Learning about the Incarnation from Maximos the Confessor

“A sure warrant for looking forward with hope to the deification of human nature is provided by the incarnation of God, which makes man god to the same degree as God Himself became man.  For it is clear that He who became man without sin (cf. Heb 4:15) will divinize human nature without changing it into the divine nature, and will raise it up for His own sake to the same degree as He lowered himself for man's sake. This is what St Paul teaches mystically when he says, '. . . that in the ages to come He might display the overflowing riches of His grace' (Eph 2:7)." 

    

~ Maximos the Confessor, The Philokalia, Text 62, First Century of Various Texts

    
TALK ABOUT IT  What do you think about the Incarnation as the means of atonement (uniting human and divine natures)?  Why then the Crucifixion?  
  
NOTE
Maximos notes that it is love that unites those who have been divided and is able to create a unity of will and purpose.  The praxis he recommends is "simply that we should show mercy and receive mercy" (Text 45).  
  
DOING IT (INNER PRACTICE)  How are you being called to practice receiving mercy? 
  
DOING IT (OUTER PRACTICE)  How are you being called to practice showing mercy?
     
LEARNING FROM MAXIMOS THE CONFESSOR: CHURCH OF RECONCILIATION   

Learning from Timothy Ware

Orthodox religious thought lays the utmost emphasis on the image of God in man.  Man is a 'living theology', and because he is God's icon, he can find God by looking within his own heart, by 'returning within himself': 'The Kingdom of God is within you' (Luke xvii, 21).  'Know yourselves,' said Saint Antony of Egypt.  '...He who knows himself, knows God. (Letter 3).  'If you are pure,' wrote Satin Isaac the Syrian (late seventh century), 'heaven is within you; within yourself you will see the angels and the Lord of the angels' (Quoted in P. Evdokimov, L'Orthodoxie, p 88).  And of Saint Pachomius it is recorded: 'In the purity of his heart he saw the invisible nature of God as in a mirror' (First Greek Life, 22).  
  
Because he is an icon of God, each member of the human race, even the most sinful, is infinitely precious in God's sight.  'When you see your brother,' said Clement of Alexandria (died 215), 'you see God' (Stromateis, I xix [94, 5]).  And Evagarius taught: 'After God, you must count all men as God Himself' (On Prayer, 123).  This respect for every human being is visibly expressed in Orthodox worship, when the priest senses not only the icons but the members of the congregation, saluting the image of God in each person.  'The best icon of God is man' (P. Evodokimov, L'Orthodoxie,  218).   
   
~ Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, p 225-226 
   
TALK ABOUT IT:  How does this Orthodox teaching affirm or challenge your own thoughts about human beings? 
  
DO IT (INNER PRACTICE):  If, as in Orthodox teaching, this divine image (icon) is a potentiality to be made real, how can/do you practice realizing it? 
  
DO IT (OUTER PRACTICE):  How can/do you summon this potentiality in others?  
    
LEARNING FROM TIMOTHY WARE: CHURCH OF RECONCILIATION   

Learning from Martin Thornton

Spiritual direction assumes the centrality of prayer as power to act... The practical out-going Christian is not someone who, vaguely inspired by Jesus, sets about solving the world's problems and trying to love his neighbors off his own bat - albeit autographed by Jesus.  Rather he is one who, ontologically incorporated into the sacred humanity of Christ, becomes his redemptive instrument.... Christian action is not action of which Jesus approves but action that he performs through his incorporated, and therefore prayerful, disciples.  
~ Martin Thornton, "Spiritual Direction", pp 13-14       
                                                                                                        No images of Martin Thornton
  
TALK ABOUT IT   How does the difference between doing what Jesus would do, and Jesus doing his work through us, matter to you?  
  
DO IT (INNER PRACTICE)   How does this difference effect you experience the practice of compassion? 
   
DO IT (OUTER PRACTICE)  How could this difference effect the way others experience your compassion?  

LEARNING FROM MARTIN THORNTON: CHURCH OF RECONCILIATION   

Learning from William Johnston

After the Second Vatican Council, scholasticism collapsed.  New theological methods arose.  No one can question the value of the historical critical approach to Scripture and patristics that is now in vogue; no one can deny the immense value of modern, scientific scholarship and research.  Yet the West has to learn an important lesson from the Orthodox tradition: the value of prayer and mystical experience for theology.  Profound wisdom comes not only from scientific research but also from contemplation.  This is the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas who speaks of connatuarality and knowledge that comes from love.  Such wisdom will be all the more necessary as Christianity enters into dialogue with the mystical religions of Asia.
  
~ William Johnson, "Mystical Theology: The Science of Love"
   
TALK ABOUT IT  What could mystical experience contribute beyond reason, research, and rational thought to theological study (the study of God and God's nature, attributes, and relation to the world)? 

DO IT (INNER PRACTICE)  What inner (contemplative) practices are helping you (or what inner practices do you think might help you) to know and understand God's nature and relation to the world?  

DO IT (OUTER PRACTICE)  What relationship can you discover between you inner practice and your outward relationships with / behaviors toward others? 


LEARNING FROM WILLIAM JOHNSTON: CHURCH OF RECONCILIATION 

Learning from Nicolas Berdyaev

The greatest Christian mystics of all creeds placed love for God and union with God above personal salvation.  Exoteric Christianity often criticized mystics because for them the center of gravity of spiritual life does not lie in the ways of personal salvation; they proceed by the perilous ways of mystical love...

In the individualistic, ascetic understanding of Christianity as a religion of personal salvation in which one cares only about one's soul, the revelation of the resurrection of all creatures is incomprehensible and unnecessary.  The religion of personal salvation has no universal eschatological perspective, no personal connection of the individual human soul with the world, with the cosmos, with all creation.  The religion of personal salvation denies the hierarchical order of existence in which all is united with all and in which no individual fate can be isolated... I cannot save myself alone, I can save myself only together with my brothers and sisters, together with all of God's creation.  I cannot think only of my own salvation, I must think also of the salvation of others, of the salvation of the whole world.  
   
And even the idea of salvation is only an exoteric expression for the achievement of spiritual heights, of perfection, of becoming like God - which is the supreme goal of the life of the world... 
   
Christianity always, is, and will be not only a religion of personal salvation and terror of damnation but also a religion of transfiguration of the world, the theosis (divinization) of all creatures, a cosmic and social religion, a religion of selfless love, love for God and humanity, promising the Kingdom of God.         
  
~ Nicolas Berdyaev, "Salvation and Creativity" in Western Spirituality: Historic Roots, Ecumenical Routes, edited by Matthew Fox 

TALK ABOUT IT:  What to you notice in this quote that challenges or affirms your own assumptions?  Where did you inherit your assumptions about salvation?  

DO IT (INNER PRACTICE):  How would (do) you practice salvation as participation in a collective transformation rather than as a private transaction with God?  

DO IT (OUTER PRACTICE):  How can (will) you contribute in some way, even some very small way, this week to the transformation of the world into the Kingdom of God?    


LEARNING FROM NICOLAS BERDYAEV: CHURCH OF RECONCILIATION 

Learning from Bede Griffiths

The death and resurrection of Christ is a unique event.  In one sense it is a mythological event, an event of supreme symbolism... But it is a sign which is rooted in history... This is very difficult for the Hindu to understand.  The Hindu ideal is to be above all suffering... When one looks at the Buddha, one sees that he is completely calm.  He has passed beyond this world.  But when we contemplate Jesus' suffering on the cross, we see how God has entered into humanity, into our human state, into human suffering and pain, into death.  This is something quite different...
  

The Hindu always tends to think that when you reach the Beyond all your differences, the body and soul, disappear, and you experience only the Divine Bliss... But in the Christian view the whole meaning and purpose of creation was that God should reflect Himself in you, in me, in others, and in everything.  The whole creation is not to disappear, but to be re-created and transformed, to participate in the Divine Life, fulfilling itself in the Divine Bliss, the Divine Glory...  
  
The danger [of Christianity today] is that it over-emphasises the importance of matter and science and history and human progress in this world striving for a better world... And so the modern Christian view needs to be complemented with the constant awareness which the Hindu has of the eternal dimension of being... of the sacramentality of the whole of creation and of the transcendent world beyond time, beyond space, beyond this world altogether.  
  
~ Bede Griffiths, The Cosmic Revelation, pp 125-129
     
TALK ABOUT IT  What does our body matter?  (Is it merely a discardable "vessel" of our spiritual reality.  Is it a sacramental reality that is changed rather than destroyed by death?) 
  
DO IT (INNER PRACTICE)  How does the way you treat your body reflect your understanding of it?  What could God be calling you to do, or be, or change? 
   
DO IT (OUTER PRACTICE)  How does the way you treat creation reflect your understanding of it?  What could God be calling you to do, or be, or change? 


LEARNING FROM BEDE GRIFFITHS: CHURCH OF RECONCILIATION 

Learning from Andrew Harvey

THOUGHTS ABOUT DEATH AND DEATHLESSNESS 
Selected in memory of David Pinyard 
      
Deathlessness is hidden at the center of the house.  You have to be killed in every room of the house before you can get to the room where deathlessness is.  That is the glory of the process. The mercy is that after the first couple of killings, you want to know that you're being killed into life.  You begin to participate in the killing willingly.  People go into retreat to die in another room, to come closer to that center of deathlessness.  Everyone doing a serious yoga with a master or with God directly is learning how to die in life, how to die into life.  They know that the law is that the more you die, the more you live.... 
  

One way of looking at the body is to see that it is given to us to be taken away, and so to compel us toward liberation.  We have a time bomb within us which is called death.  After a while you hear the ticking of that bomb as it grows louder as you grow older.  The ticking is there to remind you to transcend your identification with the body, to go beyond the body while you're in it....
  
You must think every day that you might not make it to the night, so that everything you do could have the beauty and serenity that you would bring to an action if you were dying. A tremendous gentleness is born from daily meditation on this. 
  
~  Andrew Harvey, "Dialogues With a Modern Mystic", Chapter 8 
   
TALK ABOUT IT:  How is death both a blessing and a curse?  How do we avoid or dilute the pain of death? 
  
DO IT (INNER PRACTICE):  How do (can) we practice dying before we die? 
   
DO IT (OUTER PRACTICE):  How do (can) we cultivate the gentleness and mindfulness of living each moment as if we are dying?  

   

LEARNING FROM ANDREW HARVEY: CHURCH OF RECONCILIATION      

Learning from Barbara Brown Taylor

The new science requires a radical change in how we conceive the world.  It is no longer possible to see it as a collection of autonomous parts, as Newton did, existing separately while interacting.  The deeper revelation is one of undivided wholeness, in which the observer is not separable from what is observed.  Or, in Heisenberg's words, "the common division of the world into subject and object, inner world and outer world, body and soul, is no longer adequate." 
   

Is this physics or theology, science or religion?  At the very least, it is poetry ...  Where is God in this picture?  God is all over the place.  God is up there, down here, inside my skin and out.  God is the web, the energy, the space, the light - not captured in them, as if any of those concepts were more real than what unites them - but revealed in that singular, vast net of relationships that animates everything that is ... God is the unity - the very energy, the very intelligence, the very elegance and passion that makes it all go ... As Joseph Campbell once asked, what if the universe is not merely the product of God but also the manifestation of God - a "eucharistic planet" on which we have been invited to live?   
  
~ Barbara Brown Taylor, "The Luminous Web", p 69-75 
  
SACRED CHRISTIAN WRITINGS: "There is one body and one Spirit ... one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all."  Ephesians 4:4-6 
  
TALK ABOUT IT:  What is your (favorite) image of God? 
  
DO IT (INNER PRACTICE):  How do (can) we practice living as a manifestation of God?
  
DO IT (OUTER PRACTICE):  How do (can) we practice engaging all persons and things as manifestations of God? 
  
LEARNING FROM BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR: CHURCH OF RECONCILIATION      

Learning from Gregory of Nazianzen

The great Architect of the universe conceived and produced a being endowed with both natures, the visible and the invisible; God created the human being, bringing its body forth from the pre-exiting matter which he animated with his own Spirit ... Thus in some way a new universe was born, small and great at one and the same time.  God set this ‘hybrid’ worshipper on earth to contemplate the visible world, and to be initiated into the invisible; to reign over earth’s creatures, and to obey orders from on high.  He crated a being at one earthly and heavenly, insecure and immortal, visible and invisible, halfway between greatness and nothingness, flesh and spirit at the same time ... an animal en route to another native land, and, most mysterious of all, made to resemble God by simple submission to the divine will. 

              -- Gregory of Nazianzen, Oration 45, For Easter, 7 (PG 36, 850) 

TALK ABOUT IT: What are the implications of being a ‘hybrid’ creature at the intersection of divine and human natures?   

DO IT (INNER PRACTICE): Share your experience or attempts with “contemplating the visible world?”

DO IT (OUTER PRACTICE): Share your experience or attempts with “reigning over earth’s creatures”? 


LEARNING FROM GREGORY OF NAZIANZEN: CHURCH OF RECONCILIATION 

Quote from Cynthia Bourgeault

For at least five centuries, Christianity carried at its heart the knowledge of a spiritual path.  Grounded in its image of Jesus the Life-giver, its path was a middle way - not heroic individualism, or death mysticism, or exaggerated asceticism, but an invitation to become unified ones, in dynamic communion with Jesus, the Unified One.... What became of this path?.... In Jesus the Savior - the Rescuer - we have heroics, and an implicit negativity: one gets rescued out of something - in this case, out of sin and death.... As the distance between Christ and humanity grew steadily wider and more unbridgeable, the foundations of the spiritual path gradually eroded.... When the original imperative toward unity [dynamic communion of unified ones with the Unified One] or wholeness, was lost, and self-perfection was seen no longer as a proper human task but as an arrogant denial of human sinfulness, one can legitimately speak of a “Lost Christianity”.  ~ Cynthia Bourgeault, “The Gift of Life” 

TALK ABOUT IT: What is the Christian spiritual path? 

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DO IT (INNER PRACTICE): Becoming one with our longing to become one with Christ

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DO IT (OUTER PRACTICE)::  Healing humanity 

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• Share:: How can we recognize and cultivate the dynamic communion of humanity with Jesus, the Unified One?

Quote from Father Thomas Hopko

Evagrios of Pontus, a fourth-century writer, wrote about this [forgiving oneself].  He said that there are in us many selves, really, but at base there are two: the real self, which is the Christ-self, and a legion of other selves, which are the Adamic selves.  What happens when we hear the word of grace is that we are split down the middle.  We don’t want grace because of the pain we have to face, the fears and so on.  But one of the things that happens - one of the lies of the Devil, so to speak - is the conviction that we are not worth it.  It is not for us.  We are to bad, worthless.  Then there comes a point, as Evagrios said, when the Christ-self needs to be convicted that “yes, I exist, and I am acceptable,” and so to have pity and mercy on those other selves.  - Father Thomas Hopko, “Living in Communion”

TALK ABOUT IT: Forgiving ourself = Our Christ-self having mercy on our other selves

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DO IT (INNER PRACTICE): Receiving mercy from our Christ-self

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DO IT (OUTER PRACTICE): Extending mercy from our Christ-self to others  

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Quote from Fr Symeon Burhold

No images of Fr Symeon
Burhold are available.
His article on "Divine
Energy" can be found
in "The Inner Journey:
Views from the
Christian Tradition".

The world is radiant with God’s presence, with divine energy. He is dynamically present in all things as their creator and all things participate in the divine energy to the extent that he acts upon them and they are patient to his touch. In Christian tradition, it is the human person who is most capable of this participation.  We are believed to be made in the image and likeness of God and, on the basis of the ancient axiom that knowledge and vision occur with likeness, the Church has affirmed that man can behold God with the eye of his soul, or heart.  So our heart's gaze can be fixed upon God.  To sin is literally to fall short of this vision of God and to deal with things merely as objects of our own gratification and convenience.  - Fr Symeon Burhold, "Divine Energy" 


TALK ABOUT IT: Sin as falling short of our capacity to behold God

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DO IT (INNER PRACTICE): Beholding God

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• Share :: Share your experience as you practice beholding God

DO IT (OUTER PRACTICE): Dealing with everything differently

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Quote from Rabbi Rami Shapiro

Yom Kippur This Week 
  
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement (At-One-ment, October 7^th at sundown) is the culmination of all this effort [of asking forgiveness from family and friends, and of honoring all creation as a manifestation of God]. We have made peace with our neighbor, peace with nature, and now it is time to make peace with God.  

For me, making peace with God is about remembering that God isn’t about salvation or damnation, reward or punishment. God is about reality, for God is reality. I make peace with God by realizing that life is wild, unpredictable, often horrifying, and yet always hopeful. I remind myself to not expect things to be other than they are, and to be thankful for all that they are. With this act of radical acceptance comes radical forgiveness, and, for me, this is what Yom Kippur is all about.  - Rabbi Rami Shapiro “Beyond Religion”, Jewish Fall holy Days, Tuesday, September 20 (blog address http://rabbirami.blogspot.com/)

TALK ABOUT IT: Yom Kippur ~ Making Peace with God 

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DO IT: INNER PRACTICE: Radical Acceptance 

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DO IT: OUTER PRACTICE: Radical Forgiveness 

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Quote from Bishop Kallistos Ware

11-09-25

In the Greek Christian tradition, the person is often described as being at the center of creation, at the crossroads.  The human person is seen as a microcosm reflecting the whole creation, both material and spiritual.  In this way, the human person is the bond of creation, the bridge - the marriage song of creation.  The human person is called to be the mediator. We are called to unite.  We are called to take material things and make them spiritual.  Though they remain material, we raise them to a higher level.  And because each of us in made in the Image of God, it is the task of each of us to be the priest of creation, to take the creation and to offer it back to God. - Bishop Kallistos Ware, “Image and Likeness” 

TALK ABOUT IT: The Human Vocation

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DO IT (INNER WORK): Re-imagining Yourself

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DO IT (OUTER WORK): Offering Creation

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Quote from Philip Newell

Christ is the memory of what we have forgotten.  He remembers the dance of the universe and the harmony that is deep within all things.  He is the memory also of who we are.  He shows us not a foreign truth but a truth that is hidden in the depths of the human soul.  He comes to wake us up, to call us back to ourselves and to the relationship that is deep within all things. The emphasis is not on becoming something other than ourselves but on becoming truly ourselves.  Christ discloses to us the sacred root of our being and of all being. ~ Philip Newell, “Christ of the Celts”

TALK ABOUT IT: What is Spiritual Amnesia?

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DO IT (INNER WORK): Bearing the Sacred

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DO IT (OUTER WORK): Serving the Sacred

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Quote from Richard Rohr

The ability to stand back and calmly observe our inner dramas, without rushing to judgment, is foundational for spiritual seeing.  It is the primary form of “dying to the self” that Jesus lived personally and the Buddha taught experientially.  The growing consensus is that, whatever you call it, such calm, egoless seeing is invariably characteristic of people at the highest levels of doing and loving in all cultures and religions.  They are the ones we call sages or wise women or holy men.  They see like the mystics see. 

Now do not let the word “mystic” scare you.  It simply means one who has moved from mere belief systems or belonging systems to actual inner experience.  All spiritual traditions agree that such a movement is possible, desirable, and available to everyone.  In fact, Jesus seems to say that this is the whole point!  (See, for example, John 10:19-38.) ~  From The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, pp.30, 32-33

TALK ABOUT IT: What is mysticism? 

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DO IT (INNER WORK): Dying to self

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DO IT (OUTER WORK): Becoming sages

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Quote from C.S. Lewis

In the same way, the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs.  If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.  God became Man for no other purpose.  It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.  ~ From "Mere Christianity"

TALK ABOUT IT: Human destiny 

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DO IT (INNER WORK): Mistaken Identity 

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4. Discuss :: Use the Discussion tab to share your inner work on identifying with your Christ Self rather than with your ego self.

DO IT (OUTER WORK):  Being Christ to Others

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Expect Miracles

FROM THE SERMON FOR JULY 10, 2011
"The Parable of the Sower" Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

What I hear that goes back to the Jesus of history is a parable, which he told to communicate his experience, his vision, his passion for one thing - the one thing he was always trying to share - the Kingdom (the Empire, the Domain, the Reign, the Reality, the Presence, the Dream) of God.

I hear, "The Kingdom of God is like this..."

"Like a sower sowing seeds indiscriminately.  So much so that they are nearly all wasted on the shallow path, on rocky soil, in the thorns.  And yet somehow the most amazing, unexpected thing happens.  Somehow, some of the seeds find good soil and the harvest is even more extravagant than the sower himself."

In the time of Jesus, a seven fold crop was a good year. A ten fold crop was truly abundant.  But this harvest is thirty fold, enough to feed a village for a year.  And sixty fold, double that.  And one hundred fold.  That's retirement!  If you had a hundred fold crop, you'd never have to farm again - ever!

How could such a thing ever happen?!  Well, the Kingdom of God is like that.  Who could guess?  Who could even imagine such a thing as the Kingdom of God?

How could such a thing ever happen?  It's a miracle.

In the darkest times, in the ordinary times, in the mundane, in the least expected moments, the Kingdom of God springs up all around us, and within us.  That non-geographical place where heaven and earth, divine and human, come together and become one.

"The Kingdom of God is at hand."  In fact it is "within you," says Jesus.  How could such a thing ever happen?  It's a miracle.

That's what I hear that goes back to the original context, to the Jesus of history himself.

But even more important is what we hear Jesus saying to us here and now.   What do you get out of this parable?  How is Jesus using this story to touch you, to speak to you, to transform your life?

I can tell you what I hear, and encourage you to share what you hear.

What I hear is, "Expect miracles!" And as I hear that, I realize I'm thinking about this church.  "Expect miracles."

I'm thinking about how isolated and cut off we had become from our diocese, from our community, and even from our own fellow Episcopal churches....  But what I hear is "Expect miracles!"  In the darkest times, in the most ordinary times, in the mundane, in the least expected moments and ways, expect miracles.

So then I think of the priest who I had a breakfast meeting with recently who said, "Frankly, I'm surprised.  I didn't think this church was going to make it, but you guys had the highest percent of your congregation that supported Episcopal night at the baseball game this year.  I'm impressed!"

And I think of a woman in California who is receiving a prayer shawl from this church from a person in this community who's not even a member of this church but who received the healing gift of a prayer shawl himself and is passing on the gift of a prayer shawl to his sister.

I think of a boy's baseball team that's in Houston, Texas, today at their world series playoffs, whose coach's wife texted me from Houston yesterday, "We're doing great. Thank you for your prayers!"  And I think of the picnic we're planning in the park on the 23rd to celebrate the hard work of "our boys" and to get to know their families.

I think of all the members of this church who showed up yesterday at Cliff Maus Village working shoulder to shoulder with Episcopalians from across Corpus Christi, and interacting with some of the residents with whom we hope to develop relationships in the future.  When's the last time you can remember our church getting involved like that with other churches in making God's dream for this world come true?

I think of the plans for the blessing of backpacks coming up on August 20, which we're hosting for the neighborhood so that we can begin to establish ourselves as a caring presence in the community.  And I think of the father of one of the baseball boys in the park whose eyes lit up when he heard that we were going to collect backpacks for some of the kids at Cliff Maus Village and include them in the "blessing of the backpacks", and who said, "Oh I want to donate some backpacks for that!"

I think of the beach cleanup we have scheduled for August 27th to show our care and appreciation of God's world, and how that's expanded to eight churches because we have also initiated a memorial event with these eight other churches (including Muslim and Jewish congregations) for the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

And I think of the men who stood in line for a pair of clean socks the last time John McDermont and his wife went out by themselves to distribute clothes to the homeless, and they ran out.  "I'm so sorry", John said, "but next month I'll be back with my church, and we'll have ten times as much!"  And that's where many of our members are right now - distributing clothes to the homeless.

"Expect miracles!" How else do you explain what's going on with this church?  Still struggling to pay our own light bill, and yet the Kingdom of God is springing up all around us, and within us.  The Dream of God is coming true for us, and through us...  "The Kingdom of God is like this."  "Expect miracles!"

That's what I hear.  Can you hear that?  Do you hear anything else?  Anything different?  Anything more?  What else do you think Jesus might be trying to say to you?  Keep listening, and keep sharing.  The more we listen together, the better we hear.