One belief I’m grappling with now is: does everything happen for a reason? Is there some divine plan for us? Is there an order of things beyond what our will can comprehend? This idea is central to all mystical traditions. And I think if we take our spiritual lives seriously, I don’t see a way to avoid it. And yet, the difficulty with it is that is seems to imply that there is a reason for injustice and suffering. Are we supposed to think that people deserve to be oppressed? That is clearly wrong.
For all the faults of this culture extending from Greek and European thought, there are nonetheless threads of wisdom and spirituality that we might draw on as resources. And we might even use those very resources to reflexively analyze the traditions they derive from--that reflexive process is actually definitive of the tradition. We are not floating, without ground, in some new-age soup. There are roots, thick and deep, that we just need follow down a little beneath the surface to find life-giving wisdom and spiritual nourishment.
