The Work of the Church

I want to post this quote without much comment. It was shared with me the other day by someone who heard Richard Rohr say it at a conference in Portland Oregon. Rohr said, "The work of the church is to keep the heart space and the mind space open." This is such a lovely vision of church.

Imagine a church in which the only goal, vision, requirement was that your heart and your mind remain open to God and to the other people around you. "Oh but this does not sound safe. How would we know what we believe? How would we know what we stand for?"

Jesus did not seem to share the fear that somehow openness would lead us astray. Jesus trusted the work of God's Spirit in pepoles' lives. Jesus said, "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth." (John 16:13) In order for God's Spirit to be at work in our lives we only need to intend to allow God's Spirit to be at work in our lives. We can trust that God's Spirit is working in the lives of all those with whom we share in worship.

If a person can come forward and stand or kneel at the table of the Lord with hands open and receive a tiny piece of bread and a sip of wine, there is nothing more we need to know. It is enough. They have indicated by their action that the desire of their heart is to open to God. What other possible reason could there be for participating in this ceremony? Why else would anyone go to the trouble of getting up on a Sunday morning and coming to church? There is certainly no longer any social pressure that would cause a person to participate in corporate worship.

People come to church because, at some level, they desire to open to God. They desire to allow God's Spirit to be at work in their lives. God honours this desire. And, wherever this desire is acknowledged, God's Spirit will grow and God's work will get done.

Having an open heart and an open mind does not mean that anything goes. Having an open mind means that while we may hold firmly and passionately to our own convictions we will also respect and honour the convictions of those who may disagree with us. We will be willing to acknoweldge that our grasp of the truth is only partial and we may be wrong. To have an open mind is to know deeply that truth is larger than anyone person or any particular formulation of that truth. Our understanding of life over time will change and grow. If we are alive, we will receive greater wisdom. Our comprehension of truth is never fixed. Truth is dynamic and living; as we grow our ability to see truth will also grow.

Having an open heart means that we will be open to everything that brings life and we will do all we can to participate in creating an environment that is life-giving for all participants. From a position of true openness it is possible to draw appropriate boundaries around violent, destructive behaviour. But the boundaries we draw will always be in the service of life, never simply for the purpose of helping us feel safe and comfortable in our protected little world. Openness of heart means a willingness to expand our vision and to draw the circle of God's love as wide as we can possibly bear.

This kind of openness is only frightening if we cannot trust God's presence in our own lives, in the lives of others and in our interactions together. There is nothing to fear when we trust that God's Spirit is indeed present and active in all of life. We only need to open, embrace, extend absolute hospitality to all people and receive them as they are. God can be trusted wherever there is an open heart and an open mind.
Read more...

The Flow of Love

Heather and I have just returned from a week on the Olympic Penninsula in Washington State. We were there to attend the "Christophany" retreat with Cynthia Bourgeault held at the Olympic Park Institute.

The retreat was based on the book Christophany: The Fullness of Man by Raimon Panikkar. It is a dense and difficult book. But Cynthia brought considerable illumination to the text. She spoke three times a day over five days and we hads lots of meditation, some beautiful singing and time to walk in the woods. There are a number of things I take away from the week that went quite deep in my spirit.

Panikkar teaches that life is characterized by motion. Everything is in a state of flow. He calls this flow love and says that this movement of love is characteristic of the nature of the God who is known in the Christian tradition as "Trinity." The Trinity is the flow of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each of the poles of the Trinity empties into the other, giving and receiving the eternal energy of that love which is the dynamic force of all creation.

The fundamental task of being human is to enter into this flow of love. We exist to receive and give back that love that comes to us by virtue of our creation in the image of God. We fulfill our destiny as human beings when we are able to open to the love that is God and is our true divine nature.

The challenge we experience every day is to know that this love is flowing everywhere, in everything, at all times. If the flow of love stopped, life would cease, the universe would implode. But we tend to lose sight of this love. We forget that everything flows from the ultimate Source that is God.

The Good News of the Gospel is that love does not stop; it does not come to an end, does not run out, will never let us down. Jesus demonstrated that the greatest horror, the deepest degradation, the most horrific loss, could not stop the flow of God's love. The ressurrection is the ultimate demonstration in history of the reality of love transcending all brokenness, all hopelessness, violence, or pain. Love cannot be defeated.

My problem is that I find it difficult at times to trust deeply in this love. I tend to think that I need to create my own life, to manufacture my own sense of well-being. I run around trying to fix all my broken bits and trying to deny my own weaknessess and pain, assuming these flawed parts of my being defeat the reality, strength and permanence of God's love. But, the truth of Jesus demonstrates that the broken parts of my life exist only to open me more deeply to the eternal flow of God's love and goodness.

There is nothing I need to do but open myself to the energy and power of God's love. This love will find me wherever I am. As I allow this love to flow through me, I share in God's nature and become the person I was truly created to be. When I try to hoard anything, protecting myself against those things, or people that I fear, I inhibit the unfolding of my true nature. I block the unfolding of God's work in and through my being.

There is so much fear in the world, so much insecurity, uncertainty, anxiety. We spend so much of our lives thinking that we have to get something done, accomplish something, prove ourselves, demonstrate our worth. For Panikkar this all comes from our small self, that little egoic part of our being that is driven by fear and a sense of lack and need. But the truth is, we need only to view that small frightened part of ourselves with compassion and kindness and allow the love that is at the centre of our being to hold that small one with tenderness and care.

We finished our retreat by chanting together the simple statement, "And Love says, 'I will, I will take care of you.'" This is the truth that keeps the universe operating. Love does take care of us. Even when it seems that everything is uncertain, frightening and chaotic, love is there at the centre holding all the pieces with tenderness and care. This is all any of us really wants to know. This is all that our heartsa long to experience. The only path to this knowing is the radical surrender of deep opening in our innermost being.
Read more...