EarthLight Magazine
Fall/Winter 2002/03 - Issue 47 - Vol. 13. No. 2, p. 53
Review by Julie Knowles
The title of this book got my attention with a quiet unease that once again I was going to review a spiritual book full of good intentions but with little substance. Instead, I found this book ignited my spiritual passion, fed my intellectual hunger, and inspired my creative muse. Author John Cock briefly describes his spiritual journey as, "Protestant Christian beginnings, to seeking tradition's reform, to trying to articulate Spirit's depth and how It works in our lives." Having spent many years searching for his authentic spiritual path, he dedicates his life to a "universal dialogue with Spirit."
The author begins his dialogue in the middle, since the ineffable has no beginning or end: how we define spirit, how we make spirit visible again, what spirit has to do with (everything), and our universal Spirit journey -- the oneness of creation. He provokes the imagination of a viable future with the emphatic statement that we need a creation-centered existence, rather than one that is human-centered: a planetary spirit consciousness. He sheds light on the contemporary revolutions in human consciousness that are already changing us, and consequently changing creation. Quotes throughout the book from many notable people enrich the dialogue: Thomas Berry, Teilhard de Chardin, Paul Tillich, and Ken Wilber are but a few of the many who have heralded spirit consciousness and changed the course of evolution as a result.
The concept of spirit is the perpetual thread of truth that weaves through all religions and myths of human evolution, Cock says, proving that we are one in spirit ('one' being an inclusive term meaning all living and non-living beings in the universe). He lists a hundred activities of spirit and tells mythical and real-life stories of how the presence of spirit intersects our lives. Spirit is in every act, every moment; it is as Kabir says, 'the breath within the breath.' Poetry, reflections and free-form prose interweave this spirit dialogue, modeling what it truly means when Cock declares, "to speak the truth through our words and through our lives is the obligation that authenticates spirituality in us humans."
Reading this book is an event in itself, an experience of the presence of spirit. It raises questions in our minds and punctuates our relationship to creation. It is a liberating consideration of our calling to authentically and thankfully choose life, by communing with a larger context and meaning that we call Spirit.
Emerging Lifestyles Magazine
Vol III, Number 1, Winter 2003
Review by David McCleskey, co-director of The Silence Foundation
I am such a bookworm that I seldom read a book that gives me that "I can't put it down" feeling. But that is what happened to me when I read John Cock's book Our Universal Spirit Journey. I was pulled from page to page waiting on tiptoe to see what he would say next. What he said in big letters was, "Spirit is key to global unity."
John gets this said in myriad ways. He does it through his own poetry. He does it by laying bare the shift from organized religion to personal and spiritual growth. And he describes the depth of spirituality clearly as wonder, freedom, care and fulfillment. In John's words, it is this dimension of life that invents us. In fact, there is nothing else that changes our lives or us. He says that spirit happens, awakens, frees, unites, transforms, reconciles, universalizes, enlightens, sustains and reigns over our lives.
Everyone should read this book! It is for all who are fed up with the surface of life, tired of living in the flatland of a technocratic society where science is our only authority, education is thought to be improved only by giving more tests, and the solution to violence is greater, more powerful violence. It should be read by anyone looking for a deeper grasp of what ails us these days and is asking how the spiritual dimension can be recovered.
John uses his own experiences to expose how the human spirit is the spinal cord and central nervous system for human society that is so essential to the ecozoic age in which we live.
This book can challenge all of us to go beyond rearranging the furniture on the first floor of our lives and to examine real changes to re-create the entire edifice in which we are living. . . .
"All our religions tell me
who I am
Spir-iT creatures
created by iT
transparent to iT
reflecting iT
creating with iT"
~p. 55
"I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN FIRST OF ALL, not even a human first of all. I am a member of creation, having journeyed here from the beginning, rising out of the dust of planet Earth. I am a member of this universe, about fourteen billion years old am I. As a DNA code-carrying member, I am a part of all that ever was and ever will be in this universe." ~p. 57
