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]
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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.
Transition and Transformation
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Just as we have borne the image of the earthy one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one. . . . Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, in an instant, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For that which is corruptible must clothe itself with incorruptibility, and that which is mortal must clothe itself with immortality. —1 Corinthians 15:49, 51-53
Father Thomas Keating reflected on the process and meaning of death:
Death and resurrection, in the Christian perspective at least, can never be separated, and . . . in a very real sense, death is resurrection.
Death seems to be a process of transformation.
The idea that something is dying needs to be investigated to see what it is. It is not we who are really dying but only the false self that is experiencing the end of its illusory view of life—our personal, homemade self, which has been the object of our efforts and is secretly present in virtually all of our good deeds.
What’s dying is not the deepest self, but our dependence and over-identification with the mental ego and its projects, and our cultural conditioning and over-identification with it, including our roles in life.
From this perspective, the dying process is the culmination or the peak of the whole development of the spiritual journey, in which total surrender to God involves the gift of life itself, as we know it.
For that reason it’s not really death, but life reaching out to a fullness that we can’t imagine from this side of the dying process.
So death is . . . the final completion of this process of becoming fully alive and manifesting the triumph of the grace of God in us. [1]
Death could be looked upon as the birth canal into eternal life. A little confining and scary, maybe, yet it’s the passage into a vastly fuller life. Eternal life means perfect happiness without space or time limitations. It is spaciousness itself. You begin to taste it in deep contemplative prayer. You realize that you don’t give it to yourself; it’s already within you. [2]
Our new body will be spiritualized and not limited to its present physical presence and limitations. One aspect of creation is that, once you have been born into this world, you never die because, as the Hindu religions teach, each of us possesses deep within us an inalienable spark of divine love. [The Song of Songs says that love is stronger than death (8:6).] That spark is the same energy that created the Big Bang. . . . [3]
Nothing is more certain than death. It can’t simply be a disaster. It’s rather a transition like all the other transitions and developments of human consciousness all the way up to unity with Ultimate Reality. The latter involves freedom from the senses and our thinking processes; in other words, entering into the simplicity of the divine energy that pours itself out into the world through continuing creation. The divine energy sustains us with immense love and patience through all the stages of consciousness. [4]
Journal DJR
Good Morning Lord
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. I am in a new phase and it’s like a kid in a candy store. It’s this freedom to let all people be who they are, (and me too) and the possibilities that this opens up. I’ve known this before, but evidently, only in my head. It’s now at a deeper level, so the possibilities are more expansive. Like I am marveling at the idea that I’m really considering leaving where I’ve been and start attending a Baptist church. Up until recently, that was the last place I thought I would find myself. What’s going on here anyway?
You are free. Truth sets you free. and you are gaining some truth in your studies and experiences. Freedom opens up options. You had blockages when you felt comfortable only with people who believed like you. Now that you are free from that and appreciating my diversity, you have more and richer options.
I do know myself, and I’ve previously run amuck with newfound freedoms.
Well, you know yourself. So don’t do that. But if you do, you know I love you, died for you and will be waiting for you to get back to me and take off another layer of blindness. Better yet, don’t ever leave, even if you leave. Take me with you if you go on a wild ride. I am with you, no matter what, just do your best to stay conscious. I like wild rides.
I ask . . . that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You. . . . I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity. . . . Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am. . . . —John 17:20-24
At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. —1 Corinthians 13:12
Two dear friends, Fathers Thomas Keating (1923–2018) and Joseph Boyle (1941–2018), lived many years in community at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, where they welcomed guests for contemplative retreats. A couple years ago, Lucette Verboven interviewed both of them. She asked Father Joseph if he expected at death to be transformed:
Yes, I expect death to be a transition. I think it is a movement into a space that is not limited by our body and our senses that are quite limited now. I like the phrase in St. Paul, that we will “see God face to face” [1 Corinthians 13:12] and we’ll relate to people and the beauty of who they are without the ego-agendas we have right now.
I see [life after death] as infinite love, as if the whole atmosphere of heaven is filled with God as a kind of vibration going through us. I think that we are going to see and know each other in God, whatever that word means. It strikes me as a homecoming, us returning home to where we come from. . . and all of our brothers and sisters are coming home as well. . . . I certainly have a very deep hope that it is a transition into an incredible related life. [1]
Similarly, Keating wrote:
Death is only a part of the process of living. If the Communion of Saints has become real for us, then every funeral is a celebration of eternal life. That is the great insight of the Mass of the Resurrection, the new funeral rite. Death is not an occasion only for sorrow, but an occasion of rejoicing that our friends or relatives have moved to a deeper level of union and that we will be with them again. [2]
We are all always connected to God and each other and every living being. Most of us just don’t realize it. Jesus prays that we could see things in their unity and wholeness.
Either we learn how to live in communion with others, or, quite simply, we’re not ready for heaven and are already in hell. We have been invited—even now, even today, even this moment—to live in the Communion of Saints, in the Presence, in the Body, in the Life of the eternal and eternally Risen Christ.
There is only One Love that will lead and carry us across when we die. If we are already at home with Love here, we will quite readily move into heaven, Love’s eternal home. Death is not a changing of worlds, as most imagine, as much as the walls of this world infinitely expanding.
Journal DJR
Good Morning Lord,
It’s been a long time since I wrote out my perception of our dialogue together. It was previously rich for a season, but then it seemed to dry up ??? I have missed it. But many things are changing in my life and it seems like it may be time to be with You this way again.
I am always there for you and in you. (John 14:20) In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. But I don’t want you to develop dogma. You say, Blessed are the flexible and it’s true. I want my sons and daughters to be flexible and to experience my Love in many ways. Both giving and receiving. Stay flexible, and curious. My love will astound you.
It is. Like you have been showing JD and me… it is easiest and sometimes only seen in the rear view mirror. But as we dive deeper we are learning to walk in and feel your love and see it everywhere.
Good, keep on coming.
Some things you are showing me are deeper levels of what I’ve known before … Like that I can be OK just knowing and experiencing You… and that I don’t need to evangelize or convert those who don’t see things the same way. Everything belongs, Let it be, and all things work together… as Richard Rohr, the Beatles, and St Paul said. It is such a freedom. It opens up new possibilities. I feel so free, I didn’t realize the constriction I had been walking in. Wow! Thanks!
This is the freedom I want for all my kids. But don’t jump out there and start selling a new Freedom Pack. I’ve been teaching you what I had your elder brother Francis say… Preach the gospel always, but only if absolutely necessary, use words. So live free and walk with me. We’ll have a good time. And when you cross over, like Reba, we’ll have an even better time. And in a few cases, (Holy Spirit will let you know) I’ll have you share. If you’re really attentive, I’ll even give you the words.
Crossing over is easier if you’ve been walking close with me all along. Not just with obedience and checklists but heart to heart like you are learning.
Thanks for all the blessings. I have self identified as post-denominational and have enjoyed walking free of the the hierarchy and bureaucracy of denominations (and also political parties) Now my new opportunity, possibility is to walk in love and acceptance with people who see core issues differently than you’ve shown me. (Agree on the main things and agree to disagree on a few things and walk together sharing the Love)
You’ve said it well. Just go walk it out and my Spirit will lead you.
Death and Resurrection: Week 1
All Things New
Sunday, November 18, 2018
Behold, I make all things new. —Revelation 21:5
As I’ve recently faced my own mortality through cancer once again, I’ve been comforted by others who have experienced loss and aging with fearless grace. Over the next few days I’ll share some of their thoughts. Today, join me in reflecting on this passage from Quaker teacher and author Parker Palmer’s new book, On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity and Getting Old.
I’m a professional melancholic, and for years my delight in the autumn color show quickly morphed into sadness as I watched the beauty die. Focused on the browning of summer’s green growth, I allowed the prospect of death to eclipse all that’s life-giving about the fall and its sensuous delights.
Then I began to understand a simple fact: all the “falling” that’s going on out there is full of promise. Seeds are being planted and leaves are being composted as earth prepares for yet another uprising of green.
Today, as I weather the late autumn of my own life, I find nature a trustworthy guide. It’s easy to fixate on everything that goes to the ground as time goes by: the disintegration of a relationship, the disappearance of good work well done, the diminishment of a sense of purpose and meaning. But as I’ve come to understand that life “composts” and “seeds” us as autumn does the earth, I’ve seen how possibility gets planted in us even in the hardest of times.
Looking back, I see how the job I lost pushed me to find work that was mine to do, how the “Road Closed” sign turned me toward terrain that I’m glad I traveled, how losses that felt irredeemable forced me to find new sources of meaning. In each of these experiences, it felt as though something was dying, and so it was. Yet deep down, amid all the falling, the seeds of new life were always being silently and lavishly sown. . . .
Perhaps death possesses a grace that we who fear dying, who find it ugly and even obscene, cannot see. How shall we understand nature’s testimony that dying itself—as devastating as we know it can be—contains the hope of a certain beauty?
The closest I’ve ever come to answering that question begins with these words from Thomas Merton, . . . “There is in all visible things . . . a hidden wholeness.” [1]
In the visible world of nature, a great truth is concealed in plain sight. Diminishment and beauty, darkness and light, death and life are not opposites: they are held together in the paradox of the “hidden wholeness.” In a paradox, opposites do not negate each other—they cohabit and cocreate in mysterious unity at the heart of reality. Deeper still, they need each other for health, just as our well-being depends on breathing in and breathing out. . . .
When I give myself over to organic reality—to the endless interplay of darkness and light, falling and rising—the life I am given is as real and colorful, fruitful and whole as this graced and graceful world and the seasonal cycles that make it so. Though I still grieve as beauty goes to ground, autumn reminds me to celebrate the primal power that is forever making all things new in me, in us, and in the natural world.
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The Abyss of Grief
Monday, November 19, 2018
My friend and brilliant translator of many mystics, Mirabai Starr, who lives nearby in Taos, New Mexico, has encountered numerous deaths and losses, each cultivating in her a deeper spiritual practice and longing for God. But the death of her fourteen-year-old daughter, Jenny, in a car crash was “an avalanche,” Starr writes, “annihilating everything in its path”:
Suddenly, the sacred fire I have been chasing all my life engulfed me. I was plunged into the abyss, instantaneously dropped into the vast stillness and pulsing silence at which all my favorite mystics hint. So shattered I could not see my own hand in front of my face, I was suspended in the invisible arms of a Love I had only dreamed of. Immolated, I found myself resting in fire. Drowning, I surrendered, and discovered I could breathe under water.
So this was the state of profound suchness I had been searching for during all those years of contemplative practice. This was the holy longing the saints had been talking about in poems that had broken my heart again and again. This was the sacred emptiness that put that small smile on the face of the great sages. And I hated it. I didn’t want vastness of being. I wanted my baby back.
But I discovered that there was nowhere to hide when radical sorrow unraveled the fabric of my life. I could rage against the terrible unknown—and I did, for I am human and have this vulnerable body, passionate heart, and complicated mind—or I could turn toward the cup, bow to the Cupbearer, and say, “Yes.”
I didn’t do it right away, nor was I able to sustain it when I did manage a breath of surrender. But gradually I learned to soften into the pain and yield to my suffering. In the process, compassion for all suffering beings began unexpectedly to swell in my heart. I became acutely aware of my connectedness to mothers everywhere who had lost children, who were, at this very moment, hearing the impossible news that their child had died. . . . .
Grief strips us. According to the mystics, this is good news. Because it is only when we are naked that we can have union with the Beloved. We can cultivate spiritual disciplines designed to dismantle our identity so that we have hope of merging with the Divine. Or someone we love very much may die, and we may find ourselves catapulted into the emptiness we had been striving for. Even as we cry out in the anguish of loss, the boundless love of the Holy One comes pouring into the shattered container of our hearts. This replenishing of our emptiness is a mystery, it is grace, and it is built into the human condition.
Few among us would ever opt for the narrow gate of grief, even if it were guaranteed to lead us to God. But if our most profound losses—the death of a loved one, the ending of a marriage or a career, catastrophic disease or alienation from community—bring us to our knees before that threshold, we might as well enter. The Beloved might be waiting in the next room.
I am aware of the phrase “true self” occurring only once in the Bible. Paul used the words to describe what he was desperately trying to locate in the midst of some major trials with his false self. He wrote of it in a telling way: “When I act against my own will, then it is not my true self doing it, but sin which lives in me” (Romans 7:20, Jerusalem Bible). Somehow, he knew there was a part of him that was authentic, steadfast, and true to its God-given and loving nature.
Paul then contrasted the true self with what we are calling the false self and he called “sin” (7:14-25). It is the self that is always passing away. This is our cozy image of ourselves as individual and autonomous, as separate from God and everyone and everything else. When this “separate” self is all we think we are, no wonder we are afraid of dying. Because this is all we know and have—if we have not discovered our soul, that is. The false self is terrified of death because it knows the mental construct that it calls “myself” is indeed passing away because it is merely self-constructed and fragile. The false self has no substance, no permanence, no vitality, only various forms of immediate gratification.
Whenever we are fearing death, whether physical death or the loss of some egoic attachment, we are in our false self at that moment. The false self is not really bad or evil, but just inadequate to the big questions of love, death, suffering, God, or infinity. God allows and uses all our diversionary tactics to get us to move toward our full and final destination, which is divine union—and thus wholeness. That is how perfect and patient divine love is: Nothing is wasted; even our mistakes are the raw material to turn us back into love.
The True Self will surely have doubts about the unknown. But the True Self is the Risen Christ in you, and hence, it is not afraid of death. It has already been to hell and back. The Risen Christ in us knows that it will never lose anything real by dying. This is the necessary suffering of walking the full human path. That is what Jesus did and why we are invited to “reproduce the pattern of his death,” each in our own way, so that we can also take our place in the “force field” of God’s universal resurrection (see Philippians 3:10-11 and Acts 3:21).
In Thich Nhat Hanh’s words, “Enlightenment for a wave is the moment the wave realizes that it is water. At that moment, all fear of death disappears.” [1]
And in Stephen Levine’s:
But water is water, no matter what its shape or form. The solidity of ice imagines itself to be its edges and density. Melting, it remembers; evaporating, it ascends. [2]
So do not be afraid. Death to false self and the end of human life is simply a return to our Ground of Being, to God, to Love. Life doesn’t truly end; it simply changes form and continues evolving into ever new shapes and beauty.
AS YOU LOOK at the day before you, you see a twisted, complicated path, with branches going off in all directions. You wonder how you can possibly find your way through that maze. Then you remember the One who is with you always, holding you by your right hand. You recall My promise to guide you with My counsel, and you begin to relax. As you look again at the path ahead, you notice that a peaceful fog has settled over it, obscuring your view. You can see only a few steps in front of you, so you turn your attention more fully to Me and begin to enjoy My Presence. The fog is a protection for you, calling you back into the present moment. Although I inhabit all of space and time, you can communicate with Me only here and now. Someday the fog will no longer be necessary, for you will have learned to keep your focus on Me and on the path just ahead of you.
PSALM 73: 23– 24; Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.
PSALM 25: 4– 5; 4 Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. 5 Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.
1 CORINTHIANS 13: 12; For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
There is a thread you follow. It goes among Things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread. —William Stafford [1]
My words for the thread that Stafford speaks of are the True Self. Your True Self is who you are, and always have been, created in the image and likeness of God who is love (1 John 4:8, 16). Love is both who you are and who you are still becoming, like a sunflower seed that becomes its own sunflower. Most of human history has called the True Self your “soul” or your participation in the eternal life of God.
The great surprise and irony is that “you,” or who you think you are, have nothing to do with your True Self’s original creation, and you can never get rid of it. It’s sort of disempowering and utterly empowering at the same time, isn’t it? All you can do is nurture your True Self, which is saying quite a lot. It is love becoming love in this unique form called “me.”
The dying process at every stage of life is a natural opportunity to let go of the small, separate self and return to the fullness of True Self. Kathleen Dowling Singh, who spent hundreds of hours contemplatively ministering to dying people, wrote:
As we return and/or are returned to our Original Nature, virtues that we have acquired, usually through deliberate cultivation, flow naturally as water from a spring. The qualities of loving-kindness, compassion, presence, centeredness, spaciousness, mercy, and confidence all radiate naturally forth from our transformed being as we come closer to death. . . . Many a time I have seen the dying comfort those in pain around them. . . .
Love appears to be the last connection the dying have with the world of form. We become expressive vehicles for the power of the Ground of Being [i.e., God], inhabited and vitalized by far greater Being. . . . The Ground of Being is, in a very real sense, Love. As we merge with it, self-consciousness and all questions of self-worth and previous psychological issues of lovability spontaneously melt. Love simultaneously pours into and pours out of us. . . .
With this basic change in identity, in the sense of who we are, death is no longer seen through the peephole of the mental ego. It ceases being a frightening enemy, a defeat, an unfortunate error in the universe and becomes, instead, an incredible moment of growth and transformation. It is a graduation into a previously unimaginable scale of being. [2]
APPROACH PROBLEMS with a light touch. When your mind moves toward a problem area you tend to focus on that situation so intensely that you lose sight of Me. You pit yourself against the difficulty as if you had to conquer it immediately. Your mind gears up for battle, and your body becomes tense and anxious. Unless you achieve total victory, you feel defeated. There is a better way. When a problem starts to overshadow your thoughts, bring this matter to Me. Talk with Me about it and look at it in the Light of My Presence. This puts some much-needed space between you and your concern, enabling you to see from My perspective.
You will be surprised at the results. Sometimes you may even laugh at yourself for being so serious about something so insignificant. You will always face trouble in this life. But more importantly, you will always have Me with you, helping you to handle whatever you encounter. Approach problems with a light touch by viewing them in My revealing Light.
LUKE 12: 25 ESV; And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
PSALM 89: 15; Happy are those who hear the joyful call to worship, for they will walk in the light of your presence, LORD.
JOHN 16: 33; I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
The Illusion of Separation
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Hopefully we begin life as “holy innocents” in the Garden, with a conscious connection to Being. The gaze of loving, caring parents can mirror us as the beloved and gives us a primal experience of life as union. But sooner or later we all have to leave the Garden. We can’t stay there. We begin the process of individuation, which includes at least four major splits, ways of forgetting our inherent oneness and creating an illusion of separation.
The first split is very understandable. We split ourselves from other selves. We see mom and dad and other family members over there, and we’re over here. We start looking out at life with ourselves as the center point. It’s the beginning of egocentricity. My ego is the center; what I like, what I want, what I need is what matters. Please know that the ego is not bad; it is just not all. The development of a healthy, strong ego is important to human growth.
The second split divides life from death. It comes when we first experience the death of someone we know, perhaps a beloved pet or grandparent. The ego begins differentiating those who are alive and those who are gone. We may then spend our whole life trying to avoid any kind of death, including anything that’s negative, uncomfortable, difficult, unfamiliar, dangerous, or demanding. But at some point, we’ll discover that life and death, negative and positive, are part of the same unavoidable reality. Everything is living and dying simultaneously.
The third split separates mind from body and soul. In the West, we typically give the mind priority and come to identify strongly with our thoughts. As Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” By the age of seven most of us “think we are our thinking” and it’s our thinking that largely defines us. This is the lie that meditation helps us unravel.
The fourth split is the acceptable self from the unacceptable self. We split from our shadow self and pretend to be our idealized self, or what others say we should be. The shadow self contains not only the qualities of which we’re ashamed but also the positive and beautiful traits we’ve forgotten or fear (our “golden” shadow, as some call it).
Splitting is a coping mechanism, a way of surviving. But as we grow, find healing for trauma, and develop mature emotional and spiritual practices, we become able to incorporate that which we have denied and from which we’ve split. Each of these four illusions must—and will—be overcome, either in this world, in our last days and hours, or afterward. That is “resurrection”!
Each of these splits from reality makes any experience of God or our True Self largely impossible. Spiritual practices and the process of dying are both about overcoming these four splits. Kathleen Dowling Singh observed:
The Path of Return involves the healing of previously created dualities [or splits]—in reverse order. . . . The mental ego is humblingly and disturbingly divested of its false sense of being and stripped of its illusions. The sense of self, quite often kicking and screaming, begins its return to the underlying Ground of Being, its own Essential Nature. [1]
——————–
BASK IN THE LUXURY of being fully understood and unconditionally loved. Dare to see yourself as I see you: radiant in My righteousness, cleansed by My blood. I view you as the one I created you to be, the one you will be in actuality when heaven becomes your home. It is My Life within you that is changing you from glory to glory. Rejoice in this mysterious miracle! Thank Me continually for the amazing gift of My Spirit within you.
Try to depend on the help of the Spirit as you go through this day of life. Pause briefly from time to time so you can consult with this Holy One inside you. He will not force you to do His bidding, but He will guide you as you give Him space in your life. Walk along this wondrous way of collaboration with My Spirit.
PSALM 34: 5; Those who look to him are radiant,
and their faces shall never be ashamed.
2 CORINTHIANS 5: 21; For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 CORINTHIANS 3:18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
GALATIANS 5: 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.
Today we are realizing that “science and religion are long lost dance partners,” to use Rob Bell’s words. Ilia Delio writes, “Raimon Panikkar said that when theology is divorced from cosmology, we no longer have a living God, but an idea of God. God then becomes a thought that can be accepted or rejected rather than the experience of divine ultimacy. Because theology has not developed in tandem with science (or science in tandem with theology) since the Middle Ages, we have an enormous gap between the transcendent dimension of human existence (the religious dimension) and the meaning of physical reality as science understands it (the material dimension). This gap underlies our global problems today, from the environmental crisis to economic disparity and the denigration of women.” [1]
Stephen Hawking, a theoretical physicist and cosmologist, believes humans have an innate drive to make sense of the world. But, he says,
Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe what the universe is to ask why. On the other hand, the people whose business it is to ask why, the philosophers [and, I would add, theologians] have not been able to keep up with the advance of scientific theory. . . . If we do discover a complete theory [of the universe], it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God. [2]
Mary Evelyn Tucker and Brian Swimme have helped our generation rediscover our common narrative, our shared cosmology. They write:
Just as we are realizing the vast expanse of time that distinguishes the evolution of the universe over some 13.7 billion years, we are recognizing how late is our arrival in this stupendous process. Just as we are becoming conscious that Earth took more than 4 billion years to bring forth this abundance of life, it is dawning on us how quickly we are foreshortening its future flourishing. We need, then, to step back, to assimilate our cosmological context. If scientific cosmology gives us an understanding of the origins and unfolding of the universe, philosophical reflection on scientific cosmology gives us a sense of our place in the universe. [3]
I regret to say that there has been a massive loss of hope in Western history, a hope still so grandly evident in people like Julian of Norwich, Francis of Assisi, and Bonaventure. (Are not the World Wars of Christian countries a clear sign of this loss? Genocides are surely a symptom of deep self-loathing and fear.) Bonaventure’s God was so much bigger and more glorious than someone to be afraid of, or the one who punished bad guys—because his cosmos was itself huge, benevolent, and coherent. Did his big God beget an equally big and generous cosmos? Or did his big cosmos imply a very big God? You can start on either side. For many in our time, an initial reverence for the universe leads them to reverence whoever created this infinity of Mystery and Beauty. [4] We must now admit that it did not work very well the other way around. Those focused primarily on talking about God somehow couldn’t see a universe as holy, as big, and as good as the one who supposedly created it.
May this awe and reverence lead us to care for each other and our common home quickly, before we run out of time.
When I founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in 1987—and even when we began sending my Daily Meditations in 2007—I never imagined how this work would evolve and grow. Over the years, our readers’ generosity has made so much possible! As I witness how hearts and minds have changed, I’m convinced that the CAC’s mission is still important.
Twice a year we pause the Daily Meditations to ask for your support. Even with all the suffering in the world and my own experiences of heart attack and cancer, I trust that God is healing and transforming all pain. In the time I have left, I have a renewed passion to help others recognize the divine image in themselves and every other created being. I believe this divine seeing will help reconcile our differences and change the way we live. These are the eyes that have taught me everything important.
We are committed to keeping the Daily Meditations free. As our online community grows, both our joy and our costs increase. But donations keep the daily emails going—day in and day out. Donations also fund scholarships and the creation of other programs that bring this critical, prophetic wisdom to new light.
Take a moment to read our Executive Director Michael’s note below about how you can help and the special gift we’d like to share. Tomorrow the Daily Meditations will continue exploring the surprising places in which God’s “image and likeness” is found—even in loss and dying.
Together let’s continue cultivating the likeness of God in ourselves and in our world.
Sarah Young
Jesus Calling
November 13, 2018
I AM CHRIST IN YOU, the hope of Glory. The One who walks beside you, holding you by your hand, is the same One who lives within you. This is a deep, unfathomable mystery. You and I are intertwined in an intimacy involving every fiber of your being. The Light of My Presence shines within you, as well as upon you. I am in you, and you are in Me; therefore nothing in heaven or on earth can separate you from Me!
As you sit quietly in My Presence, your awareness of My Life within you is heightened. This produces the Joy of the Lord, which is your strength. I, the God of hope, fill you with all Joy and Peace as you trust in Me, so that you may bubble over with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
COLOSSIANS 1: 27; To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
ISAIAH 42: 6; I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant …
NEHEMIAH 8: 10; Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy.
ROMANS 15: 13 AMP; May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing [through the experience of your faith] that by the power of the Holy Spirit you will.
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
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