Let’s live in the “Kin-dom of Heaven.”
No, that’s not a typo. As a committed environmentalist, and a seeker after a deep and progressive spirituality, I found myself struggling with the “Kingdom of God.” These words worked for Jesus in his day, and they yet work for many with a traditional worldview. However, the words are too masculine and too hierarchical for my post-modern sensibilities. So I leapt ahead to something that is more integral — the “Kin-dom of Heaven.” There are a number of reasons to get juiced up about living in the Kin-dom of Heaven. Here are some….
As we grow up we change our minds.
At least, we should.
In normal adult development one’s worldview becomes wider and more embracing as greater degrees of complexity are explored and integrated.
One of the real questions that has flummoxed me for years is this: why do some people apparently stop evolving? But, that’s a subject for another time. For now, let me tell you about how I moved from “Kingdom of God” to “Kin-dom of Heaven.”
In the traditional worldview in which I grew up, the way we defined sexual identity was pretty straightforward. There were boys and girls, men and women, Kings and Queens. Of course, I graduated from high school in 1966 and that was right before the “sexual revolution” exploded right along with so much else. God was a guy. No question.
College followed, and then three graduate degrees, and what do you know… I was introduced to critical thinking! In the late 70’s I studied Neuro Linguistic Programming and was blown out of my mind by this one phrase: The map is not the territory. My then emerging modern worldview demythologized a lot of the maps that my traditional worldview had previously taken to be sacred truth.At our 10th anniversary high school reunion, I was surprised to find out that the guy that played next to me in football was gay.
I spent the 80’s stretching to grow as I grew into a postmodern worldview that was sensitive to everyone’s map of the territory and the relative truth of all perspectives. Effort was put into exploring other religions, philosophies, and attitudes that were different than my own. I continue to have an eye for understanding, accepting and integrating what I experience.
Today I am in pursuit of a post-postmodern worldview that embraces and integrates the best of the previous three worldviews that helped me to grow up, and up, and up, and now up even more.
“King” is masculine, but “Kin” includes everybody and everything, and to my post-postmodern sensibilities that is everything in creation. There is no separation between creation and Creator. We are all kin with each other — all humans, all mammals, all insects, all fish, all trees, all dirt, all air — all of everything in all of creation is Kin with all. We live and move and have our being in a giant web of Interbeing, as Thich Nat Hahn refers to it.
“King” is pretty hierarchical, too. After all, the King is at the top of the social structure, right? Unless it is the Queen as in the United Kingdom. My picture of the Kin-dom is that it is flat, or even upside down since Jesus, my exemplar and savior, turned it upside down. My hunch is that he’d be comfortable with my notions of the Kin-dom.
Let me tell you about another change. In my book, LOVING MOTHER EARTH, I use the phrase “Kin-dom of God.” Lately I’ve shifted toward the “Kin-dom of Heaven” for two reasons.
First, while both God and Heaven are referenced in the Christian Scriptures, it is really hard to shake the limiting idea of God as a person, and thus, not much more than the guy on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Try it. Visualize “God” and what comes to mind?
The second reason is that “Heaven” is not personal, although it does evoke clouds above and an afterlife. However, Heaven is associated with an ideal state of being and that makes more sense to me today from my emerging post-postmodern worldview.
What do you think?
Maybe you also grew up immersed in a traditional worldview. Maybe you grew up and through a modern worldview, and on toward a postmodern worldview full of sensitivities to a multiplex of perspectives.
Hey! Get this. Maybe we are on our way to the metaverse where the best of all worldviews is integrated in the Kin-dom of Heaven? I sure hope it will be a post-postmodern worldview because the dark side of the emerging metaverse is truly frightening.
Here is the heartfelt dream that juices me up:
That more and more of us will embrace an emerging post-postmodern worldview that integrates everything into the Kin-dom of Heaven — where communion with all, and reverence for all creation are embraced.
To get there would be to Love Mother Earth, and that would be to live lovingly with everyone and everything in our environment.
And that would be beautiful!
