The Congregational Renewal Team (CRT) is meeting in October to put the final touches to the month-long-retreat-program - ‘God in the Now’. It offers a different approach to accompanying people in deepening their God-quest, as the program in integrated into the ordinary fabric of the working week. Our God is in the every day meetings, disappointments, conflicts, insights, pain and achievements of our lives as they were for Shug a key character in Alice Walker’s ‘The Colour Purple’.

Celie and Shug talk about God. Celie has just described God as the one she was urged to believe in by white people. Shug replies:

‘’Ain’t no way to read the bible and not think God white’’, she say. Then she sighed. ‘’When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest…’’

‘’Here’s the thing’’, said Shug. ‘’The thing I believe is that God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for…

My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me; that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was.’’

There is an addiction potential in religion that comes out not only from its capacity to ‘hook’ shame-based people, but also from its use of ritual. This may be called ritual abuse – the creation of an altered state of consciousness in victims in order to manipulate them. Have we experienced this in our lives?

Reliance on external religious authority is a common symptom of religious addiction and is typical of an early stage of faith development. A sign that a particular religious behaviour is healthy and stage-appropriate or addictive and unhealthy might be our ability to tolerate and gradually move toward respect for and even dialogue with those who are different.

Spiritual healthy adults let children see what it looks like on their insides. They share their inner God experience honestly. That is how children learn to process life.

If prayer experiences are like water hitting a stone they are not healthy but if they are like water penetrating a sponge they are healthy. (St Ignatius)

How are your experiences of the inner life of prayer away from the formal external rituals of religious practice?

Br. Peter Harney, CRT

October, 2004