Prayer may be regarded as a process during which me and He becomes we and then We and then He. Prayer assumes a different countenance — but retains the same substance — in each phase of the process. Eventually, through process, instead of being self-aware as a special or unique activity, prayer is simply done as every thought, word, and deed no matter what, to include sleeping. In this condition, prayer is no longer even self-aware. It is whatever one is doing. Prayer in a special sense then feels like a come-down, an alienation even from its [supposed] object.
When I use the word Church with a capital C I mean that ultimate He phase of the process. When I use the word with a small c, I mean the me and He phase of the process. It is the same process regardless of phase. This is Tillichian usage but of very ancient origin. Paul uses it as conceptual structure for reading Galatians the riot act. In my posts I sometimes mix use of C church and c church. However, usually when I write Church or The Church I mean the Spiritual Community, aka the Power of God in Three Persons — as we Christians put it, although it can be put in other ways — and when I write church I mean the churches, aka judicatories or independent organizations whose congregations, meeting halls, and sanctuaries stand on real properties in towns and cities.
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When you go about with the conviction, “God is with me; I am in God,” you will have no fear. – Sathya Sai Baba
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A point oft made and still germane: The Pilgrims were Calvinist Separatists (congregational lay governance), not Calvinist Puritans (hierarchical clerical governance). Puritans came later. Separatists left the Church of England early, realizing they could not endure there using congregational (lay) governance, which Calvin himself preached and practiced. Church and state being one then, that meant quitting England. Holland was Calvinist, mostly, and connected to the English crown but not to the Church of England. Puritans stayed in the Church of England until they made themselves persona non grata (think Cromwell).
Separatists were few in number but stout and not lazy. Their ecclesial presence in the American colonies came to be called Congregational, and today, after mergers with other Congregationalist-type Calvinists, United Church of Christ, who went fully secular in the early 1970s. Puritans, once they arrived here, retained their taste for hierarchical clerical governance, founding Harvard Seminary (now University) on that model, where they quickly became Unitarians engaged in now centuries-long dictation of social and national life under color of morality they believe they alone embody. Harvard retains their Puritan descent: sententious spite.
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For the same essentially antinomian reasons, although for different beneficiaries, Harvard’s Unitarians and Pennsylvania’s Quakers teamed to prevent ratification of the U.S. Constitution. To this day, their descendants, who crawl American institutions, abominate the U.S. Constitution their ancestors despised . . . as is self-evident and the more ardently and unambiguous pressed ahead by them over time.
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Puritanism, as is seen in the record, is a brother to Salafism — a word which means Purity — and embodies today in America only secularly, such as arrogant professors and bureaucrats and showboating evangelicals and pastors, such as propagate in mega-churches. Cromwell is transfigured, not buried. The Obama/CIA crowd, for example, are Puritan Evangelicals to the core, genuine Roundhead-types bent on collecting all authority into one set of hands, although in this case, the executive rather than the legislative function as was intended by the original Roundheads. Coincidental it is not that the Obama/CIA crowd present as mindless, zealous, heaving thugs.
Principle I
Principle II
Principle III
In the Gita, the Lord has assured that the person who dies with the Pranava (Om) filling his last breath is sure to be liberated. Of course, mere calling of Om to memory is of no benefit. The sound ‘Om’ will not help when the mind is flitting from one desire to another, and weeping over the imminent departure from the world and shivering at the outcome to come. In such a case, how can the sound help? The glory of Om has to be apprehended throughout life, if it is to stand out before the mind at the moment of departure. There are some who deny women the right to repeat the Pranava. This is sheer prejudice; it is not laid down in the scriptures. When women are entitled to Brahmavidya (Yajnavalkya taught it to Maitreyi, his wife), as Gargi, the great scholar-disputant proves in Janaka’s court, how can anyone keep Pranava away from them?
