Sunday Simmerings.......thinking on the deep side.

God is...

Throughout all time and places, humanity has encountered an invitation of the Holy kind, which springs forth from the ever-present[1] source known only as “The Mystery of Love”.  This message offered from what I choose to call God, imparts to all humanity the message of good news in all types of modalities.   It beckons humanity into relationship with the Divine; and is interpreted along with the Divine-Human encounters, through many different religious traditions including those experiences recorded in the biblical texts.[2]    Specifically for the Christian tradition, which is the lens of my experience,  this message is revealed through the Cosmic Christ event in the four canonical gospels and throughout the writings of the biblical texts, and through experiential living.  

     This mystical invitation from “The Mystery of Love” lures humans toward the  “good life” or wholeness, which is found in the relationship with this Source of Goodness and Possibility.  This invitation beckons us to embark on the adventure of incarnational and embodied[3] living.  It allows God’s potentiality to come forth through a symbiotic transformational process catalyzed by Pure Love.   In the process of recognizing and remembering God’s Presence[4], humanity encounters the potential for this message of love to “ beat within the human heart”[5].   The message of Love is the Good News.  It is this:  God loves and from this life-altering Holy encounter of the Divine Kind, humankind is changed.  As God’s Love begins to ooze from within and around a mutual relationship, a holistic understanding of self is actualized.   This actualization enables humanity to love one’s neighbor in deeper dimensions and to implement the understanding of this Good News through deliberate acts of intimacy, risk taking and justice seeking.[6]  This is the message of Good News of God’s revealed love.   

                                                                             God is…

Source of Infinite Creativity and Goodness

    From the depths of nothingness, springs the Source of Infinite Creative Power.  This Source, All that Is, All that was and All that potentially will be[7], is the very root of all that is known and unknown within the crevices of space known as the human intellect.  The cosmos flows from this Eternal Pregnant Womb and offers humanity access so life-altering both the source and the receiver are altered forever to receive and experience the goodness of life.    Experiencing God in ITS’[8] untapped Fury of Holiness is to be changed and altered forever.[9]

 A bit deep for a Sunday reflection.....................................................

but think about it and let me know what you think.

                      

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[1]     Sallie McFague, The Body of God:  An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis, MN:  Fortress Press, 1993),  133.  McFague addresses this issue in the following manner:  “The model or the universe as God’s body radicalizes transcendence for all of the entire fifteen-billion-year history and the billions of galaxies is the creation, the outward being, of the One who is the source and breath of all existence.  In the universe as a whole as well as in each and every bit and fragment of it, God’s transcendence is embodied….The world (universe) as God’s body is also, then, a radicalization of divine immanence, for God is not present to us in just one place (Jesus of Nazareth, although also and especially, paradigmatically there), but in and through all bodies, the bodies of the sun and moon, trees and rivers, animals, and people.”  In Hildegard of Bingen’s writings:  “For [God] manifests [Godself] in [God’s] creatures so wondrously that they can never exhaust [God’s] presence; and so secretly that they cannot scrutinize [God] by an willful knowledge or sense.”  inBook Three,  Columbia Hart, translator, The Classics of Western Spirituality, Hildegard of Bingen (New York:  Paulist Press, 1990), 412.

[2]     While I believe that the pathway to God comes through many directions, I have found my way to the Divine through the stories and traditions found within the realms of Christianity.  Therefore, while I believe that there are other pathways that convene at the same Source of Goodness that are just as capable of rendering the Gospel Message, this explication will remain within the boundaries of the Christian tradition.

[3]       C. Robert Mesle, Process Theology:  A Basic Introduction (St. Louis, Missouri:  Chalice Press, 1993),  106.  While Mesle writes:  “When we say we are experiencing God’s call and responding to it, we are actually, in the process-relational vision, taking God into ourselves and creating ourselves out of God.”  While I agree with this statement, Since I believe that God is already intrinsically part of who we, when we allow God to connect in a relational manner, then God’s Word become becomes part of our process of being human and lives out  ITSELF in our humanity or we become embodied vessels.  However, incarnation also occurs when we take in experiences of God via another source be it human, animal or plant.   

[4]      Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Earth is the Lord’s:  The Inner World of the Jew in Eastern Europe (Woodstock, Vermont:  Jewish Lights Publishing,  1955), 70-71.  In Heshel’s work he says the following:

“The manifestation of mystery is partly suspended, with ourselves living in lethargy.  Normal consciousness is a state of stupor, in which sensibility to the wholly real and responsiveness to the stimuli of the spirit are reduced.  The mystics, knowing that [man] is involved in a hidden history of the cosmos, endeavor to awake the drowsiness and apathy and to regain the state of wakefulness for their enchanted souls.”

[5]      This phrase is attributed to Dr. Jimmy Kirby as he used it in his definition of agape love in An Introduction to Christian Ethics class at Lexington Theological Seminary in 2002.

[6]        My understanding of the Gospel is based upon the following biblical texts:  Exodus 20, Micah 6 and Luke 10:25-37.

[7]        From Exodus 3:13, God said to Moses,  “I AM WHO I AM” which can be translated from to Hebrew to also mean I AM WHAT I AM OR I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE.

[8]        IT is the pronoun that I have chosen to use for God.  While He/She are often utilized as the pronoun with God, IT allows for a broader understanding of the facets of God which we cannot name nor are we capable of fully understanding.  IT is a Mystery.

[9]        Matthew Fox, Creativity:  Where the Divine and the Human Meet (New York:  Penguin Putnam Inc, 2002).  While nothing is quoted from this book, the perception  of Creativity from this book may have been formed my understanding of this aspect of God.