public worship of the cooperative deliberative type all members of the congregation (ideally) cooperate with each individual in each personal endeavor to worship by providing (1) beauty in such form that it can be religiously experienced, (2) rituals, prayers and readings which will enable the individual to achieve an appreciative and critical survey of human experience in widest scope and fullest content, (3) a readjustment of personal attitude to the end of living more successfully.

You visit us in our aloneness but we express You best in our togetherness.

References

Harrington, Donald Szantho. Outstretched Wings of the Spirit: On Being Intelligently and Devotedly Religious: A Lenten Manual Based on the Theology of Henry Nelson Wieman and Regina Westcott Wieman.

The Thirty-Second Day - Illuminate The Darkness

Highlights

No one can live this religious life alone. We must have the fellowship of others who are trying to live in this way. This is so because the human personality above all things is a social entity.

The most potent group in which to foster the distinctively religious way of living is small in number. It should range from two or three or four up to twelve or fifteen, although the last number is too large except in rare cases.

One of the purposes of such a fellowship is to make inhibitions to dissolve away the dark areas of personality to be illuminated, and the individuals to become translucent to one another.

Human personality cannot grow and flower in such dark crypts of social concealment. It must have the sunshine and rain of understanding and sympathy.

Psychic madness, social revolution, and international conflict rise higher and higher as long as this personal isolation continues with its competitive attitude toward all comers.

In forming a fellowship to save personality from these evils the individuals should be selected with care. A single wrong choice will ruin it. If it is found that there is some one who cannot interact fittingly, this group should disband and another be formed at some later time. Individuals selected should be ready to practice the method we have described. This exclusiveness is not selfish, for the main purpose of such a group is to release power to transform personalities and change the social order in the interests of greater community among all.

The group should worship together, although the practice may not go by that name and should assume the form best fitted to their needs. lt may be Quaker silence, or singing together, or reading together great prose or poetry or biography.

In a time like ours the only way that a new and transforming religious movement can be started is through creative fellowships such as we have tried to describe. Anyone who lives in the peculiarly religious way must have the support of such a group. The devitalizing, competitive, atomistic social order is all around us. It will suffocate or crush or desiccate the devoted life within us unless we have the support and nourishment of such a cell of spiritual renewal and power.

The Church is regarded by many in our time as old-fashioned and outmoded. But, if it were to die it would have to be recreated. For human beings could not stay human without its prodding, explaining, correcting, comforting presence.

The Thirty-Third Day - The Wholeness of God

Highlights

The mystical experience brings the minded organism of the individual into interplay with the ignored richness and fullness of the immediate environment with its hidden possibilities of meaning and value.

The free, spontaneous, relatively disorganized interplay of the minded organism with its environment during mystical experience, may make possible a most wholesome reorganization of habits and patterns of living.

Sometimes a quite complete reorganization of personality may occur. This is sometimes called rebirth, or regeneration, where this reorganization involves a redirection of living so that henceforth the individual is sensitive to high values not appreciated before and, above all, has appreciation and aspiration for the wholeness of God.

Mystical experience is an important part of life and worship.

Such experiences leave us with a new perspective on our petty, daily cares.

The Thirty-Fourth Day - Beyond The Boundaries

Highlights

there is almost always a deep feeling of refreshment.

one carries a sense of spiritual adventure following such experience

Also one can come from it with a new appreciation for the old objectives of life. One sees them in a new perspective. One sees them as pointing beyond themselves . . . They represent an outreach after the wholeness of God

When we come from the mystical experience we find ourselves in the old universe, but it is renewed. It has distant vistas. On its horizon is the light of meanings yet to dawn. It has qualities it did not have before. It is an open universe, not a closed one. It opens out into the infinity of God.

The Thirty-Fifth Day - The City Of God

Highlights

The church has tried to improve society by changing individuals.

But the social order cannot be changed through effort to change its individual units for a very simple reason.

The more complex and compact society becomes, the less effective is the good intention of the individual who lacks the guiding support of institutions to coordinate his or her activities with those of others.

To be sure these saints — supposing they could be produced in the midst of such malfunctioning institutions — might change the social order. But that is a gigantic task in itself and cannot be left to take care of itself while everyone is striving to transform everyone else into an individual saint.

Yet without the sustaining
devotion and driving loyalty of a religion, social reconstruction with all its difficulties and sacrifices cannot be carried through.

The City of God is not a place, but a condition. It is never wholly achieved, but always a-building. It requires individual transformation, which in turn sparks social revolution. The task of religion is, step by step, to help people grow into that City, so that they may discover it emerging within and among them, transforming their society in the direction of wider mutualities. This inevitably will require new and reborn social institutions if the reborn spirits are not to be suffocated and stifled.

TheThirty-Sixth Day - Religion Shaping History

Highlights

Increase of human control over the social process does not mean that we will be any less dependent upon the growth of meaning, which we have seen is the reality of the superhuman in our midst. It does not mean that God, working in ways that are beyond our power, will be any the less operative in history. Quite the contrary is the case. We shall be more dependent upon the superhuman growth of meaning than we have been in the past.

When we are constantly reconstructing the social order in basic ways, there is bound to be great loss of old meanings. Therefore the meaning of life will decline, swiftly and fatally, unless there is continuous growth of new meaning.

Again and again it has happened that when people have achieved means of control over their own ways of living, they have neglected to give highest loyalty and prime concern to growth of meaning.

The consequence of this refusal to give primary importance to the superhuman growth of meaning has been a steady decline in the meaning of life

Can humanity be trusted with power to direct the social process in human history and still remember that it is made for God and God alone? Or will we throw off that ancient allegiance and divine sovereignty and so find ourselves in a world full of activities but so barren of meaning and value that life ceases to be worth the living?

The Thirty-Seventh Day - Loyalty To A Higher And Richer God

Highlights

The chief political function of religion in the difficult and dangerous times of social reconstruction is to provide us with an object of loyalty which is vastly higher and richer than any specific objective. The great danger in such times is that we will focus all our passion and all our loyalty on some definite goal.

But a noble religion enables us to pour out our passion and energy for this specific objective not as an end but as a metaphor of that which is infinitely higher.

Our greatest human failing is the tendency to give our all for limited, human objectives

to forget that in God’s Being-Becoming we are all bound together, so that if one is hurt all are ultimately hurt, and if one rejoices, all ultimately shall rejoice. It is not easy, but God’s command is to give ourselves for the well-being of the whole.

God of all, help us be more deeply aware of the bonds that bind us to all men and women everywhere, and to all the generations past, whose victories are summarized in us, and all who are to come who must receive their world from us. Help us to pass on this world to those who will come after us as a more harmonious place. Amen.

The Thirty-Eighth Day - Political Endeavor in Time of Social Crises

Highlights

It is the part of religion in all times, but especially in times when people undertake the shaping of history, to equip each individual with loyalty and a way of worship that will enable each one to combine perspective with energetic action.

religion and politics must work together in the new era toward which we are moving

The task of religion is to keep politics from becoming idolatrous or demonic, to keep the molder and maker of events on the track, and to sustain him of her through good times and bad. Thus, to keep the realms of this earth growing towards the most meaningful City of our God.

If we do not make it according to Your growth of meaning, it quickly becomes a hell of selfishness and strife.

The Thirty-Ninth Day - A Web Of Necessary Mutual Support

Highlights

God is in the economic process. We cannot intelligently and devoutly shape history until this is seen and felt.

Today the entire planet is becoming one community, not in love, not in mutual understanding, and cooperation, but in interdependence.

The superhuman power of God is shown shaping the lives of men into oneness that they never intended and which is, more often than not, contrary to their purposes.

Physical things, human purposes and living organisms of all sorts are woven closer and closer and wider and wider into a web of necessary mutual support. The growth goes on wherever there is production for exchange.

God at work in the economic process weaving a web of unity that can grow into community if we will do our part .

The church as the prime established institution of religion must awaken humanity's loyalty, love and sensitivity to God in this realm of production for exchange, so that its economic striving will be corrected, inspired and directed by the intimate sense of this divine presence at work shaping history through these activities.

The church must develop criteria which will enable us to know when our economic striving runs counter to the working of God in this field of endeavor.

With adequate criteria the church can speak with authority and insight and save us from the chaos and ruin of fighting against God.

The theory is that if everyone is selfish enough, the whole will benefit. But it is not working out that way.

The Church and its members have the responsibility to find and demonstrate a more excellent way.

Collations

God is in the economic progress.

The Earth is growing in interdependence but not necessarily in a good way because of production for exchange.

We can transform this economic interdependence into unity and community.

If God is ultimately the growth in meaning and mutuality and love, then we should direct our economic structures and behavior according to this process.

The Fortieth Day - Palm Sunday - Working With God To Rear a Realm Of Meaning

Highlights

The serious business of living for human beings is to transform this planet by way of political, educational, artistic and other activities into a place where growth of meaning in the two forms of development of personality and growth of culture can fulfill itself most abundantly.

In deep creative community of meaning we must work with God to rear a realm of meaning, rooted in the economic order, but flowering in the highest spiritual outreach of imagination.

It is the cardinal function of the church to turn our hearts to God so that such meaning may grow. It must keep us eager, expectant and alert for this growth.

Growth of meaning we must seek above all else.

Man’s high calling is to create upon this earth an integrated world of meaning in which the highest potentials of all participants are called forth and exercised. In our time, we stand at the threshold of such a possibility. It awaits only our willingness to share our knowledge and our creativity more wisely and more widely.

The Forty-First Day - Face Turned Towards The Light

Highlights

each individual, each order, each epoch, each aeon, can actualize but a very small part of the fullness of possible meaning that is in God

Their chief end will be the promotion of that growth and richness of the world's meaning which all people may share and to which all may contribute.

Because they discern the perpetual emergence of new possibilities, they will see that all human life is failure, and all is success, so long as they render their uttermost devotion to God.

the very best we can make of ourselves and our situations must be superseded. Our victories are mere stepping stones towards a yet higher good

if we set our minds and hearts and lives on service of the highest, even our failures will be true success. We will have the satisfaction of knowing that we served God faithfully, as best we could, provided the next step up in a long climb, and live and die content.

The Forty-Second Day - Creative Interaction - The Saving Reality

Highlights

In what we call inquiring religion as over against the dogmatic, . . . the religious devotees do not think that they alone have the truth about the saving reality in which all human living must find whatever supreme fulfillment it can ever have. They confess that their knowledge of it is very limited and very partial.

But the inquiring type of religionist knows there are other insights, further knowledge, additional perspectives, and great possibilities of development in our apprehension of this most important reality.

this growing apprehension full of vision and more open access to God can be attained only in the way that all truth grows, namely, by creative interaction with many different minds, many different cultures, many different insights, and the pool which is of many traditions.

They go forth not to save other people from the black hopelessness and error of their ways, but to enter into that creative interaction with them that sharing, that mutual criticism, correction and enlargement that comes from cross fertilization, fuller appreciation and interchanges of thought and spirit.

Thus for inquiring religion the missionary enterprise is preeminently the way by which the road that leads to the Highest is made more plain and broad and open for all

A person cannot have a sense of saving truth and not feel compelled to share it with others, all others. But how we go about this becomes all important. If we do so openly, expectantly, hoping to learn as well as teach, we will succeed. If we go forth only to convert, we will fail.

The Forty-Third Day - The Interpenetration And Transfusion Of Cultures

Highlights

If missionaries have the faith that inquires, they can bring to others a devotion to that supreme and perfect reality which they do not claim to be identical with their own specific beliefs.

they can bring others a striving and an awareness that reaches up through all imitations and errors of their own culture and all culture, their own unworthy practice, and all unworthy practices of religion. They can bring a loyalty that reaches up to the supreme and perfect reality of God

Such missionaries can bring to all people a devotion that can rally all cultures, all religious souls, all traditions and perspectives, to one great cooperative enterprise of bringing their diverse insights and dominance of efforts into creative inter-change, mutual correction, and supplementation to the end of attaining a clearer vision of the sublime and perfect reality of God and of the way of life whereon his goodness shines.

Our world is coming together with a rush, bringing together cultures and peoples who had known of each other but had no real opportunity to interpenetrate.

This is God at work in and through us towards a higher, broader mutuality. We need not to resist it, but to welcome it.

Soul answering to soul

The Forty-Fourth Day - No Religion Is Better Than Demonic Religion

Highlights

One way in which religion constantly degenerates if not corrected by criticism and cultivation is to become narrow and demonic. It becomes demonic when some specific objective of endeavor which is sufficiently near to actual conditions to be within the range of practical achievement assumes the role of the supremely worthful for all human living. When this objective commands the sovereign devotion of a life and is served as though it were the final and supreme good for all history, we have a very great evil.

The noblest propulsions, utmost zeal and greatest powers of human life are perverted and degraded by being harnessed to anything so low and so full of evil as any such objective always must be held subordinate to the ultimate objective which is far more spacious, and more lofty than these.

remind ourselves of the our unending temptation to our own particular way as the only good way for all.

It is this which leads to crucifixions and divisive hatreds where there should be all-redeeming love.

Forty-Fifth Day (Good Friday) - Religion May Become Fiendish

Highlights

The immediate objective in any social enterprise always involves a stand in relation to persons, for and against.

When the horizons of our religion narrow themselves down to some one specifically formulated objective, all the driving power of our religious loyalty may become focused upon persons, for some and against others. Then the persons who are opposed to us cease to be human in our eyes. They become devils. They become the incarnation of all that is obstructive to the forward movement of history and the fulfillment of highest values.

Religion often takes this form in times of war. But never does it become so evil and degraded in this respect as in the great struggles to change the status quo on the one side, and defend it from change on the other. Under such conditions a religion that is operative but unconscious, uncriticised, uncorrected by the insights of history, the fellowships and the meditations of cultivated religion, may become fiendish. It becomes directed by social differentiation — against persons and for person. Then the most terrible persecutions, the most unbelievable cruelties, can arise. They are unbelievable except when we understand the psychological principles of a religion that has become fiendish, by reason of narrowing its devotion to a dauntless and unswerving drive towards some immediate social objective

Yet without the sustaining devotion and driving loyalty of a religion, social reconstruction with all its difficulties and sacrifices cannot be carried through.

God, help us to catch the vision of endless growth of meaning through increase of creative mutuality in an ever evolving world. Let it stand in judgment upon all of our small victories and partial accomplishments. Amen.

Forty-Sixth Day - Laughter That Makes People Thin

Highlights

What makes one feel at home in the universe is one’s beliefs about the universe, and the part and place of human life in it. This system of beliefs is the foundation of one’s sense of inner security, and is the basis for the organization of oneself and one’s characteristic behavior. When these beliefs are disordered or nullified, life loses its order and meaning.

A transition period in religion is a very difficult period for human living. There are in commotion many factors and trends which confuse us, and prevent us from feeling at home.

Some lose meaning, and hence lose the self.

A few courageous ones dare to say they do not know, and hold themselves open to all other opinion.

Some try to build up a system deliberately, with the assortment of materials at hand.

Some are self seeking experimenters, trying first this and then that.

But there are, over and above all these, certain searchers in the field who, while holding their findings to the discipline of rigid tests, are exploring with relatively open minds the possibilities of meaning and value wherever these seem likely to be found.

Religion is the most important way that humans have tried by which to organize the order of life. This way is itself now disorganized, and is being questioned and brought under examination. Whether out of the resulting confusion there will come a period of the chaos of mere ruin, or sort of a Dark Ages of Futility, or a period of vigorous growth which will compel intelligent, creative control, is a question of social evolving. Certainly the soil around many of the roots of religion is giving evidences of the sturdy thrusts of living force.

In our age, religion itself is undergoing its own “via dolorosa,” a crucifixion and a resurrection or rebirth in a new more pertinent garb, capable of speaking powerfully to the modern scientific age. But this rebirth and resurrection can become significant only as it takes place in and through us.

Not that we live and die, but how — is what makes the difference.

Forty-Seventh Day (Easter Sunday) - The Recreation of Faith

Highlights

Religion is devotion to what we hold to be supremely worthful not only for ourselves but for all human living.

Religion, at its highest and best, is the devotion of the total self, through search, service and adoration, to the highest cause of which one is now conscious, providing that cause is deemed worthy of the devotion of all people, and is symbolic of ever higher unexplored values.

Religion, then, is a process of organizing the self around and toward the highest values. The total self must be involved if the highest values are to be promoted and realized.

In excellent religion, which is always something more than genuine religion, the objective sought and served and adored has not only the kind of value which must be shared to be realized, but a value which the individual reveres because it leads on to, and always opens out into, higher and wider realms of value which are never fully compassed at any one time by the devotee.

Hence the way of life that marks excellent religion is the process of progressive integration, involving the total person, and growing toward a Supremely Worthful which exceeds the scope of present comprehension.

“This is the reason why people’s religion is so important to them when it is genuine. lt is not that it is so close to them but that it is the center of their lives. It is themselves. It is their total self living at particular way of life. We can no more suddenly ‘lose our religion' than we can suddenly lose our personality. Both are present growth processes rooted in previous growth processes, and thrusting out toward future growth processes. The particular responsiveness or way of life, and the generating and emerging body of concepts which portray what is at the time the most worthful, are not two distinctly different things, but rather two aspects of the religious process. One aspect is always becoming the other.”

Growing one’s own religion is a matter of constantly reworking one’s beliefs into a more and more perfectly integrated, living faith, testing out each fragment by one’s own experience, the findings of others and the wisdom of the past. The task is never finished, but that does not matter, for the task of spiritual growth itself becomes the principal source of personal pleasure, social effectiveness, and carries the sense of a transforming glory.

Forty-Eighth Day - As Yet Unglimpsed Possibilities

Highlights

When the individual has grown sufficiently to discern that the highest conceivable Objective of our dominant loyalty is a growth of meaning and value in the universe which we can serve but cannot construct, and which is in that sense super human, we have discerned God. . . . It is a steady and progressive process of growth.

A philosophy of religion developed in the process of devoted religious living can never be lost. It can and is modified progressively, . . . nor is it ever finished. Always it moves toward the as-yet-unglimpsed possibilities of a more magnificent and profound Reality-on-beyond, so long as religious living continues intelligent and vital.

The swiftest and surest way to the attainment of a worthy idea of God is through a progressive development of value-habits and ideals which grows into a progression of loyalties by way of devotion to the highest value at any one time conceivable.

Of course, no one can have knowledge beyond the culture of one’s time, but one can recognize the limitations of that culture.

Culture-bound individuals tend to have blind spots as to the possibilities of exploration and evaluation outside those which have been recognized and standardized by the social group with which they identify themselves. They do not realize the relativity of the techniques and the appreciations of their culture. They take their age and time too seriously. They do not see them as only a long moment.

This culture-bound philosophy can be better understood by contrasting it with its opposite. . . . Such persons engage in great flights of speculative imagination, which take off from the proudest heights of truth that this culture can erect. These speculative ventures suggest a larger perspective than that of their own culture . . . it is Reality-centered rather than culture-centered.

Individuals, here, cannot know beyond the limits of the knowledge of their culture; but they can realize vividly and stirringly that there is more to know, and that there may be new ways of going about the building of knowledge. Their knowledge is bound by their culture, but the exploration and creativeness of their imaginations are not.

They have a mystical quality in their living and outreaching. They hold themselves ready for the greater which may emerge. They hold their system of concepts tentatively, ready to re-test and re-shape when greater meaning comes. They will progressively integrate their living in the light of the findings.

(Such persons) participate actively in the actual living processes which go to make up the realities of the every day; but they seek to discern in and through these, those significant meanings which are pointers toward the wider Reality.

They have a vivid sense of the unfinished and fragmentary nature of what this particular culture can reveal of the Supremely Worthful.

lf it has succeeded, its users will want to go on building in their own daily meditations and ongoing search for truth and right.