Whilst taking a group of Students from CYM to a Gallery the other week I picked up a very intersting book... 
Suzi Gablik - Conversations before the end of time it is a book of interviews/conversations with Artists and writers on... "Art, Life and Spiritual Renewal".
I was particularly interested in the words of the famous author/psycotherspist, Thomas Moore (chapter - The liminal zones of the soul) where he talks about the need to shift from a modern view of mechanistic humanity to a spiritual one - from battery to soul as the heart of a human. He says...
The soul loves the labyrinth rather than the ladder (which symbolises "getting somewhere"), and it prefers relatedness to distancing. Paradox, mystery, being sick, failures, foolishness, blank spaces, not knowing where one is going, are all good for the soul, which is ripened by making mistakes... The soul does not have an urgent need for understanding or achievement; rather it loves intimacy.
I am wondering what connections this makes with ideas like - Liquid Church, networks suplanting institutions, the holy fool, spiritual pilgrimage/journey etc. Are people like Moore 'beginning' to speak to the very heart of humanity - are we 'beginning' to catch up, at least with the language? David Tacey observes that we are not yet...
The mainline churches are apparently unable to take up a dialouge with the new spirit of our time, partly because they only acknowledge conventional ideas of the sacred. Things may change, and I certainly hope they do...The spiritual revolution is also finding the sacred everywhere, and not just where religous traditions have asked us to find it. things considered wordly or even unholy are being invested with new spiritual significance... such as the body, nature, the feminine, sexuality and the physical environment.
(BTW Tacey makes a clear distinction between spirituality and a New Age belief system)
But maybe, we are beginning to...
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