United Communities of Spirit

"THE PATTERN THAT CONNECTS..."

A Meditation on Electronic Networking

written for

Mr. Matthew Fox, Director

Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality

Holy Names College, Oakland, CA,

author of The Coming of the Cosmic Christ

and many other books

Bruce Schuman

origin@rain.org

PO Box 23346, Santa Barbara, CA 93121

http://www.rain.org/~origin/one/pattern.html

October 8, 1989

It is 8:30am, Sunday, October 8, 1989, the foghorn cuts through the gray Santa Barbara morning -- and, "knowing something", I seek to be illuminating and persuasive.

And I hope I can be forgiven if my present thesis remains a patchwork quilt, a collage of images drawn from your book, each directly linked into my own dreams, into my own motives, into my own need to synthesize, consciously, this "pattern that connects."

I have called the work I am doing now "The Bridge Across Consciousness", and with it, I seek to frame a body of distributed relationships, that I perceive as scattered, until linked by the tendrils of the living bridge.

And I see you as a vital node in the vines of God, positioned with grace between the old and the new, between what seems to be dying, and what seems to be giving birth.

By anchoring yourself within "the church", yet bringing to that church and importing into its tired veins an array of vital insights drawn from many sources, you gather Light, and with it are empowered as a healer. In this book, you tell of your dream, and of its climax: "Your mother is dying". And by "mother", you mean many things, including Mother Church. But you have written the book to transmit vision and vitality and hope, and of Christianity you say (p7):

It needs the kind of dreams and visions that the prophet Joel promised would be available in abundance in the messianic age. It needs the kind of renewal that John XXIII dreamed of when he launched his revolution in the Vatican in the 1960s. Perhaps a new "ecumenical council" will be forthcoming in our lifetime. This one would be deeply ecumenical and would call forth the wisdom of all the world's religions. Part of its work might be to declare an ancient but forgotten doctrine: the Cosmic Christ, the "pattern that connects"...

I simply could not agree more. The church, all churches, the living human church, needs this renewal, this revitalization, this recontacting of roots and the "divine ground of being", this nourishment, without which the souls of men, and of institutions, wither and fall from the vine.

And you propose the possibility of a true deep ecumenism, one that would be based on the wisdom of all of the world's religions. And you consider the possibility of a "new ecumenical council" in our lifetime to explore this depth, and the doctrine of "connectivity".

And hearing this, and seeing this, and knowing this to be true, in the spirit of connectivity, I have settled myself at this keyboard this morning, as an act of spiritual discipline and determination, because I sense connectivity, and I sense urgency, and I sense potency -- and all these things I wish to communicate to/with you.

I propose:

A new ecumenical council, not merely in our lifetime, but immediately. I propose a "deep ecumenism", based on the wisdom of all the world's religions and traditions and sources of spiritual and mystical and cosmological insight.

I propose a bridge and a living vine and an electronic network, to gather this insight, to interconnect its sources, to assemble from these sources their own inner pattern, and to radiate back through the vine this insight that we, in our connectivity, have jointly managed to synthesize.

I propose this as an active pursuit, conscious, intentional, designed, and anchored in an overall scheme which is the "divine pattern which connects".

I propose the "knowing" of the Cosmic Christ, whether mystical, or analytical/ intellectual. I propose the "translation" of the world's diverse scriptures into a central crystalline doctrine of immaculate conceptual purity, neutral, universal, divinely impersonal yet intimately personal, bridging across all the levels of mind and being from the divinely universal insights of the prophets and saints, to the innocent details of daily life, as we live and breath and grow.

And it is my place to say that I "know" this work can be accomplished, and that it should be accomplished -- and for this reason, here this morning, at this keyboard, with your book before me, I write these words.

On p19, you say

Much is happening today to awaken the mystic and the maternal force in us. Of primary importance is the rejection of Newton's piecemeal consciousness, i.e., knowing the part will instruct us in the whole. The whole is greater than its parts, and the quest for the whole, for unity, is a mystical quest par excellence.

On p21, you continue

Wisdom demands a cosmology, a relating to the whole, a healing of the whole when it is broken, a passion for the whole. Today, as a result of the Newtonian paradigm, our educational structures are built on a parts-mentality. Each area of learning -- sociology, psychology, science, art, math, history, religion -- is simply seen as a part. No attempt at integration, or the understanding of the whole that is wisdom is made.

So, to you I say that the work I have done, and am doing, involves what I have called the "synthetic reassembly of primal unity", a gathering and an integration of parts, wherever they may be, at whatever level of mind or existence they may occupy.

It is "the pattern that connects" which can do for the human mind and heart and soul what "all the king's horses and all the king's men" cannot. It is the redemptive power of the truly Cosmic Christ, anchored at the core of society, and defined as the core of our intellectual/scientific/philosophical understanding, that can vitalize science with wisdom, that can vitalize politics with virtue, that can vitalize society with insight and hope and inspiration.

I refer to my own intellectual and analytic work as "synthetic theory", by and in terms of which I gather up "pieces", place them in relationship to one another, and seek to assemble from them a unified picture or image of "the whole".

We have in our culture, distributed as "a thousand points of light", all the resources that we need. The reductionist Newtonian mentality you discuss has accomplished fabulous things, and established many thousands of independent "points".

But where -- you and I jointly ask -- is "the pattern that connects"? Where is the meaning of this tapestry, that all of us, perhaps unconscious of the larger design, have collectively woven into the evolution of our civilization?

As divine potential, this pattern exists. In the microcosm, and in the macrocosm, in the individual, and in large social institutions, this pattern exists, as potential.

Some of us are realizing this identity individually, our points of light becoming independently brilliant, like individual kernels of popcorn just beginning to burst. Some of us, sensing many of these things, are recognizing our own inner divine potential, and are gathering Light from many sources. Regardless of what may seem to be the trend in the world around us, we are protecting our own divine identities, and doing all we can to promote and facilitate this metamorphosis into the fullest possible realization of grace.

But this alone is not enough, not nearly enough. Your thesis, that "Mother is dying", remains tragically true.

The earth is wounded.

The youth are stricken.

And compassion, Mother Love, is sore wounded, by a spirit of selfishness that has filled our visionless society with a blind self-centeredness rooted in a sense of individual impotence, and an immature excitement that feeds on immediate gratification in its ignorance of our larger unity and pain.

On p135, in your section "The Cosmic Christ -- Bearer of Coherence", you quote the poet John Donne: "Tis all in peeces, all cohaerence gone."

And you say

The Cosmic Christ ushers in an era of coherence, of ending the separations, divisions, dualisms, piecemealness that characterizes a world without mysticism, a society without a living cosmology. A cosmos is always a whole, a unity, a state of coherence even if the coherence seemingly exists for a time only in the hearts and imaginations of the people, only in hope. The Cosmic Christ unites psyche and cosmos once again. In 1875, theologian J. B. Lightfoot wrote that Christ was the "principle of cohesion in the universe. He impresses upon creation that unity and solidarity which makes it a cosmos instead of a chaos..."

Continuing, you say

Thus all suffering and all poverty is connected as is all glory and all beauty. Suffering is not piecemeal; it is not meaningless. All suffering is coherent, it coheres in the Cosmic Christ (who is crucified and wounded) and it coheres in divinity as well as in humanity. It coheres on earth as well as in heaven. The "recapitulation" theme of Ephesians means to "bring together parts which have been scattered and separated". This is the meaning of "making peace".

This Cosmic Christ needs to be born, is yearning to be born, in all of us individually, and in our society. "We are all called, like the Cosmic Christ, to radiate the divine presence to/with/from one another". (p137) In the words of Meister Eckhart, "we are all meant to be mothers of God".

And you continue,

We are called to be bearers of this new paradigm, this living cosmology and its new wineskins; we are called to be "patterns that connect" and "bearers of coherence" to a society of separation.

But, you point out, quoting theologian Rob van der Hart,

The cosmic order, so relevant for peace on earth, does not at all appear to be something given, something which can be taken for granted. It is something to be achieved...

And, you add

The birthing of the Cosmic Christ is itself a cosmic act involving cosmic labor pains. It will not come cheaply... To truly give birth to something new is an awesome responsibility.

To all of this, Mr. Fox, I am most deeply receptive. I have not the slightest doubt that all of it is as true as words can be. You have defined and outlined the woundedness of our society and of the world, and of ourselves -- and you have outlined a path of healing, a cure, a "Balm of Gilead", to soothe and nourish the frightened or confused souls of a society cut adrift from our mystical roots, the very roots that are the only source of nourishment that can preserve the vitality of our kind.

And knowing all this to be so, I have written these words to you this morning, to further establish "a pattern that connects", to express my appreciation for your vision, for your anchor at the juncture of the traditional and the creative.

I myself "carry a vision of connectivity", written deeply in my soul, and possessing me with a kind of caring urgency that compels me to propose conscious organized action.

As Rob van der Hart points out, this is something we must achieve. Our victory in the realization of cosmic order on earth will not be given to us easily, and we certainly cannot take it for granted. It may well be that the labor pains of realizing this cosmic order may be immense, and perhaps we today may have already accomplished a larger measure of this birth than we consciously know.

I do prefer to believe that "no suffering is meaningless", that all is interconnected, and that in our joint travail, "lurching towards Bethlehem", we are indeed progressing on a path that leads to the "synthetic reassembly of primal unity". I believe we are capable of gathering up the thousand points of light left scattered by the Newtonian paradigm, and weaving them into a unified tapestry of philosophic perspective and vision, that can inspire and connect hearts and minds around the world, into a living and breathing unity of understanding that can heal the earth, and lead its citizens away from the precipice of their own self-destruction.

I believe that electronic networking, particularly on-line teleconferencing, can play a tremendous role in the process of making this interconnectivity and resynthesis of unity a conscious process. I believe that today, we have the tools that we need to initiate the very process of "ecumenical dialog", on a world-wide scale", that you -- and John XXIII -- have called for. I believe that there absolutely is an "inner unity" and harmony amongst the varied and diverse traditions of the world, and that this unity can be consciously, intentionally, purposefully, and beautifully synthesized, combining tools and insights from every quarter throughout our so very advanced yet crippled society. I am certain that all the world's religions carry some aspect of truth essential to our joint salvation, if for no other reason than their truths are held to be sacred by our fellow human beings.

Through electronic networking in today's environment, through the "global computer" today interconnecting millions of nodes in a unified network, this truth can be synthesized, and this most profound "ecumenical council" established.

There is no reason to delay. There is no reason to hesitate. We cannot wait for "evolution" or "divine grace" to intervene on our behalf, and present to us whole, as a "free gift", by some deus ex machina, the exit from our present catastrophic dilemma, into a golden age of peace and harmony and redemptive illumination.

We must create this perspective. We must consciously synthesize it. We must make it happen, with all the tools at our disposal, and through the faith that has preserved and nourished us thus far.

I am telling you these things this morning, because though you already know they are true, you may not as yet see this "vision of the network", as I do, this electronic design that can mediate the very path of action that your treatise calls for.

Mr. Fox, I shall continue to design, and to build, and to do what I can. I know the opportunity is there, and there is nothing today that is retarding or delaying our actions, apart from the very sluggishness of the world that would terminate a less determined force. But I myself live in the "force that through the green fuse drives the flower" (D. Thomas) and I "know" that God and his angels will drive this growth.

We are today "One in the Network", implicitly one in the "Mystical Body".

Our linkage exists, as an unconscious presence of primal unity, binding all that exists into a unified web of being.

But I am network designer and builder, and I dream on the cosmic scheme of things. And in this, I believe, you and I are dreamers together.

I believe we can and will build a "network of Light" through which to consciously synthesize the primal unity which is our birthright, and the core of our spiritual and physical vitality.

I believe we can demystify the befogging forces of confusion that have stripped religion of its vitality, and stolen the Light from the sons and daughters of God.

The "Pattern that Connects" is the pattern that has led me to you, and is the pattern that leads me to network design. Mr. Fox, I thank you for your visionary work, your many books, your hundreds of seminars, your traveling and lectures and scholarship, and for the driving force at the core of your being that has made you such a fruitful vine, and so kept alive, when the force of death has sometimes seemed so strong, those ancient inner traditions that can and must vitalize our cultural and spiritual institutions.

The "Coming of the Cosmic Christ" may indeed be "the Second Coming of Christ" -- in all of us individually, and throughout our society.

I, for one, believe we must consciously facilitate this birth, must work for it, create it, give it a way to happen.

For this reason, I have written you. For this reason, I continue to write.

And I thank you for all that you have done.

Bruce Schuman

Santa Barbara

8:33 - 11:29am, Sunday,

October 8, 1989