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
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
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?
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
