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There is a subtle but profound shift taking place in our times. We live in a very busy, highly extraverted, culture that fills us with all kinds of information and endless entertainment, yet there is a hunger in our souls that our technical brilliance cannot fill. It has always been the task of great religions to feed this hunger, but some of our institutional Churches struggle to meet this need. Our Churches are strong in terms of what Ken Wilber calls the tasks of the first half of life. We find doctrines, rituals and moral guidance to help us to build up our egos, and we get a sense of belonging and of identity. The problem is that we can do all this and still see God as distant from us, looking on from afar, checking our faults and failings, and never quite satisfied with our performance, however hard we try. Our busyness and willpower never seem to be enough. Not only that, but this distant God, who we are told is a God of love, seems determined to punish us.