A man was desperate to know God. He heard of a famous mountain on a far off continent where, purportedly, many persons had discovered God. He gathered up much of his life savings and paid for a trip to the distant land. After flying over, he asked for directions to the mountain. He walked to the mountain, deep in the forest. At the foot of the mountain, he could trace a little footpath leading upward. He walked for hours, finally reaching the summit. There, on the top, was a little wooden sign. The sign read: Go Back Down, There I Am.
Ordinary Perfection, in Buddhism, and Incarnation, in Christianity, affirm a single, universal truth. The Incarnation, or Manifestation, of the Word, into time and space, validates the goodness of all Creation, in time and space. Jesus Christ, the union of Deity and Humanity, Formlessness and Form, Spirit and Flesh is a sign of the Ordinary Perfection of Nature. Jesus Christ, indeed, is Deified Nature, and our belief in a physical resurrection, not just a “spiritual” one, affirms the goodness of the flesh of Jesus Christ, human, and world.
The Christian message, then, is that nothing is wrong, essentially, with Creation. Therefore, all Nature being imbued with Divinity, we do not have to seek God outside Creation. Rather, contemplation is the full embracing of Ordinary Perfection that, then, can open one to experience, immediately, the Mystery, from Whom everything making up Nature receives its Divinity.
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We do not seek God outside Creation; rather, we seek God in and through Creation as a visible sign of Grace. This is one reason we need to celebrate the human body and, thus, come to feel at home in our bodies. Indeed, the flesh is the home of Divine Spirit, as is noted in I Corinthians 6.19: Or don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? (NLT)
A little girl asked her mother to tell her what she did at the university, where she went every day. “I am in the art department. I teach people how to draw and paint,” said the mother. Amazed, the girl inquired, “You mean they forget?”
Possibly, one of the oddest of phenomena is that we have persons “seeking God” and some saying “I found God.” I would rather say that “God seeks us” and “God finds us.”
So, why do we still not, often, act like we actually believe that we are immersed in Love? Why do we act like God is lost? Why do we behave as though we have forgotten where God is?Could it possibly be that Ordinary Perfection, which includes our own union with Wonderful Presence, is simply too amazing for us to believe? I do not mean just believe in the sense of mental affirmation. I mean believe in the sense of knowing and feeling, immediately, the truth that everything participates in Incarnation and all Creation is Ordinary Perfection, just as it is, essentially, thoroughly.
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