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Poem
What Happens?
What happens when your soul
Begins to awaken
Your eyes
And your heart
And the cells of your body
To the great Journey of Love?
First there is wonderful laughter
And probably precious tears
And a hundred sweet promises
And those heroic vows
No one can ever keep.
But still God is delighted and amused
You once tried to be a saint.
What happens when your soul
Begins to awake in this world
To our deep need to love
And serve the Friend?
O the Beloved
Will send you
One of His wonderful, wild companions ~
Like Hafiz.
(Daniel Dadinsky, Trans., I Heard God Laughing: Renderings of Hafiz)
Commentary
When I was aged nine, I had a profound mystical experience of encountering God or, rather, being encountered by God. This experience has left an indelible imprint and repeatedly affirms faith in a Reality corresponding to “God.” I do not just believe there is a God, nor do I just believe in God; I know there is a God.
Likewise, this early event allowed me, later, to see that persons the world over and from different faiths, over many centuries, have had similar life-changing conversion experiences—what I call Divine Inbreakings. When I read of their experiences, though they are often different from my own, such resonates within me as Truth. This mystical experience has, likewise, made it impossible for me to believe that the Infinite Love, as I experienced that Sunday evening, is confined in any religion. God is greater, more immense, than any particularized expression, for God is Immensity. Therefore, the limited cannot fully express Immensity, or Immensity would not be Immensity. Only some thirty-three years later was I given the phrase to explain this experience I had and would be living into for this lifetime—Christ transcending Christianity. That means the event at age nine is the cornerstone of an inclusive evangelical faith that I am exploring and growing into, sometimes joyfully, at times painfully. I am contending for the recognition of the freedom of God, in Grace, to give generous Love and healing to persons outside the means through which I have been graced with Christ.
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I am, therefore, contending for a humble recognition that to dissent from the exclusivists within our faiths is not the same as being heretical, heterodox, or untrue to our faith. Jesus, I am clear on, was faithful to God within his opposition to the arrogances of religious reductionism in movements within Judaism, while he was true to the underlying values and beliefs in His faith. The Jesus I met at age nine keeps prodding me to be more expressive about the Immensity of the Word, as the cosmic Christ, which was fully manifested in Christ.
The Voice that called to me, to accept Jesus Christ, was calling me into acceptance of a living Fact. That Truth has continued to push me to discern and frame the integral, inclusive, and cosmological implications of that formative event in the life of a little boy from South Georgia. Therefore, I am an evangelical inclusive.
I attempt, though I often fail, to follow Christ beyond the borders and boundaries of the known “territory” to explore the other places Christ is dancing, playing, and speaking with the same Voice I heard in 1969. Further, I have sought, and such has brought much personal heartache and aloneness, to go outside the historical faiths to, again, the cosmic Christ, the Word before, within, and after all words, even the words of religious institutions, even the words of the Church, that I serve and love, dearly. For, beyond the Church, I am, as you, called to the world, to everyone, to all Creation. And, enveloping the Church, interpreted by many in a fully dualistic way, is the mystical Church of all those who receive the Life of Christ, through Grace and faith, and return that Life in service for the healing of the Good Creation, to cooperate with God in bringing healing to Creation and ourselves as part of Creation.
A silent locution, or Inner Voice accompanied the conversion experience, which occurred on a Sunday night at Philadelphia Missionary Baptist Church. This Inner Voice was not of human words, but my brain became the means of the translation of the Inner Impression. I had my head bowed, while I stood beside my mother. The Pastor stood, waiting for whomever might feel called to walk forward to accept Christ. I resisted this Voice, but as the singing continued, I looked to my mother, saying, as I recall, “He wants me to go up.” The Voice, to me, was none other than Jesus. I, quite a shy fellow, ordinarily, walked to the front without any embarrassment. Rev. James Carter, a part-time Pastor and full-time Canada Dry salesperson, asked me, “What do you want?” I profusely cried and through the sobbing whispered, “I want to be saved.”
After the invitational hymn was completed, Rev. Carter asked me to stand before the congregation. He told the people what I had come forward for. I looked at them, wet nose, soaked eyes, and still crying. He invited everyone to come forward to welcome me as a new Christian. They did. Grandparents, parents, friends, younger and older, came forward rejoicing, hugging and kissing me. Months later I received the sacrament of baptism in my Uncle Edwards trout and moccasin pond, as family and friends lined the banks, and I went down to drown spiritually and rise a new creature from the dark waters.
Continued... |
