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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• Share :: Share your experience of identifying and working with the longing within you to become one with the “Unified One”.  

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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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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3. Share :: Choose “Re-imagining Yourself” to share your experience as you practice identifying yourself as a mediator of the material and the spiritual, as a priest of creation offering it back to God. 

DO IT (OUTER WORK): Offering Creation

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3. Share :: Choose “Offering Creation” to share your experience in actually exercising your role as a mediator of the material and the spiritual, as a priest of creation offering it back to God.  

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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