"Some of the most exciting and fruitful theology today is being described as the "turn
toward participation."^ Religion as participation is a rediscovery of the Perennial Tradition
that Plotinus, Gottfried Leibniz, Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, and so many saints and mystics
have spoken of in their own ways. It constantly recognizes that we are a part of something
more than we are observing something. The turn toward participation now sees that most of
religious and church history has been largely preoccupied with religious ideas, about which
you could be wrong or right. When it is all about ideas, you did not have to be a part of
you just needed to talk correctly about You never had to dive in and illustrate that
spiritual proof is only in the pudding. You never have to actually go to Russia; you just need
a correct map of Russia and the willingness to say, "My map is better than your map," or,
more commonly, "Mine is the only true map," without offering any corroborating evidence
that your map has in fact gotten you there.
The spiritual question is this: Does one's life give any evidence of an encounter with God?
Does this encounter bring about in you any of the things that Paul describes as the 'fruits" of
the Spirit: 'love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, and self
control" (Galatians 5:22)? Is the person or the group after this encounter different from its
surroundings, or does it reflect the predictable cultural values and biases of its group?
Or, even worse, does your religion spend much of its time defining and deciding who
cannot participate? When there is not much to enjoy from the inside, all you can do is keep
yourself above and apart from others. Many groups still "forbid under pain of sin"
worshiping God in another denominational space. Please. Such religion is nothing but
groupthink and boundary marking, and is not likely to lead you to any deep encounter with
God. Such smallness will never be ready or eager for true greatness.
If God is for you a tyrant, an eternal torturer, or with a smaller heart than most people
you know, why would you want to be intimate, spend time with, or even "participate" with
such a God? As Helen Keller once said, "I sometimes fear that much religion is man's despair
at not finding God." Most groups picked a few moral positions to give themselves a sense of
worthiness and discipline, or a few sacraments to "attend," but loving and even erotic divine
union still largely remained a secret or foolish to imagine. "I don't have time for the mystics;
we are running a church here," a bishop once told me. I'm not kidding. And he was not a
bad man or a bad bishop, but he was an outsider to the very Mystery that he talked about in
the church he was "running."
Playing king of the hill always overrides any actual party on the hill. Jesus makes
That very point in his several parables of the wedding party or the great banquet (see
Luke 14:7-24 or Matthew 22:1-10). Parties are about participation, not legislation. If
there is not room for one more at your party, you are a very poor host. And God is not
a poor host.
Participation has not been the strong suit or primary position in any of the three
monotheistic religions up to now, except among some subsets of Hasidic Jews,
Hesychastic Orthodox, the Sufi Muslims, lots of Catholic mystics, and the many
individuals who would have fit into any of these groups if they had known about
them. Protestantism as a whole seldom moved toward any notion of real or universal
participation, although many, many Protestant individuals did. As in Catholicism,
many learned to keep officially quiet and practiced their "generous orthodoxy" on the
sly and on the side. In the Franciscans, we always say, "It was easier to ask for
forgiveness than to ask for permission." Don't expect a lot of freedom or permission
from most religious people, but thank God, the Gospel requires them to give you
forgiveness."
(Richard Rohr. Immoral Diamond)
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