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Now, to a concept from early Christianity: the Mystical Body of Christ. While it is in the language of that faith, Christ is a term that is not merely Christian, any more than the word Buddha is merely Buddhist. Such terms are present to open us to seeing the Truth pointed to as outside any one tradition, be it national, political, religious, racial, ... This like a Martin Luther King, Jr. or a Gandhi transcending religion, race, and citizenship. Such beings have become archetypes to us, outside time and space, to inspire us as though they are personally here. Hence, Nikos Kazantzakis using the figure Christ in The Last Temptation of Christ, though Kazantzakis had no religious faith in Jesus as Christ, indeed, no religious faith at all.
Quoting from Huston Smith, in The World's Religions...
The first Christians ... did not feel themselves to be alone. They were not even alone together, for they believed that Jesus was in their midst as a concrete, energizing power. They remembered that he had said, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them" (Matthew 18.20). So, while their contemporaries were nicknaming them Christ-ians..., they began to call themselves an ecclesia, a Greek word that means literally "called out," or "called apart." The choice of this name points up how unlike a self-help society the early Christian community thought it was. It was no human association in which people of goodwill banded together to encourage one another in good works and lift themselves by their collective bootstraps. Human members constituted it, but it was powered by Christ's ~ which is to say God's ~ presence within it, though that presence was now spiritual and no longer visible.
This appears paradoxical: To live together as one, we return to where we are one. Christ is one image that signifies this oneness-in-Love. Oneness creates oneness. We as selves do not create oneness, we do not create the peace that oneness is. We must integrate the social-outward with the spiritual-inward as we live together toward peace. An integral way of living is the only viable option for the future.
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The host and the guest are to be united as one. We each belong equally at the banquet of Grace, of Love, of Life. Let us not say, "You're not like I am, so you're less than I am." Let us say, "We're not alike, but welcome, you are that I am." In this spirit of Spirit, we move beyond both separation and tolerance to inclusion. This is the work and fruit of Love. We, the flowers, can live in unity, for in unity with the Field.
Ⓒ Brian Wilcox, 2020
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