To speak the word God

To speak the word God

1.                  If we say that God deliberately allows all things

We might imagine a God who holds Tuesday morning briefings

On who shall get sick and raped and shot this week

We imagine a God willfully signing off on the world’s worst horrors

For this we might agree with Job

God’s apparent double standard on who may or may not test whom.

2.                  If we say that God merely holds all things, good and bad

This might get God off the hook for direct responsibility

But we cannot help but imagine this God as a little boy

Helplessly crying with a precious broken toy in his hands

For this we might agree with the Psalmist

God’s bitter injustice of any justice left undone.

3.                  Even if we say that God impartially cares for all things so purely

That he himself should not interfere with our own just deserts

We are left imagining a God perfectly detached in our darkest of hours

We imagine an aged Father whose grayish wisdom is not quite beyond rebuke

For this we might agree with Jesus

“My God!  My God!  Why have you forsaken me?!”

4.                  In the end, it seems that any time we speak of a God

Who is clothed in these kinds of contingent conundrums

We blatantly admit we have imagined a God

Which is not really above our image of ourselves

For this, we must in all sobriety beware

That on this cliff there stands a cross our faith to bear.

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Yet then how to speak of God?

In short, I submit a three-fold imagination; a Father, Son, and Spirit of sorts

I.      I submit with Tillich, a Father

That God is none other than the Ground of Being itself

Our metaphysical foundation

The unmediated universal attribute of all existence; the ‘I AM’

II.      I submit with Hegel, a Son

That God is the Living Word that remains and resurrects in spite of all that comes to pass

Our phenomenological temple

With an altar flowing with new life rising from every death

III.      And I submit with Campbell, a Spirit

That God is the inner meaning of Myth

Our shekinah glory streaming out through the curtains of mystery

Alas the holiest sanctum of our faith

For this is our gospel proclamation:

That we have sought and found
Our deepest Concern, our Living Reason, and our truest Tale

That we may live into a Love and Justice greater than we may imagine.

It’s personal

It’s personal

When the morning sun shines on a child’s face

It’s personal

Not because the sun is a person

But because the child is.

When the cold winter wind whispers Christmas carols in our ears

It’s personal

Not because the wind is a person

But because we are.

When deafening shots ring out across the nation

It’s personal

Not because our guns are persons

But because we are

Even as we wear the wounds of our devices.

When God holds the precious flicker of each budding life

It’s personal

Not because God is a person as such

But because we are

Even as we witness these lights snuffed out for no reason anyone can fathom.

       To do, or not to do

       To shoot, or not to shoot

       To hold a gun, or hold a hand

       To safe guard life, or neglect its least among us

       To be, as compassionate human persons, or not to be

       These are the questions.

But, I’m sorry to say, these are not God’s questions

For what God could ponder to permit the pierce of a child’s beating heart

No, these questions remain, as always

Our sacred and solemn concern and duty as persons.

For God simply is, God always is

God is our great and everlasting embrace of all that is

God is our morning resurrection of all that comes to pass
God is our sacred and everlasting story of hope

And we are reminded in this our time of senseless loss and deepest sorrow

Of those mysterious words
Which speak a transforming power
Of rest and peace in God’s unending embrace

And for us
This eternal embrace
Of those we have lost, and of we who remain

Is profoundly personal.

We’ve got blinders on

We’ve got blinders on, and they're four layers thick!

1.  Let’s admit it, we all have those times when its hard to tell the difference

Between our sense of ourselves and who we really might be
We have a psychological duality between what our senses tell us and what our heart tells us

2.  Moreover, we can often find it difficult to keep straight the difference

Between our inner models of the world and the world as it is out there
We have an empirical duality between subjective and objective ways of knowing things

3.  And gol dern it when we fail to navigate the difference

Between what it means to know and love another’s soul and still to love them bodily
We have a metaphysical duality competing between the values of matter and mind

4.  To top it all off we can’t ever really be sure the difference

Between your worldview and mine, no matter how same or different our expressions
We have a social duality of 'us' and 'them', and it's compounded by these prior dualities

What a four-fold pickle!  What a four-cornered cage!  How ever can we see?!

Luckily it seems we’ve poked a few pin holes in these blinders

And if we can just find the faith to peer around a bit

We might be able to connect a few daring dots

Let’s see if we can:

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1.  Psychology has shown us our unconscious selves
We have seen an interdependence between our awareness and our being

Alas we are who we are in spite of how partially we see our own reflections

2.  Science has shown us a verifiably consistent universe
We have found an interdependence between stones and stories, between data and theory

Alas the world is what it is in spite of all the ways we experience it

3.  Love has shown us a more excellent way
We have witnessed an incarnate interdependence between heaven and earth

Alas love is the only thing which ever remains in spite of all our fears and failures

4.  And myth has revealed our collective souls
We have identified an interdependence between the worlds of Self and Other
Alas from ancient times till now, miracles and myths have stirred and stilled our hearts

In spite of the existential expanse between our souls

For what else do we ultimately have to see and share with one another but

1.  A transcendent twinkle of an eye
2.  The grit between our teeth
3.  The healing touch of a hand
4.  Or a whispered word of wonder?

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The cosmos it seems, as best we can tell, is alive and burning

All things are moving out, mixing up, coursing and coming to pass

Our selves, our world, our loved ones, even our precious paradigms are entropic

All is like smoke

And yet in spite of this, something remains, and this is the realest miracle of all

That what remains is that very something without which

We could not even stand here to witness these flickering flames

What is this something?!  What is it that lasts in spite of all which comes to pass?!

Well I’m sorry to bring you this far

If only to say the answer I may not truly tell

That is, given our collectively compounded blind-fold condition

I dare not try to speak it with my sorely split and sutchered tongue

Yet, given our shared pin holes, perhaps all we may say for now

Is that it is right here, right now, piercing this present darkness

Right here, passing by our four-fold cleft

Right now, continually incarnating at hand

Can you feel it?  Can you stand it?

If you can

Can you find a way

1.  To see it in your self

2.  To see it in your world

3.  To see it in others

4.  To see it even through a stranger’s eyes?

If you can, if we can

Then I believe we already know what God is

And we need not necessarily talk about particular theologisms

Instead

Let us go break bread together my friends

For it is the evening of our human condition

And we’ve got a lot of life to bear in the morning.

Engaging myth, loving souls

All myths

Contain the nutrients

Of shared human values

And all genuine myths

Are originally made from scratch

Even as later versions may come in a box

The historical Jesus

Was the raw ingredients

For our nutritious Christ

God himself

Is a recipe

Peaked and stirred in our hearts

But myth is not just some delicacy

Make no mistake, myth is vital

Vital for tasting and sharing our most important human values

So as a Christian

I promise to sit down and break bread with you

Whoever you are, whatever your myth

Even if the recipe tastes like death to me

It’s you I love

And for this love, I too would give my body and blood.

http://paintragmagazine.com/?page_id=596

our Papa and our Sacred Heart

       God is that explanation which accounts for everything

Everything thought, everything touched

Everything good, everything bad

Everything known, everything unknown

       Everything is IN-God

This is the answer to everything

And therefore ultimately answers nothing
 

       Except
 

       That God is also what remains in spite of all that comes to pass

In spite of mortal life IN-God, what remains is being

In spite of weariness IN-God, what remains is newness

In spite of every fear and failure IN-God, what remains is love

       For everything that lasts IN-God is OF-God

And this answer too is often above our heads

Yet this is just within our reach!

       IN-God / OF-God, perhaps a heady explanation

For our Great One, and our Redeemer

Our Papa, and our Sacred Heart.

Still Speaking

The Christian Bible

Is but one way that God is still speaking

And we call it the Word of God

Not because God speaks in human tongue

But because God speaks in human heart

And we have written in trembling hand.

Christmas Greeting

Peace.  Be still.  Nobody is taking Christ out of Christmas

Just because we have woken up to a great big world

That has more than one wintertime religious holiday

Doesn’t mean anyone is taking Christ out of Christmas

As Christians we embrace Christ as the ‘Anointed One’

Not by competing with other religions for a top holiday seat

But by welcoming all people’s holiday sentiments

With radiant arms and hearts as big as that of a babe in a manger

Jesus came humbly into the world

Not with demands for the top holiday spot

But ready to serve and love all peoples

And humbly he remains.  Can you feel him even now?

Christ can never be taken out of Christmas

As long as we remember that God’s gift in Jesus

Is big enough for a whole world of different faiths

I mean, even the wise men from religions of the East knew this

Peace.  Be still.  There is no secular Herod trying to murder our sweet baby Jesus

The universal gift of Love has come, and you can’t put that back in a box

So greet Christmas how you will this season, to Jews, to Muslims, to fellow Christians alike

But please remember to say it, not defensively, but openly from the heart

Like trembling shepherds in a field

May we settle our fears about the Christmas Greeting

And come, simply come to the stable in awe

With Mary let us ponder these wonderful things in our hearts

This Christmas, may we each find our own way

To speak Peace and Joy to ALL this happy season of holidays!

Breath and Earth

There is no God who deliberately put together

Such a risky mortal mix of flesh and soul

Nor is there a God to pull them back apart again

In a great eternal waste but for a few of godly goal

There is only the God IN which our fleshen souls abound

Which is the God OF which compassion can be found

To dwell within the long recycled

       breath and earth we are becoming.

 http://matthewdg.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/the-breath-of-life/