Holy Week - Christ as Savior ... of How Much?

This Lent we have been looking at the relationships between the Three (the Trinity). Today's post reflects a bit more on one of the Three: Christ. This being Holy Week, I thought it appropriate to then look at Jesus the Christ (Christ being a title, remember) and the issue of Salvation. Personally, I become a little nervous when the theological conversation moves to personal salvation. I'm not so much uncomfortable discussing my own salvation: that I understand. I'm quite aware of the places I still need to grown and allow God's grace to help shape me. Frankly, I often find that what I really need "saving" from is myself, and these types of discussions don't help me reduce my own "ego." Maybe its is because of the environments I have lived in for many years (seeing the stars at night, for instance) that I'm reminded of how small I really am. It is the nature of what is left out of the "salvation" discussions that I find difficult, namely all of creation. Yet, Paul especially, constantly writes about how nature is groaning in birth pains at this sense of salvation, in essence, the entire world/cosmos benefits.

 Richard Rohr's post from last week struck me, as I found he deals with this quite elegantly. So, I've decided to share his post with you.

May it give us somethings to reflect upon as we contemplate and celebrate Holy Week to Easter.

Blessed be,

Joel

[By the way, I just discovered that CAC's Daily Meditations are Archived Here.]

From Richard Rohr: Universal Salvation: April 7, 2017

A universal notion of Christ takes mysticism beyond the mere individual and private level that has been seen as mysticism’s weakness. If authentic God experience overcomes the primary false split between yourself and the divine, then it should also overcome the equally false split between yourself and the rest of creation.
For some of us, the first split is overcome personally in an experience of Jesus, but for many others (maybe even most!), union with the divine is first experienced through the Christ: in nature, in moments of pure love, silence, inner or outer music, with animals, awe before beauty, or some kind of “Brother Sun and Sister Moon” experience. Why? Because creation itself is the first incarnation of Christ, the primary and foundational “Bible” that reveals the path to God. The first incarnation of the Christ Mystery started about 13.8 billion years ago at “The Big Bang.” So some start with Jesus, but many who began with the Christ Mystery did not have that experience validated by the Church. They looked secular, humanistic, or like mere “nature mystics.” But God uses and honors all starting points!
Pre-Christian and pre-Jewish people already had access to God. This is the ecclesia ab Abel (“the church that existed since Abel”) that has been spoken of so often by the early church Fathers and in the documents of Vatican II. From the first righteous victim (Genesis 4:10; Matthew 23:35) until now, all suffering cries out to God and elicits divine compassion and community. This is a momentous and universal truth. We are indeed “saved” inside the Christ Mystery since the beginning of consciousness. Only in eventual time did this community take the form of “church.”
So we are called to love both Jesus and Christ. You can begin with either Jesus or Christ, but eventually it is easiest to love both. Too many Christians have started and stopped with Jesus, never knowing the universal Christ. Many non-Christians have started with loving the Christ by another name. I have met Hindus, Muslims, and Jews who live in this hidden mystery of oneness; and I have met many Roman Catholics and Protestants who are running away from the Christ Mystery, as either practical materialists or pious spiritualists.
Tertullian (160–225), who is called “the father of Western theology,” rightly taught that “the flesh is the hinge of salvation” (Caro salutis est cardo). [1] The incarnation of flesh and Spirit is Christianity’s most important contribution to spirituality, and this is the meaning of “The Christ,” although you do not need to name it as such.
Now “the world, life and death, the present and the future are all your servants, for you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God” (1 Corinthians 3:22-23). Full salvation is finally universal belonging and universal connecting. Our Christian word for that is “heaven.” This is why Jesus can say to a man dying in time, “This day you are with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). The Christ is now, here, everywhere, and always.
Gateway to Silence:
In Christ, with Christ, through Christ
References:
[1] Tertullian, De resurrectione carnis (Treatise on the Resurrection), 8, 2.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media: 2014), 223-226.

Trinity as Relationship

This morning I'm with one of my kids experiencing a college campus. It is hard to believe I've gotten to this point in parenting, but there we are. What strikes me walking around this morning are the relationships. Of course we humans are relational creatures. I have even read social scientists who posit that the reason we look back at our "college" days with such fondness, is because that is the way we are supposed to live. That we humans are supposed to live in connection with one another (and the cosmos, and the divine!). It is often in college that we "find" our life work, or passion. There is a sense of excited beginnings.
Isn't that what the Trinity is about, too? The excited relationships between the Three call us into relationship, too. These Three aren't done with the creating yet either. I'll leave you with these quotes:
John 3:17; John 5:17; and John 14:26
"God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved."
"My Father goes on working, and so do I."
"The Holy Spirit ... will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you."

Blessed be,
Joel

Welcome Home

[Sorry I didn't post something yesterday. I just realized that today is Thursday. It has been a week of fullness. Hopefully this finds your week blessed, too.]

I've been pondering how easy it is to become disconnected from nature when we humans now are considered urban creatures. (I believe it has been in the last ten years that somewhere a few more humans in the world wandered into a city to live that pushed us, as a species, over the border, as it were, from a rural to an urban population.) When we don't experience any wildness, how does that effect our understanding of ourselves, our place in the universe, who God is, our relation to the natural world ... ?

And yet, we long for wildness, in some carefully crafted safe way, because we add parks to our cities. There is a deep seated longing for the wild.

If we are disconnected from nature (or at least are unaware of our connection) how does that impact our countries' policies toward preserving natural "resources" (a biased word?); our companies' policies of extraction; our citizens' choices regarding climate change; or our religions' beliefs about salvation?

"In God we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28) implies that the entire cosmos somehow exists within God. Ephesians puts this a little differently: "There is one God and Creator of all, who is over all, who works through all, and is within all" (Ephesians 4:6).

What if we took this seriously in a deep trinitarian way: celebrating the relationships (or the "web of being") that connect us all?

The crazy thing is that such an idea is in no way new within Christianity. Listen to how Richard Rohr speaks about Bonaventure  (1221 - 1274):

Bonaventure took Francis of Assisi’s lay intuitive genius and spelled it out in an entire philosophy and theology. He wrote: “The magnitude of things . . . clearly manifests . . . the wisdom and goodness of the triune God, who by power, presence and essence exists uncircumscribed in all things.” [1] God is “within all things but not enclosed; outside all things, but not excluded; above all things, but not aloof; below all things, but not debased.” [2] Bonaventure spoke of God as one “whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” [3] Therefore the origin, magnitude, multitude, beauty, fullness, activity, and order of all created things are the very “footprints” and “fingerprints” (vestigia) of God. Now that is quite a lovely and very safe universe to live in. Welcome home!

Are you ready to celebrate being home? 

Blessed be,
Joel

_____________
Quote is from Rohr's Daily Meditations for 30 March 2017.

[1] Bonaventure, Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey to God, I, 14, trans. Ewert Cousins (Paulist Press: 1978), 65.
[2] Ibid., 5, 8, 100-101.
[3] Ibid., 5, 8, 100.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, “The Great Chain of Being,” Radical Grace, Vol 20 No 2 (CAC: 2007).

Joining the Creative Dance of the Universe

Over this last week I've been reflecting upon Cynthia Bourgeault's notion of the Law of Three  (or the ternary workings of the universe). In particular I've been pondering those times in my life where I have felt the most alive and "connected" to that Great Source of Being.

It turns out that at least two things have been present (and I'm looking for a third): a sense of creativity, and a sense of play. The more I sit in reflection about this, the more I'm becoming convinced that the/a third element is the physical body connection. For the Hebrew Bible/Old Treatment Tradition, the body was a good thing; this wasn't the case for the Platonic Ideals (in which all bodies fell short of the Ideal Body).

What has continued to sit with me are some of the following images: "A ternary system [being] asymmetrical and innovative ... corkscrews its way through time, matter, form—whatever plane is at hand—in a riot of uncertainty and new combinations, the whole of which is the fullness of divine reality";* "For the late theologian Beatrice Bruteau (1930-2014), the Trinity is first and foremost an image of relational unity. The three “God-persons in community,” as she sees it, comprise the prototype and the prerequisite for the expression of agape love—the energy of the Godhead itself. Bruteau builds a detailed case for why threefoldness is the necessary condition for agape love. She goes on to demonstrate why threefoldness is by nature “ecstatic” or, in other words, self-giving and generative. By its very threefoldness, it “breaks symmetry” (a term borrowed from quantum mechanics) and projects the agape love outward, calling new forms of being into existence, each of which bears the imprint of the original symbiotic unity that created it. “It is the presence of the Trinity as a pattern repeated at every scale of the cosmic order,” she believes, “that makes the universe a manifestation of God and itself sacred and holy.”** and "Understood within the context of a universe in motion, and with the Law of Three as its template, the Trinity becomes a dynamic mandala of God’s ongoing creativity in an evolving universe. It becomes, in fact, the evolutionary principle. The Trinity as a symbol of relationship invites us to trust the relationality of nature itself and to reconsider what we understand about the very nature of love. It is no longer a pre-existent “property” of God, but an emergent property of the whole of creation, joined in that divine dance."***

Where and when do you going yourself fully "connected"?

Blessed be,
Joel

____________

*Adapted from Cynthia Bourgeault, The Shape of God: Deepening the Mystery of the Trinity, disc 2 (CAC: 2004), CD, DVD, MP3 download; and
The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three (Shambhala Publications, Inc.: 2013), 6, 64-65, 81. (See Richard Rohr's Mediation for 3/15/2017).
**Beatrice Bruteau, God’s Ecstasy: The Creation of a Self-Creating World (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 14. (See Richard Rohr's Mediation for 3/14/2017).
***Adapted from Cynthia Bourgeault, “Trinity: The Evolutionary Principle of Unfolding Creativity,” The Mendicant, Vol. 7 No. 1 (CAC: 2017), 1, 5. (See Richard Rohr's Mediation for 3/14/2017).

Reality in Nature

     Over this past weekend my daughters celebrated a friend's birthday. Their friend had just put together a Virtual Reality (VR) system. They were amazed at what it could do, and how their bodies were "tricked" by what they saw. As a for instance: one of my daughters enjoyed playing fetch with a virtual dog. However, when she went to walk outside the other side of the house, she noticed she was standing on a porch. Below the porch there was blackness. Did that mean shadow? Did that mean a drop off a cliff? She knew she was in her friend's room, but she couldn't force herself to step off the porch.
     All in all, my daughters were amazed, but also left pondering the uses/misuses of VR. I think they have read too many sci-fi books (i.e. Ender's Game) and may have listened to their Dad's thinking. The friend's Dad jokingly made the comment, "I hope this doesn't mean my child stops going skiing with me because s/he is now Olympic quality on VR!"
     Which brings me to the questions of this post: what is the nature of reality? How do we stay engaged in that Reality? How do our thoughts of reality make a difference in what we see?
     If you haven't been reading Richard Rohr's Meditations over the last few weeks, I think your missing out on some good content. This week Cynthia Bourgeault has been a guest writer continuing to reflect upon the Trinity as a source of Reality. What has particularly caught my attention is Bourgeault's statement that the Trinity is inviting us out of a binary world view and into a creative, invigorating and innovative ternary. "Ternary systems have three independent forces coming together to form something new, a fourth thing."
     Imagine the potentials here? What would it mean if we'd been tricking ourselves all along (like a good VR game) about the binary nature of reality. What if Realty was really ternary?
     Enjoy your ponderings.

Blessed be,
Joel

Micro and Macro Ponderings

I've started reading Richard Rohr's new book on the Trinity (Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House: 2016).

Did your eyes glaze over? Sorry, that wasn't the response I was hoping for. I don't mean to engage you in a long theological argument, but rather draw your attention into both the microscopic and macroscopic worlds (and everything in between).

The Trinity has to deal with these worlds because the one reflects the other. The Trinity is ultimately about relationship: the three persons are in interaction with one another; they outpour love one to another; they depend upon the others to fill them back up again, only so they can outpour once more;  they are diverse, yet cherish that very diversity; ... On a microscopic level isn't this what happens within atoms and between molecules? What about on the macroscopic level? Aren't we discovering that universe operates in relation with other universes?

It definitely happens on the human level: we are retational beings.

But what does this say about the church; about how we are to relate to the world?

So this week in Lent I marvel and ponder the implications, all the while relating. May it be so with you also.

Blessed be,
Joel

Ash Wednesday Reflection - 2017

A blessed Ash Wednesday to each of you.

While I was in Tokyo with the Blaine Wind Ensemble, we visited the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (as I mentioned in my last post). One of the interesting exhibits was on global issues facing future generations (including ours?). The exhibit focused upon the choices we have and how they effect the future. What I thought was interesting was the time spent distinguishing between "forecasting" and "backcasting". "Forecasting" gets the most press in the United States. To forecast, we extrapolate current conditions adding/multiplying (depending upon the case) a rate of change allowing us to predict (often quite accurately) what will happen. Backcasting moves in the other direction. What kind of future do we want? What type of future is beneficial? Backcasting then asks, "how do we get there?" Backcasting is goal oriented.

What does this have to do with Lent? Rather than just giving something up for Lent, why not practice backcasting?

These are but an example of the type of questions backcasting asks. What would it mean if our investments aligned with our values/kin(g)dom of God? What does a healthy mind, body and spirit look like, and what steps to I need to put into place to get there? If I truly want to lower my carbon footprint, can I continue to sail in this really light wind (challenging myself in the process)? Do I need to drive, couldn't I walk or bike instead?

So rather than give something up for Lent, I'm going to try using backcasting as a spiritual discipline. Who knows, maybe by the time we reach Easter the process will become a spiritual habit.

Blessed Be,

Joel

Below is my Ash Wednesday Service for those of you apart from a church community this Ash Wednesday.

GREETING:
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
And also with you.
Bless the Lord who forgives all our sins.
God’s mercy endures forever.

OPENING PRAYER   (from the United Methodist Hymnal #353)
O God,
maker of every thing and judge of all that you have made,
from the dust of the earth you have formed us
and from the dust of death you would raise us up.
By the redemptive power of the cross,
create in us clean hearts
and put within us a new spirit,
that we may repent of our sins
and lead lives worthy of your calling;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

SCRIPTURE:
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Psalm 51 (#785 in the UMC Hymnal)
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

INVITATION TO THE OBSERVANCE OF LENTEN DISCIPLINE
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:
the early Christians observed with great devotion
the day of our Lord's passion and resurrection,
and it became the custom of the Church that before the Easter celebration
there should be a forty-day season of spiritual preparation.
During this season converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism.
It was also a time when persons who had committed serious sins
and had separated themselves from the community of faith
  were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness,
and restored to participation in the life of the Church.
In this way the whole congregation was reminded
of the mercy and forgiveness proclaimed in the gospel of Jesus Christ
  and the need we all have to renew our faith.
I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church,
to observe a holy Lent:
by self-examination and repentance;
by prayer, fasting, and self-denial;
and by reading and meditation on God's Holy  Word.
To make a right beginning of repentance,
and as a mark of our mortal nature,
let us now kneel (or bow) before our Creator and Redeemer.

(a brief silence is kept)

THANKSGIVING OVER THE ASHES
Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth.
Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence,
so that we may remember that only by your gracious gift
  are we given everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

IMPOSITIONS OF THE ASHES
(as people come forward, a leader dips a thumb in the ashes and makes
a cross on the forehead of each person saying:
  Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

THE LORD’S PRAYER

DISMISSAL WITH A BLESSING