REVIVING TRUST: Cultural Moorings

Outcome experience qualifies understandings of conscience and measure values, that is, as to what advances or diminishes wellbeing. The evaluation of outcomes defines what culture considers moral, ethical. Conscience and choice are about appealing to the best that is within us and choosing the greater good. In religious/cultural tradition, conscience and wellbeing relate synergistically. Communal wellbeing shapes in concert religious and cultural sense; cultural understandings, civility and religious sensitivity shape worldview, the enduring understandings that inform self and the place of self.

Culture and worldview have correspondence with the sacred remembrances of past experience and outcome, and they ground self-authentication and social sustainability in new contexts. Social intelligence evolves; the common sense of the sacred and the every day evolve together. Remembrance rituals (e.g., sacraments) should be recognizable as intentional expressions designed to inform and update social intelligence. Personal wellbeing and social wellbeing are co-dependently linked in social intelligence; the better the intelligence base of faith, the better and more sustainably lives can be fulfilled.

Graces of social wellbeing and personal fulfillment cannot be separated from natural relationships; thus, deeper insight into the dictum "grace supposes nature" enables better informed living. For example, understanding DNA as the mooring of sacrament gives perspective on how grace and intelligent design advance vitality and intentional living. Sacrament, that is, purposeful living based on memoried experience, is the end/means of intelligent design, of evolving gene/meme coding.

Genetics are about natural memory and memetics are about nurtural memory; the rituals of sacrament are about facilitating sacred remembrances, the signs and graces of sacred, worthy purpose. Consciousness of worthy purpose shapes conscience. The point and purpose of sacrament is intentional responsiveness to the graces of wellbeing that enlighten judgment toward decisions that advance the common good. The better that the graces of wellbeing are understood the better living can be justified and sustained.

Sacraments are physical (material) and psychical (spiritual). Sacraments are celebrated in common. Sacraments are identified for their roles in nurturing life and self-justification. Nature and nurture are sign and grace of wellbeing encoded and expressed in DNA. Sacraments can indeed be characterized in the grace they convey (nurture) and in the edification (sign, structure) they leave in nature, in evolution.

In Christian culture, the singular sacrament that overarches all other sacrament is EUCHARIST. Eucharist celebrates the dependency of human life and consciousness on the natural potentials of trans-substantial matter. If it is true what Isaiah says, that "all flesh is grass", then the substance of our own persons is grass in origin. Bread is made from the flour of grass seeds and effectively represents the intentional presence of intelligent design in the correspondence of sacrament and DNA. By reason of divine instance in bread, we "eat God" when we consume bread, but especially in the memorable celebration of the Mass and ritual communion. Notwithstanding the convergence of all sacraments in Eucharist, other sacraments also serve as marker events in the personal journey of life and deserve ritual celebration in their own right.

Birth occurs with a rush of water. The essential roles of water in every aspect of life are celebrated in the Sacrament of BAPTISM. CONFESSION is a spiritual exercise that celebrates communication by which we personally learn right from wrong in the trustful exchange of words, understandings, etc. CONFIRMATION is a personal commitment to informed consciousness and to fidelity in relationships. Conscience-formation and living conscionably are objectives of confessional communication and confirmed commitment.

PRIESTHOOD and MATRIMONY are commitments to ways of life. Priesthood pertains to a life commitment of instructing and celebrating personal integrity; priesthood is a personal commitment to learning and teaching for a lifetime, especially in areas of divine/human relationships and within the competency of male and female alike by reason of common baptism, faith and reason. Matrimony is a commitment to the woman-man relationship, to their mutual wellbeing and the purpose of personal sexuality, to self-fulfillment and to building community by procreating new life and provisioning for life's needs. Competency to teach and provide are talents obviously and universally important for all and proper to all. Sacraments are sacred techniques of learning and teaching that keep mind refreshed in what matters most. The social ordering of religion and civility (church and civil government) imposes conscionably on each and everyone alike.

End-of-life ANOINTING brings full-circle birth's celebration and fullness of justified, sustained living. Life's substances and holiness derive directly from the intentional soul and substance of Earth's energy and matter. The iterations of life, conception, gestation, birth, growth, maturity and death are sacrament events of soul growing into age, wisdom, and grace; these bring self-worth to realizations of life's true valuation and participation in intelligent design. Individually, when a life has reached its fullness, which varies for each person, the energy and substances of life must be returned whence they came; soul re-unites with divinity whence it came; photons return to rainbow glory, and chaotic dust returns to Earth. Every "ultimate" life accomplishment is not a final ending it is a new beginning, an iteration and continuance of spiritual transcendence.