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Welcome to a ministry of encouragement for all persons. This site is designed to provide inspiration for us together, as one, to find a way to peace within ourselves and in our world, in respect for the Sacred and the Divine in one another, and all Nature. Love! And keep Loving! Always.
Brian Kenneth Wilcox
SPIRITUAL TEACHING
The spiritual Person doesn't seek fulfillment.
No seeking, no expecting;
so, she is present, and can welcome
all things and everyone.
*Tao Te Ching. Chapter 15, Stanza 4.
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The early Church Father Athanasius wrote The Life of St. Anthony. Anthony was from Egypt and “father" of Christian monasticism. Athanasius writes:
He observed the graciousness of one, the earnestness in prayer of another; he studied the even temper of one and the kindheartedness of another. He fixed his attention on the vigils kept by one and on the studies pursued by another. He admired one for his patient endurance, another for his fasting and sleeping on the ground. He watched closely one man’s meekness and the forbearance by another. And in one and all alike he marked especially their devotion to Christ and the love that they had for one another.
Christian contemplative and monk Thomas Keating writes, commenting on Athanasuis' witness to Anthony’s graciousness:
Notice the bond that unties the members of the group amid their diversity of gifts: the love of Christ and their love for one another. The deeper the unity, the more pluralism a community can absorb. The variety of viewpoints and gifts are experienced not as threats to one’s practice and views, but as enrichments.
*Invitation to Love.
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Thomas Merton takes Athanasius and Keating's words to another step of Embrace. Merton shows how unity is possible - his words apply to persons generally, not just to those professing Christianity, and apply in the universal context:
If I can unite in myself the thought and devotion of Eastern and Western Christendom, the Greek and Latin Fathers, the Russians and the Spanish mystics, I can prepare in myself the reunion of divided Christians. From the secret and unspoken unity in me can eventually come a visible and manifest unity of all Christians. If we want to bring together what is divided, we can not do so by imposing one division upon the other or absorbing one division into the other. But if we do this, the union is not Christian. It is political, and doomed to further conflict. We must contain all divided worlds in ourselves and transcend them in Christ.
*Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.
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With unity, as all things, there is a practical, empirical aspect. We do not automatically “see” others the way Athanasius depicts Anthony “seeing” others. Community does not automatically integrate pluralism in a healthy communion of diversity. We do not transcend differences by mere intent.
Merton clarifies, however, that we “can prepare in” ourselves “the reunion of divided" selves. The manifestation of outer unity arises from “the secret and unspoken unity” within us each; otherwise, there will be no unity, no spiritual sharing.
Merton, in his prophetic manner, takes us beyond where most persons would take us. He is not content with “Christian” unity, though that is vital to him. For Merton, Christian unity is only part of a greater unity. We are called to “contain all divided worlds in ourselves and transcend them in Christ.” For Merton, Christ is not calling us only to Christian unity; Christ is calling us to unity, period.
The more we grow into the Christ Who Transcends Christianity, indeed all religious faith, the more we include our faiths in all-embracing oneness and experience the Living Fact of all existence. We experience Christ as Existence Itself, One Who unites plurality back into the Source, the Father, through the Spirit, the Energy of Grace.
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Living in a global village does not mean abandonment of historical and cultural particulars of faiths. The Christian does not have to become non-Christian anymore than the Buddhist non-Buddhist. Rather, Love is the Word in Whom particulars find their unifying Truth - an actual state and process of being who each person is.
This will require for persons of all faiths to allow to be lived in themselves, through love of Grace, the life of the Spirit of Life. This is the Christ, even though this Reality might be called by different names and titles. Now, we are to be surrendered to a Vision which will allow us to "see" all seekers of Truth as our brothers and sisters, and we must find means to allow the unity within our ways to join us in one Path.
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As Christian - not merely a Christian, my being the Body of Christ opens me from the particular to the universal, as truths open to Truth, and God-images usher me into Beauty.
This unifying transcendence, or transcending unity, is worked out within me through radical surrender, even surrendering claims to belong to the only true path for all, the only means that Grace is seeking to heal Nature and restore all to the Image of the Gracious. All depends, now, on my "Yes."
SPIRITUAL EXERCISE
1. How have you become more open to varied ways Pure Spirit is working in and among persons of varied faith groups? Persons of no religious faith?
2. Can you remain open to how Christ might mean more than what you have before believed Christ to be? Explain.
3. What is “unifying transcendence," or "transcending unity”?
4. What does Keating mean when he writes, “The deeper the unity, the more pluralism a community can absorb”?
5. What is the relationship between “unity” and “inclusiveness”?
6. Why do some religious persons, over time, become more inclusive and other persons do not?
PRAYER
Transform my heart that my eyes might see in the most hurt and most harmful a child of God. Amen.
Brian's book of mystical love poetry, An Ache for Union, can be ordered through major bookdealers.
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