Enantiodromia

Enantiodromia is when something morphs into its opposite.

I was struck afresh by the way in which the credal churches, but specifically medieval catholicism under whose shadow we all suffer to a degree, have corrupted the quality moral 'freshness' they s/ought to preserve. Last Sunday on BBCr3 I listened to a Catholic priest droning on in some basilica about the virtues of St Francis, and his values of poverty etc – I simply didnt know how he had the nerve, surrounded by the panoply and choral pomp which is the diametric opposite of what Francis preached. But of course that is the 'trick' of religion: if you can get people to believe something which is manifestly incongruent then they have as much invested in maintaining that belief as those promoting it.

Today in my Bible reading project I reached the Beatitudes and the teaching that follows them, which ties in extremely well with also dipping into Rumi. What Christ actually said remains as powerful and radical and left field as Rumi – both are talking of a love of inner truth, of connection to spirit/God that cannot ever been taken for granted in the kind of 'fact of life on the ground' way that a building creates – let alone one administered by a bunch of men in nighties (no matter how well-meaning).

No wonder the reformers throuout the ages have wanted to blow it up and smash the very stones that they see as creating an obstacle to true faith – and yet of course the stones still stand and appear to a faithless age (perhaps faith is only ever seen in retrospect?) as synonymous with the very quality it obscures. And now we have a vast 'heritage industry' which cares nothing for what Christ or anyonelse said, but solely concerns itself with the preservation of monuments to a dead faith. What hope for the living?