In these verses of Mark’s narrative about a Jewish peasant from Nazareth named “Jesus” rising from John’s washing from the corruptions of that era of history is prelude to the disciples of Jesus rising from their own deep-water dying experienced when their mentor was crucified. Mark is going lead us from this resurrection in the life of Jesus to the resurrection of Jesus’ life in the lives of the disciples.

If you want the read this whole commentary on the Gospel of Mark, it is published on the Realistic Living blog site for a mere $10 plus your name, your address, and your e-mail address. Just put those four things in the mail to Gene Marshall, 3578 N. State Highway 78, Bonham, TX 7418, and I will e-mail you the password that allows you to download as many copies of this commentary as you want to use for yourself or in your local ministries.

To see more clearly what this commentary contains, you can go to:

https://realisticliving.org/New/mark-commentary/

Following is an early part of that commentary:

For John came and began to baptize men in the desert, proclaiming baptism as the mark of a complete change of heart and of the forgiveness of sins. All the people of the Judaea countryside and everyone in Jerusalem went out to him in the desert and received his baptism in the river Jordan, publicly confessing their sins.

John himself was dressed in camel-hair, with a leather belt round his waist, and he lived on locusts and wild honey. The burden of his preaching was, “There is someone coming after me who is stronger than I—indeed I am not good enough to kneel down and undo his shoes. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Mark: 1: 4-8 J. B Phillips translation.

In these verses, Mark is indicating that the religious movement initiated by John, the Baptist is an important precursor to the topic of Mark’s good news. Mark implies that Jesus identified deeply with the movement initiated by John, the Baptist. Many New Testament scholars believe that this was true of the historical Jesus—that the man Jesus was not a Zealot or a Sadducee or a Pharisee or an Essene—that Jesus chose the radical movement of John, the Baptist instead of these other options for communal association. Decades later, Mark still felt that John’s movement was an important movement, as well as an important part of the story of Jesus. Mark does not give us any details of that movement or of Jesus’ biography in relation to it. But Mark did feel the need to clarify something about John’s movement.

Mark clearly felt that the movement Jesus initiated needed to be distinguished from John’s movement—that the addition that Jesus made to John’s movement was huge. John was a wild-hermit, eating and dressing like the ascetic Elijah, and calling people out to the edge of society to be washed of the evil that inflicted that entire wicked era of history. Individual people were volunteering for that washing, and John’s movement was also an address to the whole society—a critique of that society’s departure from the Mosaic norm, indeed a departure from the authenticity of being human. The historical Jesus likely concurred with that radical critique. According to Mark, Jesus accepted John’s warning that a radical historical judgement from Eternity of the entire human world was on the way, and would arrive soon.

Perhaps, we can also identify with John’s message, as we look realistically at our 21st century world order—refusing to deal fully with our ecological challenges, drifting backward toward authoritarian governments, racism, sexism, bigotries of every type. We too may be open to being “washed of our era”—joining a deep repentance, renouncing the estranged state of things, and rising up from such a washing into a new attitude toward the whole of human history. Jesus joined John at the river Jordan.

When have you wished to be washed of your era?

When have you felt that the world’s estrangements from realism were so great that a general catastrophe was surely on the way, and soon?

Mark goes on to proclaim that Jesus will make a huge addition to the revolution launched by the remarkable John, the Baptist. This addition was so significant that John himself, according to Mark, knew that he, John, was not worthy to kneel down and undo the shoes of Jesus. John, Mark indicates, washed us of our evil era, but Jesus will wash us further with the hot fire of God’s own Spirit. What does all that mean? We will have to wait and see as Mark’s story moves along, but at this point we have Mark’s hint that the event of Jesus is a remarkable coming of a very radical revolution in human understanding of what it means to be a human being

It was in those days that Jesus arrived from the Galilean village of Nazareth and was baptized by John in the Jordan. All at once, as he came up out of the water, he saw the heavens split open, and the Spirit coming down upon him like a dove. A voice came out of Heaven, saying, “You are my dearly-beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!” Mark: 1: 9-11 J. B Phillips

Almost every phrase that Mark includes in his story has some sort of secret meanings. “Up out the water” can pass unnoticed if we do not associate this immersion with dying to the evil era. If we do see the allusion to dying, then “up out of the water” is an allusion to resurrection. In this story Jesus is becoming the resurrected one.

“The heavens split open” is an even more cryptic piece of poetry to a modern person who does not know what to make of the word “heaven” and certainly finds it very odd to speak of seeing “the heavens split open.” Translating that phrase from its transcendence metaphorical imagination to an existential transparency type of poetry takes a bit of thoughtfulness. “Heaven” means the realm of Absolute Mystery, and Mark is picturing that dynamic as right above our heads. There is a sort of big punch bowl with stars on it and if that bowl were to split open we would see right into the Eternal heaven. I believe that Mark is thinking more metaphorically and less literally than that picture may sound. Seeing into the Eternal is the heart meaning of the text. As Jesus comes up out of the watery tomb in which John has dunked him, the punch bowl of Awesome Absolute Mystery splits open. What a story!

Next, this profound-eyed person Mark sees another signal of profoundness: “the Spirit coming down upon him like a dove.” Spirit, for Mark, is the Absolute Mystery itself manifesting as a state of our whole life sometimes called “Wonder” or “Awe.” But for someone who has the courage for such a dreadful, fascinating state of Awe, this happening is a gentle thing, like a dove settling on head and shoulder.

Finally, Mark gives us one more symbol for how this baptism was an outstanding event: “A voice came out of Heaven, saying, ‘You are my dearly-beloved Son.‘ “ We need not believe that a tape recorder would have heard this voice. Mark included this bit of poetic flair to complete his view of the significance of this baptism for this simple roof-repair man’s son from the nowhere of Nazareth. And what does “Son” mean here? It means that Jesus is having a new birth, not of a father from Nazareth, but of a Spirit from Eternity. This is Mark’s “virgin birth” narrative. Mark is implying a virgin birth for Jesus, a birth sired from heaven that was now taking over Jesus’ whole life from his biological birth in Nazareth.

The Awed One (Jesus) is filled with Awe (Spirit) sourced from the Awesome (Eternal Mystery.) This whole secret Trinity of Divinity (Awesome, Awed One, Awe) is happening among us, to us, to humanity in these opening pages of Mark’s story. For the rest of Mark’s strange narrative, Jesus is the washed one, the resurrected one, the beloved of Reality one. Jesus is virgin born among us to lead us into our own virgin birth of profound humanness. For the rest of Mark’s gospel we see in Jesus what this exemplar of resurrected humanity looks like—walking, talking, calling, teaching, healing, feeding, eating, celebrating, living, suffering, dying. Women coming to honor him in his tomb find nothing there, except their own resurrection into Jesus-hood profoundness.

So, what might this passage be saying to us today about the living of our own authentic lives and about the power of these Christian symbols for our own depth living? Perhaps we might give Christian symbols a second look. Perhaps we might view these long-preserved stories as being clues to our own most profound matters of living. Perhaps we might ask of Mark and other resurrected witnesses, what must we do to inherit this life abundant. Perhaps we are drawn to read further in Mark’s story to see where our own particular healing is required in order to be washed of our own grim era—washed in order for us to enter here and now into this communion of the saints, this Kingdom of God, this Reign of Reality, this commonwealth of profound realism of which Jesus speaks. Perhaps such an enigmatic interior baptism is our first step, our next step toward beginning a fresh walk with Jesus for the rest of our own life story.

Mark clearly sees Jesus’ baptism by John as a new birth in the consciousness of Jesus. If we were using Eastern language we might call it “enlightenment.” Using the language that Mark develops toward the end of his story, Jesus was experiencing in John’s baptism a death and a resurrection to profound humanness—to his spirit depth, to his authenticity in this ordinary human body..

The ordinary human ego of Jesus was not destroyed, but that ego ceased to be the identity of this person. Jesus was dead to the evils of his era to the extent that there was nothing left to his identity except his essential authenticity, his profound humanness that was created by Final Reality from the dawn of time. Jesus in this story is a symbol for that profound humanness that the Creator of everything gives to humans before their fall into their estrangements from Reality. Jesus is the “Offspring of God,” the new humanity—a humanity that Jesus’ healings are going to call forth in others. Perhaps in you. Perhaps in me.

To say all these extreme things about Jesus, at the very beginning of his narrative, means that Mark views Jesus as a human being who has already died to estrangement and been raised up to authentic life. As we will see, Jesus is not intimidated by the entire Roman world or by Israel’s hypocritical religious establishments of compromise, flight, or furious hatred toward it all. Jesus is not intimidated by the prospect of living such a profound life or dying such a profound life at the hands of those he servers.

Matthew and Luke expand on this topic of Jesus being an “Offspring of Final Reality” with stories about Jesus’ virgin birth. John’s gospel also talks about a second birth that is available to all of us who embrace Jesus’s message. But at this point in Mark’s gospel the meaning of this divine birthing is only hinted—it is still a secret that something very special has appeared in Jesus. In coming chapters we are going to watch what happens as this person lives out such profound humanity in real-world social engagement. We are going to see someone who lives the authentic life unto death.

According to the scholarship of Rudolf Bultmann, what baptism came to mean in the early church was threefold: (1) washed of the era of “sin,” (2) sealed within the body of Christ, and (3) filled with the Holy Spirit. All three of these meanings are descriptions of an event of rebirth—drowning our estrangements to death, opening us to our profound authenticity, and facing our future in this “Spirit of Wholeness.”

What experiences in your life seem to correspond with such a profound rebirth?

The post Deep River Washing first appeared on Realistic Living.

It is interesting to note that when Siddhartha realized that he was the Awake One (the Buddha), he continued his meditation practices for the rest of his life. He apparently assumed that these practices assisted him in being the Awake One and further exploring the full realization what that meant.

It seems to me that those of us who are willing to view ourselves are already “in Christ” also need to do our solitary practices, our Bible reading, our group practices, and our history-bending engagements in order to manifest our “in Christ” essence and to further explore the full realization what that means.

My understanding of doing religious practices was enriched deeply by this story I heard about the student who asked his Buddhist teacher if meditation caused enlightenment. His teacher answered, “No, enlightenment is an accident, but meditation makes you more accident prone.”

That reminds me of Paul Tillich’s Christian teaching about grace—that “grace is a happening that happens or it does not happen.” That implies that grace is also an accident, and that our Christian practices only make us more accident prone to the grace that heals our lives. That also implies that our “in Christ” awakenment is not a human achievement, but our true nature or essence breaking through our human achievements.

I believe that this trend of thought applies to all religious practices. Such practices are only a means of assisting us to be more accident prone to experiencing our essential profound humanness—a human essence that all of us already are, but that all of us have clouded with falsifying overlays.

Over the years I have studied and practiced all sort of religious practices, and I have recently constructed this list of secular categories for all the religious practices I have ever heard about:

Profound Dialogue
Foundational Meditation
Persistent Intentions
Full-Body Exformation
Historical Engagement
Devotional Singularity
Holistic Detachment
Boundless Inquiry
Visionary Trance

In this spin I am not going to spell out all these sets of religious practices. I am going to focus on Historical Engagement. We don’t often thinking of historical engagement as a religious practice, but for Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jesus, Mohammed, and many more, I believe it was for them a religious practice—and that it has been for me.

In 1963 I went to Jackson, Mississippi to march with Martin Luther King Jr. I stayed in the house of one of my friends, Bob Kochtitsky, whose house had been bombed a few months back by people who did not like the leadership he was taking in the civil right revolution. As I was marching down that Jackson, Mississippi street seeing people on their porches and policemen standing around, I did not think of this as a religious practice. But reflecting on it later (as well as now), I am viewing it as an example of what I mean by “Historical Engagement as a religious practice.”

My brief Jackson-Miss engagement was not a religious practice because I was walking in a group with Martin King. It was not a religious practice because it was a little bit dangerous. It was a religious practice because I was in this small way participating in the bending of history toward justice. Doing such a thing was making me more accident prone for accessing my profound humanness.

So what does this say about having a true religious practice? A good religious practice is anything that makes us more accident prone to the accident of accessing our profound essence of being human. A true religious practice can be done alone, or with a group of like-minded practitioners, or with a large group of people of many backgrounds,

Good religion is whatever practices assist us toward the accident of being “a Buddha” or being “in Christ,” or being “in” the meaning of whatever “vocabulary” points to our profound humanness. Certainly, no practice has the right to be called the exclusive good religious practice.

It is also true that religious heritages that have served human beings for thousands of years have something that can be and need to be recovered for our times. I personally feel called to build a next Christianity that is relevant and vital for our emerging era. I believe that such a next Christianity will learn from contemporary and ancient Buddhists, perhaps sit Native American sweat lodges, do Sufi dancing, and join with many types of spirit explorers in forming together the spirit care for our wide diversity of humans. This next Christianity will also realize what it means to be “resurrected in Christ Jesus.”

For further probing of these boundless topics, I recommend my book:

The Love of History and the Future of Christianity?
Toward a Manifesto for a Next Christianity

http://www.realisticliving.org/books.htm

The post Being Buddha first appeared on Realistic Living.

I have come that human beings may have life and may have it is all its fullness. I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hireling, when he sees the wolf coming, abandons the sheep and runs away, because he is no shepherd and the sheep are not his. John 10 :10-12

Those who give sermons on the good shepherd often assume that this ancient image applies to a contemporary pastor who tells his flock what they should believe and how they should act. Such a view also assumes that most people are sheep in the sense of being gullible, go-along, authority-addicted dumbbells.

I do not believe this was the meaning intended by the original author of these verses. The original shepherd image was grounded in the experience of noticing highly dedicated persons working on a hillside with a flock of sheep, providing them grass and water and protecting them from wolves. Being a follower of Jesus means being such a leader.

So where can we actually experience this Good Shepherd in our lives today? Let me answer this with a fictitious story—a story made out of my own experiences. In my story, Sally McGillicutty teaches an adult class in the Sunflower room of the Umpity Ump Christian Church. Sally trusts the Ultimate Message that the Infinite Silence we meet in every event of our lives loves Sally and every other person (and creature) on this planet or any other planet. Because of her trust in that Eternal Wholeness that is faced by Sally and by us, Sally is thereby an embodiment of the Ultimate Message from Eternity.

When Sally walks into the room, the Ultimate Message walks into the room. When Sally speaks, the Infinite Silence speaks the Ultimate Message. When Sally notices the despairing living going on her class, that despairing living knows itself noticed by the Infinite Silence, audited by the Infinite Silence, forgiven by the Infinite Silence, and called by the Infinite Silence to a free, trusting, compassionate, tranquil sort of living. Sally constantly confronts each member of her class with the option of living human life in victorious freedom. Sally is a person through whom the Infinite Silence speaks. She challenges her class to live their lives with courageous freedom—to live with compassionate freedom the same lives over which each of her class members quite commonly despair.

The men in her class who feel they have no feelings worth expressing learn from Sally to experience, to trust, and to express those feelings. They learn that every anger, every fear, every hostility, every compassion, every bodily desire, is part of the goodness of life. The women in her class (most of whom always thought that being nice was the one thing that a proper woman should do) learn from Sally that being firm and ruthlessly honest is the sort of aliveness approved by Eternity. The parents in her class (most of whom live in despondency with the thought that they are to blame for every failure or flaw in their offspring) learn from Sally to realize that each of their children is virgin born, an offspring of the Infinite Silence–that children are strange and mysterious beings who must do their own despairing, failures, depravities, as well as find their own buoyant living and astonishing novelties. “Parents,” Sally says, “who love, feed, and protect their children from injury, are doing their job.” “And loving them fully,” she says, “includes allowing them the freedom and the dignity of going astray in their own way.” “Maybe,” Sally says, “you might pray without ceasing that your children will find trust in the Infinite Silence, but if they don’t, it’s not your fault.” In these and many other ways, Sally is the Ultimate Message in human flesh. Sally is the Resurrected Jesus to this particular flock who come each week to probe with Sally into the secrets of living life in an ongoing trust of the Infinite Silence. Sally is the Good Shepherd. Before Abraham was born, this strange Sally IS.

Sally is not appreciated by every person who has attended her class. Some left in a huff and never returned. One particular official in the church sought to have her class disbanded. “A disgrace,” he called it. But Sally believes that such opposition is to be expected. She even uses this opposition to teach her point that we live in a world of darkness that opposes the light. As to her own inconvenience and grief over being opposed in these ways, Sally says, “The Good Shepherd lays down her life for her sheep. Therefore, a bit of grumpiness from the congregational establishment does not discourage me.”

Now my story might have taken place in some other environment than a church. Sally could be a teacher of secular wisdom in some university. Sally could a teacher of Buddhism. Or perhaps Sally is not a teacher at all, but a plumber who comes to fix your water faucets. Perhaps Sally is a political leader who knows how to take care of her staff. Perhaps Sally is as organizer of a revolutionary movement. The Jesus Christ-dynamic, since it is the Ultimate Message from the Infinite Silence, is not limited to the communication that might go on in the context of a Christian church. The communication of the Ultimate Message does not even require the context of Christian symbolism.

Any person who communicates in any way that we are loved by the Infinite Silence is a fleshly embodiment of the Ultimate Message. That person can be said to be “in Christ.” That person is living “in the name of Jesus, the Christ” Indeed, that person, insofar as he or she actually embodies the Ultimate Message, is the Resurrected Jesus Christ!

Those two words “Jesus Christ” do not only point to a first-century peasant teacher from Nazareth; they also point to a dynamic of healing that is built into the cosmos. Perhaps you have noticed the opening verses of John’s narrative that this dynamic, “The Communication of the Infinite Silence,” was present at the creation of everything. This was poetry, but poetry about the everywhere presence of this Word of healing.

There are many deep, profound, compassionate persons who do not call themselves by the name of “Jesus.” We who do revere Jesus in an ultimate way can, however, view any authentic spirit messenger as “Jesus Christ.” Why? Because these two words, deeply understood, speak of a dynamic that can happen anywhere. The true flock know their Shepherd wherever and whenever that Shepherd shows up. Yes, the Resurrection of Jesus really happens, happens indeed!

Every Good Shepherd is the second FACE of the triune experience of Divinity. Every Good Shepherd is the Beloved Offspring of the Infinite Silence, the Ultimate Message in human flesh, the New Adam or Eve who knows the Eternal as Love and in that context lives the full ambiguities of a human life. Perhaps you have met some Good Shepherds who have laid down part or all of their lives for some fragile sheep like, for example, you.

The post The Good Shepherd Lives first appeared on Realistic Living.

Deep river
My home is over Jordan
Deep river, Lord,
I want to cross over into campground

These opening lines to an African American church-song illustrates the depth of Christian awareness that is hidden in many of those old songs. This “deep river” is an allusion to the cross—understood as an inward death to all our temporal idols. And “campground” is an allusion to the resurrection—to the authenticity that is experienced on the other side this “deep-river crossing.” Few church goers, black or white, have probed the depth of this understanding of the cross and the resurrection. Few of us actually view the resurrection as the hidden side of the cross, or see both cross and resurrection as possible experiences in the depths of our own human authenticity.

Oh don’t you want to go
to that Gospel feast
that promised land
where all is peace.

The death/resurrection crossing is a feast, good news, a promised land of living in peace with the WAY IT IS essentially for all human beings everywhere, no matter what their grim or privileged circumstances. These deep meanings of the Christian revelation are missing in most of the living that goes on in the world today. Why is that so? That will be the question of this essay.

A Next Christianity

This essay is part of my dialogue with three lectures by Paul Tillich that Joyce Marshall, Alan Richard and I studied together. The Irrelevance and Relevance of the Christian Message was published in 2007 from Tillich lectures given in 1963, two years before his death.

In opposition to the Christianity known by most of us, a more relevant next Christianity has been emerging for well over a century. Key to this next Christianity is overcoming the irrelevance that prevents this tradition from meaning something to aware people living in the 21st Century. Forms of Christianity that may have been meaningful to aware people in earlier centuries can appear completely foolish today—supportive of what is now clearly obsolete, and irrelevant to the pressing questions and social challenges that now demand realistic responses.

So what are the characteristics of a next Christianity that can be relevant to people who are living with awareness in 2017 and beyond? I am going to explore two characteristics of this next Christianity: “The End of the Vertical Dimension” and “The Resurrection of the Depth of Love.”

The End of the Vertical Dimension

A quality of our contemporary culture that makes Christianity seem irrelevant to many aware people today is what Paul Tillich called “the end of the vertical.” Tillich was pointing to the religious metaphor that has characterized the whole of Christian history until very recently. We know this metaphor as the picture of a realm that is above the Earth and populated by God, angels, and devils that are agents of action in this ordinary realm of time and space. We now know that this picture was mythological or story-time talk about a dimension of depth or ultimacy in our real lives. But we now have difficulty identifying where in our lives this so-called ultimacy is operating. The vertical metaphor both in its literal and metaphorical interpretations has ceased to be meaningful to the most aware members of this post-modern culture.

The Death of the Vertical
among Right-Wing Christians

The more conservative Christian interpreters have tended to take the vertical metaphor literally—holding that there is a real place called “heaven” occupied by a Super Being and his angels. This literal viewpoint is a form of death for the vertical dimension. Such literalizing makes “God” one more being in the world of beings, rather than something Totally Other to the temporal beings that populate our lives. This destroys the divine as understood in the Bible.

Most of these right-wing Christians are loath to accept that Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Wesley, and many more great theologians did not take this metaphor literally in the way that we modern people mean “literally.” We who live in this scientific age tend to view “literal” to mean something that eyes can see and ears can hear, if they are in the right place to do so. The divine. as discussed in ancient times, was not understood that literally. The great theologians of Christianity were aware that the divine cannot even be described in words. As Luther clearly says, the word “God” is basically a devotional word directed toward a Complete Void or Absolute Mystery that human minds cannot contain in words. In those earlier times, metaphorical talk was viewed as normal discourse for saying what could not be said in ordinary discourse about our experience of these divine topics.

The Death of the Vertical
among Left-Wing Christians

The more liberal Christian interpreters have tended to talk about the divine more metaphorically, but in a way that also makes what they say part of the temporal realm of processes. “God” as used in such liberal discourse is not something Wholly Other to the temporal processes, but one of those processes that make up part of our self-serving Christian influenced humanism. In this understanding there is no revelation about an Absolute Mystery loving us. There is nothing Absolutely Mysterious to reveal something about. There is no active wrath against our estrangements from realism. There is no power of grace that heals us from those estrangements. In much liberal Christianity the human predicament of extensive estrangement from realism is unexamined. We do not see ourselves as needing to be healed or saved. We are being seen as rational beings and potentially moral persons choosing between the good and the bad according to our parents’ morality, or our culture’s morality, or the morality of our selected peer group. We are locked in captivity to some law; we do not actually see any room for a Mysterious realism that tends to upset everything in order to bring us to a more realistic mode of living.

The Death of the Vertical Resurrected
in a Horizontal Fashion.

Therefore, our religious thinking must go farther than either the right or left Christianity that I have so briefly characterized and debunked. We simply do not need the vertical metaphor any more, but we need to recover what the vertical metaphor was pointing to in human experience, and tell about it in a horizontal manner of thinking.

This transition is not so easy, for it includes both seeing the experiences that the ancients were pointing to and saying those same profound experiences in our own words in an equally useful and powerful way. The first stumbling block we have to overcome is our unconscious rationalism—that is, we unthinkingly think that what we think is reality. Hopefully our thinking does have some correspondence with reality, but we are typically unaware of the extent to which all that we know is a gross approximation of the Real with a capital “R.”

All our knowledge is a pattern of abstractions created by we humans, and these humanly created perspectives screen-in only part of Reality and screen-out far more of Reality. No self-constructed reality is Reality with a capital “R.” Some people do not believe that there is a capital “R” Reality. “Reality” for them is simply whatever they want to believe is true—even to the extent of denying both long-established scientific knowledge as well as inwardly visible common sense.

A sense of perpetual ignorance is a characteristic of true scientific research. Scientific knowledge is forever changing—giving up its current approximations for better, but still approximate knowledge that remains open to be improved once again. Our state of scientific knowing is even more drastic than that—our knowledge is like a small leaf floating on a chaos of water. The more we know about nature, the more we know we don’t know. Reality is being seen today as more, not less, Mysterious than it was seen centuries ago. We now know, if we want to know, that what we know is infinitely exceeded by what we don’t know. This does not mean that what we know is any less valuable; we could not function at all without what we know. The mind and its knowledge can be and need to be fully affirmed.

The anti-intellectualism so prominent today is sheer foolishness. But, it is true that an Unknown Void yawns before our consciousness. Silence engulfs our human noise. Awesome Power overpowers our human powers. Uncontrollable Force limits our most prominent control of nature. These awarenesses have long existed, but they have become even more vivid for those of us today who want to be honest, rather than bigoted fools.

This weakness of our human knowing also occurs in our contemplative inquiry—that is, our looking within by our own consciousness at the enigma of consciousness itself and its flow of contents. We have learned a lot through this inner quest, and expressed a lot of this wisdom in our philosophies, psychologies, essays, painting, sculpture, drama, music and all the other arts and humanities. These huge cultural deposits of wisdom tells us much, perhaps half of what we know. But, our inward knowing also falls far short of what can be learned through the inward quest. Outwardly and inwardly we are perpetually overwhelmed with the Sheer Mystery of it all.

Our awareness of profound Mystery is both our ignorance and our wisdom about the divine as Absolute Other. This wisdom describes our experience of the Absolute Other in a horizontal manner. This all-encompassing Mystery is the same divinity that the ancients used story-time, mythic talk to discuss. We no longer need this ancient vertical metaphor.

The symbol “God” adds to the Absolute Other only one thing: our devotion, our trust, the obedience of our faith. Such faith is a leap of deep freedom. It is a gift from the Absolute Other of the freedom to make this leap, but we ourselves must employ this freedom in making this leap of freedom.

In the midst of the conditional experiences of our lives, we can meet the Unconditional and as true Christians trust this Unconditional Reality. In the midst of the temporal, we can meet the Eternal. In the midst of the finite, we can meet the Infinite. We can talk about burning bushes of temporal stuff that burn with the Awe of the Awesome Overallness. We can talk about an Awe-inspired glow of authenticity is the faces and behaviors of some of our neighboring humans—provided that we have developed the Awe-sensitive vision to see such things. We can trust this Awe and this Awesomeness that awakens this Awe in our inner being. With this trust, we make the Awesome our God, our devotion, our ultimate concern in the living of our whole lives.

The vertical metaphor is gone in the above discussion, but what the vertical metaphor pointed to in ancient theologizing is still present to us. If we have eyes to look and see this hidden depth in the horizontal, temporal processes of our ordinary lives, we see also the face of God as revealed in our ancient Bibles..

The Resurrection of the
Depth of Love

What I have said so far is only about the symbol of the cross—the crucifixion of our many temporal devotions in favor a devotion to the Eternal. Beyond this experience of detachment from temporality is the companion experience called “the resurrection of the temporal body.”

This detachment from the temporal is not enough without our openness to being truly human in devotion to the Eternal. This devotion to the Eternal includes love for the temporal and the Eternal. Our entire bodily life in its natural and cultural setting is resurrected. We love ourselves unconditionally, and we love others unconditionally, and we love the entire natural realm unconditionally.

We see the truth of our Infinite relatedness as a powerful grace that is accepting our true humanity—that is accepting us in spite of all of our departures from living that true humanity. We see that grace as opening us and calling us to a life-long journey of repenting from our reality-departures, and thereby opening us to the gifts of our essential goodness given with our birth, with our everyday lives, with our little deaths, and with our final conclusion.

This deep love that we can have for ourselves and others must be distinguished from other meanings of the word “love” (libido, friendship, and passion for the good, true, and beautiful). “Agape” is the Greek word used in the New Testament for this Eternally rooted quality of love that accepts the unacceptable in ourselves and others, that loves the enemy as well as the friend, and that loves others as we love ourselves. This quality of love gives life its meaning, no matter how meaningless various circumstances may appear.

And it is the expression of agape in specific everyday ways in the here and now that gives agape its actuality, rather than being simply potential. The expression of agape creates what we call the true church, the communion of saints, the community of love for all the specifics of human life. It is the expression of agape that creates the resistance of the Christian community to the social environment of personally and socially estranged humanity in all its actual historical predicaments.

It is the expression of agape that produces resistance to the current human abuse of nature in ourselves and toward this entire planet. This planet is not only our provided home (part of the love of Eternity for us and for all that we love) but this planet is also our responsibility, because of our assigned role as this planet’s self-aware portion.

The resurrected life of agape expression is an uphill road of active living for any human being. And for some of us this uphill road of active living includes the rebuilding of the Christian practice as an effective daily, weekly, and annual nurture for ourselves and for all those who are likewise called to be and do this profound Christian renewal.

Oh don’t you want to go
to that Gospel feast
that promised land
where all is peace.

Deep river,
I want to cross over into campground

The post Deep River Crossing first appeared on Realistic Living.

And resurrection is not about life after my death.
Resurrection happens now.
Was that not so for Mary, Peter, and Paul?

So what was it that had died in them or me.
that made a resurrection possible?
What died was who I thought I was,
what I thought reality was,
what I thought thought was,
what I thought WAS was and IS is.

Yes, everything had died!
Is that not what death is?
Gone, gone, gone of everything!

Resurrection is what is left
when everything has died!
Leaving plain me, plain reality,
plain thought, plain plainness.
human essence, profound humanness
Holy Spirit, Body of Christ, the REAL ME.

This grand GIFT
is given at the tomb.
No wonder those women in Mark’s narrative
fled from the tomb in terror
saying nothing at all to anyone.

Let us picture these women in the resurrection story in Mark’s “GoodNews” story. They came to this tomb with spices to honor the body of their mentor. Their male companions had already fled to Galilee. Let us further imagine that these women discovered, instead of one more dead body, that they were now, in their own bodies, the resurrection of Jesus. They were Jesus—not Jesus exactly, but the life that was in Jesus was now seen as their own life.

Jesus is the Christ in the sense that this event opened to humankind our authenticity. The event of Jesus—his teaching, healing, being, and yes his dying a most disgraceful death that crushed all the expectations of his followers—resulted in those followers discovering that this destruction of their temporally-based expectations was the transformation they had followed Jesus to find. Jesus had manifested our human essence, our true being, our profound humanness. So this Jesus manifestation was not dead, but was risen indeed in a continuation of living bodies, beginning with these women and moving on down to those of us who join this body of living.

As these followers of Jesus now faced one another and told one another what had happened to them, they saw the life of Jesus bodily presence among them. They themselves were “the Body of Christ” as Paul came to talk about it. They were according to Paul “in Christ” because they had been “crucified with him and thereby raised up with him to newness of life.” Indeed, by this reconciliation with Eternal Reality, they were Jesus, and thereby, like Jesus, they were now assigned to be the reconcilers of the rest of humanity.

Here is an astonishing aspect of this “crucifixion/resurrection” event as it occurs in human lives—the temporal qualities of their lives had not changed. They were still the same personalities living in the same religious culture under the same Roman oppression. Nothing temporal had changed. What had changed was their relationship to everything temporal and their relationship with the Eternal that we humans meet in the temporal flow of events.

The temporal changes that we associate with this “new birth” come after this temporally contentless transformation, not before it, and not with it. And these changes in our temporal lives are whatever we choose to change based on this new-found freedom that we enjoy with this totally transformed state that has changed nothing, except our relationship to everything.

It is understandable why people in the first century and every other century have been offended by such a “Messiah” as Jesus. According to many of Paul’s distractors, the Messiah was supposed to change things, certainly not get crucified, a most disgraceful and fruitless waste of whatever good qualities this man Jesus may have had. And it was certainly true that Jesus left the Roman Empire intact.

Nothing was changed, yet those who revered Jesus as the Christ were transformed in such a total way that what they did thereafter did change things in Palestinian, in other Mediterranean places, and eventually in the entire Roman Empire. Many of these changes can appear odd to us, changes we may need to do over, and indeed have already been done over many times. Changes in our temporal societies and personalities are never final. Even religious practices become out of date, corrupt, and open to revision. It is surprising to me how many big temporal changes were made in the first-century of the Christian religion.

So, here is an astonishing and enduring truth: the Jesus-Christ revelation is not about changes in our social fabrics and personalities, but about a much more massive revolution in our whole relationship to all the temporal matters of human living. Because this transformation is temporally contentless, this massive revolution in human living can take place in any human life at any time and place, within whatever social content and whatever personal content is transpiring.

Understood in this way the Jesus Christ revelation is not about a religious invention, or a religious reform, or a religious or cultural anything. It is about a transformation of our entire relationship to human living. It is also about the transformation of our entire relationship with the Eternal that is meeting us in temporal event.

“Crucifixion/resurrection” is a general type of happening that applies to minor events as well as momentous events. For example, when I was in my early forties undergoing a mid-life crisis, having already changed my vocation and remarried, I was 46 pounds overweight, out of condition, my gums were bleeding, and my teeth were falling out. My new dentist challenged me to radically change my diet. This kicked off a crucifixion/resurrection happening in my life.

After that happening I was still 46 pounds overweight, out of condition, my gums were still bleeding, and my teeth were falling out. But everything was transformed. Something had happened to my relationship with eating, with having bad teeth, with neglecting exercise and common sense eating and other practicalities. This is the sort of experience that crucifixion/resurrection is—nothing is changed, but everything is transformed.

Changes did follow as I attempted to live the new context of having died to some old attitudes. And that death had left me with a slightly deeper experience of my essential humanity. I had already had other crucifixion/resurrection experiences before this dietary event. Some of them were even more consequential, and I have had other very consequential crucifixion/resurrection experiences after that dietary transformation, but all of these transformations have the same basic character: no change in the temporal content, but everything was transformed. Living out of the crucifixion/resurrection experience does change things, yet the transformation experience itself is nothing more than the gift of WHAT IS that is given to me or you from Eternity, acting in the midst of my or your temporal ongoingness.

Do I have a right to use the profound symbols of crucifixion/resurrection for interpreting what can seem to be trivial events? Yes, I find support for this in Mark’s narrative. On every page of Mark’s story we see Jesus as an exemplar of what living out of the crucifixion/resurrection foundation looks like and how this healing can happen to ordinary people who are struck by this revelation.

I am in the process of rewriting a detailed commentary of the Gospel of Mark. I have completed the last three chapters on crucifixion and resurrection. Here is the downloading code for those pages:

http://www.realisticliving.org/PDF/MarkCrossResurrection.pdf

The post Some Easter Poetry first appeared on Realistic Living.

“God“ is a relationship word—a word of devotion similar to sweetheart, lover, friend, rock, foundation, shepherd, mother, father, and other such words of devotion.  When  we call the Final Mystery “God,” we are making a religious confession.  If we are not making a religious confession, we do not need the word “God.”  We can get along without the word “God” or any word like it, unless we are a self-conscious Jew, Christian, Muslim, or a member of some other religious community that uses ”God” as a devotion word—as a relationship word for the Final Mystery.

Honestly living within today’s culture, we find no heavenly realm of rational meanings that humans can access to make sense of the absurdity of a Big Bang Beginning, or of an evolution from the single-celled organisms that mysteriously arose on this minor planet of a marginal star in one of the hundred billion or so galaxies.  The sheer Mystery of this vast expanse and of the infinitesimal minuteness of  this physical cosmos is not made less Mysterious by presuming a First Cause or an Ongoing Creator of all this wonderment.  As a solution to scientific meaning or contemplative awareness, the word “God” is not needed for any rational solution.
If we call this Final Mysteriousness “God,” we are making an act of will, an act of devotion, an act of commitment, a leap of trust.  Trust of this Final Mysteriousness does not alter the fact that we still know absolutely nothing about this Mystery— nothing with our scientific research and nothing with our contemplative inquiry.  We know things, but all that we know is approximate and changing.

The famous Sufi Muslim poet, Rumi, captured the shock of calling the Final Mystery “God” with this provocative verse:  “Life and death are two wings on the same bird.”  For Rumi, the name of that “bird” is “the actions of God.”   Rumi uses the word “God” devotionally.  And the object of his God-devotion is Whatever this IS that is ISING what is ISED.

Some theologians are trying to say that God is changing.   It is true that our human uses of the word “God” can be said to change or evolve.   But “changing” is not something that can be said about this Final Mystery—this Mystery about which nothing can be said.  Similarly, “unchanging” cannot be said about the Absolute Mystery, unless “unchanging“ means that the extent of the Absolute Mystery is no less Mysterious today than it ever was or ever will be.

The human mind cannot speak about the Absolute Mystery itself, but only about our relationship with this Absolute Mystery.  Therefore, there can be no models of God, no images of God, no attributes of God.  Why?  Because Absolute Mystery cannot be thought by a human mind.  The much rehearsed God-talk found in our Bibles, Torah, Koran, and other theologizing is now seen to be story-talk about our human relationship with this Mystery.  The entire 3000 years of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim “God-talk” is story-talk about our human relationships with the Unspeakable Mystery, not about the Unspeakable Mystery that remains unspeakable in any human language.

We can indeed describe our experiences of our conscious relationships with this Indescribable Mystery.  We actually know a lot about our experiences of this Mystery.  We often call these experiences “Wonder” or “Awe”— where “Awe” means a shaking of our rational foundations resulting in a deep dread and fascination— experiences for which we need courage to sustain them as our conscious state.  Such courage is part of our faith, our trust-devotion that reveres this shattering Awe as good for us.  Strange as it can seem to our knowledge-hungry egos, we can revere our total ignorance before the Absolute Mystery as good for us.

Following Søren Kierkegaard’s insights, we only have two basic options for our relationship with this Absolute Mystery, (1) “Yes, this is my life, and it is good” or (2) “No, I will insist on having some other ‘reality’ or resign myself to consciously fleeing, fighting, and inwardly hating what IS.”  The word “God” fits into this awareness as a devotional name for the Absolute Mystery when “Yes” is being said.  In other words, the name “God” is a name that is expressing a positive relationship with the Absolute Mystery.  “God” is not about some rational understanding of this Mystery.  Similarly, Father, Mother, Friend, Rock, etc. are all words of story-time talk that describe a relationship of trust with the Mystery for which we have no description.

Relationship

What does it mean to have a relationship with any object or process?  Relationship includes an encounter of my consciousness with some otherness plus a response by my consciousness to that otherness.  We have all sorts of relationships with temporal entities and processes: parents, stars, planets, children, enemies, gravity, etc.  Some of these others can consciously respond back, some cannot.  We also have relationships with internal others, such as our own bodies, minds, feelings, and consciousness.  And we have an unavoidable relationship with that Absolute Mystery that is ISING every temporal isness and all our relationships with these temporal othernesses.

The argument that there is no otherness, that we humans are simply an inseparable aspect of an inescapable Oneness is only half the truth.  This Mystery is indeed an Everythingness in which we and all things exist.  But this Mystery is also a Nothingness, an otherness from which we and all things have come and to which we and all things return.  This paradox of Everythingness/Nothingness is simply an expression of the realization that we know nothing and will forever know nothing about this Absolute Mysteriousness.

Oneness

The Oneness of the Absolute Mysteriousness is part of our faith, our leap into the darkness of Mystery.  We who cherish a truly monotheistic faith do not believe that we face two powers—one that is for us and another that is against us.  Rather birth and death are two wings on our experience of the same Oneness.  The same “Love for us” is trusted in our death as in our birth.  In other words, our faith in Oneness is not about a description of the Unknown Mystery.  Rather, Oneness is about our relations with the Absolute Mystery.  Again, the Absolute Mystery is that about which nothing is known, including Oneness.

When monotheistic faith seems to be in rejection of the many warring, quarreling, battling mysterious powers, this only means a rejection of  scatteredness in our human devotion, not a rejection of the many Awesome aspects of life.  To worship Venus as help for our love life and Mars as help for our conflict life is a scatteredness in our devotionality.  Of course both love and conflict are real powers in our human existing.  But worship is not about whether something exists, but about the quality of our devotion to what does exist.  Monotheistic faith is about an affirmation of the goodness of every Awe-filling aspect of the Overall Awesome Mysteriousness.  This quality of Oneness in our monotheistic God-talk is a confession of faith—a relational quality of trust in THAT WHOLENESS about which we know nothing with our mental faculties or with our emotional sensibilities.

Every Psalm in the Bible is a poem about a relationship of trust with the One Eternal Mystery.  Here is one of my favorite Psalms, plus a bit of substitute wording and some notations for reading it aloud, as I believe all Psalms are meant to be read.

Psalm 139

Eternal Mystery, my God, . . .
You see through me. . . .
You know everything, . . . when I sit down or rise up; . . .
You watch my thoughts. . . .
You have traced my journeys and my resting places. . . .
You are familiar with all my paths. . . . . .
There is not a word on my tongue that has missed your observation. . . .
You have kept a close watch in front of me, behind me, and over the top of me. . .
Your knowledge of me is beyond my understanding. . .
I cannot comprehend it. . . . .

Here there is a shift in tone of voice: it is louder now, more openly full of dread, a tone of satirical humor is added.

Where can I escape from Your presence? . .
Where can I flee from Your sight? . . .
If I travel out beyond the last galaxy, . . You are there. . . .
If I bury myself in the grave, . . You are there. . . .
If I flee to the east where morning begins,
or go west till the ocean ends,
even there You will find me . .
Your awesome actions will grasp me. . . .
If I say, “Surely darkness will cover me,
black night will hide me.” . .
No darkness is dark for You.
The night is as luminous as the day. . .
Dark and light are alike to You.

Now the voice tone shifts to sheer amazement.

It was You who fashioned my inward parts. . .
You stitched me together in my mother’s womb. . . .

I marvel at Your presence,
for You fill me with AWE.
You overwhelm me with WONDER,
And each specific entity You bring forth is full of WONDER. . . .

You see me through and through. . .
My private body is no mystery to you.
You saw as I was secretly shaped,
patterned in the depths of earthiness. . .
You saw me unformed in the womb.
You marked down in Your records each of my limbs,
as day by day they were formed.
Not one limb was late in growing! . . .

O trusted One, how deep is Your sense of things!
How inexhaustible the subjects of Your wisdom.
Can I count them? . .
They outnumber the grains of sand . .
To finish the count, my years would have to be as numerous as Yours. . . . .

Now the voice tone is loud and angry.

O trusted One, if only You would slay all those who oppose You.
If only those killers of Your truth would but leave me in peace–
those who challenge You with their deliberate falseness,
those who viciously rebel against You. . .
How I hate them, O Eternal One, those that hate You.
I am cut to the quick when they oppose You.
I hate them with undying hatred.
I hold them all as my enemies. . . . . .

Now the tone is more quiet, but with the intensity of humble confession and sober trust.

Examine me, O trusted One, . . . know my thoughts. . . .
Test me, . . see my ignorance. . . .
Watch me, . . lest I follow any road that departs from You. . .
Guide me, . . in Your primordial path. . . . . . . .

Theologizing

Theologizing is a confessional witness meant for a community of faith and for the building of that community.  Theologizing is a planet-wide address only in the sense that it is about the profound humanness that is possible for all human beings.  But as rational content, Christian theologizing is only one of many viewpoints on this quest for realism.   And Christian theologizing is a group process, rather than a merely individual opinion process.  If that group is a vital community of Christian faith, we theologizers in this group work together on a common theological project for our era.  We Christian theologizers serve each other, and we do so in obedience to a specific revelation of Final Reality, a revelation called “Christ/Jesus.”

When the best of Christian theology speaks of revelation, it speaks of an encounter that illuminates all encounters for those who join this revelation.  When the best of Christian theology speaks of faith, it speaks of a current human response to a current human encounter with specific events in the life of a living human being.  In faith, specific current events are viewed through the Christian revelation of the meaning of all events.  Christian theologizing is reflection on such revelations of the Christ Jesus revelation.

A similar theologizing is taking place among many members of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  In what I view as the best of Jewish theologizing, we find an inquiry into a revelation about Final Reality given to us in the event of the Exodus and its accompanying new mode of law writing.
In what I view as the best of Christian theologizing, we find an inquiry into a revelation about Final Reality given to us in the “New Exodus” event of dying/resurrecting into the ongoing body of Christ Jesus.

In what I view as the best of Muslim theologizing, we find an inquiry into a revelation about Final Reality pulled into focus by events surrounding the life and teachings of Muhammad, who is also a devotee of the God of Abraham.

At least some of the theologizing within each of these vast religious communities can be seen to grapple with the implications for living the total round of life in the light of a unique revelation about the meaning for humans for living every event.

We can discern a great deal of overlap among the deepest theologies of these three monotheistic religions.  There is also considerable uniquenesses in each of these three religious points of view concerning how Final Reality is to be viewed and trusted.  In spite of these differences, all three of these Arabian-originated religions emphasize “eventfulness” and history and living that history in the light of a specific revelatory vision.

Buddhists, in their theoretics about Final Reality, make little or no use of the word “God” or “eventfulness,” so their theoretics need not be called “theologizing.”  But Buddhists also revere a type of revelatory event found in the life and teachings of the one called “Buddha.”  Christians talk of participating in dying with Christ Jesus in order to be resurrected with him to newness of life.  Similarly, Buddhists talk of participating in the enlightenment of this historical Buddha.  As actual experiences of the depths of human living, resurrection and enlightenment have overlapping meanings.  Clearly each of these four religions have enrichments to share with each of the others.  All revelation is a unique viewpoint on the Absolute Mystery of Final Reality—unknown to everyone.

The above summary is a bare-bones picture of what a confessional theology or a confessional religious theoretics looks like.  “Theologizing” is reflective thoughtfulness about an event of  revelation concerning what we are encountering in every event.  Each event of revelation includes the response of a primal choice of trust toward living that revelation—a response often called “faith.”   In other words, revelation only becomes revelation when it is revelation to someone making the choice of faith to allow their lives to be so revealed.

For more on the philosophy of religions that undergirds this mode of theologizing see:

http://www.realisticliving.org/books.htm
The Enigma of Consciousness
A Philosophy of Profound Humanness and Religion

The post Uses of the Word “God” first appeared on Realistic Living.

I am using the term “theologizing” rather than “theology,” for I want us to be clear that the theoretics of a vital next Christianity needs to be an ongoing thoughtfulness, rather than a settled “theology.” Nevertheless, there are theological qualities and methods that need to be observed, if we are to have a vital next culture of Christian religion of the sort that I am assuming when I employ the term “a next Christianity.

Here is an example of the Bible-based method of thinking that I am promoting. The following is my commentary on the story of the transfiguration of Jesus as told in Luke 9:28-36:

About eight days after these sayings [about the son of man coming in his glory], Jesus took Peter and James and John and went off with them to the hillside to pray. And then, while he was praying, the whole appearance of his face changed and his clothes became white and dazzling. And two men were talking with Jesus. They were Moses and Elijah—revealed in heavenly splendor, and their talk was about the way he must take and the end he must fulfill in Jerusalem. But Peter and his companions had been overcome by sleep, and it was as they struggled into wakefulness that they saw the glory of Jesus and the two men standing with him. Just as they were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus,

“Master, it is wonderful for us to be here! Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

But he did not know what he was saying. While he was speaking a cloud overshadowed them and awe swept over them as it enveloped them. A voice came out of the cloud saying,

“This is my Son, my chosen! Listen to him!”

And while the voice was speaking, they found there was no one there at all but Jesus The disciples were reduced to silence, and in those days never breathed a word to anyone of what they has seen.

So, here is my take on what that story might mean. First of all, it is helpful for us to know some historical facts, like the highly probable fact that this story was written years after the crucifixion. The whole story is fiction—not a word of it is actual history except for the names of the people. “They never breathed a word to anyone of what they had seen” is an admission of the story teller who first told this story that he or she is making up this story. Seeing Jesus in his glory (as the Christ) did not happen until the “resurrection experience” happened. Indeed, seeing this glory of Jesus by the disciples, or by us, is the resurrection.

So, this story is about the meaning of resurrection, told and read by resurrected persons after the horror of the crucifixion became for them a doorway into the deeps of life. The teller of this story knows that “there was no one there at all but Jesus.” That dynamic applies to us today: until we participate in the resurrection experience, there is no one there at all but Jesus.

The bulk of this story is told in a type of dream imagery. The dazzle of Jesus garments is something seen only by transformed people who see the dazzle of Jesus along with the dazzle of Moses (author of the law) and the dazzle of Elijah ( grandfather of the prophets). We can translate the meaning of this dazzle for our mindsets as an experience of awe—a dread and fascination moment that is mysterious, that requires courage, and in the end redirects our lives.

I reject the sort of literalism that implies that a tape recorder would have picked up that voice from a cloud. I view this cloud as a symbol used to indicate the “heavenly source” of the message. And “heaven” is also a symbol for what we today might call, “the realm of Mystery that can penetrates any ordinary moment.”

And what does this dream-world “voice” say? It says, “Pay attention to Jesus, for this human being is revealing the nature of the Mysterious EVERY-THING-NESS/NO-THING-NESS that Moses and Elijah were also dazzled by, and that awake people today might meet in every moment of their lives.”

“The disciples were reduced to silence.” In other words, these still-learning disciples had no words for what they, in this story, were experiencing. They were, in this story, experiencing a preview of the resurrection, that rebirth on the other side of having all their illusions crucified in an event that so shattered the foundations of their lives that they never got over it. Only when this shaking of the foundations is complete, does the dazzle noted in the story appear. Only when all our illusions are exposed for what they are— when we have died to all our egoistic projections upon Reality, does the dazzle of Reality appear to us.

Peter cries out, “Let us build some altars [some religious formations] at this place.” In this story, Peter did not know what he was saying, but he did knew that he was experiencing FINAL THINGS, appropriate for marking this place with some sort of humanly invented religious something.

In this story, all the above happens to these three disciples as “they were struggling into wakefulness.” We can identify with this phrase, for this story is what it is like for any of us to struggle into wakefulness, concerning our true being.

This completes my illustration of what it means to translate a bit of New Testament text into language that might enable 21st Century humans to notice the “Awe-level” or “Primal-truth-level” that this story contains for our lives today. In other words, I have been examining what it might mean to “Hear the Word of God” in a passage of Christian scripture. So what might we have heard at this deep level? In reflecting more carefully on this passage, we may have realized that we may have been walking with Jesus to hillsides and villages, so to speak, but it will take his death to wake us up to being the body of Christ who sees Jesus as the Christ, as the Truth, the Life, and the Way to live our lives. This story may also be telling us something about the human experience of “the resurrection from the dead”—the transformation from our deadly, despair-destined deludedness to our essential being in the body of the resurrected Jesus.

In my biblical interpretation above, I have used at least these four contemporary methods:
Scientific History: What do we know about when and where this text was written, who wrote it, and what probable meanings were being given to the specific words used by this time-bound story teller?
Literary Analysis: Was this a poem, a teaching, a fictional story, a historical legend, a theological myth, etc.?
Metaphorical Translation: Interpreting any transcendent, two-layer, story-talk with our contemporary, existential, one-layer, transparency language.
“Word-of-God” Suggestions: What might this passage be saying to us today about the living of our authentic lives and about the power of these Christian symbols for our own depth living?

For further illustrations using these biblical interpretation methods as well as this type of radical Christian theologizing, I recommend starting with the following ten-session course of essays:

http://www.realisticliving.org/UR1/

The post Theological Commonalty first appeared on Realistic Living.

So, we don’t know where we have been, or where we are, or where we are going. We do have images and perhaps careful thought and plans about all of that, but none of those rational products provide certainty. The sheer MYSTERY of it all is our only complete certainty.

Christian faith includes trusting that very MYSTERY that anyone and everyone can know about and have certainty about if they will only admit their ignorance and stop assuming total certainty for their models of thought with which they express and exclude aspects of that MYSTERY. This strange certainty that there is no complete certainty graspable by a human mind is, paradoxically, a type of certainty that we can absolutely count upon.

Trusting that this MYSTERY is friendly toward us is an additional type of certainty. It is a risk into the unknown for which we have no rational proof. But we have no rational proof that this MYSTERY is not trustworthy. Of course, we do find it true that the MYSTERY is not trustworthy to operate entirely in accord with our preferences, hopes, neuroses, plans, moralities, social conditioning, personality constructions, loves, hates, passions, intuitions, fears, anxieties, despairs, horrors, or any other aspect of our temporal modes of evaluation. Trusting the MYSTERY means surrendering all of our temporal modes of evaluation. This surrender is experienced as a kind of certainty.

Such paradoxical certainty is the key to understanding properly the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Innocence. They ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil of which Absolute Realism forbid them to eat. Our healing, rescue, or redemption from the Adam and Eve fall from innocence entails vomiting up that fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Trusting the MYSTERY means a return to full and complete ignorance about good and evil. All our choices become ambiguous. We never know if we are doing the right thing, No law is absolute. No teaching is absolute. No social conditioning is absolute. No fabric of consciousness is absolute. No intuition is absolute. No body-wisdom is absolute. Nothing! We have nothing but total ignorance on the topic of good and evil. According to Christian witnessing the Holy Name for this state of being is called “Freedom.”

Trust and Freedom are two aspects of the same Holy Spirit,
the same authentic humanity, the same primal innocence.

And a third aspect of Holy Spirit also exists as part of that Trust/Freedom state-of-being human. The name of this third aspect of Holy Spirit is “Love”—Spirit Love, Love of the MYSTERY, Love of the neighboring beings as we love our own beings, compassion to be with the joys and horrors of our own life, as well as with the joys and horrors of other people’s lives. Such Spirit Love is a deep experience, and it is a profound commandment to actually live our essential humanity. The Holy Spirit is a gift of our “creation” and Holy Spirit is a gift of our redemption or restoration to that essential humanity. Holy Spirit is simply our essential being. This Holy Spirit is simply there when all our escapes from the simply there have ceased to hide this essence. After the restoration of this gift, this Trust/Love/Freedom demands to be lived by the ones to whom this restoration has happened. Not living this gift of Holy Spirit means a return to slavery and mistrust, as well as malice, envy, avarice, greed, sloth, arrogance, pride, and every other deadliness of un-love, mistrust, and non-freedom.

So what does all this have to do with “God,” as that word is used in Christian theologizing? One of the faces of “God,” in the Christian view of God, is this Holy Spirit that we can access within our own beings. Another face of “God” is that MYSTERY we pointed to above. To call that MYSTERY by the name “God” means that we trust that MYSTERY as our ultimate devotion. It does not mean that there is a Big Person sitting back there in a second realm of things. That double-deck thinking is simply story-book talk that works somewhat for the childhood of our upbringing. As true adults, we can now be absolutely atheistic about any supposed need to believe in a second realm of Gods, Goddesses, angels, devils, and all other such supposed populations. In a true understanding of the biblical texts, “God” is simply that MYSTERY that we all face and that can be, according to the Christian good news, be understood as being for us in everything that happens to us—including our death, suffering, limitations, opportunities, joys, and our horrific as well as glorious possibilities and challenges. For Christian faith, nothing more need be said about that MYSTERY than its trustworthiness. And this trust in the trustworthiness of the MYSTERY is what Martin Luther was pointed to with his assertions that “redemption” happens not by achievements of good works but “by faith alone.” To be redeemed, nothing needs to be done by us, except trusting the trustworthiness of the Mystery.

So how is Jesus as the Christ (Messiah) also a face of “God” in the Christian elaboration of this devotional word “God.” Let us look at the literary story of Jesus (as portrayed in the fictional narratives of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John). These minimally historical narratives were composed not as biography, but simply to tell us what it looks like to live in that Trust, Love, and Freedom that results from of our trusting obedience to the MYSTERY. In these narratives we see the 12 disciples and an uncounted group of women followers becoming excited, confused, and eventually horrified by following this spirited Jesus. In the end, having experienced compete despair over what they thought they were following, they found themselves moving beyond the hell of this despair into a life that they called “resurrection”—resurrection from the dead, resurrection from the horrific estrangements of the devilish world of which they were members, resurrection form their temporal hopes (that were also temporal fears) to a new quality of hope that cannot disappoint because it is a hope for that MYSTERY to remain a MYSTERY that forgives us, supports us, and loves us completely. This basic message of good news is said to reveal the nature of the MYSTERY—that is, that this MYSTERY can be our ultimate devotion—our “God.”

In the event of encountering Jesus we meet the MYSTERY that loves us. Jesus, seen as the final coming of our essential humanity, is also a face of our ultimate devotion. Jesus Christ is a face of “God,” a never absent part of the dynamic of our ultimate devotion to the MYSTERY and to how that MYSTERY is love for us and therefore can be loved by us in return.

This ordinary, fully human, fully temporal, suffering, dying Jesus is, in spite of all of that temporal humiliation (as well as because of all of that down-to-Earth humanness), a revelation of the MYSTERY’s love for us. In that sense, Jesus showed us that the MYSTERY was God for us. In the face of Jesus these healed ones saw their God. Whoever truly sees Jesus sees God—sees the nature of the MYSTERY. This is the claim. And now on the other side of this death and this resurrection, the essence of Jesus walks among us, eats fish, feeds us fish, lives on among us as a member of our group of trusters. And get this full paradox, this trusted Jesus also lives in a “right elbow” association with the trusted MYSTERY. In other words, the Jesus-presence-among-us is understood as fully human and, you may not believe this, fully God. In so far as we share in this presence of authentic humanity depicted in Jesus as Christ, we are also, you may not believe this either, both fully human and fully God. That is, anyone who has eyes to see any one of us as a trusting person sees the trustworthiness of the MYSTERY. This human/God paradox is an essential part of the Christian revelation and an essential part of our ongoing theologizing about that revelation.

This very quick outline about “God” in the Christian sense of that word, is introductory to a project of theologizing that can fill thousands and thousands of books and centuries and centuries of living. For a further elaboration of a core part of this theologizing, see the following essay.:

Redemption From What to What?

http://www.realisticliving.org/PDF/Redemption.pdf

The post Certainty first appeared on Realistic Living.

In But Not Of

The quality of the Christian life has to do with being “in the world, but not of the world.”

“Not of the world” means an “end-of-time” happening in your present life.  It means the coming of a deep detachment from your family, your peers, your citizenship, your culture, your time in history, your self images, your personality habits, your gender, yes even your own body and all its time-bound characteristics.  But if  your state is only “not of this world” rather than united with “in this world,” your state is aloofness rather than Christian love.

“In this world” is just as important as “not of this world.”  “In this world” means an “incarnation” of your “out-of-this-world-ness” in your physical body, your personality habits, your self images, your time in history, your gender, your culture, your citizenship, having your peers and your family, your body.  All your temporal relations are fluid; they can change; they can be changed by you; they will change because of your “out-of-this-world-ness.”

Nevertheless, your “in-this-world-ness” does not go away.  Some form of “in-this-world-ness” will always be the case.  Also, the quality of this “in-this-world-ness” is not entirely up to you.  You have been assigned your “in-this-world-ness” by the Infinite Almighty Mysteriousness that has sourced your temporal existence and moves you inexorably toward the end of your temporal existence.  At the same time, you are totally responsible for what you do with what you are and with what you can become over the course of your life.

But if your state is only “in this world” rather than united with “not of this world,” your state is despair, torn and scattered by time’s inexorable march. And you will have no sustained attention and objectivity for what the Christian witness is pointing to with the word “love.”

Love of the Christian sort means a total affirmation of every aspect of your particular body, of your personality and changes, of your self images and your recreations of your self images, of your gender, of your ongoing relationships with peers and family, of your culture and how you live it and alter it,  of your citizenship and your time in history with its limitations and challenges, plus your responses to some of these challenges and the consequences of those responses.

Love of the Christian sort also includes a total affirmation of your end-of-time detachment form the temporal flow of the world.  This absolute uprootedness is your gift of objectivity and creativity in your living in this world. This uprootedness makes you a son or daughter of Eternity rather than a son or daughter of perdition.  This uprootedness is your power, your spirit energy, your equanimity, your rest, your hope, your undefeatable quality that no ups or downs of fortune can disrupt.

“In the world, but not of the world” is your human essence, but perfection in manifesting this essence is not to be expected in your real-time living.  This is a journey.  We may have been born into this quality, but we “press on to the full stature of Christ Jesus,” as the apostle Paul put it.  “We were crucified with Christ” Paul said.  This means our detachment in being “not of this world.”  And we were “raised up in Christ to newness of life,” Paul witnesses.  This means our incarnation in being “in this world” as the resurrected body of Christ.

So, what does this “in Christ” symbol mean for Paul?  It means a perfection into which we have been joined by a profound transformation of the overall direction of our lives—toward ever greater realism in love-relatedness with Infinite Reality and love-relatedness with all the temporal  realities that constitute our lives.  But this is a journey. We do not yet manifest this perfection in our personal life or in our social contributions.   Let us press on.  We are in a cosmic struggle between realism and illusion.

For more study of the “in Christ” symbol, I recommend this essay:

Here Already and Still to Come

Here is the downloading URL for this essay:

And for some companionship in further researching these far-edge topics, put these dates on your 2016 calendar:  Friday evening June 10 to Wednesday morning June 15th

This five-day set of two meetings begins Friday evening June 10, 2016 with a carefully orchestrated set of methods for a spirit-retreat on honoring women’s experience led by Joyce Marshall and Pat Webb.  This “retreat” lasts until Sunday noon June 12th followed by an afternoon break.

Then, beginning the evening of June 12th, we begin our Research Symposium Meeting on the topic “Is There a Post-Patriarchal Christianity” moving on with related topics until 9:00pm Tuesday evening the 14th.  People return home Wednesday morning June 15th.

The post In But Not Of first appeared on Realistic Living.

It is fair to say that the symbols of cross and resurrection are as central to an understanding of the Christian revelation as meditation and enlightenment are to Buddhism. Yet both cross and resurrection seem cryptic to many, even weird.

The last three chapters of Mark’s 16-chapter narrative are about the meaning of cross and resurrection as understood by that mid-first-century author and the surprisingly vigorous religious movement of which Mark was a part. I know of no better way to introduce to a contemporary explorer of Christianity the power of these two symbols than with a commentary on the last three chapters of Mark’s Gospel.

Members of a our current scientific culture may be excused somewhat for having a weak understanding of resurrection. Most of us know, if we are honest, that belief in a literal return to life of a three-day-old corpse is superstition. Yet this meaning of resurrection has been paraded as Christian by many. Mark did not see resurrection in this light. Or perhaps we might better say, “Mark did not see resurrection in this darkness,” for a literal return from the dead means nothing deeply religious to Mark or to you or me. If such an event were to happen today, it would be open to hundreds of speculative explanations, none of which would be profoundly or convincingly religious.

Mark’s understanding of the cross is equally opaque in our culture. Some modern authors even accuse Christianity of having a morbid preoccupation with death, suffering, and tragedy. The crucifix, or even a bare cross, is viewed by some as silly and grim—like hanging a guillotine on your wall or around your neck. But for Mark the horror of the cross is seen as priceless food for the soul. How can that be? Surely, we have some thoughtful exploration to do, if we are to grasp the Gospel (the good news) that Mark claims to be announcing.

So here is what I am going to do. I am going to quote in order the Markian text in chapters 14-16. After each section of the narrative, I will do a commentary on the quoted verses and follow that with a few discussion questions. I will assume the best of New Testament scholarship, but will be doing what I call “21st century theologizing for the ordinary reader.”

Mark 14:1-9 A Holy Waste

In two days’ time the festival of the Passover and of unleavened bread was due. Consequently, the chief priests and the scribes were trying to think of some trick by which they could get Jesus into their power and have him executed. “But it must not be during the festival,” they said, “or there will be a riot.”

Jesus himself was now in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper. As he was sitting at table, a woman approached him with an alabaster flask of very costly spikenard perfume. She broke the neck of the flask and poured the perfume on Jesus’ head. Some of those present were highly indignant and muttered, “What is the point of such wicked waste of perfume? It could have been sold for over thirty pounds and the money could have been given to the poor.” And there was a murmur of resentment against her. But Jesus said, “Let her alone, why must you make her feel uncomfortable? She has done a beautiful thing for me. You have the poor with you always, and you can do good to them whenever you like, but you will not always have me. She has done all she could—for she has anointed my body in preparation for burial. I assure you that wherever the Gospel is preached throughout the whole world, this deed of hers will also be recounted, as her memorial to me.”

The story of Martin Luther King Jr. has become a treasure in our recent common memory. We can see how he and his leadership team were supported by the crowds while being opposed by establishment enemies. If there were no crowds, no swath of the population and its social forces hearing his message and supporting it, King’s enemies would have simply shut him up in one way or another. These dynamics are present whenever something new is breaking upon the scene. We can see it in early labor movements, in the apartheid struggle of South Africa, in Gandhi’s freedom fight in India, even in the Beatles impact upon popular music. The prophet is the bringer of new truth to the dynamics of society. There will always be enemies of any new truth. The prophet goes to those who will hear and then confronts his enemies with the crowds who support him or her. The enemies have to listen to the prophet because of the crowds. Otherwise they would simply dismiss him or her. The existence of the listening crowds makes conversation with the prophet’s truth a possibility even for the prophet’s enemies.

Mark has begun the closing chapters of his story by showing us Jesus’ relation to his crowds and to his establishment enemies. Mark is leading up to telling us about Jesus’ arrest, crucifixion, and burial as well as its vital meaning for our lives. Next Mark tells us a story about a woman anointing Jesus’ body in preparation for his burial. Mark views Jesus as the Anointed One, the chosen of God for illuminating the Truth about every event that happens to human persons and societies. This whole-hearted and enthusiastic women is pouring out her expensive perfume on Jesus’ body. This event provides the only anointment ritual that Jesus is going to receive. Jesus is also being prefigured as being himself a precious perfume that is going to be wasted, or so it seems.

The crux of the story is the dialogue between Jesus and those who see this woman’s deed as a wicked waste of expensive perfume: “It could have been sold and the money given to the poor.” Jesus’ reply indicates that honoring a prophet in our midst has an importance even more valuable than giving alms to the poor.

Jesus is surprisingly direct. “You have the poor with you always, and you can do good to them whenever you like, but you will not always have me.” It may now be possible to do away with poverty, but there will always be opportunities for charity and reform rather than the deeper thing that Jesus was doing. Clearly, all values do not revolve around improving the economic conditions of humanity. The value of truth and the value of the truth-teller are even more precious. And these truth values deserve whatever resources we need to honor these rare gifts. In terms of the more typical values of human living, honoring Jesus with a precious ointment may seem like a waste. For Jesus did not change the economic and political conditions, and it is still unclear to many people how he reset our whole sense of truth. Indeed, this entire sadistic and violent pouring out of Jesus’ life can still seem like a waste.

When have you felt that something precious has been wasted?

What might it mean to find other meaning within that seeming waste?

To read the rest of this three-chapter commentary
on cross and resurrection according to Mark click:

http://www.realisticliving.org/PDF/MarkCrossResurrection.pdf

For even more elaboration, see the following book:

The Love of History and the Future of Christianity
toward a manifesto for a next Christianity

For more information on this book, click:

http://www.realisticliving.org/books.htm

The post Cross and Resurrection first appeared on Realistic Living.