Religious Intelligence

When religious intelligence moves into a more mature stage, the adolescent disinterest becomes exciting fascination. Religions become not only stories and myths, but anthropological wonders of a collective consciousness. They are super stories, deep art, and cross-cultural dreams. “Dream” here has two meanings. One is a hallucination, nonsensical and meaningless. The other is a vision, like Martin Luther King’s. Religions can be visions, our minds peaking into higher human potential, more perfect unions, more compassionate hearts. Art uses the symbols of religion but not necessarily promoting the beliefs. It uses these symbols because they are deeply understood on many levels by many people. “If it works, use it.” The pieta, Mary holding the dead Jesus, can have nothing to do with Christianity, and everything to do with grief and loss. Our bodies empathize with the mother holding her dead child. Who is that? Oh, its Mary and Jesus. Who are they?