Monthly Archive for September, 2007

Your soul is eternal. Starting … now.

Published
by
Ken
on September 26, 2007
in death, god, meister eckhart, mysticism and quotes
. 0 Comments

Does a single-ended eternity make sense? Our soul is eternal but from here on out. That’s not really eternal, is it?

Now, I’ve never heard anyone preach on where, exactly, our souls come from, but I would guess that most would say that God gives us our soul at conception or birth or sometime in there. That’s what makes us “human.” But where did God get that soul to give to us? Did he create it for me as I was being conceived or born or sometime in there?

Now, this soul of mine — as long as I’m on the “right” side of the fence and the “right” side of Jesus’ body at the Great J-Day — will live forever in God’s presence. But every single thing God has created — plants, animals, stars, galaxies, etc. — dies. Every single thing that does not die on its own will be destroyed when God creates the new heaven and new earth. So, if our souls were created for us, why will they not also be destroyed?

What if, as Eckhart says, our souls — or whatever you want to call our essential essence or being — has always and always will exist?

… whereby man may come most closely to God and wherein he may once more become like the original image as he was in God when there was yet no distinction between God and himself before God produced creatures.

Blessed are the pure in heart who leave everything to God now as they did before ever they existed.

God has no before nor after. God is neither this nor that.God is perfect simplicity. Prior to creatures, in the eternal now, I have played before the Father in his eternal stillness.

That is the real effect of original sin — separating us from God. But if I was born in sin and my soul was created when I was born then “I” have never known anything but separation from God. So, why do I have the urge to repair that separation? Why do I crave something I’ve never had and could never possibly understand?

Being born in sin means that my soul, which was and always had been with God, is now separated from God. And that’s why the Holy Spirit (as I talked about in my previous post) can work in us and remind us of what it was like being not separated from God. We can only be reminded of something we once new.

The work of the Holy Spirit

Published
by
Ken
on September 25, 2007
in buddhism, christianity, d.t. suzuki, god, holy spirit, meister eckhart, mysticism and quotes
. 3 Comments

Found a quote from The Orthodox Faith by John of Damascus on The Fire and the Rose:

The Son is image of the Father, and image of the Son is the Spirit, through whom the Christ dwelling in man gives it to him to be to the image of God.

So, we can’t become the image of God without the Holy Spirit? But I thought we were created in the image of God. There’s no becoming involved.

Genesis 1:27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis 9:6: Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.

In Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist, D.T. Suzuki writes:

Indeed, we are all apt to forget that every one of us is Buddha himself. In the Christian way of saying, this means that we are all made in the likeness of God, or in Eckhart’s words, that “God’s is-ness is my is-ness and neither more nor less.”

We already are the image of God so what does the Holy Spirit have to do? The Holy Spirit is the reminder of things we’ve forgotten because (again from Mysticism)

… the sense of opposites is dominating your consciousness. The idea of participation or empathy is an intellectual interpretation of the primary experience, while as far as the experience itself is concerned, there is no room for any sort of dichotomy. The intellect, however, obtrudes itself and breaks up the experience in order to make it amenable to intellectual treatment, which means a discrimination or bifurcation. The original feeling of identity is then lost and intellect is allowed to have its characteristic way of creaking up reality into pieces. Participation or empathy is the result of inellectualization.

. . .

It is our eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge which has resulted in our constant habit of intellectualizing. But we have never forgotten, mythologically speaking, the original abode of innocence: that is to say, even when we are given over to intellection and to the abstract way of thinking, we are always conscious, however dimly, of something left behind and not appearing on the chart of well-schematized analysis. This “something” is no other than the primary experience of reality in its suchness or is-ness …

The Holy Spirit does not enable us to become the image of God but, rather, is the constant reminder that we already are the image of God. If we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives, then we can realize this a-rational identity. A-rational because it does not come from our intellect. We cannot think our way into the image of God. We must experience it in a raw, unprocessed manner.

“Please return to the highlighted route”

Published
by
Ken
on September 20, 2007
in god, mindfulness and thomas merton
. 0 Comments

About 6 or 7 years ago, I was driving a rental car with one of those “new fangled” GPS navigation systems. I typed in my destination and was off, dutifully following the turns dictated by the system. Near my destination, however, I made a wrong turn and the system said, “Please return to the highlighted route.” Well, I tried and tried and tried but it kept repeating, “Please return to the highlighted route. Please return to the highlighted route.” I don’t remember exactly what happened but it may have involved a power button and a large piece of folded paper with strange markings on it.

Flash forward to last week in my wife’s new car with a GPS navigation system. Again, I made a turn not on the calculated route but this time the system said, “Recalculating route … Go straight about 2 miles and turn …” Ahhh, so much better!

I’m reading Echoing Silence by Thomas Merton and, in one of his letters to Mark Van Doren, Merton says:

I can no longer see the ultimate meaning of a man’s life in terms of either “being a poet”or “being a contemplative” or even in a certain sense in “being a saint”(although that is the only thing to be). It must be something much more immediate than that. I—and every other person in the world—must say: “I have my own special, peculiar destiny which no one else ever has had or ever will have. There exists for me a particular goal, a fulfillment which must be all my own—nobody else’s—& it does not really identify that destiny to put it under some category—’poet,’ ‘monk,’ ‘hermit.’ Because my own individual destiny is a meeting, an encounter with God that He has destined for me alone. His glory in me will be to receive from me something He can never receive from anyone else—because if is a gift of His to me which he has never given to anyone else & never will. My whole life is only that—to establish that particular constant with God which is the one He has planned for my eternity!”

Many people say, along with Merton, that God has a purpose for our lives. That Merton goes further to say God receives something unique from each one of us is wonderfully non-mainstream. But in regard to this purpose for my life, I’m wondering which GPS system God is like. Is he sitting up in heaven watching me live my life and noticing all my wrong turns and yelling down at me at the top of his lungs “Turn left now. Now! Oh, you missed it, again! Please return to the highlighted route, you dumb ass.” Or is he patiently recalculating my route with each wrong turn I make?

And is he changing my destination along the way? Suppose my purpose was to enter seminary and become the next Billy Graham. Obviously I’ve missed that turn a long way back. Does my life still have a purpose? Perhaps plan B, C, or D has been invoked? Of course, God could have accounted for all my missed turns and planned my route accordingly. But wouldn’t that make my life’s purpose my plan instead of God’s plan? And are plans B, et al., secondary in importance and glory?

Perhaps my purpose is a simple one: give someone a cup of cold water or a meal; visit a sick friend; or give someone in need some clothing. I wonder if Billy Graham’s purpose was not to be the speaker that he was—perhaps that was incidental to his real purpose of feeding one hungry woman or giving a moment’s counsel to one confused man. And when I fulfill my purpose, what then?

Too many questions, I guess. Perhaps I’ll just know when I make a correct turn. Or perhaps I’ll fulfill my purpose and be none the wiser. I guess the only thing to do is to be open to and mindful of life and the world around me. If I go through life preoccupied with my self and my work and my finances and my commitments and me me me me, then I’m surely going to miss a lot of turns and a lot of opportunities. If I’m not mindful of other than me then I’ll never even see that thirsty woman over there let alone give her a drink of water.

WWJD … today?

Published
by
Ken
on September 2, 2007
in christianity, environment, jesus and money
. 3 Comments

Over at The Fire and the Rose, D.W. Congdon has an excellent and provocative post. “What would Jesus drive? What would Jesus buy?” is the question. I fired off a comment that Jesus wouldn’t drive anything and a couple other people chimed in with agreement. But D.W. raised an excellent counter-point.

It seems to me that you (and other commentators thus far) are essentially saying that one cannot be a Christian in suburbia. And as much as I would like to say that Christians should not drive and should worship where they live, this is simply an impossibility on any kind of large scale.

. . .

But we live an hour away from the city, because of where I go to school. We have one car. I take the school shuttle so she can have the car. She drives an hour each way to her school. This is certainly not ideal, but it’s the best we can do. My wife, Amy, is working in the inner city, but in order to do this work, she needs a car to get there.

What would you say to her? Would you question whether she really needs a car? What do you have to say to the many Americans who actually do need cars to do things that are really worthwhile and need to be done?

The Christian ideal is to emulate Jesus. But the Jesus that is held up before us like the carrot on a stick is a first century Jesus. What are we supposed to do with that? Sure, the easy stuff is still easy — don’t kill, commit adultery, steal, blah, blah, blah. But Jesus doesn’t say anything about, for example, the environmental impact of our daily lives or the globalness of our culture and society. Sure the clothes we buy in WalMart that were made in China are cheaper for us. But what about the cost of transporting that shirt halfway around the world? Does that matter? Of course Jesus didn’t drive. He walked everywhere because his “parish” was small. (Or was his parish small because all he could do was walk?)

As D.W. asks, is it wrong to live in a place where you cannot commute to work by bus or bike or foot? If we all claim that Jesus would not drive, then what does that say about what we should be doing? There are people in the San Fransisco East Bay area who drive an hour or more each way to work. Some of them do this because they simply cannot afford to buy a house close to where they work. But what are they to do? There are not enough jobs in the area where they live.

The real question I’m asking is: “What would Jesus do … Today?” Answering what Jesus would have done 2000 years ago is a moot point. It doesn’t matter. The Old Testament Law is no longer “valid” for us today — we are not stoning homosexuals and adulterers. Things change. No matter how hard we try to keep things as they were, “as they were” was a change from what they were before that! Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek,” but what does that mean today? What does it mean to be meek today? Can you be both meek and a CEO, CFO, CIO, CTO, police officer, inner-city school teacher, politician, or mega-church pastor? I’ve posted on this before, but the early church sold all their property and gave to those in need. Why don’t we have to do this today if the early church is the gold standard? “Well, because things are different today,” you’ll no doubt say. “Exactly!” I’ll say. “Things are different but our Jesus hasn’t changed one iota. He’s still wearing sandals and walking everywhere with no money, home, car, savings account, IRA, or job.

How does this help me TODAY??