The Bulwark of our Spirituality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastion#/media/File:Castillo_de_San_Marcos.jpg

"Where two or more are gathered I too am among you." 
~ Math 18:20 

When I think of a bulwark I think of massive structures.  Giant fortifications and enormous earthen levees come to mind. Towers to keep out threats.  Something we build for protection.  A wall garrisoned with troops and heavy artillery.   Oddly enough levees fail and walls are breached, so what exactly is the bulwark of our spirituality? 

Some questions that have arisen in this inquiry are: 

• Why is a spiritual bulwark even necessary?
• What would constitute a spiritual bulwark? 
  

Our modern age is full of things that former generations didn't have to deal with.  In times past there was work, family, god and allegiance to some fiefdom or lord or city-state.  Now  the attacks on our spiritual body are numerous, pernicious and constant.  Two that come to mind are TV and the internet; both of which are Pandora's boxes that deliver a host of attacks deep into our psyche about everything from peer pressure, medical ailments, legal problems, the economy, politics, war, race, and on and on.  Most of which cannot be verified and are quite honestly a stream of lies. 

How many of us are glued to traumatube?  

These information streams (if you can call them that) also have embedded inside them a horrific idea -- materialism.  That somehow the fundamental substance of our nature can be reduced down to the known.  Molecules, atoms, and the working of physics.  We have been so trained to think (no, far too generous a word) that if we only knew more about prions, quarks, or this or that molecule that science will save us.  TRUST THE SCIENCE.   The new god.  

But not everything is reducible to the sum of its parts.   This idea is absurd on its face and yet we continue to tear things apart trying to find "THE THING" that is important when the whole is what we ought to be focused on.  The conjunction and interplay of the parts.  Let's take water for example.  Hydrogen and Oxygen separated are explosive and dangerous elements yet together they are essential to life.  There is a syzygy at work we don't understand.  It is observable and common knowledge but ask a chemist why and they can't really offer an explanation; only abstract theories why things are the way they are. 

I propose that what holds us together spiritually is community.   More than a bulwark.  More akin to threads in a mycelial network. It is intelligent beyond our understanding and contains many nodes of knowledge.  When two or more are gathered in a spiritual community another being is present. 

Yes, there is some individual work to be done.  For that alignment of the temporal and the spiritual the individual must say "yes" and acknowledge that there is more going on than meets the eye. Once that psychological barrier is breached whole other worlds can open -- and do. 

~ Joseph Olejak