Francis of Assisi understood that the entire circle of life had a Great Lover at the center. For Franciscan John Duns Scotus, before God is the divine Logos (rational pattern), God is Infinite and Absolute Friendship (Trinity), that is, Eternal Outpouring (Love). Love is the very nature of Being itself. God is not a being who occasionally decides to love. God is “the one in whom we live, move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). God is Being Itself, and by reason of the Trinity, Being operates as Infinite Love, emptying and out-pouring like an eternal water wheel—in one positive direction.
For us, the Trinity must be the absolute beginning point—and ending point, too. Outpouring Love is the inherent shape of the universe, and only when we love do we fully and truthfully exist in this universe and move toward our full purpose. The Christ who comes forth from the Trinity is both the Alpha and the Omega point of all history (Revelation 1:8, 21:6, 22:13). This metaphysical and cosmic statement gives the whole universe meaning, direction, and goal! God’s purposes are social, cosmic, and universal, not just to hold together a small group of so-called insiders.
Love is the very meaning of Creation. Many of the Fathers and Mothers of the Church, along with saints and mystics throughout history, said that God created because, frankly, God needed something to love and something that could love God freely in return. Parents’ fondest desire, perhaps unconsciously, is to love their little ones in every way. Hidden behind that is the hope that someday their children will love them back. The very way we love our children becomes their empowerment to love us.
Franciscan Philippe Yates puts this in cosmic terms:
At the heart of Scotus’ theology was the doctrine of the primacy of Christ. God is absolutely free and therefore if he [sic] creates it is because he wants to create. He wants to create in order to reveal and communicate his goodness and love to another. Because God loves, he wills that his creation should also be infused by love.
St. Paul tells us that Christ was the “first-born of all creation” [see Colossians 1:15], and Scotus’ theology makes sense of this affirmation. The incarnation in Scotus’ theology is the whole purpose of creation. Christ is the masterpiece of love in the midst of a creation designed for love, not a divine plumber come to fix the mess of original sin. [1]
In other words, many of us Christians settled for Plan B, or Jesus as a mere problem solver after we messed up. The Good News is that the Christ is Plan A from the very beginning, and Jesus came along much later to make it all visible, lovable, and attractive. Salvation is a historical, social, and universal notion, which is made very clear already by the Jewish prophets. But when we make Jesus very small, then the good news of salvation becomes very small too.
The Universal Christ The Inner Blueprint Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Let’s begin in the beginning with the prologue to John’s Gospel (John 1:1-11). John is not talking about Jesus; he’s referring to Christ. I’m going to give you my own translation, which I think is a fair one. Instead of “Word,” which is taken from Greek philosophy’s Logos, I’m going to substitute the word “Blueprint,” because it’s really the same meaning. Logos is the inner blueprint.
In the beginning was the Blueprint, and the Blueprint was with God, and the Blueprint was God. . . . And all things came to be through this inner plan. The inner reality of God became manifest in the outer world as the Cosmic or Eternal Christ.
No one thing came to be except through this Blueprint and plan. All that came to be had life in him. Now it’s become personalized. This great Universal Christ Mystery since the beginning of time now becomes specific in the body and the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The Blueprint has become personified and visible as a human being. (The particular gender is not significant here.)
And that Life was the Light of humanity. John is describing a bigger life, a bigger light, from which we all draw. This is Consciousness—a pre-existent form that is the Eternal or One Light. This great Light or Consciousness is the source of our little piece of light, as it were. You can also substitute the word Love. The Blueprint is a cosmic act of Love.
This Light/Life/Love shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. “The visible galaxies we see strewn across space are nothing more than strings of luminous flotsam drifting on an invisible sea of dark matter,” writes astrophysicist Adam Frank. [1] Franciscan Sister Ilia Delio explains: “Scientists speculate that dark energy comprises about 73 percent of the total mass-energy of the universe and accelerates expansion of the universe.” [2] Somehow the universe is an interplay between light and darkness.
This Blueprint was the true light that enlightens all human beings who have come into the world. So, the true light, Consciousness, or Love itself precedes and connects and feeds all of our smaller lights and attractions.
He was in the world that had its very being through him. But the world did not know him. In the same way, for the last 2,000 years, we have not understood the Cosmic Christ. We fell in love with the symbol instead of what Jesus fully represented. To love “Jesus, the Christ” is to love both the symbol and everything that he stands for—which is precisely everything. This lays a wonderful foundation for a new consciousness and a new cosmology—and a very different notion of religion itself.
Who Is Christ
Sunday, December 2, 2018
First Sunday of Advent
What if we’ve missed the point of who Christ is, what Christ is, and where Christ is? I believe that a Christian is simply one who has learned to see Christ everywhere. Understanding the Universal or Cosmic Christ can change the way we relate to creation, to other religions, to other people, to ourselves, and to God. Knowing and experiencing this Christ can bring about a major shift in consciousness. Like Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus (see Acts 9), we won’t be the same after encountering the Risen Christ.
The Universal Christ is present in both Scripture and Tradition, and the concept has been understood by many mystics, though not as a focus of mainline Christianity. (See John 1:1-5, Colossians 1:15-20, Ephesians 1:9-12 if you think this is some new idea.) We just didn’t have the eyes to see it.
The Universal Christ is Divine Presence pervading all of creation since the very beginning. My father Francis of Assisi (1181–1226) intuited this presence and lived his life in awareness of it. Later, John Duns Scotus (1266–1308) put this intuition into philosophical form. For Duns Scotus, the Christ Mystery was the blueprint of reality from the very start (John 1:1). Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) brought this insight into our modern world.
God’s first “idea” was to become manifest—to pour out divine, infinite love into finite, visible forms. The “Big Bang” is now our scientific name for that first idea; and “Christ” is our Christian theological name. Both are about love and beauty exploding outward in all directions. Creation is indeed the Body of God!
In Jesus, this eternal omnipresence had a precise, concrete, and personal referent. God’s presence became more obvious and believable in the world. The formless took on form in someone we could “hear, see, and touch” (1 John 1:1), making God easier to love.
But it seems we so fell in love with this personal interface in Jesus that we forgot about the eternal Christ, the Body of God, which is all of creation, which is really the “First Bible.” Jesus and Christ are not exactly the same. In the early Christian era, only a few Eastern Fathers (such as Origen of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor) noticed that the Christ was clearly historically older, larger, and different than Jesus himself. They mystically saw that Jesus is the union of human and divine in space and time; Christ is the eternal union of matter and Spirit from the beginning of time.
When we believe in Jesus Christ, we’re believing in something much bigger than the historical incarnation that we call Jesus. Jesus is the visible map. The entire sweep of the meaning of the Anointed One, the Christ, includes us and includes all of creation since the beginning of time (see Romans 1:20). This Advent, let us wait in anticipation for the eternally coming Christ.
—————————-
From the Beginning of Time
Monday, December 3, 2018
Christ is the radiant light of God’s glory and the perfect copy of God’s nature, sustaining the universe by God’s powerful command. —Hebrews 1:3, Jerusalem Bible
Christ is not Jesus’ last name. The word Christ is a title, meaning the Anointed One, which many Christians so consistently applied to Jesus that to us it became like a name. But a study of Scripture, Tradition, and the experience of many mystics reveals a much larger, broader, and deeper meaning to “the Christ.”
The above passage from Hebrews says that Christ “sustains the universe.” The concept of Christ can be used to describe reality in an archetypal, symbolic, and profound way. But it names the shape of the universe before it names the individual who typifies that shape, the one we call Jesus Christ. All of creation first holds God’s anointing (“beloved” status), and then Jesus brings the message home in a personal way over thirteen billion years later!
This is a different way of thinking for so many Christians. The three synoptic Gospels are largely talking about Jesus, the historical figure who healed and taught and lived in human history. John’s Gospel presents the trans-historical “Christ” (which is why so very few stories in John coincide with Matthew, Mark, and Luke). This Christ frequently makes universal “I AM” statements and claims (see John 6:35, 48; 8:12, 24, 58; 10:9, 11; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1), mirroring the unspeakable name of the Holy One (Exodus 3:14).
Many people don’t realize that the Apostle Paul never met the historical Jesus and hardly ever quotes Jesus directly. In almost all of Paul’s preaching and writing, he refers to the Eternal Christ Mystery or the Risen Christ rather than Jesus of Nazareth before his death and resurrection. The Risen Christ is the only Jesus that Paul ever knew! This makes Paul a fitting mediator for the rest of us, since the Omnipresent Risen Christ is the only Jesus we will ever know as well (see 2 Corinthians 5:16-17).
Jesus’ historical transformation (“resurrected flesh”) allows us to more easily experience the Presence that has always been available since the beginning of time, a Presence unlimited by space or time, the promise and “guarantee” of our own transformation (see 1 Corinthians 15:1-58). In Jesus, the Timeless Christ became time bound so we could enjoy the personal divine gaze (see 1 John 1-2).
Whenever the material and the spiritual coincide, there is the Christ. Jesus fully accepted that human-divine identity and walked it into history. Henceforth, the Christ “comes again” whenever we are able to see the spiritual and the material coexisting, in any moment, in any event, and in any person. All matter reveals Spirit, and Spirit needs matter to “show itself”! I believe “the Second Coming of Christ” happens whenever and wherever we allow this to be utterly true for us. This is how God continually breaks into history—even before the first homo sapiens stood in awe and wonder, gazing at the stars.
Cynthia Bourgeault, one of our core faculty members at the Center for Action and Contemplation, writes about the unshakable depths of hope:
Must we be whiplashed incessantly between joy and sorrow, expectation and disappointment? Is it not possible to live from a place of greater equilibrium, to find a deeper and steadier current?
The good news is that this deeper current does exist and you actually can find it. . . . For me the journey to the source of hope is ultimately a theological journey: up and over the mountain to the sources of hope in the headwaters of the Christian Mystery. This journey to the wellsprings of hope is not something that will change your life in the short range, in the externals. Rather, it is something that will change your innermost way of seeing. From there, inevitably, the externals will rearrange.
The journey to the wellsprings of hope is really a journey toward the center, toward the innermost ground of our being where we meet and are met by God.
Meditation, more than any other spiritual practice, nurtures the latent capacities within us that can perceive and respond to divine hope. In the classic language of our tradition, these capacities are known as the “spiritual senses.”
Deeper than our sense of separateness and isolation is another level of awareness in us, another whole way of knowing. Thomas Keating, in his teachings on centering prayer, calls this our “spiritual awareness” and contrasts it with the “ordinary awareness” of our usual, egoic thinking. The simplest way of describing this other kind of awareness is that while the self-reflexive ego thinks by means of noting differences and drawing distinctions, spiritual awareness “thinks” by an innate perception of kinship, of belonging to the whole.
The only thing blocking the emergence of this whole and wondrous other way of knowing is your over-reliance on your ordinary thinking. If you can just turn that off for a while, then the other will begin to take shape in you, become a reality you can actually experience. And as it does, you will know . . . your absolute belonging and place in the heart of God, and that you are a part of this heart forever and cannot possibly fall out of it, no matter what may happen.
[I]n the contemplative journey, as we swim down into those deeper waters toward the wellsprings of hope, we begin to experience and trust what it means to lay down self, to let go of ordinary awareness and surrender ourselves to the mercy of God. And as hope . . . flows out from the center, filling us with the fullness of God’s own purpose living itself into action, then we discover within ourselves the mysterious plenitude to live into action what our ordinary hearts and minds could not possibly sustain.
Richard Rohr Joy and Hope Mystical Hope Friday, November 30, 2018
Cynthia Bourgeault, one of our core faculty members at the Center for Action and Contemplation, writes about the unshakable depths of hope:
Must we be whiplashed incessantly between joy and sorrow, expectation and disappointment? Is it not possible to live from a place of greater equilibrium, to find a deeper and steadier current?
The good news is that this deeper current does exist and you actually can find it. . . . For me the journey to the source of hope is ultimately a theological journey: up and over the mountain to the sources of hope in the headwaters of the Christian Mystery. This journey to the wellsprings of hope is not something that will change your life in the short range, in the externals. Rather, it is something that will change your innermost way of seeing. From there, inevitably, the externals will rearrange.
The journey to the wellsprings of hope is really a journey toward the center, toward the innermost ground of our being where we meet and are met by God.
Meditation, more than any other spiritual practice, nurtures the latent capacities within us that can perceive and respond to divine hope. In the classic language of our tradition, these capacities are known as the “spiritual senses.”
Deeper than our sense of separateness and isolation is another level of awareness in us, another whole way of knowing. Thomas Keating, in his teachings on centering prayer, calls this our “spiritual awareness” and contrasts it with the “ordinary awareness” of our usual, egoic thinking. The simplest way of describing this other kind of awareness is that while the self-reflexive ego thinks by means of noting differences and drawing distinctions, spiritual awareness “thinks” by an innate perception of kinship, of belonging to the whole.
The only thing blocking the emergence of this whole and wondrous other way of knowing is your over-reliance on your ordinary thinking. If you can just turn that off for a while, then the other will begin to take shape in you, become a reality you can actually experience. And as it does, you will know . . . your absolute belonging and place in the heart of God, and that you are a part of this heart forever and cannot possibly fall out of it, no matter what may happen.
[I]n the contemplative journey, as we swim down into those deeper waters toward the wellsprings of hope, we begin to experience and trust what it means to lay down self, to let go of ordinary awareness and surrender ourselves to the mercy of God. And as hope . . . flows out from the center, filling us with the fullness of God’s own purpose living itself into action, then we discover within ourselves the mysterious plenitude to live into action what our ordinary hearts and minds could not possibly sustain.
Psalms 32:8; I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.
Luke 10:41-42; Martha, Martha,” the LORD answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42but few things are needed-or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Philippians 3:20-21; But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the LORD Jesus Christ, 21who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
Joy and Hope Generosity of Spirit Thursday, November 29, 2018
For a week in April 2015, Archbishop Desmond Tutu visited His Holiness the Dalai Lama at his residence in exile in India. Their dialogue and interactions, facilitated by Douglas Abrams, became The Book of Joy. I’d like to share some of their hard-won wisdom with you today.
Suffering is inevitable, they said, but how we respond to that suffering is our choice. Not even oppression or occupation can take away this freedom to choose our response.
As our dialogue progressed, we converged on eight pillars of joy. Four were qualities of the mind: perspective, humility, humor, and acceptance. Four were qualities of the heart: forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and generosity.
[Archbishop Tutu said:] “Our human nature has been distorted, . . . I mean, we are actually quite remarkable creatures. In our religions I am created in the image of God. I am a God carrier. It’s fantastic. I have to be growing in godlikeness, in caring for the other. I know that each time I have acted compassionately, I have experienced a joy in me that I find in nothing else.”
When we practice a generosity of spirit, we are in many ways practicing all the other pillars of joy. In generosity, there is a wider perspective [italics mine], in which we see our connection to all others. There is a humility that recognizes our place in the world and acknowledges that at another time we could be the one in need, whether that need is material, emotional, or spiritual. There is a sense of humor and an ability to laugh at ourselves so that we do not take ourselves too seriously. There is an acceptance of life, in which we do not force life to be other than what it is. There is a forgiveness of others and a release of what otherwise might have been. There is a gratitude for all that we have been given. Finally, we see others with a deep compassion and a desire to help those who are in need. And from this comes a generosity that is “wise selfish,” a generosity that recognizes helping others as helping ourselves. As the Dalai Lama put it, “In fact, taking care of others, helping others, ultimately is the way to discover your own joy and to have a happy life.”
[Near the end of their time together, Archbishop Tutu offered this blessing:]
“Dear Child of God, you are loved with a love that nothing can shake, a love that loved you long before you were created, a love that will be there long after everything has disappeared. You are precious, with a preciousness that is totally quite immeasurable. And God wants you to be like God. Filled with life and goodness and laughter—and joy.
“God, who is forever pouring out God’s whole being from all eternity, wants you to flourish. God wants you to be filled with joy and excitement and ever longing to be able to find what is so beautiful in God’s creation: the compassion of so many, the caring, the sharing. And God says, Please, my child, help me. Help me to spread love and laughter and joy and compassion. And you know what, my child? As you do this—hey, presto—you discover joy. Joy, which you had not sought, comes as the gift, as almost the reward for this non-self-regarding caring for others.”
____________________________________________
John 14:27; Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
Isaiah 58:11; The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden,
Isaiah 40:11; He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.
PEACE
Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling Morning and Evening Devotional (Jesus Calling®) (Kindle Location 8057). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
Joy proceeds from the inner realization of union with God, which descends upon us at ever deeper levels as we walk our faith journey. This deepening is the goal of Christian contemplation and is the heart of perennial wisdom from every faith. This is how contemplatives “know” things: The soul itself is an image of God, to which God is so present that the soul can actually grasp God, and, as Bonaventure wrote, “is capable of possessing [God] and of being a partaker in [God].” [1] Ironically, it is in letting go that we most truly “possess” God and participate in God’s fullness.
Jesus modeled and taught contemplative prayer. He invited us to “go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret” (Matthew 6:6). Our beloved Father Thomas Keating (1923–2018), who recently passed away, explained how such prayer helps us access the joy of experiential union with God:
In Jesus’ formula for waking up to who we are, he suggests entering this inner room. Then he says shut the door, meaning stop the interior dialogue. Get free or detached from our over-identifications with our thoughts, experiences, past life, future hopes. It doesn’t mean leaving anything behind, but changing your attitude to everything, so it’s a non-possessive attitude, which is the nature of [God] or the Beloved, or the Ultimate Reality. . . .
[We are] in the process of awakening to the divine image within us, the supernatural organism where faith, hope, and charity, the divine indwelling, and the fruits and the gifts of the Spirit are sitting, so to speak, in our ontological unconscious, gathering dust, waiting to be used. And they can’t come into full action until our over-identification with the false self and its programs for happiness that can’t possibly work have been reduced.
So life, then, is constant death and resurrection at every moment. We die to our own will and enter the present moment by consenting to whatever it is, either by accepting it or doing something that the Spirit suggests to improve the situation. This divine enlightening process sometimes gives us an Aha! experience. It’s still on the egoic level, so it’s penetrated with some misunderstandings, but nonetheless, this is what Alleluia means. “Aahh”—this is the primordial sound that that you hear in Allah or in Alleluia or in Aum [Om] as the Hindus put it. It’s waking up!
. . . Everybody has personal, unique relationship with God and capacity to manifest something of that infinite goodness that is a torrent that simply moves from relationship to relationship in the Trinity in a kind of moving ocean of infinite love that is reaching out and drawing everybody back through the unspeakable groanings of the Spirit that dwells even in matter [see Romans 8:22-23], but especially in our inmost being and conscience, calling us into freedom, into peace, into joy, which we already possess at the hidden level. That’s why we need to find out who we are!
We are already all these things. We just think we aren’t. Stop thinking, and you’ll find out. [2]
Joy and Hope
Universal Belonging
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Bonaventure’s “vision logic,” as Ken Wilber would call it, and the lovely symmetry of his theology, can be summarized in what Bonaventure named the three great truths that for him hold everything together. He summarizes all his teaching in these three movements:
Emanation: We come forth from God bearing the divine image; our very DNA is found in God.
Exemplarism: Everything in creation is an example and illustration of the one God mystery in space and time, by reason of its “origin, magnitude, multitude, beauty, fulness, activity, and order.” [1]
Consummation: We return to the Source from which we came; the Omega is the same as the Alpha and this is God’s supreme and final victory.
What a positive, coherent, and meaning-filled world this describes! Note that Bonaventure’s theology is clearly not the later reward/punishment frame that took over when people did not experience God, but merely believed propositions. Many people today are not sure where we came from, who we are, and where we are going, and many do not even seem to care about the questions. What if we could recover a view of the world and God that was infused with Bonaventure’s teaching? It would provide a foundation that we lack in our often aimless and adrift age. It could hold our lives together during times of despair and cynicism.
Bonaventure described the Great Chain of Being both in a historical and linear way—but also in terms of cosmic connectedness along the way! He was following Paul in Colossians: “In his body lives the fullness of divinity, and in him you will find your own fulfillment” (2:9–10), or “There is only Christ: He is everything and he is in everything” (3:11). We were created in unity, proceed forward insofar as we are in unity, and return to God’s full gift of final unity. It is grace before, during, and after.
For Bonaventure, creation is quite simply the mirror and image of God; he uses metaphors like footprint and fingerprint (vestigia Dei), effigy, likeness. Francis, Bonaventure, and Teilhard give me the confidence to believe and teach that “everything belongs.” They describe and defend the universal belonging of all creation and show us that such a cosmic divine victory makes the fear-based preoccupations of later exclusionary and punitive Christianity seem small and unnecessary.
There is neither denial nor resentment in Bonaventure. His heart was never stingy, but always generous and eager to love. Bonaventure’s “tree of life,” his “coincidence of opposites,” his “journey of the soul to God,” his Great Chain of Being . . . each made joyful room for everything in one divine circle of life. God for him is “the one whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” [2]
And now you know that all things, including you, live safely and happily inside of that one good circle.
I believe that St. Francis is the example par excellence of care for the vulnerable and of an integral ecology lived out joyfully and authentically. . . . [He] was deeply loved for his joy, his generous self-giving, his open-heartedness. —Pope Francis [1]
Just as Pope Francis has exercised a worldwide and major imaginal change, Francis and Clare of Assisi are still having a profound impact in the Christian world, eight hundred years later. They told us by their lives that Christianity could be joyful, simple, sweet, and beautiful.
I believe that the Gospel itself, and the Franciscan vision of the Gospel, is primarily communicated by highly symbolic human lives that operate as “Prime Attractors”: through actions visibly done in love; by a nonviolent, humble, and liberated lifestyle; and through identification with the edged out and the excluded of every system. The very presence of such Prime Attractors “gives others reasons for spiritual joy,” as St. Francis said. [2]
Both St. Francis and Pope Francis are simply following Jesus’ lead. In his apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis writes:
The Gospel . . . constantly invites us to rejoice. A few examples will suffice. “Rejoice!” is the angel’s greeting to Mary (Luke 1:28). Mary’s visit to Elizabeth makes John leap for joy in his mother’s womb (cf. Luke 1:41). In her song of praise, Mary proclaims: “My spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:47). When Jesus begins his ministry, John cries out: “For this reason, my joy has been fulfilled” (John 3:29). Jesus himself “rejoiced in the Holy Spirit” (Luke 10:21). His message brings us joy: “I have said these things to you, so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11). . . . He promises his disciples: “You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy” (John 16:20). He then goes on to say: “But I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22). The disciples “rejoiced” (John 20:20) at the sight of the risen Christ. . . . Wherever the disciples went, “there was great joy” (Acts 8:8); even amid persecution they continued to be “filled with joy” (Acts 13:52). . . . Why should we not also enter into this great stream of joy? [3]
. . . I realize of course that joy is not expressed the same way at all times in life, especially at moments of great difficulty. Joy adapts and changes, but it always endures, even as a flicker of light born of our personal certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved. [4]
—————————–
The Franciscan Vision
Monday, November 26, 2018
St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1217–1274) took Francis and Clare’s practical lifestyle to the level of theology, philosophy, and worldview. Unlike many theologians of his time, Bonaventure paid little attention to fire and brimstone, sin, merit, justification, or atonement. His vision is positive, mystic, cosmic, intimately relational, and largely concerned with cleaning the lens of our perception and our intention so we can see and enjoy fully!
He starts very simply: “Unless we are able to view things in terms of how they originate, how they are to return to their end, and how God shines forth in them, we will not be able to understand.” [1] For Bonaventure, the perfection of God and God’s creation is a full circle, and to be perfect the circle must and will complete itself. He knows that Alpha and Omega are finally the same, and the lynchpin holding it all in unity is the “Christ Mystery,” or the essential unity of matter and spirit, humanity and divinity. The Christ Mystery is thus the template for all creation, and even more precisely the crucified Christ, who reveals the necessary cycle of loss and renewal that keeps all things moving toward ever further life. Now we know that the death and birth of every star and every atom is this same pattern of loss and renewal, yet this pattern is invariably hidden or denied, and therefore must be revealed by God—which is “the cross.”
Bonaventure’s theology is never about trying to placate a distant or angry God, earn forgiveness, or find some abstract theory of justification. He sees humanity as already being included in—and delighting in—an all-pervasive plan. As Paul’s school says, “Before the world was made, God chose us, chose us in Christ” (Ephesians 1:4). The problem is solved from the beginning. Rather than seeing history as a “fall from grace,” Bonaventure reveals a slow but real emergence and evolution into ever-greater consciousness of Love. He was the Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) of the 13th century.
One reason Bonaventure was so hopeful and positive is that he was profoundly Trinitarian. He saw love always and forever flowing between Father, Son, and Spirit and on to us. Bonaventure’s strong foundation in the Trinity gave him a nondual mind to deal with the ineffable mystery of God and creation. A dualistic mind closes down at any notion of Trinity or infinite love, because it cannot process it.
For Bonaventure, God, is not an offended monarch on a throne throwing down thunderbolts, but a “fountain fullness” that flows, overflows, and fills all things in one positive direction. Reality is thus in process and participatory; it is love itself, and not a mere Platonic world, an abstract idea, or a static impersonal principle. God as Trinitarian Flow is the blueprint and pattern for all relationships and thus all of creation, which we now know from contemporary science is exactly the case.
Journal DJR
Good Morning Lord
Thank you for these words today, And the messages I’ve been hearing recently. This life in the kingdom which is mystically apprehended has been the basic track that I’ve been on for a couple of years. But it’s off and on. It’s so easy to fall back into a rational and judgmental place. But it’s getting easier to recognize as is knowing the way back… as I get more sure of your love. Most recently I’ve been listening to and liking a Baptist pastor who we’ve visited. I was really surprised, he had a lot of stuff that seemed to resonate. And there were a lot of happy people at his place. But then I realized that the thing that I was liking was causing a dissonance in me. What I like and gravitate to is the formulaic way that he had things worked out and the way he presented them. Kind of a formula for becoming a Christian and then the formula for staying happily on the path. My brain really likes that kind of thing. … And it works… until it doesn’t. And it seems to conflict with the mystical, perhaps even shut it out. Like Calvin and Luther both decided, “no more mysticism” I’m loving Jesus and life and everyone more since I’ve started down the road of the mystic… and I’m not willing to give it up for formulas that make my left brain comfortable. I’m seeing trap of the Enlightenment and Rationalism. I’m seeing that a mystical, non-dual view is essential to living in your kingdom. Help me to live in the world but not be of the world, as Paul said. Bring your kingdom here. Thank you. I love you.
The whole process of living, dying, and then living again starts with YHWH “breathing into clay,” which becomes “a living being” called Adam (“of the earth”; see Genesis 2:7). Breath and what appears to be mere dirt become human (the word “human” comes from the Latin humus). Matter and spirit are bound together; divine and mortal interpenetrate and manifest one another. The Formless One forever takes on form as “Adam and Eve” (and in Jesus “the new Adam”), and then takes us back to the Formless One, once again, as each form painfully surrenders the small self that it has been for a while. Jesus says, “I am returning to take you with me, so that where I am you also may be” (John 14:3). Resurrection is simply incarnation taken to its logical conclusion: what starts in God ends in God—who is eternal.
Buddhists are looking at the same Mystery from a different angle when they say, “Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form,” and then all forms eventually return to formlessness (spirit or “emptiness”) once again. Christians call it incarnation > death > resurrection > ascension. This is about all of us, including all of creation—not just Jesus—coming forth as individuals and then going back to God, into the Ground of All Being. That cyclical wholeness should make us unafraid of death and thus able to fully appreciate life.
The Risen Christ represents the final and full state of every True Self: God-in-you who is able to see and honor God-everywhere-beyond-you too! In other words, Christ is more than anything else a “holon”—a scientific term for something that is simultaneously a whole by itself and yet a part of a larger whole, too. Jesus is telling us that we are all holons! We all participate in the one single life of God.
“To God, all people are in fact alive,” as Jesus put it (Luke 20:38…He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”). We are just in different stages of that aliveness—one of which we experience as dying.
Journal DJR
Good Morning Lord
Pretty somber stuff this morning… Or not, If we really get that death is part of life and we are just going on to (back to) a better place. I seem to get that, and then lose it, and then get it again. I think it will take a while to totally replace decades of living with one paradigm with the new paradigm. Thanks for these reminders.
Flow with me. Daily and all day long, as much as you can. We’ll get there together.
Many things these days seem to have physical – spiritual connection. I see that there’s a connection, but I can’t discern exactly what it is. Like last night when I fixed the carburetor on the snow blower. I vacillated on having someone do it… as I knew nothing about it. But dove in and got it done… not the way any of the YouTubes suggested. So perhaps I got encouraged that I can do anything I set my hand to. A life long belief, but one that I’m questioning the value and appropriateness of, as the years go by and muscles grow weaker, eyes dim and memory becomes less reliable.
The belief is good. I put it in you. And everything belongs. It can be mis-used for sure. If you mix it with your Big Four, need to look good, and feel good, be right and be in control, that belief can surely run you amuck. So bring those things to the cross. I have a better replacement for each of those big four waiting for you. Keep the belief that you can do anything. It is rare and valuable. Your kids need it. Learn to live in Spirit and Truth and discover each of my Better Big Four. And let them live and lead your life.
Philippians 4:13 (NLT) For I can do everything through Christ,[a] who gives me strength.
John 14:12-14 (NLT) “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father. 13 You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. 14 Yes, ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it!
There are times when it will indeed be better to let others do things. You can still know that (with me) you could do those things… but don’t have to. Actually you only want to do the ones that I ordain for you. They will go down peacefully.
So did you ordain the gummed up carburetor?
You had more to do with that… by lack of maintenance. But I chose to bless you in the recovery. And we’re having this conversation.
Those alternative Big Four have my attention. Probably too simplistic to just ask what they are??
You can always ask me anything. But many times, most times, the answers don’t fit in small boxes. they lead to discussions and have nuances.
Isaiah 55:8-9
“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the LORD.
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
9For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.
Like last nite for example. I was with you in it. But it was pretty brutal. You missed many turns and it could have been more elegant if you had been better tuned and hearing the Voice and Seeing the Next.
John 5:19 So Jesus explained, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does. 20For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he is doing. In fact, the Father will show him how to do even greater works than healing this man. Then you will truly be astonished.
This CO2- (Church Of 2) is where two guys meet each day to tighten up our Connections with Jesus. We start by placing the daily “My Utmost For His Highest” in this WordPress blog. Then we prayerfully select some matching worship music and usually pick out a few lyrics that fit especially well. Then we just start praying and editing and Bolding and adding comments and see where the Spirit takes us.
It’s been a blessing for both of us.
If you’d like to start a CO2, we’d be glad to help you and your partner get started. Also click the link below to see how others are doing CO2.Odds Monkey
Steve Harvey Introduces Jesus To A Secular Audience
About
Change this text in the admin section of WordPress
You are currently browsing the CO2MannaToday blog archives.
