Found some great writing in the Rowe newspaper for Spring 2012. This is what sent me on a search for Jan Phillips and buying her book. These excerpts are from No Ordinary Time — The Rise of Spiritual Intelligence and Evolutionary Creativity by Jan Phillips.
“Our culture is in deep trouble and everybody knows it. Every institution is in its death throes. Half the world’s scientists are engaged in war research. Religions insist on separating humans from God and humans from their earthiness. Capitalism has begotten a greed that is growing like a malignant tumor as we globalize our pathologies. People are returning to fundamental beliefs so they won’t have to sort through the complexities of social matters and form their own opinions. Churches are silencing the prophets and absolving the perpetrators of crimes against children.
“A culture can’t lift itself out of dark and destructive mindset, but creative acts and ideas from a few can ignite the moral imagination of the many. … It’s time to call God home, reconnect ourselves to the natural world, and proclaim the good news that as people on earth we share a single origin, a single community and a single destiny. …
“Every mystic and prophet alive today understands that their interests are not separate from anyone else’s. Healing the wounds of the world is an act of self-interest. Mother Earth is healing herself through us. Every activity we engage in is both an activity of the universe and a human activity. The catastrophes of the times — the collapse of the economy, the failures of our institutions, the ineptness of war as a solution to any problem — all signs of a planetary mid-course correction. The earth as an organism will evolve, with or without us.
“The universe itself is the primary revelation of the Divine and it is continuing to unfold through our thoughts, words, lives, and creations. The Divine speaks through Nature, Nature speaks through us, and the sacred is communicated through our rituals and relationships. Like the whole world in a grain of sand, revelation is enfolded and unfolding in all directions.
“Our conversations are not about the Divine — our conversations are the Divine. We are awash in the Mystery, saturated in sacredness. This is the awareness that will bring us to our knees, stop us in our self-indulgent tracks and return us to our senses. This is the kind of spirituality that can mean something, lead to something that is poignant, personal, passionate. This is our chance to BE the ones we are waiting for — to be prophetic, poetic mythmakers conspiring in the evolution of a conscious culture, a compassionate culture. As my mystic friend David says “WE is just an acronym to Who Else?”