God\u2019s Heartbeat<\/strong><\/a>\nFriday, November 3, 2017<\/strong>\n<\/iframe><br \/>\n<em>CAC\u2019s core faculty member, Cynthia Bourgeault, shares insights from other mystics\u2014current and past\u2014to reveal mercy at the heart of the universe. She shares the theological implications of quantum physics from contemporary Episcopal preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor:<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Where is God in this picture? God is all over the place. God is up there, down here, inside my skin and out. God is the web, the energy, the space, the light\u2014not captured in them, as if any of those concepts were more real than what unites them\u2014but revealed in that singular, vast net of relationship that animates everything that is. . . . At this point in my thinking, it is not enough for me to proclaim that God is responsible for all this unity. Instead, I want to proclaim that God <em>is<\/em> the unity\u2014the very energy, the very intelligence, the very elegance and passion that make it all go. [1]<\/p>\n<p><em>Cynthia reflects: <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Barbara\u2019s point may seem like a nuance, but it is a crucially important one. Our visible, created universe is not simply an object created by a wholly other God in order to manifest God\u2019s love, but the created universe is <em>that love itself\u2014<\/em>the very heart of God, fully expressive in the dimension of time and form.<\/p>\n<p>When we speak in these terms, of course, we begin to use the classic language of the mystics, the language of visionary utterance. For Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) the name in German for mercy was <em>Barmherzigkeit\u2014<\/em>\u201cwarmheartedness.\u201d Boehme saw mercy as \u201cthe holy element\u201d: the root energy out of which all else in the visible universe is made. The Mercy is \u201choly substantiality\u201d\u2014the innermost essence of being itself. It is that \u201criver of God,\u201d running like the sap through the tree of life. [2]<\/p>\n<p>Lest we be inclined to discount this insight as merely the rambling of a God-intoxicated mystic, it is astonishing to discover virtually an identical insight revealed by the eminently sane psychotherapist Gerald May (1940-2005). May affirms that from a clinical standpoint, once the various differentiations and feeling-tones have been stripped away from our subjective emotional life, what remains is a raw, root energy that is, finally, none other than divine love. \u201cIt is as if <em>agape<\/em> [divine love] were the base metal, irreducible and unadulterated,\u201d he writes. \u201cThe universe runs on an energy that is, at its core, unconditionally loving.\u201d [3]<\/p>\n<p>May\u2019s vision of <em>agape\u2014<\/em>divine love\u2014is very close to Boehme\u2019s (and my own) notion of the Mercy. Far from pity or condescension, it is the very heartbeat of God resonant in creation; the warmth that pulses through all things as the divine Mystery flows out into created form.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gateway to Silence:<br \/>\n<\/strong>We live, move, and have our being in love.<\/p>\n<p>________________________________________________<\/p>\n<p>A Bondservant of Jesus<\/p>\n<h4>By <a href=\"https:\/\/utmost.org\/oswald-chambers-bio\">Oswald Chambers<\/a><\/h4>\n<p><!-- \/.col-12 --> <!-- \/.row --><\/p>\n<div class=\"clearfix\">\u00a0<strong>I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me\u2026 \u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?version=31&search=Galatians+2%3A20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Galatians 2:20<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"top-rule\">These words mean the breaking and collapse of my independence brought about by my own hands, and the surrendering of my life to the supremacy of the Lord Jesus. No one can do this for me, I must do it myself. God may bring me up to this point three hundred and sixty-five times a year, but He cannot push me through it. It means breaking the hard outer layer of my individual independence from God, and the liberating of myself and my nature into oneness with Him; not following my own ideas, but choosing absolute loyalty to Jesus. Once I am at that point, there is no possibility of misunderstanding. Very few of us know anything about loyalty to Christ or understand what He meant when He said, \u201c\u2026<em>for My sake<\/em>\u201d (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Matthew+5:11\">Matthew 5:11<\/a>). That is what makes a strong saint.<\/div>\n<section class=\"entry-content\">\n<div class=\"post-content\">\n<p>Has that breaking of my independence come? All the rest is religious fraud. The one point to decide is\u2014 will I give up? Will I surrender to Jesus Christ, placing no conditions whatsoever as to how the brokenness will come? I must be broken from my own understanding of myself. When I reach that point, immediately the reality of the supernatural identification with Jesus Christ takes place. And the witness of the Spirit of God is unmistakable\u2014 \u201cI have been crucified with Christ\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The passion of Christianity comes from deliberately signing away my own rights and becoming a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Until I do that, I will not begin to be a saint.<\/p>\n<p>One student a year who hears God\u2019s call would be sufficient for God to have called the Bible Training College into existence. This college has no value as an organization, not even academically. Its sole value for existence is for God to help Himself to lives. Will we allow Him to help Himself to us, or are we more concerned with our own ideas of what we are going to be?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cosmology God\u2019s Heartbeat Friday, November 3, 2017 CAC\u2019s core faculty member, Cynthia Bourgeault, shares insights from other mystics\u2014current and past\u2014to reveal mercy at the heart of the universe. She shares the theological implications of quantum physics from contemporary Episcopal preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor: Where is God in this picture? God is all over the place. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16143,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16141\/revisions\/16143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}