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Many hear of a Fire
Some see the Fire
Others breathe the Fire
A few become Fire
Many disdain the Fire
Many ridicule the Fire
They oppose the Fire
They seek to discredit those who become Fire
But--Thank the Fire!--
No one can put out the Fire
How can one who clings to the common rock
ever appreciate the experience of one who kisses the celestial Treasure?
A disgruntled member of a congregation I served sent one of my OneLife writings to an independent pastor (one not aligned with any Christian group), to have him judge it for worthiness in regard to the Christian faith. His decision was that it was not Christian: of course, he would, likewise, judge my devotion to The United Methodist Church as lacking in trueness to the Christian faith. This woman had struggled with my teaching and preaching and, apparently, writing, for she could never give up the control of the egoic-mind that seeks, in its self-infatuated intellection, to deny the Depths of the Ocean of the Divine and the Heights of the Mystery of Love. Indeed, the painting of my words, that point to the universalizing Mystery of Jesus Christ, can not be understood, appreciated, or lived from the mind. Indeed, anyone who bows before the idol of the brain or the idol of the heart cannot bow to the Mystery. For Christian mysticism is entered into through the mind and heart, but the Mystery is Prince of both. Therefore, I judge it a privilege for the work I do in respect of the depths of the Christian faith and Church, to be judged in error by those who speak of and live in the shallows of intellectualized religion. One who crawls upon the earth is sure to fail to appreciate the joy of flying in the Sky, and she will judge as a heretic of the air she who has heard the call to the Heights of Love.
In "The Mystical Core of Organized Religion," David Steindl-Rast writes:
Mysticism has been democratized in our day. Not so long ago, "real" mystics were those who had visions, levitations, and bilocations and, most important, were those who had lived in the past; any contemporary mystic was surely a fake (if not a witch). Today, we realize that extraordinary mystical phenomena have little to do with the essence of mysticism. (Of course, genuine mystics had told us this all along; we just wouldn't listen.) We've come to understand mysticism as the experience of communion with Ultimate Reality (i.e., with "God," if you feel comfortable with this time-honored, but also time-distorted term).
Jesus Christ was certainly a mystic. And he pointed to the essence of mysticism--as described above: "communion with Ultimate Reality."
Webster's New World Dictionary & Thesaurus (© 1989) gives the following definitions of "communion": "the act of sharing; possession in common; participation." "Communion" derives from the Latin communio, "a sharing." What do we dust-bound jars of clay share with wholly Transcendence? What do we jointly possess with Deity, we homo sapiens? What is the participation with the infinite Creator of universes, we tiny creatures living in space and time on a relatively small planet that is not even the center of its own galaxy?
On a universal, ontological level, we share Being with Transcendence. We are derived beings. Since being, or be-ing (Life in evolvement) must be from Being (Life evolving with our living, or life-as-movement)--this Be-ing is evidenced in the doctrine of the Trinity as a ceaseless and dialectical dance of communion-in-union among the three Persons, so that the Trinity is absolute Movement and Dialectic--, Being is our ongoing parentage. If Being withdrew from being for a moment, being would become, instantaneously with the withdrawal, the absence of Being. Motion and change is a reflection of the nature of Essence Itself, as Be-ing.
Therefore, at this creational level of being, every person is linked with One by being created from and by the One. Substance is your substance, and your accidental attributes are derivative of that Divine Substance.
Christic mysticism gives a specific meaning to mysticism and its communion. In contrast to much mysticism, Christ Mysticism integrates matter and spirit in the One and, thus, suprahistory and history. Christian mysticism sees the reduction of Christ to history as an error; Christian mysticism sees the reduction of Christ to beyond history as an error. Christian mysticism links enlightenment with internal change; however, Christian mysticism points to a specific historical event as preparatory to that internal change.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation [i.e., eternally begotten of the Father]. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth [all creatures of sky and earth], the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers [all spiritual realities, or beings]; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together [... is the energy of cohesion in Whom all coinheres]. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead [i.e., the resurrection of Jesus], that in all things he himself might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness [of Deity] was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross (through him), whether those on earth or those in heaven [salvation does not just apply to humans on earth, but other spiritual beings, or realities] (Colossians 1.15-21, NAB).
Christian mystics discover the mystical Reality and Message in the Christ, One joining eternity and time, space and supraspace, past and present and future, in His Person and Working. On an only-literal level, the message of Christ in the Colossians passage would be ludicrous. To reduce Christ to the image of an earthly Jesus alone, would make such nonsense of the passage--even as to reduce Christ to a spiritual being absent from matter, would make the cross and resurrection other than the reconciliatory event it is. However, again, Christ, or the Logos, is the joining of Pure, or Full, Spirit and Pure, or Full, Human. For Christ Jesus is both Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father in timeless generation, and Son of Mary, born of a woman in time.
The Colossians passage, then, pictures Christ Mysticism in its linking of the universal-timeless with the particular-within-time. The Seven Ecumenical Creeds of the Church--Nicea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople III (680), Nicea II (787)--are each evidence of this mystical dialectic in being true to the original mystery (thus, mysticism) of Christ, the Gospel, and the Church: as well as to the mystical nature of matter and cosmos in Christ: as in the first Nicene creed--the first universal, or catholic, creed of the Church:
We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, Begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father through Whom all things were made.
Who for us men and for our salvation came down and became incarnate, and was made man, suffered and rose on the third day, And ascended into heaven, And is coming with glory to judge living and dead, And in the Holy Spirit.
But those who say, There was when the Son of God was not, and before he was begotten he was not, and that he came into being from things that are not, or that he is of a different hypostasis or substance, or that he is mutable or alterable--the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes.
Still, many Christians fail to appreciate and affirm the mystical essence of Christian faith or the Christ: indeed, few do, even among those who affirm mentally the mystical import of the Scripture and creeds. Denial of this mysticism in belief or living is believing and living untrue to the truth of Church and Christ and failing to enter rightly and joyfully into what St. Paul means by being in Christ and the Body of Christ. Possibly, this is why so many Christians exemplify, even while being a member of a church, that they know little of being a member of the Body of Christ, the Church.
But what is the natural and inevitable consequence of Christians embracing the mystical essence of the Christian faith? Again, we refer to Steindl-Rast:
One of the great surprises is that the fire of mysticism can melt even the rigor mortis of dogmatism, legalism, and ritualism. By the glance or the touch of those whose hearts are burning, doctrine, ethics, and ritual come aglow with the truth, goodness, and beauty of the original fire. The dead letter comes alive, breathing freedom. "God's writing engraved on the tablets" is what the uninitiated read in Exodus 32:16. But only the consonants are written in the Hebrew text: (chrth). Mystics who happen to be rabbis look at this word and say: Don't read charath (engraved); read cheruth (freedom)! God's writing is not "engraved"; it is freedom!
Possibly, one root, or the main source, of widespread ignorance of and resistance to the mystical essence of Christ and the Church, an ignorance and resistance among both clergypersons and laity, is, ironically, the fear of being truly free. How ironic!
I conclude with a final scripture, noting that Jesus willed for us to live consciously in mystical communion, sharing communion with the most Holy and Blessed Trinity and each other,in Christ: which is sharing in Holy Communion and actualization of the cosmological import of Jesus Christ and His Gospel--one which in no way contradicts the amazingly evolving intuitions of science on the nature and emergence of matter:
St. John 17.20-26 (NAB)
I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them [already] the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me. Father, they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world also does not know you, but I know you, and they know that you sent me. I made known to them your name [essence, nature] and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.
The above writing is dedicated to a dear friend, Cindy. One of few whom I can share with the depths of exprience of the mystery of Christ and the unfathomable expanses of Grace it unfolds along the Way. May Spirit bless her as she shares the Heart of Christ with others and is a light of Christ to those who know her and seek the Christ within her. Thank you, Cindy, for being such a dear friend!
*Opening poem by Brian K. Wilcox.
**Material from Steindl-Rast, Copyright © 1989 by David Steindl-Rast; ReVision, Summer 1989 12(1).
***OneLife writings are offered by Brian K. Wilcox, a United Methodist pastor serving in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. He writes in the spirit of John Wesley's focus on the priority of inner experience of the Triune God; scriptural holiness; ongoing sanctification; the goal of Christian perfection (or, wholeness). Brian seeks to integrate the best of the contemplative teachings of Christianity East and West, from the patristic Church to the present. Brian lives a vowed contemplative life with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, in North Florida. OneLife writings are for anyone seeking to live and share love, joy, and peace in the world and in devotion to God as she or he best understands God.
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