Cullusaja Falls, NC
c. J. Patrick Mahon

Dry Falls, NC
c. J. Patrick Mahon

Yesterday was a beautiful day in many ways. We left early in the morning to drive to Highlands, NC to hear John Dominic Crossan, biblical scholar, preach at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation. The drive from Franklin to Highlands is hairy at best and replete with narrow roadway and sharp curves. We found ourselves well ahead of schedule and the Creator showed us some of the glory of creation. The falls on the Cullasaja River in the national forest opened up to us and we had time to stop and see and hear the falls along the way.

The original Incarnation Church is a national historic monument. The new church was filled to capacity and the ushers had to add a row of folding chairs.

Crossan began by asking himself what one thing he could tell us in a fifteen minute sermon that would summarize the essence of our faith. To my astonishment he selected Psalm 82 and not a New Testament passage:

God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
“How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked?

 Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk around in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

He reminded us that this psalm begins with God sitting with the lesser gods who are in charge of the world. God is indicting the lesser gods. Sure looks to me like some of the Canaanite deities worked their way right into David’s psalm. It also reminded me of the pantheon of greater and lesser Greek gods and goddesses.

God is judging the failure of the lesser gods. They are grossly failing to serve the needs of the weak, the poor and the downtrodden. They are to maintain the “right” of the lowly and destitute. This is about justice, not retributive (punishing) justice but distributive justice which demands that all have rightful access to the bounty of creation. My study of things biblical teaches me that justice is all about right order. Every person is created in the image of God and has God-given rights to food, clothing, shelter, education, and medical care. However, the “lesser gods” in Washington, DC are quick to ignore the rights of the lowly and destitute. After all, they usually do not vote and do not have their own paid lobbyists.

Crossan also reminded us that there is person justice and systemic justice. Systemic or structural justice demands that societal and political structures assure access of the lowly and destitute to things they rightfully need. Again, this is the countercultural biblical agenda and not the agenda of politicians selected by the rich and powerful. Now even corporations are “people” with all the rights attendant there unto.

Crossan concluded by referring to his school days and the fact that Irish students had to memorize poems. He cited the ending lines to Yeats “Ode to a Grecian Urn”:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

All we need to know as followers of Jesus the Christ is:

Justice is love, love is justice.

Love is the internal component and justice the external expression of love. Justice puts feet on love.

This is ALL we need to know.

Festival Music Grounds, Tallinn

Before we embarked on our recent Baltic cruise to Tallinn, Estonia, St. Petersburg, Russia, and Helsinki, Finland, we had signed up to attend a retreat at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky with Merton scholar, Tony Russo. In preparation for the retreat on “Merton’s Search for Wisdom and Wholeness,” Tony has sent out letters explicating the themes of the retreat—pilgrimage. Thus, I decided to approach our cruise as a pilgrimage.

Merton clearly understood pilgrimage as an inner journey. For him it was the journey to the True Self. For more recent spiritual leaders, pilgrimage is the evolutionary journey to higher consciousness. For Merton and Teilhard de Chardin interpreters like Ilio Delio, both are the same. Our journey into out True Self is a journey into higher consciousness—an awareness that we are one with all else, an awareness that Love is the evolutionary force in the cosmos. We re-discover, as the Buddhists would say, our face before we were born where all was one. For monks who, unlike the peripatetic Irish monks, have a vow of stability within a particular monastic community, pilgrimage has to be an inner journey, a journey of the heart, a journey we can all take.

Today is the Feast of St. James, the apostle to Spain. Annually, thousands undertake a long pilgrimage from Southern France across Northern Spain to the Cathedral of St. James in Santiago. For these pilgrims, the arduous trek of 500 miles comes to be an inner journey into True Self. Martin Sheen’s movie, “The Way,” is a dramatic portrayal of one person’s transformation while walking the Camino de Santiago.

My pilgrimage began in Tallinn, Estonia. Estonia along with Lithuania, and Latvia comprise the Balkan states. Shipboard lectures and reading made me aware of the fact that these states have often been political pawns in conflicts between Germany, Russia, and Norway (the home of the Nobel Peace Laureate has been quite warlike in the past!) Estonia was under oppressive rule by the Germans and then the Russians. Many leaders, just like Nelson Mandela in South Africa, were imprisoned in concentration camps by the Germans or gulag prisons by the Soviets. When Gorbachev loosened the reins of Soviet control in hope of stimulating the economy, the freedom-loving Estonians began a series of mass demonstrations where the people gathered to sing the outlawed national songs. Eventually, 300,000 Estonians gather in the Song Festival Grounds.  300,000! At another point, Estonians, Lithuanians, and Latvians formed a 600 kilometer long human chain to express their desire for freedom from oppression. The Singing Revolution, a nonviolent coup, earned the Estonians their precious freedom. I highly recommend the DVD, “The Singing Revolution.” It documents the history of the revolution and is replete with wonderful Estonian choral music.

I stood silently apart from the tour crown at the top of the Song Festival Grounds. I stood in awe of a monument to people who so loved freedom that they pursued bloodless, nonviolent means to achieve their goal. The Singing Revolution depended on a deep sense of national pride and community and, in turn, it built greater community. As we evolve into higher consciousness we know with the heart that community must replace rugged individualism.

BTW, a side bar. Most of the people in Estonia, Russia, and Finland live in apartments. It is only when you get beyond the towns and cities that you see single family dwellings and these are usually weekend summer homes. Our penchant for half acre single family dwellings shapes our society and culture. We may have a more difficult time developing viable communities which nurture a pilgrimage to higher consciousness because we tend to live in our isolated silos.

A bronze statue sits on the hill atop the Festival Grounds. It is Gustav Ernesaks who led the national symphony for 50 years. He set a poem, “My Fatherland I Love,” to music and it became the national anthem of the Singing Revolution”:

My Fatherland is My Love,
to whom I´ve given My Heart.
To You I sing, my greatest happiness,
My flowering Estonia!
Your pain boils in My Heart,
Your Pride and Joy makes me happy,
My Fatherland, My Fatherland!

My Fatherland is My Love,
I shall never leave Him,
even if I must die hundred deaths
because of Him!
Does the foreign envy slander,
You still live in my Heart,
My Fatherland, My Fatherland!

My Fatherland is My Love,
and I want to rest,
to lay down into Your Arms,
My sacred Estonia!
Your Birds will sing Sleep to Me,
flowers will bloom from My Ashes,
My Fatherland, My Fatherland!

The history of the Singing Revolution is powerful testament to the power of music to move the human heart. The heart is where it is at when it comes to knowing higher truth.

It is a lesson in freedom. The Creator respects human and biological freedom. Using music to throw off oppression goes beyond violence and wars. God is the evolutionary Love imploding in the cosmos and making all things new. The Singing Revolution was “one large step for mankind.”

Aleksander Nevski Orthodox Cathedral

We ended our visit to Tallinn with a walking tour of the old medieval town. The Hanseatic architecture has been preserved. Beautiful churches dot the landscape and their tall glistening towers reach high into the sky. Again a soul-lesson learned—preserve what you have. I hate to think that we might have razed the old town long ago to make way for the newest, greatest NFL stadium.

Old Town from above

Horsetrough Falls
Upper Chattahoochee National Forest, GA

I have been watching videos of the first ChristPath Conference in San Diego (http://www.christpathseminar.org/). Matthew Fox is the principal convener of this exciting new spiritual endeavor which will feature a series of live conferences with attendant web casts. The conference will be held in different cities across the nation. Matthew Fox, Andrew Harvey, and Joanna Macy address the significance of the Cosmic Christ in the first conference. Having listened to about six lectures, what follows from Joanna Macy speaks to me about the Cosmic Christ—the Risen Cosmic Christ present in and through creation. We need to overcome our addiction to transcendence and live the reality of the Cosmic Christ. It has huge significance for us, our planet, and indeed the entire Cosmos as it flares forth from the Love of the Trinity.

We Awaken in Christ’s Body

Symeon the Theologian (948-1032)

We awaken in Christ’s body

as Christ awakens our bodies,

and my poor hand is Christ, He enters

my foot, and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully

my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him

(for God is indivisibly

whole, seamless in His Godhood).

I move my foot, and at once

He appears like a flash of lightning.

Do my words seem blasphemous? — Then

open your heart to Him

and let yourself receive the one

who is opening to you so deeply.

For if we genuinely love Him,

we wake up inside Christ’s body

where all our body, all over,

every most hidden part of it,

is realized in joy as Him,

and He makes us, utterly, real,

and everything that is hurt, everything

that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,

maimed, ugly, irreparably

damaged, is in Him transformed

and recognized as whole, as lovely,

and radiant in His light

he awakens as the Beloved

in every last part of our body.

_________

 We Awaken in Earth’s Body

Joanna Macy (1929 –  )

We awaken in Earth’s body

as Earth awakens our bodies,

and my poor hand is Earth, She enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Earth becomes all of Her

(for Earth is indivisibly
whole, seamless in Her Planethood).

I move my foot, and at once
She appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous? — Then
open your heart to Her
and let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Her,
we wake up inside Earth’s body

where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Her,
and She makes us, utterly, real,

and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Her transformed

and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in Her light
She awakens as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.

Wow!!!!!

Day Lily

I have read three books by Sister Ilio Delio, a Franciscan theologian, in an attempt to understand what the new science and hence the new cosmologies have to say about the Cosmic Risen Christ. With the help of Richard Rohr’s occasional excursions into the Cosmic Christ and Matt Fox’s The Christ Path Seminar Series, I am beginning to get glimpses of the Cosmic Christ that I can understand.

The Cosmic Christ is the Risen Jesus, the Christ, present in all of creation (matter and energy). God created out of infinite Love and the stardust cascading throughout the cosmos and our very being since the first Big Bang is God Love. The incarnation of Jesus is the second Big Bang, God Love made incarnate in matter-energy. The Cosmic Christ is both in creation as it flares forth and is ahead of creation as the Omega Point calling us and all of creation to be all that we can be—spiritualized matter ultimately divinized in God. Continue reading →

Summer Morning Mountain Light

I always get worried when I think I am starting to understand something that St. Paul wrote; however, the beginning of today’s reading says it all:

Brothers and sisters,
The love of Christ impels us,
once we have come to the conviction that one died for all;
therefore, all have died.
He indeed died for all,
so that those who live might no longer live for themselves
but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

Note what Paul says. He is saying that Jesus died to teach us the way. The way is to no longer live for self but rather to live for Christ, other people, and all of creation. Note what Paul does not say. Paul does not say that Jesus died to make a perfect sacrifice to the Father to atone for our sins. We have grown so used to Anselm’s atonement theory that we miss the real meaning of the Christ for people living with a 21^st century world view informed by science and evolutionary theory.

I do not want to be too hard on Anselm. After all, what he had to go on was a medieval world view. Today we have evolution and the deep thinking of Teilhard de Chardin. Evolution is God life flowing forth as love. You cannot posit a literal fall from grace when humans have never yet reached the fullness of human potential. We are in the process of becoming divine as the early fathers and mothers used to say.

Evolution is God’s self-emptying into creation which is the first revelation of God. God emptied God’s self to birth the cosmos. And what a wonderful 13.7 billion years old cosmos it is. Our Milky Way is one of hundreds of thousands of galaxies. The Milky Way has one billion stars and is 100,000 light years across! And the entire cosmos is still expanding!

The very stardust which we share with the cosmos is God in matter-energy. God completed the self-emptying in the fullness of time when the Christ was birthed into human flesh, into the stardust of the cosmos.

However, incarnation is completed in resurrection which unleashes the power of God’s very breath, the Holy Spirit, into the unfolding cosmos. Evolution is not a theory. It is what the unfolding of God is all about.

God is creating—self-emptying—at the very moment. We who share in divine life NOW are indeed co-creators. God is no longer up there and out there. As Bishop Spong says Jesus is not a divine invader from outer space. Jesus became the Christ—divine love incarnate in matter-energy. The Christ in the power of the Spirit is here now do what God does—wholemaking as the cosmos moans and groans toward the Omega Point—Christ the fullness of divine love. Not only is the Crist here. The Christ is also up ahead beckoning us toward the fullness of what we can become in the Spirit. Death and sin can no longer pull us down or stop us from being all we can be in Christ. Paul’s hymn to the kenosis—self-emptying—of the Christ is the model for our growth in love, our growth in wholemaking, our growth in LOVE.

Ilio Delio made me aware of the term “wholemaking.” Later in today’s reading, Paul speaks of reconciliation. The Christ brings reconciliation, shalom, peace, healing—wholemaking. Our call as co-creators is to make whole that which is fragmented. Our call is to arise from our self-centeredness to enter more fully into relationships to God, ourselves, others and all of creation. In this day of environmental concerns, it is important for us to be wholemakers in caring for creation. In this day of fractured relationships, it is our responsibility to bring healing. BTW, this is where healing ministry fits into the larger scheme but healing is about much more than personal physical, emotional, and spiritual healing.

Paul nails the bottom line—we have to learn under the guidance of the Breath of God to live for others.

. . .

My photography wires me to deeper union with creation. The photograph at the top is an HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo. Basically, you take a number (I took 3 photos –one at normal exposure and one each at +1 and -1.) This enables the photographer to use a computer program to blend the best light qualities of the three photos. Enjoy God’s creation lighting up on a summer mountain morning!

Rain nurturing spring growth

The Gospel account of Jesus’ encounter with the religious leaders over tribute to Caesar has intrigued me. At first blush, Jesus seems to be saying that we are to give to God what is God’s and to Caesar what is Caesar’s.  This does not square with the many instances when Jesus required undivided loyalty from his followers. Do not turn back to bury the dead. I came to bring the sword.

I went back to Ched Myer’s commentary on Mark. Ched has an uncanny ability to look at the context in which the Gospel was written and draw out deeper meaning that clarifies the text. In Say to this Mountain by Ched Myers and others, the authors say the Mark was written “in the late days of the Judean revolt.” The question posed to Jesus was a real question for both Judean loyalists and those who collaborated with Rome. The dividing issue was whether to pay taxes to Caesar. Continue reading →