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The Mystery of God makes possible the beautiful diversity we rejoice in. Just look at Nature. What a witness to the manifold Manifestation of the One! In fact, the Magnificence of the One is enhanced for her who can embrace the diversity, cheerfully and thankfully. And, this celebration of diversity is in the teaching on the Trinity, for we see more of this Magnificence in One-in-Three or Three-in-One than in just One. Therefore, it was only natural that naturalism and monotheism would be transformed into a higher, more embracing view of God.
One way of seeing this is Father pertains to the Sky, Son to the Earth, and holy Spirit to the union-through-love of both in the One. That is, union makes possible the diversity, while the diversity is essential to the union.
Likewise, today, I write of thirst, seeking to take us from the phenomenal experience of spiritual longing back to its Source, which is the Source of all longing. Every manifestation of longing is the Word wording us into existence and back Home. Desire comes from God and leads back to God. Want and Fulfillment are part of a union, made possible by the holy Spirit.
And, I continue assuming a stance taken by Gerald G. May, Christian psychologist and contemplative, in his Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology. He writes, “At least from a contemplative standpoint, it seems to me that the core of all major religions surpasses and transcends such claims to exclusivity.” He is referring to his recent notation of the attitude of some of “us against them” or “we have the only path to God.” Indeed, no faith has the “only path to God,” for the “path to God” transcends every faith and, ironically, is the Center of every living faith, though most do not penetrate to that Center. At the Center of every faith then is what Christ refers to, which is Love.
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Therefore, not having penetrated to that Center, persons long for what only the Center can give. Outside the Center, they judge all other faiths, including their own tradition and Scripture, from living on their privileged, little parcel of the periphery. But, from the Center, everything changes, and our longing, undressed of particularity, is seen to be the Naked Heart’s Cry for the Living God. Indeed, from the Center one can most appreciate her faith tradition, finding a communion of all who are drinking from the Fount of Living Water.
Therefore, we seem to want different things spiritually, when seen from the fringes of the Center. However, when seen from the “living core,” the Center, we all want the same thing. We all want God; we all want Love….
Pertaining to this Center is the spiritual quest. When we are gifted with the satisfaction of our deepest longing, we find we are in a fellowship, the mystical Body of Christ, one from which we came as persons and peoples from many directions, but all back Home, when we choose. Indeed, this writer assumes the universal longing for God-in-Christ is the spiritual homing instinct, deriving from our prior Participation and Derivation from God, who is the One wording us into existence and calling us Home, through the very desire that we seek to satisfy in myriad ways, until unfulfilled we, like the Prodigal Son, say, “I will return, to my Father” (see Luke 15.11-32).
Are you ever thirsty? I mean, really thirsty. I imply a thirst that nothing seems to satisfy. All efforts seem to lead you further away from the Meaning that alone gives life meaning. Possibly, you get brief satisfactions from the refrigerator of phenomena, as you sate your senses on one more big gulp of sex—this time with a fresh face and new body—, a new job, a nicer home, some more money, another six-pack, a return to the religion you left, another expensive retreat or conference led by a leading “spiritual” teacher, or a new spiritual path with some esoteric techniques promising to quench, finally, the longing that haunts you when you are alone and listening, or trying not to listen.
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