Worship God and create community within the sacred, evolving, gorgeous, celebratory event we call the universe.*
I was deeply moved by last Wednesday's meeting for worship. Both the sense of not being alone; God always being with us and the question (reworded), "how, then, shall we live?" have been with me on and off all week. We live in such a hyper-individualistic culture that I must qualify all that I say with the admonition, all that we do must be rooted in community, with the help of God, the Holy Mystery, and each other we can find our way. There are many ways to live, many ways forward, many ways to manifest the portion of love we have been given, the gifts both spiritual and earthly that have been benevolently bestowed upon us, indeed, showered upon us, that we have mostly squandered, like the prodigal son, in Jesus' parable.
It has become clearer and clearer to me that the universe, itself, in all its beauty, grandeur and mystery, is the primary revelation of God, and that we are a part of this, not separate from it. Though this has always been true, and all religion has been an attempt to interpret this revelation, it is only now, in the 21st century, that we can begin to fully appreciate the immensity and depth, the intricacy and delicacy of all its numinous nuances. So too everything we do must be rooted in this knowledge; the universe can be described as a single, self-organizing, evolving, gorgeous, celebratory event, rather than a once and for all static creation. God, Holy Mystery, is embedded in every aspect of this event, though not confined to it.
Like the prodigal son, we must come home, come home to live in the 21st century, to be in it but necessarily of it. Certainly not in the culture that exists, that is ravaging the planet, God's creation, that has caused the withering of our home, our Earth. We must create alternative (subversive, even!) cultures and communities, right where we are, right where we live. We must be committed to building community and building it across all lines of unnatural division (race, class, gender, religion etc.). We must begin to live the truth that we, all humans, are members of one species; one species among many species in the commonwealth community of Earth.
Whatever we do, must not only be done in love, but in accordance with God's primary revelation. We must ask ourselves and each other:
Does this action/lifestyle move us toward a deepening of our sense of oneness? Is it mutually beneficial for all members of the Earth community? Is it in accordance with our best understanding of the unfolding of God's plan as witnessed to in the evolving universe?
And because so many of us have a new found appreciation for Christ Jesus/the Christ principle, we must also ask:
In light of the new understanding of the universe as the primary revelation of God, how does Jesus speak to us, now, in this century? Seeking the spaciousness within that mirrors the depth and breadth of the event we call the universe, what is Christ Jesus saying to us, through his words, stories and life?
It seems to me that for, at least, the last 1000 years, Christians have focused on and emphasized getting into heaven after death, on salvation and on worshiping God in the form of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer- not exclusively, but primarily. (Some scholars assert that this is a direct result of the Black Plague that swept through Europe killing 35%-75% of the population in 3 years!) Perhaps it is time, now, to focus on Jesus' original message. He preached that God was like a father, one that loves his children unconditionally. In other words, God loves us, each one of us, warts, bumps, mistakes and all. Jesus also preached that the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God is within us and among us (at one and the same time, I am convinced). Jesus also admonished us to love one another as he loves us, as God loves us. In fact, when Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment, his answer was, "to love God with all your heart, mind and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself."
Bringing these into the 21st century, it is clear that our neighbor is not just our human neighbor, it is also all the other animal and plant neighbors, up to and including the Earth itself. What might not be as clear yet to most of us is that since God is embedded in every part of the event we call the universe, that everything, EVERYTHING from the smallest quark or nutrino to the largest galaxy, from the tiniest living microbe on Earth to the very planet, itself- including everything that we have come to think of as inert, inanimate or non-living, everything has interiority, everything has depth, soul, consciousness, that of God.
Therefore, we are called:
1. to view humankind as one species among species that make up the Earth commonwealth community, to treat all human beings as our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, AND all children as our own.
2. to recognize the RIGHT of all other beings to existence in their natural habitat
3. to recognize, experience and to live out the heaven, the kingdom of God that is and is becoming in each of us and among us, e.g. creating a multiplicity of cultures/societies where it is easy to love one another as ourselves, cultures where it is easy to respect each other, treat each other as equals and to have mutually enhancing relationships and economies.
4. to love our neighbors as ourselves, including all species of the Earth commonwealth community, to rejoice in the health and growth of other species (as a whole or individually), even as it means the constraint of our own selves/species, e.g. adopting a tree or a particular forest, an animal or a heard or flock (in the wild), falling in love with our bio-region and looking after it as we would a member of our family (perhaps instead of having our own child, or along with?)
5. to come to know and revere the universe as revelation, as fully as possible, e.g. engage in the new 3 R's: reverence, resonance and reverberation. Reverence for the beauty, grandeur and mystery... by resonance is meant the perception and comprehension of each part of the whole, each tree, animal, human being or galaxy... our true goal, reverberation, indicates, being drawn into the depth of the thing, whatever we find ourselves draw to, to experience its interiority, to receive its radiance, the radiance we cannot perceive without entering into its depth, soul or consciousness.
5. (in order to do #4, or any of these), we are called to free ourselves from our collective and individual entrancement with modern technology. Not necessarily reject it altogether, but to free ourselves of our addictions to it/them, our over-dependence on them etc. Freeing ourselves will allow the opportunity to fall in love with and be entranced by God's ongoing creation, and God as embedded in every aspect of it. For how can we do God's will if we are not listening for the voice of Holy Mystery in the sky above us, the trees beside us, the birds, the rivers, the lakes, the plains and prairies, the oceans, the abundant life here on Earth, including our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, our children, all our children? (rather than listening to our MP3's, or spending so much time surfing the internet or playing computer games!)
6. to create community and communities, in ever larger circles, and to start where we are, with the ones close by. "Love the ones you're with".
7. to increase individual and corporate capacity for compassion. E.g. create and/or join groups where it is easy to grow our own and others' compassion. Create new modes of being that will replace and undermine the current industrial, perpetual growth consumer mode which is causing the planet to wither and which has been and continues to destroy so many of our neighbor species, as well as cause wars and systems of domination that have created a kind of living hell on Earth for so many.
8. to seek God in all that we do, to seek that of God in everyone and everything, e.g. take enough time to pray, to withdraw, to go inward, to retreat in nature, to celebrate and renew our spirit, to let the love of God fill us and flow through us, find the ways that work for us and do them every day, so that we can do all we do in love and Holy obedience.
* in imitation of Michael Pollan, who wrote In Defense of Food and gave away his whole message in one line, "Eat food, mostly vegetables, not too much."
