Hevajra Mandala (detail) by Wonderlane Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
"Wholeness"
"Participating in Divinity"
Wednesday, 12 November 2014
Creation itself is the Body of God, and “the Christ” is the mystery of matter and spirit operating as one. Well, then, you ask, what makes the Church special? What makes believers different?
In the first thousand years of the church’s formation, a great deal of ink was spilled trying to unpack one verse in the first chapter of Genesis, where it states that we are “created in the image and likeness of God” (1:26). This was the consensus they came to: “image” is the objective identification with God that is given to all of creation. Everything bears the divine DNA. Therefore, everything is objectively the Body of God. Everything came forth from the Creator and reveals the Creator in some unique way.
“Likeness” is your subjective appropriation of this reality, your subjective actualization of God’s image. Something can be absolutely true, but until you bring the unconscious truth into conscious choice and realization, it isn’t true for you.
We are all equal on the first level, the level of image. On the second level we are clearly at different levels of maturity—same image, but different likeness. Most of the church’s work has been focused at the second level, trying to make people more like Christ. We got so preoccupied with growing in likeness, that we underplayed the image part. The Eastern Church held onto the objective image and taught this much better. But both Roman Catholics and Protestants are profoundly Western Christians, largely without honoring the other hemisphere of the church (nor does the East honor the West very much!). The point is that we both lost out on the full glory of the immense Christ Mystery.
One of my favorite Eastern Fathers, Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022 AD), said, “I have seen the Totality, received not in essence, but by participation. When you light a flame from a flame, it is the same flame that you receive.” We’re not saying “I am God.” No one can or wants to live up to that! What we are saying is that we participate very really and objectively in the Divinity. That’s the whole point of religion: to let you know that what you’re drawing upon is already planted within you! You don’t manufacture it by good moral behavior or by going to church on Sunday. You do awaken it, however, by participating in a community of faith, by eating the Eucharist, living in an entirely sacramental universe, and by fully enjoying God’s image in nature, animals, and in other human beings.
Adapted from Franciscan Mysticism: I AM That Which I Am Seeking
(CD, MP3 download); and Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self, page 107
Gateway to Silence: Wholeness holds you.
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Center for Action and Contemplation
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PO Box 12464
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(505) 242-9588
cac.org
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