Bogosity

I finally finished Tacey’s book . It was a real effort to get through because I found it so thought provoking and often had to spend days processing the chapters. I think during this time I have backed away from church in a big way too. Towards the end of the book David rewrites a bit of scripture: He who finds his faith will lose it, and he who loses his faith for spirituality will find it. His basic premise being that faith must emerge from spirituality rather than being imposed from an external authority. He has a strong emphasis on mysticism and immanent or incarnational spirituality which is pretty much in line with where I have been heading in my own beliefs. I think I read this book at the right time as it has really hit home on a lot of things I’ve been thinking about since dropping out of priestly formation. I’m sure I’ll post little bits and pieces I’ve picked up from the book but I don’t really want to try and run through the whole lot in one blog post.

I’ll just mention some of the keywords and themes of the book: Spirituality apart from religion, panantheism (not pantheism), new age (as a crude first step into spirituality), new forms of church (networks and communities rather than parishes), fundamentalism (an attempt to deny modernism/postmodernism and return to traditional forms of belief), poetry, art and imagination as pathways into spirituality, the supernatural (discusses why metaphysics and “the spiritual dimension” don’t have plausibility) and modern social isolation, depression and mental illness (as a by-product of spiritual alienation).