I’ve just returned from a Cyprian Consiglio Concert at St. Bonaventure University Chapel. Cyprian is in our area for a contemplative retreat week that is occurring at Mt. Irenaeus, Franciscan Mountain Retreat. Cyprian’s music is more than religious. It is an invitation to mysticism. His music draws on Sufi, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian traditions. He has been deeply influenced by Bede Griffiths. Cyprian is a Camaldolese monk from New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California. His concert lasted 90 minutes and included material from all his albums including his most recent. His music is a celebration of the divine in all of us and in all creation.
One of Cyprian’s songs entitled “There is a light” proclaims that “there is a light that has overcome the darkness, there is no darkness that can overcome the light.” Paula, Jeff and others have written eloquently about the cheapening of life by our culture. I think there is a deeper soul sickness than is touched by ordinary religious life. Western culture and that includes western theology has severed the umbilical cord that connects us to the divine. We’ve got God in box. We bring that box out on Sundays or Saturdays and we put on our church faces and piously proclaim our faith in God and scripture. That all changes once we leave our respective churches because there is no connection between what happened in the sanctuary and what happens outside. The sacred is not missing in our world. We’re missing the sacred.
We have politicians and clerics who want to post the Ten Commandments in public squares and public buildings. It’s more important that those precepts are written on our hearts and that we live like they were. It’s no wonder that many in the west are drawn to mystics from the east because somewhere along the line we’ve lost the mystical in our lives. The mission of Christ was not primarily to atone for sins by death upon a cross, but to show the way to experience unity with the divine. When we see ourselves as divinely interconnected we are less likely to dehumanize and kill each other with abortion, pornography and war. Peace.
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spiritual, mystic, cyprian consiglio