"Creation is the primary and most perfect revelation of the Divine." -- Thomas Aquinas
"God remains in immediate sustaining attentiveness to everything that exists, precisely in its 'thisness.'" -- John Duns Scotus
The Incarnation of God did not happen in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. That is just when we started taking it seriously. The incarnation actually happened 14.5 billion years ago with a moment that we now call "The Big Bang." That is when God actually decided to materialize and to self expose.
Two thousand years ago was the human incarnation of God in Jesus, but before that there was the first and original incarnation through light, water, land, sun, moon, stars, plants, trees, fruit, birds, serpents, cattle, fish, and "every kind of wild beast" according to our own creation story (Genesis 1:3-25). This was the "Cosmic Christ" through which God has "let us know the mystery of his purpose, the hidden plan he so kindly made from the beginning in Christ" (Ephesians 1:9). Christ is not Jesus' last name, but the title for his life's purpose. Jesus is the very concrete truth revealing and standing in for the universal truth. As Colossians puts it, "He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation" (1:15), he is the one glorious part that names and reveals the even more glorious whole. "The fullness is founded in him ... everything in heaven and everything on earth" (Colossians1:19-20). Christ, for John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308) was the very first idea in the mind of God, and God has never stopped thinking, dreaming, and creating the Christ. "The immense diversity and pluriformity of this creation more perfectly represents God than any one creature alone or by itself," adds Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) in his Summa Theologica (47:1).
For most of us, this is a significant shaking of our foundational image of the universe and of our religion. Yet if any group should have come to this quite simply and naturally, it should have been the three groups of believers that call themselves "monotheists". Jews, Christians, and Muslims all believe that the world was created by one God. It would seem to follow therefore that everything, everything without exception, would bear the clear imprint and likeness of the one Creator. Doesn't that seem to follow? How could we miss that? After all, we believed that One God created everything out of nothing.
We must realize what a muddle we have got ourselves into by not taking incarnation and the body of God seriously. It is our only Christian trump card, and we have yet to actually play it! As Sally McFague states so powerfully, "salvation is the direction of all of creation, and creation is the very place of salvation." (The Body of God, p. 287) All is God's place, which is our place, which is the only place and every place.
In the 4th century St. Augustine said that "the church consists in the state of communion of the whole world" (Ecclesiam in totius orbis communione consistere). Wherever we are connected, in right relationship, you might say "in love," there is the Christ, the Body of God, and there is the church. But we whittled that Great Mystery down into something small, exclusive, and manageable too. The church became a Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant private club, and not necessarily with people who were "in communion" with anything else, usually not with the natural world, animals, with non-Christians, or even with other Christians outside their own denomination. It became a very tiny salvation, hardly worthy of the name. God was not very victorious at all.
Our very suffering now, our condensed presence on this common nest that we have fouled, will soon be the one thing that we finally share in common. It might well be the one thing that will bring us together. The earth and its life systems on which we all entirely depend (just like God!) might soon become the very thing that will convert us to a simple Gospel lifestyle, to necessary community, and to an inherent and universal sense of the holy.
I know it is no longer words, doctrines, and mental belief systems that can or will reveal the fullness of this Cosmic Christ. This earth indeed is the very Body of God, and it is from this body that we are born, live, suffer, and resurrect to eternal life. Either all is God's Great Project, or we may rightly wonder whether anything is God's Great Project. One wonders if we humans will be the last to accept this.
"From the beginning until now, the entire creation has been groaning in one great act of giving birth, and not only creation, but all of us who possess the first fruits of the Spirit, we also groan inwardly, as we wait for our bodies to be set free" (Romans 8:22-23). It seems that St. Paul is saying here that we human ones might be the last ones to jump aboard God's great plan. There is the groaning of growing in all of creation, and the groaning of resisting and "waiting" in us humans.
All of creation, it seems, has been obedient to its destiny, "each mortal thing does one thing and the same ... myself it speaks and spells, crying 'What I do is me, for that I came'" (Gerard Manley Hopkins, When Kingfishers Catch Fire). Wouldn't it be our last and greatest humiliation, surely the "first being last," (Matt. 20:16) if we one day realized that all other creatures have obeyed their destiny unblinkingly and with trustful surrender. Watch the plants and animals!
It is only humans who have resisted "the one great act of giving birth," and in fact have frequently chosen death for themselves and for so many others.
Radical Grace, April-May-June, Volume 23, Number 2, 2010. Used with permission.
Fr. Richard Rohr: Mysticism In Religion: Three Ways to View the Sunset
Christian mysticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Welcome to the Center for Action and Contemplation - Integrating a ...
We Taoist call it the Tao, the way of nature, simply that. Call it what you want(God, Creator, Supreme One, Great Spirit, Tao), all our words are part of the "Illusion", for it truly has no name. Our minds are part of the "Illusion" also. Yet we can learn to think with our spirit mind, as those of old did. When we go within, in the silence, it can be found.
A journey of a thousand miles, begins with the first step !
In each life we can advance our spiritual mind, to the point, that there is no separation. Like the Masters of old, one learns to ride the waves, life after life in the unending stream of that which is.
As deep as one can go within ones body/mind, and as far as you can travel into the abyss of deep space, you reach the same point...
On the "Illusion" Lao Tzu said: "The five colours blind the eye, the five tones deafen the ear, the five flavors dull the palate, and the five physical sensations confuse the mind, and make us act like animals".
While we exist in this realm, these things(senÂsations)seÂem real, in the transitionÂ, we forget what which was before, that which is permanent.
So the temporal realm seems real, and it's pleasures seem vast, yet they are shallow, when compared to our original state, that which we have forgotten.Â(A Master once said, every second in Heaven, is like 10 million orgasms)Â. It is not to be taken literally, it's just an example.
But inevitably it breaks down, no matter how well you took care of your vehicle, like any vehicle, it will eventually die ! Then you will go and buy a new car, and start the same cycle again.
Your "body" is your vehicle at this time, in the this physical realm, in this universe. Your body houses your "spirit"(that which is Immortal). Your body is composed of all the elements, that make up all we see, taste and touch.
This "universe" is your is your vehicle at this time, in the this physical realm, in this universe, and is composed of all the elements, that make up all we see, taste and touch.
Like all things observed in nature, in the universe, there are cycles. Day and night, the coming and going of the four seasons, activity and rest, inhaling, exhaling, Yin and Yang and the like. Where every we look we see cycles, and there is nowhere, they cannot be found.
Your "spirit" goes through innumerable bodies and forms. Yet it is a vehicle, and will wear down. But Don't Worry. You Get New Vehicle !
But folly comes when you are born, we forget what was before, so we believe that this realm is real, and it seems real. We get lost in the "Illusion" and think it's real, seduced by the physical body/mind and universe. We exist for but brief occurrences, coming and going like ocean tides.
The Absolute, in a sudden and tremendous desire to know itself, divided itself from non-existeÂnce in a cataclysmiÂc event resulting in endless cause and effect--an event that neatly parallels the so-called Big Bang Theory. Instantly, space was formed and time began, and two charged states came into being, yin (negative) and yang (positive)Â.
As a result of the complementÂary polarity of yin and yang, matter and energy, that were at first undifferenÂtiated, separated and regrouped into the physical reality that became our universe.
Huai Nau Tzu
: )
It embodies the conviction that belief in God is a matter of supposing there to be, above and beyond the familiar world with all its furniture, one more big and powerful thing!
This would, presumably, be the case if God were a material object of any sort, a structure with parts, an organism with a very powerful brain: If, indeed, He was part of His own Universe.
Which is just why one of the most outstanding theologians in the 20th century, Nicholas Lash in His book Theology for Pilgrims, wrote that it was precisely the reason we have worked out in the centuries that great anecdote to all Pantheism, "the protocols against Idolatry".
Central to this protocol is the insistence, not so much how God is, but How God is NOT.It is the theological critique of Idolatry: the relentless denying of God everything that is inappropriate, everything that is characteristic of things in the material world, and, above all, that God belongs to ANY CATEGORY OF KIND, even the category of substance, indeed, that God, in short, is an object of any kind!
And this was true until God took created form in order to create, and then took human form in order to redeem.
whatever is behind it
it is genius AND
infinite and eternal
gotta have respect and reverence for that.
absolutely.
just because i'm impressed doesn't mean you have to be.
God became Father and Mother, an son, are within every man, the human father to conceive and give birth to the Son and Holy Beings is HOLY when in possession of HER OR HIS humanity Spirit. And so God formed the "primordial womb' from, gave birth to the IMAGE and likeness of Godself. God is ONE. Make HER, wisdom, your friend. No one will know the living Father apart the mother for it is SHE who shows us the FACE of our Father.
God is alien in this world. World of shadows, dim lights, false deceptions.
You see, I am a woman, but see I am a man and I am a woman and I am neither man nor woman. You go looking for the annointed, but do not see. So long as you are looking, you will not see. When your seeking comes to an end you will find. When Angels leads us out of the corruption of the world, do not turn towards the world again. Lot's wife did, looked upon the dead, destroyed, do not look back.