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Today’s Scripture ~ John 1.4-5 (WE)
4Life was in the Word. That life was Light for people.
5The Light shone where it was dark and the darkness did not stop the Light from shining.
Personal Prelude
The following devotional presents the teaching of detachment even from religion, and is based on my own journey as a man immersed in formalistic and fundamentalist faith as a child, youth, and young man. My life, in many ways, since, has been a slow, sometimes ecstatic and sometimes painful, emergence from the shadows of numbing, moralistic, and literalistic religion. The writing, as all my work, is a witness to the quest of the human spirit for a creativity and animation that is part of returning to the full image of our Source, what Jesus calls becoming a child again? Of course, I could have chosen a much easier path, but I did not, and I have no regrets: though I often sense a deep aloneness on the path chosen, but that it honors God is all that matters.
Is this teaching of detachment even from the Christian faith, then, Christian? Yes. All the great holy men and women, while living within the truths and rites of Christian faith, have taught detachment. They understood that even Christian faith could become another idol, an end in itself.
Detachment is a poverty of heart, according to them, an emptying of ultimate reliance on all but God. The rites and ways of faith are means to True Faith, to God, not themselves are they True Faith. Religion, at its best, is overall a means of Grace, a way to God in Christ, through the mediating influence of the Holy Spirit, but a way that does not separate us from the gift of vital humanness.
To come to God, I must come to myself. To come to myself, I must come to God. This, all great saints have taught us, and the early desert Fathers and Mothers fled the deadness of secularity and formalistic faith to seek to regain the Life, not simply to escape the world, and this Life is the Life spoken of in St. John’s Gospel as “eternal life,” a life not eternal in duration, but a life eternal for quality. This Life, this Aliveness, is God.
Wisdom Sayings
We beg you, make us truly alive.
―St. Serapion of Thmuis (Egypt, fl. Ca. 350)
The glory of God is the human being fully alive.
―St. Irenaeus (Church Father, France, 2nd Century)
Wisdom Story
Wandering ascetics are common in India, and a peasant mother forbad her small son to have anything to do with them. She did this for some were truly holy and some were exploiters in the disguise of holiness. One day the mother was looking out the window. She saw a wandering ascetic surrounded by the village children. To her surprise, the ascetic, doing what many would have considered undignified for a holy man, was doing somersaults to entertain the children. So impressed was the mother that she called out for her son to come to her. He did. She told him, “Son, see that man over there doing somersaults. That is truly a holy man. You may go out to him.”
*Anthony de Mello. Taking Flight.
Comments ~ A Prayer
Spirit of Christ, sometimes I struggle to know what it means to be holy, truly. I have been surrounded since childhood by styles of apparent holiness that I find lack authenticity, honesty, creativity, and liveliness. I find so many religious persons deadened by the intoxication of rule and rite, while the human spirit is muted by sanctioned claims of the distant past. I find so much of this religiousness repressive, sedate, and deadening to adventure and creativity. I find much of it the refuge of persons more interested in safety and propositions than adventure and truth. I find those who seek to break free to be condemned to silence, looked upon as disloyal, and judged as betrayers. I find those who follow it to lack depth, vision, responsibility, and vitality. I find there must be a creative joining together within myself, as a fully human man, of the dignity of the human spirit and the grandeur of the divine spirit. I find my yearning must meet and merge with the wild freedom of God, the Wind that blows from where and to where I do not know.
I find myself wondering how much the style of so-called holiness has held back my own human spirit and spread its shadow over me, and since childhood, creating a fracture between my own innate goodness and the holiness of my Source. I seek to break forth to true life, fully, and claim, without having to cite religious justifications, that I am a good and whole person, a fully-fleshed creature honoring Love for living into my life and my world animated by a living principle that brings a fullness of beatitude that is earthy and common, rather than for a special few.
I have tasted this created and bodily liveliness, possibly more than most, but there is still a fullness I am pulled toward, as to a destination that has cried out for realization from my youth. Possibly, many do not feel this ache, for they are not awake enough to sense the inner Voice laying claim to their total beings. Sometimes I feel I am there, fully immersed in Love. Then, I, like drift wood, am thrown back on the shore, cut off again from this self that is given a name and thrown amidst the subtle and sublime mysteries of this earthy terrain.
Possibly, this journey consists of many conversions. Possibly, the path to true life for me is renunciation of religion, or maybe to serve it to others while I remain fully detached from its claims over my spirit, standing only in Love, even as Peter and John were told, on the Mount of Transfiguration, to listen to Christ, not Moses and Elijah. This, I know, sounds irreligious for a person who is a spiritual guide for others, but possibly you are spiritual and not religious, and we must all learn this. And, possibly, I am a way, to serve as a testimony of a holiness that is fully human, fully embodied, fully of the world, and fully and heavenly alive at the same time. Possibly, my struggle is that you have led me to relinquish, and gladly, the very vessels of faith that helped me get to this point, opening to a larger freedom, and one I must follow if I am to remain truly free and make my way The Way of Grace.
I see you standing there, Christ. Take me to you alone, covert me again, but not to religion, only to Love, and a Love not bounded by any structure, regardless of how helpful to me in the past. Do this, I pray, today, that my heart might be filled with love, joy, and peace, and I might shun the cemeteries of dead piety and deadening morality, even if I walk alone and follow you into the world as a man truly and fully animated with Spirit. May aliveness become my witness, may vitality be my sermon. While many accusations might be made against me, let no one ever justifiably say that I am not a man truly and vitally real, marked with the authenticity of a creation pulsating with the Life of God. Rather, I renounce the demons of darkness―the structures of thought and action, socially, religiously, and individually, that contain the human spirit and cramp the creativity of the human heart. If I refuse this call to Life, how can I speak of it to others? If I deny this summons, human and holy, how can I claim to honor you, my Source? If I follow others, how can I follow you? Amen.
Suggested Reflections
How might we use religion to seek escape from the inner need and destiny to be fully alive persons? How might one serve others through religion, and yet remain detached from its claims on his or her life? How can one remain true to his or her religion and see its rites and regulations as means toward a fulfillment beyond and outside it? Whom, or What, are you living under the claim of? What might the following mean?―”I see you standing there, Christ. Take me to you alone, covert me again, but not to religion, only to Love, and a Love not bounded by religion or faith.” How does the above writing reflect both the opening Scripture and the story?
*Pastor Brian K. Wilcox serves the Christ Community United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL. His passion is applying historical contemplative teachings and its practices to the yearning among many Christians have for a deeper spiritual walk with Christ.
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