Edited by two friends of Sea of Faith, several copies of this book were sold at the 1995 annual conference, perhaps because Leicester 95 focused on the issue of non-realism versus deconstructed realism — critical realism as some call it. There are eleven essays by nine writers (based on presentations made at St James', Piccadilly, in 1993) offering a 'vision' of an organic universe made popular in recent years by the work of Matthew Fox. I could find no example of a thorough-going non-realism as proposed by Don Cupitt, but I could find numbers of touching points with Don's 'ecstatic immanence', his view of the 'world as our objective redemption'. Let me indicate some of these touching points, together with the names of the 'visionaries' and those who write about them.
St. Cuthbert (James Stewart) is seen as a man for whom heaven is now and here, whose sense of compassion for his entire environment could inspire its like in us today. Eriugen (Martin Counihan) sees God as integral to nature and at work in reason. Hildegaard (Eileen Conn) can help us reawaken to the awe and wonder of being alive, part of the whole creation (solar being?). We need to recapture from St. Francis (John F. Green) a calm acceptance of the natural cycle of life and death (living like a fire until we burn away?). With Aquinas (Richard Woods) it is suggested that we may find a divine love and power in the midst of the world process. Eckhart (John Doyle) helps us to let go of the search for security in external structures (living at the end of the world?). Dante (Jean Hardy), feeling his ‘being turned . . . by the love that moves the sun and other stars’, can help us learn the relativity of time-space, to know our place in Paradise — in that love. Mother Julian (Madeleine O’Callaghan) equally shows us a love that delights in creation, drawing us ‘courteously to live in that same delight’.
The modern quest is illustrated from Thomas Hardy, Charles Darwin and Teillhard (David Haslett, M. Counihan). Hardy, alive to the uncertainties and ironies of life, can support us inour uncertainties. Darwin and Teillhard offer not ‘scientific certainty’ (what could that be?), but a principle for the fruitful interpretation of wide aspects of the world.
Don’s book Lifelines (1986), which doubtless he would now want to modify, offered the possibility of relating varieties of realist and non-realist Spirituality within a ‘process’ view of living.
Perhaps these visions from proponents of ‘creation spirituality’ can be seen as offering viewpoints that SoFers can use as grist to their own mill. Certainly they are useful introductions to the life and teaching of the figures they speak about — and presented in an attractive package in this concise, well-referenced book.
Let Eileen Conn have the last word from her final essay, “The Web of Life’: “We create the world as we see it in our minds and as we feel it in our relationships . but the renewal of our consciousness may be facilitated by a discriminating re-connection with the sacred cosmologies of the past? — even though we perceive them through non-tealist lenses.
Visions of Creation, ed. Eileen Conn and James Stewart (Godsfield Press, 1995).