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My thesis is that the dictates of history, our contemporary experience, and the demands of the future, tell us that the age of Christianity, and indeed all religions, is over, and a new grounding myth is showing glimpses of emerging. A new age is dawning.

By the time we have considered climate change, the environment, sexism, racism, popularism, and injustice of all sorts, there is little time left for considering our understanding of God, religion, and the whole spiritual realm.

No one doubts that we are living in a time of major transformation. With the environmental crisis, the populist crisis, rampant individualism, a consumer economy, racism, sexism, ageism, a pandemic, and whatever else, the handwriting is on the wall. We are in the midst of a critical time. What we do, or fail to do, as a human species will dictate our future. The question we all must deal with is, “How do you read the handwriting on the wall?” We need to know where we are before we can move forward.

In this book, Don Murray explores the wisdom we can inherit from the Bible after Christianity has faded as a creative religious force.

If traditional religion no longer holds you, yet you yearn for a deeply spiritual and intellectually satisfying communion with the great Mystery, this book offers the New Story, the Universe Story, that is evolving out of all that has gone before.

Most of us have gone quietly on saying how terrible it is and doing nothing. We (I) am all too comfortable in our (my) innocence and ignorance of the grim reality of the life of those oppressed. But the move is on. The age of innocence is over.

Are the Dog Days of summer drawing to a close? Are we feeling a little chill in the air as the long evenings of summer begin to shorten? We’ve had our share of those warm sultry days. But we’re not complaining. We will remember them fondly in mid January. According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the Dog Days of summer go from July 3rd to August 11th, coinciding with the morning rising of the Dog Star, Sirius. And that tradition goes back to the Romans, Greeks and Egyptians who believed that it was Sirius that brought the hot muggy weather.

The Bible is, in my mind, the best witness the Western World had to the evolution of human consciousness. That is a story in itself – I’m working on the book. However, what is true on the grand scale of one tradition’s journey toward wholeness is also true as a map for our personal growth. We can see the ages and stages of our own lives against the background of the biblical story. I will touch on some main points.

As part of this evolving universe we have our personal psyches, our individual mix of influences that shape and mold our lives and nourish our unique creativity. Amongst the multitude of forces that work within us is a central energy pushing us toward integration and wholeness. This integrating and creative force Jung called the Self.

In the short interval between hearing the words and partaking of the symbolic body of Christ, I was enveloped in one of those rare moments of total oneness with all that is. The word “body” became present to me in a way I had not previously experienced. A feeling of connectedness with all mortal life swept over me. And beyond that an awareness of my aliveness being one with the aliveness of the earth and universe.

To believe, or give assent to, a fixed set of beliefs, such as, “I believe in God the father almighty….,” or the inerrency of the Bible is to cut off the possibility of growth. If you have all the answers you are not open to new thoughts or questions. Communicating with a fundamentalist is very difficult, and we are all fundamentalist in a variety of ways. But Leonard Cohen reminds us that “there is a crack in everything, that’s where the light comes in.”

“This book sees Eve as the mythic heroine, rather than the villain, of the human adventure. The biblical story then takes on a whole new shape and meaning. The path from the innocence of the Garden of …

I am a child of the Universe. Everyone is a child of the Universe. We are all one, no matter what our race, colour or creed,. The wondrous evolving Universe has created dust, stars, galaxies, sun, earth and all creatures upon it. We are from the earth; self-conscious creatures; the Universe experiencing and reflecting upon itself. The Universe Story is our primary story.

Before the 2012 SnowStar Conference fades into the background I would like to push forward some of Roy Hoover’s comments regarding the changing paradigm. As I recall – apologies for any inaccuracies – he spoke of the need for integrating the insights of Galileo and Darwin in order to make the paradigm shift from the age of superstition to the age of reason. History as a search for what actually happened and science now form the road to truth.

The season of the Solstice is the appropriate time to array our homes, our world, in light. Something deep within us is responding to a desire that seems to come from the heart of the Universe.

A New Story is beginning to emerge, the foundation of which is The Universe Story. You are a child of the Universe. Everyone of whatever race, colour or creed is a child of the Universe. It is the great uniting story, of which I have written many times.

Don Murray relates how the cycles of the Earth relate to our continual celebrations of the life and death of Jesus.

Don Murray recounts the recent burning of a Qu’ran by Pastor Terry Jones, and how this relates to the history of the conflict between the three great monotheisms.

With so many unfortunate world tragedies occurring, compassion should be our goal as human beings. This article reminds us that compassion is what can lead us toward the triumph of peace and justice our world.

There was Jay, welcoming people with a smile and exuding a joie de vivre that spread throughout the group gathering for worship at St. Andrew’s United Church last Sunday (May 10). This was a special Sunday. Not only was it Mother’s Day, it was the day they were voting on whether to become an Affirming Congregation.

Savour the moments. Appreciate the day. We don't know what life will bring us. Sometimes we will be called to courage and endurance. Sometimes we will have to bear our own and others' pain. Being with a loved one through illness and death can be a trying yet profound experience. It is our experience of living that shapes us and calls from us the best that is in us

Unfortunately, many churches are slow to change and are out of sync with modern times. Often neither the theology nor the music speak to the souls of people of today.

Resurrection happens in the course of history. Ideas, ways of thinking, accepted understandings are born, live for a time, then fade and die.

I believe that the Fundamentalists are fundamentally wrong in looking back and trying to keep alive a pre-scientific understanding of faith. We must embrace, and integrate into our thinking and living, the best available knowledge the world can provide.

The voice I miss in contemporary theological discourse is that of Dr. Carl Gustav Jung.Carl Jung has been called the psychiatrist of Christianity. It is as if he put Christianity on the couch and worked through to an authentic Christian reality that lays a foundation for a whole new understanding of religions in general and Christianity in particular. In the process he became one of the major influences in changing the way the western world thinks. In fact, for me, the two greatest minds of the western world in the twentieth century were Dr. Albert Einstein, who introduced a new understanding of the outer world (the universe) and Dr. Carl Jung, who created a pathway or map into the inner world of the collective unconscious or objective psyche.

Have you done much thinking "outside of the box?" We are being enjoined on all sides to do so. In fact the plea to "think outside of the box" has become such a cliche that it has lost most of its power to startle us into thinking in new ways. But it is still a useful image.We live inside boxes, assumptions as to what is true and how things are to go. "What I believe is the only truth" and "We've always done it that way" is the hue and cry of those who are quite happy within their boxes or are afraid to peek out.