Is it really Love? Spiritual Way of the Six Loves

What is it like to experience the presence of God?  Drawing from the Contemplative Prayer tradition there are three general ways Gods presence has been described: an intellectual vision or grasp God, an intuitive sense of God, and a social interactive sense of God's presence.  The intellectual vision first requires that our emotions are quieted and mistaken images of God are removed from the intellect.  With the intuitve sensing of God's presence, the intellect is stilled since God is beyond our full understadning.  After the emotions have been cleared of old hurts, resentments and angers, we can begin to sense God as a calming presence,     In the next episode, we will look at the social interactive sense of God's presence. To see more of Craig's books and music, go to www.craigowen.net    

In this episode, we begin a series on spiritual discernment, how to find out what is Gods will for us in different situations.  Or if you prefer, what is the spiritual purpose of one's life.  First we look at what will not be covered in this series regarding spiritual discernement.  A related issue is how spirituality is defined.  In particular, what is meant by the phrase "I am spiritual but not religious?"  Finally, a definition of spirituality is suggested that will be our beginning point. To see more of Craig's  music and books, go to www.craigowen.net    

At last we have climbed the ladder to reach gratitude.  Along the way we have looked at several values that help us reach gratitude.  Gratitude is possible about little things such as a good meal or a good movie.  What we aim for is a broader understanding of gratitude.  We look again at Fr. Thomas Merton's advise and discover one more value, humility.  With so many values supporting gratitude, how do we keep them up?  Gratitude is an ongoing dance between these various values that helps us to be thankful for the many good things in our lives.     In the next episode, we will start a new series on Spiritual Discernment. To see more of Craig's music and books, go to www.craigowen.net    

How can beauty and wonder help us reach gratitude?  When we see beauty, we often feel a sense of wonder at what we have witnessed.  This sense of wonder can help us break out of our bubble of personal concerns.  Beauty and wonder can remind there is so much more in the world besides our own daily routine and struggles.  Especially in relation to gratitude, wonder can lead to joy, which can lead to hope, two key values we have looked at on our way to gratitude.  If all of us can experience beauty in some form, and a sense of wonder that comes with it, does this not give us some basis to reach out to people beyond our own circle of friends who think like us?      In the next episode, we will finally look at what is gratitude and how these other values relate to gratitude. To see more of Criag's books and music, go to www.craigowen.net    

We consider joy in the growing list of values that can lead us to gratitude. Joy is something that most of us have experienced before, but it helps to stop and think more about it. What is joy? Is it the same as happiness or is it different? How do we find joy? One challenge for many of us, how do we hold onto joy when we feel crowded by many different concerns? How do we tell good joy from bad joy? We continue to find that there is a growing network of values that leads us to gratitude: caring, hope, happiness, humility, compassion. To that list we will now add joy plus one extra, reverence. In the next episode we will take a look at beauty as another value that can help lead us to gratitiude.       To see more about Craig's books and music, go to www.craigowen.net  

What is hope? We look at some different aspects of what it is. Hope involves resiliency when our plans do not happen as we had imagined. Humility helps us to sort out realistic hope from too high expectations. 'Sometimes we must lose what we wanted before we can find it' is an important lesson for holding onto hope. Hope is a choice, but on what basis do we choose hope? It becomes clear that hope is connected to several things- humility, happiness, healthy spirituality. To see Craig's books and hear his music, go to www.craigowen.net

One of the stepping stones to gratitude is caring.  Most of us have experience in caring relationships.  The capacity to care maybe what makes humans unique.  Caring is central to the Golden Rule in its various forms, giving us a minimal definition of community.  When we learn we can have an impact on the lives of others, it can change our own attitude about ourselves dramatically.   To see more of Craig's books and music go to www.craigowen.net  

In this episode, we begin a new direction: How to find gratitude.  Gratitude involves a number of attitudes and feelings such as care, joy, hope and beauty.  Exploring these in subsequent episodes will bring us to the threshold of gratitude.  Fr. Thomas offers advice on how to find a balance between gratitude and humility. To see more of Craig's books and music go to www.craigowen.net    

What is the purpose of righteous anger?  Any kind of anger is a short term emotion.  It can only be sustained by finding new targets to resent and with which to be angry.  Righteous anger raises our awareness, but should lead to compassionate confidence.  Compassionate confidence is more durable over time since it involves attitude an beliefs, not just an emotional reaction. To see more of Craig's books and music go to www.craigowen.net      

When we are ultimately loyal to a process of spiritual transformation, how does this reflect on our loyalty to individuals? In this episode, we look at how our lack of awareness of the false self can leave us open to being manipulated by unscrupulous leaders of any kind. This lack of awareness had lead to many bad conseqeunces in the past. How do we undo it? To see more of Craig's books and music go to www.craigowen.net  

How does our ultimate loyalty to spiritual transformation inform our other loyalties? In this episode, we will look at loyalty to institutions and loyalty to beliefs and groups who share our beliefs. While institutions and groups who share our beliefs are important, when we depend on them too much for identity and a sense of purpose, trouble can easily arise. Our ultimate loyalty to spiritual transformation can give us a larger perspective and greater sense of purpose that can keep us from blind loyalty and corrupt righteous anger regarding institutions, beliefs and groups. To see more of Craig's music, books and photos go to www.craigowen.net  

In this episode, we finally have an answer to our question, to what are we ultimately loyal. Consideration is given to a problem we all struggle with: the willingness to say and do anything to hold onto our pride, power and privilege. To counter this problem, we must commit to a process of spiritual transformation, and this is to what we are ultimately loyal. [In episodes 12,13 and 40-52 I explain in detail how this works]. How this ultimate commitment affects our other loyalties will be the topic of the next episode. To see more about Craig's books and music, go to www.craigowen.net  

I suggest three boundaries that we should look for to avoid crossing into corrupt righteous anger. First, we look at the admonition "love your enemies and pray for those who oppose you." What does that really mean? Second, that no political view, religious or ethical belief can enirely fit every situation we encounter. And finally, the most important of the three, "the worst kind of evil is evil that ALMOST makes sense." After exploring these three boundaries, we are ready to answer the question, to what are we ultimately loyal? We will answer that in the next episode. To see more of Craig's books and music go to www.craigowen.net  

We look at the three steps that lead from righteous anger to corrupt righteous anger.  Nahum illustrates all three steps.  We also look at the book of Jonah, which might have been written as a counterpoint to Nahum.  Jonah shares the same mindset as Nahum: the Assyrians must be destroyed.  But with Jonah, God wants him to go to preach to the Assyrians in their capital of Nineveh.  How serious are Nahum and Jonah about their faith?  Have they added nationalism to their faith, making it equal to or more important than their faith?  Do we add things to our faith- loyalty to an institution, political ideology or social group-making it equal to or more important than our faith?     In the next episode we will look at what boundaries we should look at to avoid falling into corrupt righteous anger.  To learn more about Craig's books and music, go to www.craigowen.net  

When does righteous anger go bad? In this episode we will look at an example of corrupt righteous anger.  Looking at a passage from the Hebrew prophet Nahum, there are major differences between his version of righteous anger and what we saw in Amos and Jeremiah.  There is no hope of renewal, no concern about the poor in Nahum, only hatred and a desire for the complete destruction of those whom he views as the enemy.  How does one cross the line from righteous anger to corrupt righteous anger?  We will look at the details in the next episode.  To see craig's books and music go to www.craigowen.net  

What is righteous anger? What is unique about it?  These are the questions we will look at in this episode.  In examining an example of righteous anger from the Hebrew prophets, we see to what that anger is related.  Most of all, what is the source of the moral urgency in the righteous anger of the Hebrew prophets?  This brings us to one of the most important questions in these episodes: How does righteous anger go bad?  How we answer that question will help us sort out to what are we ultimately loyal, the topic of the next episode. To see more of Craig's books and music, go to www.craigowen.net    

In this episode we are taking a new direction.  We start with the challenge that the Book of Revelation makes, Who is your God?, or To what are we ultimately loyal?  The theme that will tie together the next few episodes is:  Loyalty without integrity leads to fanaticism and idolatry.  Exploring what this statement means, we look at the Hebrew prophets'  ideal of integrity and the values that support that ideal.  If you have read any of the Hebrew prophets, you will notice many angry words from the prophets about not living up to their ideal of integrity.  This leads us to two questions:  what is righteous anger?  Is it good or bad?  We will consider these questions in the next episode. To see more about Craig's books and music, go to www.craigowen.net  

In this episode we will wrap up our study of the Book of Revelation.  What is the basic message of Revelation, especially to us today in the 21st century?  It presents us with two challenges: 1) Don't mistake the ephemeral for the eternal and 2) Who is your God? or put another way, to what are we ultimately loyal?  This episode will explore challenge 1).  What is the one of the biggest challenges facing us today that the Book of Revelation points out?  Challenge #2): too many people are giving their blind loyalty to the wrong things.  The result? Factionalism that paralyzes us, keeping us from solving major problems.  In following episodes we will explore to what are we ultimately loyal?  And how can we tell if our loyalty is misplaced? To see more of Craig's books and music, go to www.craigowen.net  

    In the last episode I suggested what was the real message and spirituality of the book of Revelation.  It is NOT telling us to be passive, waiting for God to intervene in history as all kinds of horrible things happen to the earth.  The author of Revelation copied heavily from the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament.  Both Daniel and Revelation were written to religious groups who were being persecuted and oppressed.  Both books allegedly predict all kinds of terrible things that will occcur.  What actually happened in history after both books were written?  We will find that history supports the real meaning of Revelation that I suggested last time.      Next time we will look at what might be the biggest threat facing us in the 21st century. For more information on my book Why Are We Here? on which this series is based, go to my website at http://www.craigowen.net

Finally, we are at the point of finding the answers to our question 'what is the spirituality of the Book of Revelation?'  As I have commented in previous episodes, what the Book of Revelation is about is answering questions about the problem of evil.  If God is all powerful, how can God let the community of faithful believers be persecuted, killed and tortured?  [Once again I am drawing upon Dr. Craig Koester's book Revelation and the End of All Things for much of these insights]. We find several answers to this question in the Book of Revelation.  What Revelation actually says is not what many people believe.  Listen and find the surprising answers, and in doing so, we will find what is the spirituality of the Book of Revelation and what it might be saying to us today.   For more information on this series, go to my website http://www.craigowen.net