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Genesis 2.4-7 (NAB)
Such is the story of the heavens and the earth at their creation. At the time when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens--while as yet there was no field shrub on earth and no grass of the field had sprouted, for the LORD God had sent no rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil, but a stream was welling up out of the earth and was watering all the surface of the ground--the LORD God formed man [adam]out of the clay of the ground [adamah]and blew into his nostrils the breath of life [lit., lives], and so man became a living being.
Origen: On Loving Affection
And because God is loving Affection and the Son, who is from God, is loving Affection, He demands something like Himself from us, so that through that loving affection which is in Christ Jesus we may be brought into fellowship with God, who is loving Affection, as by a relationship made kindred by the term loving affection.
*Origen (b. c. 185), Commentary on the Song of Songs, Trans. Rowan A. Greer, in "The Classics of Western Spirituality"
Comments
What more beautiful image in Scripture is there than the All-Potent bending over the man's impotent-lifeless body, lying like a corpse on the earth, before consciousness arose in him? Imagine! Pure-Potency prostrating! This is the Creating One: All in all. However, this One is not aloof, but bends downward to the creature--This is Love (there is no true Love that does not willingly, joyfully bend downward)!
True Christianity refuses to reduce vitalizing, intimate, and transformative Spirit to an abstract idea. The Spirit, whether as seen by Jews or Christians or Hindus, is One meeting us where we are, not simply waiting for us, and wills in the One's Will to take us where True Love longs us to be always with God; for the longing within adam--you and I--is yearning of that Divine Fire from Whom springs forth true passion in creation, as fiery sparks from a Flame.
This flaming forth is Love's initiative. Love pines in loving creature. God longs for consciousness--or spiritual awakening--, to make possible mutual awareness of Creator and creature.
Adam, the story goes, is only a body. All-Potency prostrates to all-impotence. This Breath breathes into breathless creature, Being into nonbeing, the only and living breathing forth, sharing with creature Life: God Himself, God Herself.
Then the Story reminds us: "so man became a living being." Or, "The man became a living soul." The life of the creature--you and me--is a shared life; again, like a sparks flying outward from the Flame and, thus, sharing the Nature of the Flame of Passion.
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Such is the beginning of two important themes in Christian Scripture. First, Grace initiates life-giving relationship with us. Second, Eternal Life is the gift of Life Itself. All giving of God is God giving God's Self.
All-Potency bends to us. How amazing! One seeks a myriad different ways to reach all and will find a way to suit each. All-Potency is not overly selective; the goal of reaching us--breathing into us--is paramount. Such Longing will not cease until creation bows in return to Spirit, Who bowed to creatures. This bowing is the prostration, not of body, but of heart and mind in delightful and lifefull resignation and witness to the Fact that no one among us belongs to himself or herself. Separate, we live corpse lives. Together, with God and each other, we live god-infused lives.
The reciprocation of prostration is the relational process of spirituality. The only proper response to the Grace's initiative is obeisance, in humble adoration and delightful awe, to God-in-Threeness; that is, breathing outward in worship as expressed in the inner influences of spirit and in rites of the body.
This life given to the human one, in Genesis, is the shadow of Eternal Life: Life not of duration, but of quality and by participating in Divinity, in Christ and through the Holy Spirit, our Companion. Our reception, or intimate recognitional-contact, of this Life is response to Grace. It is, indeed, All-Potency's emptying into creation and you and me, without losing any of Itself or Its potency, that makes possible to recognize Grace and receive Eternal Life, enjoying both in the enjoyment of the Giver. The Good infuses the world, and in the Good we choose to infuse all things through being in the Good, thereby enjoying the Good in the good of creatures, known and unknown.
St. Augustine, in his Confessions reminds us that our hearts are restless until we find rest in God. Yes, we have a built-in, innate, natural capacity for responding to Love, and which is satisfied in no other way. This is evidenced by refusal to satisfy predictions of those who have declared the death of religion. All cultures show religious sensibilities and consciousness of the Wholly-yet-Intimate Other: such shadows the true Image, Fountain of spiritual satiation. Being religious is as normal as needing food and drink, rest, and human companionship.
Again, our response to the Divine is only due to a longing for us: companionship inheres as a Natural Capacity in Triune Divinity. Discontentment outside of the Triune Divinity mirrors the Divine restlessness outside of us and seeking us. The Triune Divinity is restless until finding rest in us, for Divinity by giving Itself into us is at unrest in our unrest--though at rest it Its quality outside us--, even as we are restless until we find rest in Divinity.
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