One of the troubles with the exact language of science when it has been wrongly applied in the area of theology is that it has "said more and more about less and less."  Precision has increased at the cost of content.  If language becomes too precise there is no room for the intrusion of the divine.  Poetry is the language of one  not knowing in the way of science, but knowing in any case. 

The first thing I am trying to do is slow the pace of my life.  Life tends to become so busy and distracted that any sense of rhythm is lost, and purpose is replaced by reactivity. I end up wondering what has happened in the last few weeks.  And what on earth I was doing whatever it was I did for! Perhaps slowing the pace will allow space and time for the Divine to intrude.  And allow me time to notice!

I am also reassessing the realities I do trust.  I remember being lost once when I was bushwalking, and thinking through very carefully what I did know.  Only a few things... it is towards evening, so towards the sun is west.  Down hill will mean creeks and perhaps water.  Thinking carefully will help me figure out roughly where I should be. This careful calming and reassessing removes some of the sense of panic.

In a similar way, there are some realities we still have if we are reading this.  We are still able to read.  We have enough of a grip on things to work a computer....   At the worst of my time I still had a sense of justice that I did not doubt.  Those remaining realities give us some anchor points.  They also help us hold onto and rediscover the truthful experience the old language described and interpreted.

I am trying to live the core values that remain of the body of theo-logy that I have learned.  That is, although I may struggle to relate to the Divine using the old God  language of the church, I still live by the remaining realities I have  been able to find.  These especially include the underlying ethics of justice and compassion, which, God or no god, still seem to me to maintain their validity. 

D.H.Lawrence. 1885 - 1930

I think I am becoming aware of the reality of the Divine again.  It is the slow learning of a new reality, with new ideas, new interpretations.  It is the building and letting build of the spiral of a new paradigm.

This is relatively simple in my religious practice.  I have tried to find again and engage with the core realities we face as biological beings... Nature... the earth... the sky... stars... the sea  These are the basic reality out of which we have evolved and been created.  I lie sometimes on the cement of our driveway and look up at the stars, just letting thought flow, feeling the enormity of what is there.

In some places the city lights remove stars and we have to work to make room for nature. I take a slight detour from the direct route to work and walk through the Botanic Gardens each morning.  I often stop and contemplate the Wollemi pine, a living fossil, and let its age speak to me.  In our age we need not to seek protection from nature like the medieval man in a Gothic church.  Although a quiet and hallowed building may have some helpful aura, we need a re-relating with nature which is our mother-stratum... the thing out of which we have come, and through which God has grown us.

I also seek this re-relating through gardening.  Gardening is about nature in one sense, but it is also about making things of worth.  It is working with nature and the planet as opposed to lording over it with machines. A wood-worker might choose to use the slow old method of chisel and sand paper instead of a routing machine. A friend who is a funeral consultant chooses to write his services with a fountain pen instead of using the computer. There is value in doing things in away which is contemplative and opens us to revelation, as opposed to the ephemeral surface diversion of a movie a night.