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Wisdom Saying
As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life. ... Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made. ... Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery....
* Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom
Comments
The aspiration for God is the search for Meaning. This, however, is not a search for a meaning. A meaning is always going to disappoint you.
Every a everything is short of the Perfect. Even as every a everything derives from the Perfect. Therefore, every a everything is meant to usher you toward the Perfect.
Take for example that you have a love or beloved. This love or beloved is means to, or a meaning of, Love. Otherwise, the love or beloved becomes an idol, something short of Love and in whom, or what, you seek the Perfection of Love. But this love or beloved can only offer you a meaning to, or in, your life.
Contemplation is the wisdom of embracing meanings and, at the same time, being moved through them, by the energy we call Grace, to the Perfect. This leads to transformation of all meanings, for these are now experienced in the Perfect, and they are no longer simply means to the Perfect.
Now, this applies to transformation of religion. Religion is often domesticated to fit culture. Theology becomes ideology. The Truth of faith becomes reduced to the institution of the faith, even as~for us Christians~the Way of Christ is fit~so we think~into the Church as the Way: and it is to the extent that it is spiritually participating in Christ~otherwise, Church is not Church but church, mere Christian religion, ...
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The contemplative moves through the meanings of her religion to the Perfect~the Meaning: before, in, beyond~eternally~her religion~all religion. She sees her religion, then, in the Light of this Beatific Vision, arising from the Word, Christ Jesus, in time from outside time, rather than interpreting the Vision in light of her religion, embedded in time.
This does not lessen her devotion to and love for her religion. Rather, she becomes more devout and in love with the tradition, Scripture, rites, doctrines, creeds, ... of her faith, for she sees them in the Light of God, rather than the lesser lights of humans.
This Beatific Vision does not mean the lesser lights are wrong~only the lesser lights or not the Light, lesser insights are pointing to the Perfect, in Whom inheres no lesser, indeed, encompasses Wholeness, being Wholeness, allowing all the lesser to be, until all lesser is swallowed up. This Grace happens by the movements within history and the Word operating in and through historical circumstance. This Word is the emanating Love of the Complete, or Father, and with the Holy Spirit is the One generating all providential movements of circumstance to lead us to the Meaning.
Suggested Reflection
Has your spiritual practice transformed positively the ways you view and experience your religion~doctrine, creeds, symbols, rites, witness, outreach, ...? Explain.
See next page for details on OneLife Ministries, Brian's book An Ache for Union, and material pertaining to sources used in the writing.
Feel free to submit a query. Thanks! Brian K. Wilcox
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