Ernest Becker sees religion today as failing to open up our perception based on “celebrating God’s creation.” He praises indigenous religions for doing exactly that. Archaic cosmic rituals humanized the heavens and spiritualized the earth and so melted sky and earth together in an inextricable unity.*
The Cosmic Mass fulfills this powerful need.
Becker explains how these cosmic rituals allowed humans to transcend their animal condition and commit themselves to being part of the generative powers of nature and the universe. Consider the return of the Green Man archetype. The Green Man reminds us how linked we all are to nurturing and generative nature. Men, as well as women, give birth.
Becker: No longer was man an animal who died and vanished from the earth; he was a creator of life who could also give eternal life to himself by means of communal rituals of cosmic regeneration. The Egyptians hoped that when they died, they would ascend to heaven and become stars and thus enjoy eternal significance in the scheme of things.
I am reminded of what Aboriginal teacher Eddie Kneebone taught me when we were outdoors on a starry night. We teach our children that stars are the campfires of our ancestors who are looking down on earth and asking, ‘What’s cooking? What’s happening at your campfires on earth?’
How did indigenous peoples go about empowering people this way? Through ceremonies or rituals. Becker recognizes that archaic humanity believed that they could put vigor into the world by means of a ceremony, that they could create an island, an abundance of creatures, keep the sun on its course, etc. Since techniques of sacrifice and invisible forces behind nature could benefit the community, they had no need for missile launchers and atomic reactors; sacrificial altar mounds served [such] purposes well.
There is a parallel here to the Christian notion of Christ sacrificed on the cross and present in the Eucharistic meal, whereby worshippers become the mystical body of Christ and participate in resurrection or immortality. Again, the Cosmic Mass captures such an experience and renders it alive once again.
Becker laments how organized religion has succumbed to culture’s commercial-industrial hero systems that are almost openly defunct; it so obviously denies reality, builds war machines against death, and banishes sacredness with bureaucratic dedication. Not only are humans treated as things or objects, but the rest of nature is too.
Religion, alas! goes along with this defunct hero system. In a perverse way, the churches have turned their backs both on the miraculousness of creation and on the need to do something heroic in this world. Thus, holiness is at a premium.
The early promise of Christianity was to bring about, once and for all the social justice that the ancient world was crying for. Christianity never fulfilled this promise and is as far away from it today as ever. No wonder it has trouble being taken seriously as a hero system.
Instead, what we have today is systems of death denial that take a heavy toll. It is a toll of unfulfilled life, based on a continuing denial of social justice; it is a toll of internal victimage based on the inequality of social classes and the state repression of freedom.
How to do better? In sciences, as in authentic religion, there is no easy refuge for empty-headed patriotism, or for putting off to some future date the exposure of large-scale social lies.
Large-scale social lies are a mark of the times. A presidential cult swims in them, buttressed by unchecked conspiratorial social and public media. How combat such idolatry?
To be continued.
*See Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death.
Banner Image: “I Am a Voice, I Have a Dream.” Photo by Trust “Tru” Katsande on Unsplash.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you agree with Becker that religion has too often turned its back on the miraculousness of creation and the need to do something heroic in this world? And that ceremony or ritual can heal this?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society, pp. xxxviii-xli
“The Green Man,” in The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. 19-32
“The Cosmic Mass: Reinventing Worship and Religion,” in Confessions: The Making of a Post-denominational Priest, pp. 363-383
“The Cosmic Christ—Redeemer of Worship,” in The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance, pp. 211-227
“Ritual: Where the Great Work of the Universe and Work of the People Come Together,” in The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood For Our Time, pp. 249-295
Matthew Fox, “A Return to Ceremony, A Return to Healing,” Foreword to Linda Neale, The Power of Ceremony: Restoring the Sacred in Our Selves, Our Families, Our Communities, pp. xi-xvi
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations, pp. 361, 218
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake, Natural Grace: Dialogues on creation, darkness, and the soul in spirituality and science
3 thoughts on “Becker on Saintliness, continued”
Thank you, Matthew, for the very poignant video on the Lakota Sun Dance. It is indeed easier for a colonial nation to look at diverse specks in the eye of other nations than to acknowledge the log of cultural genocide in its own.
YES! YES! Hope the rituals of the Cosmic Mass and Indigenous rituals like The Sun Dance continue growing around the world to help our personal and communal spiritual journeys and connections PRESENT with-in Our Sacred Mother/Her living creatures/ Sacred abundance, and with-in All physical/nonphysical spiritual beings/dimensions of Our Sacred Living Co-Creation and evolving Cosmos in Our LOVING DIVERSE ONENESS….
Yes!
But I am not sure of the absence of the heroic in everyday faith. Timidity for sure. I am angered that the machine and muscle of humanity cannot focus itself on the wonderful challenge presented to us out of the fog of selfishness and me first consumptiveness that strikes a deep chord of inhumanity. We should be more aware of what comes out the backside as we devour our once pristine Eden.