Presentation rev. Tina Geels     ICUUW- 2012

Where do we find the Spirit of life?
About the longing to belong… to somebody, to some place, to some thing in the passion of the Holy Spirit.

About lost Christianity and the challenge to transform the church.
About integration, transformation beyond all our rational dualities.

I. Introduction

We all know this famous song from the Unitarian tradition:
Spirit of life come unto me. Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion…
It moves me all the time when I sing it, when we sing it in our congregation in Bilthoven.

You can feel a wholeness: this universal emotion of longing, which connects us strongly together. Longing for a moment of unity we are together is services and ministry. We sing this song, e.g. when a delegation from our partner church congregation from Szentpéter in Transylvania is with us.

This feeling of longing to connect is spread out over our community even when people have left again.

It is a moving feeling, physically and spiritually.

By invisible threads we feel connected; we feel that we belong together. 

It is an emotion of longing to belong. It makes also transparent and visible that which was divided by history and by different cultures here in Transylvania, in the West of Europe and in the rest of the world.

This deep feeling of longing to belong makes us aware that we belong together as women, as liberals even as liberal Christians, men and women.

We say that we live in an age, a period of Western culture. But can we still call the fast developments which occur around us in that sense; can we still call that everlasting “rush hour” a culture? Can we still call the developments in the West culture? 

We live in a society where digitalization will become more and more dominant. Maybe we must look for another paradigm; another frame to reflect for all what is happening around us and deep inside in our souls.

But this is not the thing that frightens. My concern is about the people around me who are losing their roots of humanity and spirituality, who are not grounded anymore in certain value systems of human connection and compassion.

Am I judging? Is it my age, feeling maybe less comfortable in our Western rushed society?
Should I sit down together with the people of the worldwide Occupy movement?

These are questions of reflection looking back to our church tradition and watching spiritually homeless young people. I look to the future with big concern about morality and responsibility, looking inward through the eyes of the friends of my sons, both university students, finding emptiness.

What did we lose and what are we longing for? What do I hope?

II. Let me explain

Looking back to the religious tradition in Western Europe, it’s clear that we are losing the institutional church. Do I feel sorry about this? No.

Since I began studying the 1st century of Christianity, before the dominant Church father tradition of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, which created the Orthodox Church more than 1700 years ago, I have discovered in earliest Christianity a big diversity in community building.  The context was the first condition for the outlook of each young congregation. It was Jewish, Pagan, Greek and Egyptian. Gnosticism also existed.

All these influences of the different old cultures were presented in a natural, organic way. With the study of the famous theologian Elaine Pagels, I learned to reset my opinion about this important first century.

This period became a frame of reference to me, like a mirror, to encourage myself in understanding the impasse of our Western culture and the deconstruction of the institutional church.

A crisis in the Roman Catholic Church institutions has become apparent, with enormous scandals of sexual misbehavior by thousands of priests. Of course not only in the Catholic Church and not only in Western Europe. The deconstruction of the institution is a matter of fact in the Protestant churches as well. The Evangelicals with their strong dogmatic belief in salvation by the crucifixion of Christ might be the only exception.

There is a strong necessity to analyze the process of secularization if we want to understand what is happening and if we want to move forward. Even though the context of Western Europe is different from the situation in Eastern Europe, the process of secularization is apparent here in Transylvania as well, appearing like a thief in the night. 

The US has its own complex story and tradition. When I was there for conferences and visited several UUA congregations, I was impressed by the commitment of the members toward their UU community and church. Still, I know that secularization is increasing, like in Western Europe, but not as fast because people are more often dependent on the church, financially and socially.

So what happened in Western Europe, in my country, the Netherlands? With the United Kingdom, we are at the top of the list of non-believers. 

Where was the responsibility of the parents for the next generation? In answering this important question, I see two main reasons for the so-called deconstruction of the church as an institution.
The first cause is to be found in the consequences of the Enlightenment in the 18th century. 
Rationality pushed Calvinists into defense, making them even more Calvinistic. That applied to Remonstrants as liberals and Orthodox on one hand. On the other, Enlightenment was a big challenge for the Remonstrant theology to take scientific research seriously. The recent liberal tradition, like the NPB (Dutch Liberal Protestants), started as an exit out of the Calvinist church at the end of the 19th century. 

Rationality pushed male clergy dominance forward strongly, with male dominance in social and moral life, with male dominance in theology and spiritual life. 

We all know this. There was no way out.

Women had to adapt, mentally and spiritually. To be taken seriously, they internalized the main male values, like male mental autonomy. In succession of old church dominant behavior, the priest was in succession of Christ. Whether minister or priest, it was the same patriarchal dominance.

There was no freedom for the Spirit of life.

Let me tell you about my own youth briefly.
My father was a Calvinist minister and I, his eldest daughter, was very spiritual but from a different world, from a different planet. And I couldn’t explain it. We speak about the sixties of the last century. 

There was only one way to keep the connection with my deep religious life and spiritual experiences: it was dance. This became my first education; all forms of dances finally converted into dance meditation, which became part of my religious identity, after many years. 

In the early sixties of the 20th century the Netherlands were just before the invasion of the so-called New Age. This new spiritual wave was beyond my perception at that time. 
For me there was no possibility for integration. I embraced the Calvinist church with its theology; church life at one side and on the other side the spiritual dance movement which became my new homeland and frame of reference.

After two years of dance education at the theater school in Amsterdam, I started studying theology at the Liberal University of Brussels. I kept in touch with dance in different ways all the time. After my studies, I became a minister. 

My first congregation was a small village in the north of Holland. I remember it made me sad and lonely – I felt separated into two worlds. Besides my ministry, I was a dance teacher.  Inside I was a young dedicated liberal minister.

It was a strange world. I had to read again my church history about all the small reformed separations between the Calvinistic mainstream of the Dutch church. It was a hard time for me.

I remember once I was asked for a presentation. Just before beginning, one of the majority male participants asked me: where is the speaker for this evening? It is me, I answered.

From 1990 until 2010, I was a Remonstrant minister in Utrecht with my husband Florus Kruyne as partner and colleague. After 2010, I became minister in one of the largest NPB congregations in Bilthoven. It fits me better than the Remonstrants. During that long period in the Remonstrant church of Utrecht, I was teaching Zen meditation and dance outside my ministry in many workshops and inside the church during services, as part of the liturgy. 
It was rejuvenating the congregation for a period of ten years. (1990-2000). After 2000, many things changed.

The younger church visitors didn’t want to move, nor participate in slow dance meditation anymore. Social life was changing…There was more and more longing for a normal, classic service. I watched this new wave and it surprised me again. 

III. What is going on?  
Of course feminism and paganism ran over the Netherlands during that period like in the US. But not inside the institutional church.

The spiritually renewed inspiration from the so-called New Age didn’t reach the heart of the Calvinist church. The doors were closed to new religious experience. 

The progress of secularization undermined the Calvinist church life and spirituality in the Netherlands more and more. Many young spiritual people left the church.

Due to this development, social life as well as religious life in general became fragmentized.
Inside or outside the church, whether spiritual or rational, theological intellectual reflection versus deep religious experience was seen elsewhere in meetings, workshops, and retreats outside the church.

The body of Christ, originally full of spiritual life, breathing in and out, moving beyond male and female, presenting solidarity beyond rich and poor, presenting wholeness beyond freedom and slavery, plural and integrated in the spiritual context of the early beginning of Christianity, collapsed more and more due to the male arrogant dominance. (Gal.3: 28)

Women tried to renew religious church life. In some places the time was right; in many places there was too much resistance. Many women, longing for an autonomic and authentic spiritual life, left the male institution, which was still called Church. 

There was a fascinating feminine process of renewing liturgy as a main theological expression. Sharing your own spirituality in a religious life of concern and social action. But this switch in church life was not attractive for the new generation: they were longing for a strong male leadership, as it was before. So, after the second feminist wave, the male-dominated institution bounced back. We tried to reform, but it seemed to become a restoration of the institution. Taking your social responsibility as a liberal Christian in our society was no longer connected with church life. Important issues are debated in the Public arena.  

The young people, the people presently in their forties are like a lost generation, living in a materialistic way of life, longing for more and more.

Searching for new spiritual life, they will not easily enter a church. At the same time, we must consider that the good old religion fits in some way very well into their longing for security and grip on modern virtual life.

A marriage with a traditional priest or minister is again popular. Only a small minority is looking for new free rituals outside the institute.

It comes together with the dangerous political stream of populism which seems to fit very well in the old frame of paternalistic Church religion in a context of a post-postmodern, fragmented life. For each part of life there are different codes, social, mental and spiritual. This reality gives tension in common church life even with the Liberals, if I speak for my own congregation.

This is not integration but bouncing back, with strong feelings of nostalgia. Am I judging? No, I am watching around. And I see two streams of longing to belong:

1. Bouncing backwards, which is not fruitful because it makes the church male and reactionary again. 
2. Discover a new longing for integration from a fragmentized life into new wholeness.
In a transition from old modernist way of old fashioned church life via postmodern vacuum towards a new period of post-postmodern life.

Toward a next step in the evolution of the global setting of life. Toward a next level of integration after rationalism and pluralism, to speak with the paradigm of the famous philosopher Ken Wilber.

IV. Looking forward
Presently in the liberal congregation of Woudkapel, we welcome a new minority of young people, longing for a community beyond conceptualized fragmented theology, open to deep universal spirituality, longing for an integrated spiritual life, with meditation and sharp reflection on social and political issues. Open for a life in solidarity, in compassion for my peer in the complex society of the West, of the Netherlands, where we are in a big transition from old toward a new style of life, without borders, virtually open, 24 hours online.

I see a new younger generation, longing for community, for real friendship, down to earth. 
Longing for compassion, open for discussion about the main issues of life and about what could be after life. What could be there beyond life?

A new generation longing for belonging beyond male or female, looking for an integrated life.

We all know that in materialistic sense we are over the top. The economic crisis leaves its footprint in all the fragments of life. In this chaos we see a new generation beyond the frustration of moral Calvinism. Young people with an open mind.

Longing to belong to somebody, to some place to some thing.

This is the big challenge especially for the liberals, for the Universalistic, for all Christians looking for depth and deep integrated spirituality.

Connected to the early first century Christianity in diversity and wholeness, conscious of the mystic presence of Christ. 

Connected by free choice to the Spirit of life.

Let us look for our roots, hidden deep in our own history, deep in ourselves. Connected to the beginning again with all we gained during our short development of Western history. With all the everlasting, eternal values from original Christianity.

Women, (women power), were and are the facilitators to deconstruct the institution that we still call church. 

The feminization of the institution will be, from one perspective, its ruin: the ruin of the patriarchal, male institution. Nowadays every two weeks (!) another Protestant church in The Netherlands is closed. Like here, in the village where we live, near the city of Utrecht, the main Calvinist church was sold half a year ago. The church building will be demolished. 

At the same time, if connected to the wholeness of spiritual life, we, women can be the initiators of a movement of renewed, integrated spiritual life--a true, contemporary rebirth of early Christianity. 

In my opinion, we have the responsibility to offer our liberal tradition an integrated and open spiritual life. Rooted down to earth, conscious of the main values of human life: 
Love in solidarity and compassion. 
Are we not the wings of the eagle, image of the Eternal One?
Who spread out her wings with motherly care under the baby birds to cover and protect them from falling down? 

As we read in Deuteronomy 32:11 – As an eagle watches over its nest, hovers above its young, spreads its pinions and takes them up, and bears them on its wings…

We are the wings; we can be the initiators of a movement of renewed integrated spiritual life.
Rooted in different traditions, including early Christianity.

A renewed religious life, where the Spirit of life finds an open air to breathe in and out like at the beginning of Creation: 
And the Spirit of God hovered over the surface of the water…waiting and expecting involvement from all of us. 

Spirit of life, come unto me. Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion/Blow in the wind, rise in the sea; move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice. Roots hold me close, wings set me free; Spirit of life, come to me, come to me.

Tina Geels, 10 March 2012