Terry's reflection on a Christian perspective
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,Before we venture on this path together, I want to clarify or confess that I view spirituality though a particular Christian lens. We all have lenses through which we view and interpret reality. Being aware of the nature and limitations of one’s lenses is an essential step on the spiritual journey.
Having been formed in the Christian tradition my lens is trifocal. When I want to see long distance, I look through the lens of the Creation, dreaming of how it is we live in such a wonder-full universe, pondering its origins, standing in awe of how it all holds together. When I look through the near sighted lens, I see the reality of incarnation, the mystery of ultimate reality revealed in material form in human beings, amazed at how humans are the universe becoming conscious of itself. When I am awake enough to view life through the middle lens, I “see” love on the move, taking root, growing and bearing its sweet fruit.
I “confess” I have these existential glasses because it helps me, and I hope you, to know that no matter what variety of lens through which we view the world, all lenses, unless regularly tended to, will get dirty, foggy and scratched over time, creating distorted images. Our sight changes over time as well. The gradual onset of presbyopia, elder eye, has invited me to periodically renew my “prescription” so that I can make my way through the world with increasing measure of grace and awareness. So whatever your particular lens, be it Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Nones or Spiritual-But-Not-Religious, we all have a worldview that, if we are to take our essential questions to heart, they will need our loving attention. And, this too is true: When, along the path we pause to rest our weary eyes, setting aside for a moment our “spectacles” and “perspectives” we breath deeply and know in a way beyond seeing that we are all one.
If we were sitting together now, and I wish we were, we might share our “perspectives” with one another. I imagine trying on your glasses to see what the world looks like through your lenses. Maybe someday we can sit around a fire and try on each other's perspectives. With this in mind, please bear with me as I say a few things about what I have learned about my perspective of Christian spirituality which is rooted in what we know of the historical Jesus though scripture and the stories of the church. At the heart of the Christian experience is the incarnation. Christians confess that the Word (logos, the essence of Divinity) was revealed in a human being born in a Palestinian backwater village as a living, breathing, dying person. So we look to the stories about his life and teachings as allies along our way.
Yet the Jesus story is one that leads us beyond the confines of death. It is not just the Jesus of the past that informs Christian spirituality. Christians believe that, beginning with his resurrection, Christ remains present in a real but mysterious way in the world. The contemporary Catholic teacher Richard Rohr calls this the Cosmic Christ which, “can be seen in the confluence of divinity and physicality, spirit and matter. When the material and spiritual worlds coexist, we have Christ.” I can sum up what I believe about Jesus in one sentence: In Jesus’ life, death and resurrection the illusion of all the separations: between divinity and humanity, between material and spiritual, between time and eternity are dissolved. Thanks for listening.
Now, with that said, I wonder how you would frame your story. You may name the deepest of truths in diverse ways. I wish to honor the names that others revere.
Here are some of those terms of reverence:
Universe, God, Lord, Allah, YHWH, Great Spirit, Higher Power, Mystery, Sunyata, Brahman, Tao, Divine, Sacred, Holy, Almighty, Ultimate, the Beyond, Intimate, Abba, Nirvana, Wisdom, Source, Vishnu, Creator, Enlightenment, Interconnection, Holy One, All.
Having been formed in the Christian tradition my lens is trifocal. When I want to see long distance, I look through the lens of the Creation, dreaming of how it is we live in such a wonder-full universe, pondering its origins, standing in awe of how it all holds together. When I look through the near sighted lens, I see the reality of incarnation, the mystery of ultimate reality revealed in material form in human beings, amazed at how humans are the universe becoming conscious of itself. When I am awake enough to view life through the middle lens, I “see” love on the move, taking root, growing and bearing its sweet fruit.
I “confess” I have these existential glasses because it helps me, and I hope you, to know that no matter what variety of lens through which we view the world, all lenses, unless regularly tended to, will get dirty, foggy and scratched over time, creating distorted images. Our sight changes over time as well. The gradual onset of presbyopia, elder eye, has invited me to periodically renew my “prescription” so that I can make my way through the world with increasing measure of grace and awareness. So whatever your particular lens, be it Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Nones or Spiritual-But-Not-Religious, we all have a worldview that, if we are to take our essential questions to heart, they will need our loving attention. And, this too is true: When, along the path we pause to rest our weary eyes, setting aside for a moment our “spectacles” and “perspectives” we breath deeply and know in a way beyond seeing that we are all one.
If we were sitting together now, and I wish we were, we might share our “perspectives” with one another. I imagine trying on your glasses to see what the world looks like through your lenses. Maybe someday we can sit around a fire and try on each other's perspectives. With this in mind, please bear with me as I say a few things about what I have learned about my perspective of Christian spirituality which is rooted in what we know of the historical Jesus though scripture and the stories of the church. At the heart of the Christian experience is the incarnation. Christians confess that the Word (logos, the essence of Divinity) was revealed in a human being born in a Palestinian backwater village as a living, breathing, dying person. So we look to the stories about his life and teachings as allies along our way.
Yet the Jesus story is one that leads us beyond the confines of death. It is not just the Jesus of the past that informs Christian spirituality. Christians believe that, beginning with his resurrection, Christ remains present in a real but mysterious way in the world. The contemporary Catholic teacher Richard Rohr calls this the Cosmic Christ which, “can be seen in the confluence of divinity and physicality, spirit and matter. When the material and spiritual worlds coexist, we have Christ.” I can sum up what I believe about Jesus in one sentence: In Jesus’ life, death and resurrection the illusion of all the separations: between divinity and humanity, between material and spiritual, between time and eternity are dissolved. Thanks for listening.
Now, with that said, I wonder how you would frame your story. You may name the deepest of truths in diverse ways. I wish to honor the names that others revere.
Here are some of those terms of reverence:
Universe, God, Lord, Allah, YHWH, Great Spirit, Higher Power, Mystery, Sunyata, Brahman, Tao, Divine, Sacred, Holy, Almighty, Ultimate, the Beyond, Intimate, Abba, Nirvana, Wisdom, Source, Vishnu, Creator, Enlightenment, Interconnection, Holy One, All.