the crucible of crucifixion

This question appeared to me this morning, as it has before, but this morning it appeared with special urgency. Why does the son of God have to be crucified? (I refer here to the Christian story, though other, and to me less powerful, examples exist.)

Crucifixion is a definition of achieving form. Coming into form is crucifixion. When the Formless becomes form, the Formless is nailed to the spot. We are talking about you here. And me. And all of us. We speak not only of one forming of the Formless. All of creation moans and groans in its birthing,

Why does the son of God, the offspring of God, have to be despised, abandoned, rejected, left for dead? And then spring forth in glorious rebirth? For the crucifixion story is a resurrection story. The Formless forms, the form feels totally abandoned by the Formless. The form discovers the Formless within itself and is resurrected, is twice born. Why does the son of God have to be crucified? Why does a seed have to fall into the ground and die?

when our box is opened

We know that "a thing isn't true unless there is someone to observe it is true" (a la Schrodinger and his cat). We also know that expected results produce those desired results (scientific experiments have to build in safeguards against experimenter expectancy effects).

What we may not have considered is that if we take the position of the cat in the box and we believe there is a Being that opens the box, when our box is opened (what we call death), the Being is there. If we believe there is nothing there, when our box opens, that is what we find.

The dance we dance now (or at moment of box opening) keeps on dancing. We will continue to be proven right, products of our own self-fulfilling prophecy.


(Thanks to Mary Doria Russell, Children of God, for the cat-perspective insight.)

seeing

Plato (427-347 B.C.) wrote "For there is no light of justice or temperance or any of the higher ideas which are precious to souls in the earthly copies of them: they are seen through a glass dimly."

Paul (5-67 A.D. or C.E.) wrote "For now we see through a glass darkly."

One might easily make the case that Paul, who was a learned man, knew Greek, and was immersed in the theophilosophical consciousness of the time, was influenced by Plato. Plato's apt metaphor of seeing "through a glass dimly" thus appears in the Bible.

For many, this is of no or little interest or import. For others, engaged in anti-Christian, anti-Bible polemics, this is additional fodder for their anti-canon cannons.

For me, it is a further understanding and confirmation of how ideas, once born into this world, are here to stay and to unfold in the minds of others. And more than that, it gives me even greater respect for Plato who provided great insights and vast room for those who were to come after him.

He wrote this: "For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason, -- this is the recollection of those things which our soul once saw while following God -- when regardless of that which we now call being she raised her head up towards the true being. And therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings; and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is."

"And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired."

May we all have the mind of a philosopher. May our minds have wings. May we all be continuously inspired.

the cosmic pause

"When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound, and time shall be no more." Though this old hymn was written by a Methodist Sunday School teacher (in 1893), we Baptists sang it anyway. After all, the Methodists were mistaken in only a few doctrinal points.

The reference, of course, is to certain passages in the Bible, my favorite among them being "Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." (1 Corinthians 15:51-52 -- see also Matthew 24, I Thessalonians 4, and Revelations 8 and 11)

The trumpet sound and the abolition of time is not just a Christian understanding. The Islamic mystics had (have) similar insights. For example, Shaikh Ahmad Ahsa'i (1753 - 1826) wrote about "the time of the cosmic pause marking the interval between the two blasts of Seraphiel's Trumpet. When Seraphiel causes the Trumpet to vibrate with 'fiery blast,' which is the 'breath of universal reabsorption,' every Spirit is drawn in, reabsorbed in the particular 'hole' in the Trumpet which is its matrix." -- Henry Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, p. 198-199. (Note: Seraphiel is an angel known as "The Guardian of the Throne of God.")

Not only am I continuously struck by the common vision of mystics across cultures, religions, and countries, but by this entire line of thought about the sounding of the trumpet and the cosmic pause.

If you take the time, you will notice there is a pause between your outbreathing and your inbreathing. This is analogous to the cosmic pause. Our Source brought all into existence and continues to do so by an Outbreathing. At some point, there will be a Pause. Followed by an Inbreathing.

The sounding of the Trumpet indicates that we will be notified of this Pause rather abruptly.

(Another Note: If you don't like mythopoetic language, you might translate this scenario into the language of a hardcore materialistic worldview. All that is matter will at some point cease to matter.)

death

As I move further along the actuarial table. a life insurance monetary scheme in which one bets how long one is to live (I have no life insurance -- I have death assurance), I become more friendly with death. I have come to realize that I am death and life is my companion. I have no "death" to die. Death is the Unborn and life is its creation. Death is the unconscious from which all creativity springs -- springs into the light of day.

Death is no foe. Death is who we are. We are the Unborn reaching into, manifesting as the Born.  "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" (I Corinthians 15:55) Death has no sting and the grave no victory because we have no death to die. We are death.

The surface consciousness ( what I call the WalMart consciousness) will not understand this. The surface consciousness insists that it is everything, knows it is not, and seeks to continue existence. It wishes to remain a happy little separative metaphysical chunk and go on forever. Death frightens the shit out of it. And rightly so, because it does have a death to die.

thankful

Whatever your thoughts on the matter, Jesus's suffering helped free millions from suffering. What a blessing! Stomp your feet all you want and curl your lip in derision. The fact remains.

Whatever your thoughts on the matter, Buddha's awakening helped millions to move out of stupor. What a blessing! Grind your teeth and squint your eyes all you want. The fact remains.

Whatever your thoughts on the matter, Lao Tzu's writings set millions free from rigid mindset. What a blessing! Snurl your nose and waggle your ears all you want. The fact remains.

knocking at the door of the unborn

It is interesting to me that Bonaventure (1221 - 1274), an Italian Christian scholastic mystic, and Bankei (1622 - 1693), a Japanese Zen master, advocated similar understandings of the Source of all being as the Unborn.

Bonaventure wrote and spoke of the innascibility (incapable of being born) of God and Bankei spent his Zen "career" pointing folk to awareness of the Unborn Buddha-mind. Both spoke of the Unborn as birthing all born. That which cannot assume form births that which can and does.

Each, of course, uses the language available to him and the consciousness structure of the populace to whom they speak.

Bonaventure develops the concept of the Trinity: the Father (the Unborn) births the Son (the Born) through the generative powers of the Spirit (the LifeForce). He addresses both scholastics and mystics (direct experiencers).

Bankei continuously invites Buddhist folk to open beyond ordinary consciousness to the realm of the Unborn. He does this in a characteristic Zen way by direct pointing to a crow cawing, a sparrow chirping, or the wind rustling the leaves.

I greatly appreciate the way universal truths emerge across cultures and time and spiritual pathways.

room

You will forever know the only Self to which you allow room. To know the Transcendent, you must be capable of the Transcendent. Capable means to have capacity, to be capacious. To know the Transcendent, you must have capacity for the Transcendent. If you only have room for your manufactured sense of self, you will not know the Transcendent. Fortunately, the Transcendent has a way of knocking at the door of the heart, hoping the door will open. Lovers and followers of the Transcendent have a wide open heart door. You will forever know the only Self to which you allow room.

inclusion

An exclusivist stance in one's religion is where one believes that one's spiritual path is the only and true spiritual path and that all other spiritual paths are false and wrong. This is human nature. We each develop ground to stand on and then have a tendency to think that if all others stood on similar ground, their problems would be solved.

An exclusivist stance takes it a step or two further: all others SHOULD take this stance and this stance only. The richness and complexity of life SHOULD follow a single track. All eggs SHOULD be put into one basket and that basket is mine.

We all know the abuses that have followed that stance in Christianity. Lands claimed, people slaughtered, children taken from their homes and forbidden to speak their native tongue, and so on. Though the outward abuse has died down considerably, the attitude amongst exclusivists is still the same: I am going to heaven and you are going to hell.

As a cosmotheandric zen baptist, I take an inclusive stance. We are all members of the Navel Tribe. We all arise out of the Great Mystery we call by many names. Each individual is at a certain level of understanding, of awareness. Each of us is an embodying of the Mystery. The Mystery has birthed us, is birthing us, and the Mystery will take us home.

neo-zoroastrians

In founding the religion of Christianity, Paul and his followers cast it in the mold of the religion of Zoroaster (600+ BCE)-- light versus darkness, good versus evil, earthlings who are either light beings or dark beings dependent on their choice, a good god and a bad devil, a forecast end of the world or aeon by fire, the capture of the bad devil and the tossing of him and his followers into the abyss of hell, the reigning of the children of light on earth and then in heaven where they will be in bliss forever.

Either Paul was very clever or there are forces at work here beneath and beyond ordinary consciousness and continuing to pop up in different clothing. I suspect both are true.

I am amused to think that today's Christians are in one sense neo-Zoroastrians. Nothing wrong with that. Just funny. But then I seem to have a strange sense of humor.

protestant

I come from a long line of protestants and am a protestant of protestantism. The protest must arise anew with each protestant. "You must be born again." And again and again. One must protest the immediately preceding protest and then protest that. Where does one stop? Where life stops. Life is reborn each moment. As far as religious dogma goes, this makes one a sort of heavenly hellion. One is "playing ball on running water."

when the knees hit the chin

When we make the temporal our temple, we have short-sheeted our cosmic bed.

trance end

A major trap in christianity is the worship of Jesus. One is then let off the hook as far as any major change in self. The way out of this glorified confinement is to BE LIKE  Jesus, a son or daughter of the cosmos in tune with and relying solely on the in-spire-ation of That-Which-Breathes-Us. To do so one must develop and allow great capacity. This requires going out of one's chatter-brain. It seems much easier to be a chatter-brained Jesus worshiper than to be a spiritual sibling of Jesus. All one has to do is keep attending the club and having confidence that one is saved (whatever that means). To live as an offspring of the Wellspring requires that one be totally lost. And to never ever be found again.

consciousness states

All theology and philosophy is a depiction of the theologian's or philosopher's state of consciousness. A particular state of consciousness is then adopted by its followers as the supreme or only state of consciousness worthy of opening into. If one's consciousness is then expanded, the experience is often called "salvation" or "enlightenment." Disillusion with a state of consciousness is called disenchantment and one seeks one's enchantment elsewhere.

the foot of the heart

IF we keep dreaming we are the way we are, we will remain as we are. AS we keep dreaming we are the way we are, we remain as we are. This has nothing to do with "advancing one's career" or "dreaming big." This is no motivational seminar. It has everything to do with soul.

It takes effort to keep dreaming the same dream of oneself, to keep wearing the same set of psychic clothes. Revving up and adding more serves only to decrease and weigh one down.

When you know who you are, you will laugh at how you tried to shape yourself. Wake up, my dear! The foot of the heart will not slip into that too small shoe.

possibles

"All things are possible with God." True. But with us individuals, possibility depends upon and takes shape through our latent predisposition and our capacity to receive. Who we are is an unfolding of a strand of the Web of Being from infinite eternity. Each strand proceeding from the infinite past has/is a fated disposition.

We move within the range of our predisposition. Capacity is capaciousness or room for possibility. Our capacity fluctuates with our mood and with our will. The will to be capacious is the willingness to be a servant of the Divine, the will to be of service. With this willingness comes all possibility.

a whup-ass loving heart

I like it that Jesus could whup anybody's ass but generally chose not to, becoming a servant instead. He could stand up on his hind legs though, go toe to toe with cunning intellectual bozos looking to make him stumble and fall. Jesus knew the spiritual equivalent of a body slam.

So you have this warrior dude who chose peace.

We have the same elements within us. We can easily be at war with ourselves, at war with our loved ones, at war with society. But that's sooo one-sided. We can also be peaceniks with fluttering hearts and little angel wings and tire tracks across our face where others (with our blessings)run over us. But that's sooo one-sided.

A flaming sword of fiery light at the core of a wide open heart: that's how I experience Jesus. No mild-mannered lamb led to slaughter. A loving heart with fierceness of intent. My role model.

My prayer and my practice are the same:
to be a whup-ass loving heart.

water game

We pour the water we are into ice trays.
We want a frame, to be held.
We get rigid.
We put our cubed self
into a glass of water.
Ah! we say.
Now I am both contained and free!
We happily forget the glass.
We take a sip of ourselves
via our metaphysical creed.
Oh, how good we taste!

tossing the baby

Literal christianity is a stumbling block. Mystical or depth christianity is another matter. To throw that baby out with the literal bathwater is an error and ultimately not possible. One may as well try to throw out the writings of Lao Tzu and the Tao because taoism exists. Or trash the Heart Sutra and the "body of transformation" because of buddhist sects. The baby concealed within the depths of christianity is transformational, an open door to regeneration and renewal. It has been clouded over with exclusivism and doctrinal rant. Poof! I blow away those obscurations and sink more deeply into the richness of christianity's deep meanings.

freed

"... permitting the soul thus to free itself from all the schemata of the world." Henry Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital

At some point, each of us will breath out and not breathe back in. This last outbreath is a prayer with no words, a returning of our breath to the one who breathes us. This is done with joy, with awe, and with a smile. We practice this with our outbreath now, preparing for the moment when we need our breath no longer.

no bounds

I love the breath that breathes me.

When I love the breath that breathes me,
I become the breath that breathes me.

When I become the breath that breathes me,
all boundaries fall away.

extrusion and exclusion

If you believe your god is the only god, you are automatically at war. Never mind that you say your god is love.

love and evol

As a holy joe, you are a schmo.
Sinking into dark, you are a snark.

Jesus and Beelzebub are brothers,
Chasing round and round that tree
Until melding into pancake butter.

Now that takes the cake!
Battered and buttered,
we make our way.

gone, gone, gone beyond, gone way beyond

Christianity as a method of salvation loses all its efficacy as a method when that method becomes a reality. Once one leaps from a springboard (the method), one no longer needs the springboard. One is in and one is the reality one was springing for. To go back and get the springboard is foolishness. One does not sit and worship the springboard.

In another but similar context, the Buddha said when you get to the other shore, you don't carry the boat around atop your head. Once the method has become a reality, one no longer needs that method. One is no longer a Christian, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Whatever. One exists as the reality for which one was springing.

no theocracy

"The color of water is the color of its vessel." (Junayd, 10th century)

Water also assumes the form of its vessel. Hence, the great differences among religions, philosophies, and thought systems, and among the individuals within each of those consciousness systems.

Same water. Different colors. Different forms.

I reckon the Great Ah-Hoo-Ah-Hoo-Ah did not desire to set up a state religion. The Theos wants no theocracy.

two tines tuning

The tuning fork that we are consists of one tine of pure animal and one tine of pure spirit. The call is for both tines to vibrate fully, openly, and simultaneously. Trying to be a "respectable" animal will not and does not work. Nor does constricting one's soul for fear of full flow-through of spirit.

Animal awareness and spiritual awareness are different from shrivel-ized awareness. The first two see (and exist in) full Being. The latter, the state of ordinary consciousness, vibrates hesitantly and weakly and resides in death.

Fully animal and fully spirit simultaneously: this is the way to fly. We are embodyings of spirit. We are spirit embodying. We are these two simultaneously.

What is the sound of two tines tuning?

the realm of the highest human endeavor

1. The Not-Even-One, the One, and the dualistic Two which we embody ("on the one hand and on the other hand") merge to make the Three, this interwhirling we call life. 
2. General consciousness dwells in and as the dualistic two. 
3. Intuitive awareness opens to and as the Three. 
4. The Not-Even-One can be felt as, through the Three, one approaches the One. 
5. The Three is the realm of the highest human endeavor. 
6. Opening to and as the Three consists of one part attitude and three parts Grace.
7. Humility, will, faith, intellect, and love make up the attitude. The Grace is free.

trinity

0 - wu- nothing - source - father/mother
1 - yu - something - emanation - son/daughter
2 - t'ai - everything - interflow - holy spirit/chi

3 - wu-yu-t'ai - trinity - perichoresis

easter

I love Easter. Life arising out of Death. All of Nature displaying this pattern mysterious yet familiar. Famil-iar: in the Family. Even and especially our very God, Source and Wellspring of All, volunteering to go through this Recycle to show Us how It is Done.

without sin

"Sin" is not a popular term and is open to ridicule by those who reject an out-moded Christian paradigm based on guilt. To me, sin is still a viable concept and useful construct, but in the emerging cosmic citizenry paradigm (which includes Christianity), it is defined more realistically. No longer are we penitents flogging ourselves with penance nor the rebellious daring all blaspheme -- two categories of being which the old conception of sin produced in abundance.

Sin is separation. Sin is cutting oneself off from one's full being. Rather than opening to cosmic citizenry and full participation in the interflow of being, one shuts oneself down, proclaims oneself a separate tiny kingdom, refuses to open to the synchronous and the synthronous.

I know. Folk are fond of saying that sin means "missing the mark." Same thing. Separation. Separation from the mark. The shot arrow thunks off target or off bulls-eye.

When we are no longer whining petitioners or rebellious buttheads but actively involved as cosmic citizens (in Christian language, Christ consciousness), we are no longer separate. We have opened into a realm that is without sin. Our Source is within us and we are within our Source. We do not stand aside to look at It. We are It. And It is us.

excerpt from the anthropological study of phenomenological endeavor

"He said hello to the Morning Jesus. The Morning Jesus is calm and bright, good sunshine colors. Humorous, the Morning Jesus is humorous, laughter in his heart. Not like the Evening Jesus who is blue and silver. The Evening Jesus descends on him like a cloud of dreamful sleep." (From the Anthropological Study of Phenomenological Endeavor)

humus humor human

Humans: a cosmic experiment whose outcome is yet to be known, except by the Great Ah-Hoo-Ah-Hoo-Ah whose end is only a fresh beginning and whose beginning never was.

amniotic sac

Self-reflection: absorption in the echoes bouncing off the thin, tough, and shifting membrane of the imagination.

heart and sole

Heart in the cosmos,
feet in the world of men,
I make my coffee,
I dance and sing.

the preachers of yore

The preachers of yore, of my childhood, whether on Sunday or one of those hot eternal Revival summer nights, would get up in the pulpit, the cockpit of the church, and give chase to that same old fox, the fox without which those little churches would not exist.

He, the preacher was always a he, a woman could play the piano but not preach, he would unleash the ravenous hounds of hell, fangs dripping with fox-ripping saliva, followed closely by the four apocalyptic horsemen thundering on fox-stomping hooves. The fox? Well, it was you, of course. You that put Jesus on the cross. You that killed the only beauty in the cosmos. And the hounds of hell were breathing down your neck and if they didn't finish you off, the horsemen would stomp your sweet ass to nothingness, are already stomping.

I learned a lot from those preachers. I learned the power of imagery, of story, of mythology. I learned the power of words. I learned the power of rhythmic repetition, of a speaking cadence that caught folk and bound them into one attentive ear. I learned the power of creative imagination and its effect upon the physiology, of creating images that lead one from heart-pounding stress and ache to soothing waters of eternal bliss.

We might leave church and revert to our worldly ways but for an hour or so we were tightly knit as one body and the world made sense and our sins were forgiven and life was good.

A salute to you old preachers and revivalists! Masters of your art! My first tutors.

the eternal pacman

I am
the Eternal PacMan
chomping life
while monsters chase.

A golden sun
with pie wedge mouth
devouring all before me
monster in disguise.

The monsters are hungry suns
floating down thin corridors
to have their turn
at chomp . . .

circumincessio

the rooster crowing
the hen clucking

the flower opening
the corpse rotting

the lotus blooming
the root mucking

the spirit fleshing
the matter at rest

I Am This
The Eternal Interplaying

jingo

When we say
it's this or that
we've now shat
in our own hat.

When we say
it's them or us
we've become
a spiteful cuss.

When we say
it's mine or mine
we believe
we're now divine.

on heaven and hell

Early thought was that hell existed below (beneath the earth) and heaven existed above (in the sky). That gave way to a belief that both heaven and hell are inside of us. Now we open to the understanding that we are embodyings of the cosmos. We are the universe universing. Where does that put heaven and hell? Hell is when we continue to encapsulate ourselves in our seed husks while being pulled to open and flower. Heaven is when we open to the flowering of the universe that we are and move beyond the shuffling zombie existence of a  seed refusing to die and be born.

night words

These words came this night: "If you wish to be a Christ-ian, you must achieve the point of view of Christ. Your soul is your point of view."

science and awareness

I am amused that science is proud of its hard-headedness in relying upon data, then engages a mooshy-headedness in explaining that data.

Take a step back from science and you will see that it is so: there is data and there is story.

And furthermore, he said, rolling back his sleeves, only certain kinds and types of data are admitted. Bias is already built into the system.

When certain kinds of data are not admitted, the story is stunted, the bed we lie in short-sheeted.

But ha! some of you may say, rushing to extol the virtues of science and all its benefits. Never mind that. I know, I know. I simply point to its shortcomings.

thy grace

I struggle to rise
from the mud I am,

making a cup for
receiving thy grace.

The cup becomes a chalice,
thy wine inpouring.

Chalice, wine merge
cup and spirit as one.

We laugh
arms around shoulders
and walk together drunk.

the first and second birth

The first birth is into the world of matter, where one is a 25 to 28 foot worm coiled in an encasing whose main concerns are incorporation and defecation while “making a living” and recreating with other worm-coiled encasings. The second birth is the opening of the eye of the soul and an increasing “aptitude for theophanic vision” (Henry Corbin’s phrase). The first is the surface or prosaic world. The second is the world of mythopoetry, where the Invisible reveals Itself to the soul’s vision.

the banana school of zen

I belong to the B.A.N.A.N.A. school of Zen: Bare Ass Naked Awareness Now Awarenessing.

in-dense-ification

We are light indensifying. This in-dense-ification is our wounding and our challenge.

legs on the angel

When I first awaken, I am in the diaphanous, transparent, or celestial mode. I have not yet formed into and as this physicality. In this mode of light and open consciousness, I comprehend more deeply and more fully the nature and origin of this universe and life. It is a gnosis, a knowing. The soul that I am smiles in loving appreciation.

It is at this time that I can read the writings of the true philosophers, the mystics of intellect and comprehensive awareness, with their meanings reverberating through my soul. I listen with a deep ear. I hear. I see. I join in.

As the earth night moves toward dawn, I am born more fully into my body, this body, the one typing. I settle into, center in. I smile with its familiarity, its weight, its aches, its promise as a sturdy embodying for active practice of the gnosis, the knowing. Legs on the angel, so to speak.

As the body gets more tired toward mid-afternoon, the celestial mode tends to fade yet not disappear. Physical fatigue and cosmic consciousness seem to have an inverse correlation. It is at this time I practice patience with myself. I smile as I remember that it is hard embodying as a human. I breathe and ask for help and move on.

standing on a plank in infinite space

Engaging in polemics in politics, religion, and philosophy is akin to standing on a plank in infinite space and proclaiming the virtues of that plank as the righteous and only true place to stand. All other folk standing on planks are seen as raving fools while you, on your plank, embody Truth.

my theology

My theology:
1. "I saw him as I was able to receive him." (Acts of Peter)
2. "The look by which I know him is the very look by which He knows me." (Meister Eckhart)

going to ashes

Decades ago I found that arising at 4 a.m., sitting quietly and going to ashes, all agenda and personification extinguished, allowed an arising anew, a flaming of energy moving into the day.

cosmic citi-zen-ry

The transformation of the human species to cosmic citizenry comes with a price. The hard-won independent egoic self must be surrendered to that-which-breathes-us. Surrender is not a word we wish to hear. Not to worry. What is surrendered is returned ten thousand fold. Without surrender, we are shoveling shit against the tide. With cosmic citizenry we have hope, we have grace, we have the full energies of our Source in our favor. We become Source-erors

ride with your essence

Death is not the cold body on the ground.
Those are the remains.
Something has escaped.
Be that which escapes.
Before the escape.
Ride with your essence.
Die before you die and truly live.
When already here, there is no place to go.
Live and love and laugh with the Cosmos.

on walking with God

There are those of us who experience a close relationship with our Source, the Wellspring, God -- an intimate friendship which has nothing to do with fundamentalism, literalism, or any other schism. Should we apologize for this, for not "advancing" into the post-post-modern consciousness state of regarding Godfulness as superstition? I think not.

theosis

It is not that theology is obsolete, then, but that it still is, and for an unpredictable length of time, in the embryonic stage.” Emile Cailliet, “The Literary Mind and Religious Responsibility” (his emphasis). In Stanley Romaine Hopper (Ed.), Spiritual Problems in Contemporary Literature. New York: Harper, 1957.

While only half a century has gone by since Cailliet wrote those words, I sense the embryo stirring into birth. Theology is being born anew. The former “study of the theos” was just that: an objective study of, with the theos (God) as object under scrutiny. We fell into the fallacy of separation, that we are somehow standing outside the universe and “objectively” observing “it.” We somehow forgot or never understood that we ourselves are a wave in this mighty ocean with no circumference or measurable depth.

The new theology is not “theology” at all, but theosis, the deep knowing that we are identical with that which we continue opening to understand. When the “religions” begin to model and teach this, a new era of spirituality will blaze the land.

religious

Despite protestations to the contrary, everyone of us is religious, swears allegiance over and over to an object of worship. Whatever you attend to the most is your object of worship, what you idolize.

radiance

"The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." (Matthew 26: 41) While I understand and see the validity of this statement, it is not the final word. What is flesh but the spirit embodying, flooding it with radiance and light so that the two are one? The flesh is as willing as the spirit is strong. Synthronicity is at play here: flesh and spirit "sit on each other's seat" simultaneously. Synthronous and synchronous, they move as one.

emergence

What is Christ if not a symbol of our own mythos, our own story, our own birth, trials, crucifixion, death, and rebirth, our own ascension to cosmic awareness and responsibility? We are Christs in the making, emerging from our chrysalis to meet all crisis.