david f,
The essence of Tikkun Olam, or repairing the world, is a continuing and growing process. Ultimately, "The lamb will lie down with the lion... and young children will play at the cobra's nest." This is an ancient and paradoxical vision of peace – something, today, we appear to be no closer to achieving.

Your heritage teaches that in every generation, an individual exists with the capacity to be 'Moshiach' – which has little in common with the understanding of Jesus as Christ (messiah). The Jewish creation myth of ‘Broken vessels’ and the ‘Divine Spark’ doesn’t contain the elemental fear as found in the doctrinal idea of ‘original sin’. This sense of ‘brokenness’, once acknowledged, makes the ‘idea’ of redemption less a process of judgment but more one of healing. As Jung has put it, ‘… what it means to be a mortal man and [God] drinks to the dregs.. he made his faithful servant Job suffer. Here is given the answer to Job, and, clearly, this supreme moment is as divine as it is human, as “eschatological” as it is “psychological”’

If one comes to appreciate the Jungian, ‘...man can be understood as a function of God and God as a psychological function of man’ and pray the strange prayer of Eckhart, ‘...I pray God to rid me of God...’ we come to a self-realization, or to put it in religious or metaphysical terms – God’s incarnation.

Don Cuppit describes the Church as “a sacramental machine” and “orthodox machine”, hierarchically structured to produce a salvation or happiness which it cannot produce in this world or the next because on the insistence on a never-ending dualism between the divine and the human. Something so religiously insipid can allow for the appeal of a religious fundamentalism where spiritual credibility is lost.

Ultimately, no one can fully define the ‘New Jerusalem’, where we might hope for a life that is healthier, more beautiful, more complete and more satisfactory – but in the experience of these, I may safely say to those I love, “This was the grace of God.

Dear Relda,

Outside of replacing ultimately with asymptotically I have nothing to disagree with in your post. I think we can approach closer to a vision of peace, but we can never reach it.

I think you have described my tradition accurately and lovingly.

david f,
Becoming increasingly nearer without ever quite meeting is a nice distinction you make... yes, I prefer it.

relda,
If I understood you properly, “New Jerusalem” is what is also called the “Kingdom of Heaven on Earth” which one can (and should) strive for but it is a utopian state of affairs that can never be reached.

George,
As "never" speaks of infinity, I wouldn't wish to be quite so definite.