|
Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, I hope persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. Please share this ministry with others, and please return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader,
Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
Brian encourages support of the 4-Star Christian organization Compassion, which supports children worldwide; see www.compassion.com .
Prayer
I need You, blessed Jesus. Come, my Friend, come as you will, come when you will, I am ready. Amen.
Song
Before reading below, listen to this beautiful rendition. If we are willing, He will come to raise us up, and often He will come as a friend, sometimes as a stranger. And, be ready, for He will send you to raise someone up, too, and it may be the friend or family member, or it may be someone you have never known before, possibly someone so unlike you that you never thought He would call you to be the Christ for him or her.
Selah. "You Raise Me Up."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th9Y_cg7ep0
Spiritual Teaching
Premise: All in Christ is the one Christ, for we are the Body of Christ. The Christ is the toe, the toe is Christ ... Any person like Christ, is Christ, regardless of his or her religion, or lack of it. If the Hindu is like Christ, he is Christ; if the Buddhist is like Christ, he is Christ, ... Christ is a be-ing, a way of be-ing, not a religion, a church, a doctrine, ... Many persons never see the Christ, for they are looking for Christ to fit their beliefs, not a Way of be-ing.
We each have had persons whom we could say, "He, or she, made a real difference in my spiritual evolution." Possibly, we have each been honored to do the same for another person.
Thomas Merton was influenced early in his adult years by a kind of man he, or no one else, would have anticipated. After all, Merton looked like everything-but this very-different man.
Merton wrote about Dr. Bramachari (Hindu for monk) with great respect and, also, humor, and reverence. Merton and Bramachari met initially at Grand Central Station, New York. Merton penned:
There stood a shy little man, very happy, with a huge smile, all teeth, in the midst of a brown face. And on the top of his head was a yellow turban with Hindu prayers written all over it in red. And, on his feet, sure enough: sneakers.
*The Seven Storey Mountain
Merton and Bramachari became friends. Merton appreciated the manner in which his Hindu friend criticized the Western world and relativized everything persons in the university found so important. Merton wrote:
He would simply make statements of fact, and then burst out laughing - his laughter was quiet and ingenious, and it expressed his complete amazement at the very possibility that people should live the way he saw them living all around him.
Possibly, the most interesting thing about Merton's friendship with Bramachari was that the Hindu never tried to give any insight into his Hindu faith. Rather, he told Merton that there are many beautiful books of mystical Christianity, and he recommend Merton read St. Augustine's Confessions and The Imitation of Christ.
Merton saw Bramachari as a potential providential send to his life. After Bramachari relativized Merton's youthful curiosity for the East, he became very sensitive to the mystical Christian tradition in the West. Only much later did Merton immerse himself in Eastern faiths. Likely without his grounding in Western mysticism, he would have never been prepared to integrate that so well with his Christian experience.
* * *
Would Merton have believed a Hindu monk wearing sneakers would have had such a marked impact on his life? No. No reason to believe such would have ever entered his mind.
And we never know how the Christ will appear to us. The Christ may be sent by the Divine Love to us, and may look totally unlike what we expected Him to be, or thought He could be.
What if Merton had not been completely open to this man who outwardly appeared so much unlike Merton? Could it be that Merton would have turned away Christ?
* * *
Oddly, many of my brothers and sisters, who claim to follow Christ, would judge this kind man Bramachari to an eternal damnation. Oddly, could they be basically saying to Christ, "You're going to hell"? Could they be blaspheming Christ, for He does not fit how they think Christ should look like? Then, if there were a hell, who, really, would be going there - Bramachari, or those claiming to be my brothers and sisters in Christ?
* * *
How about you? Do you think you know so much about how the Spirit works that you could miss the Christ, for the Christ might not show up looking like what you expected? Possibly, you have already missed the Christ, many times, even as you may claim to be a follower of Christ.
If you turned the Christ away, in whatever disguise, would you be any different from those in Nazareth who tried to throw Jesus down a slope? They failed to see Christ in the man Jesus, a man who had grown up as a neighbor, in the home of the woodworker Joseph. (See Luke 4.14ff)
Yes, it is easy for a Christian to judge the people of Nazareth. To say, "How could they?" But, is it not possible each of us has turned away Christ? He came - and comes - and the way did not - does not - fit in the frame of our theology or way of life. So, we have and do turn Him away? Is that possible?
Or, possibly, like Merton, and like this writer, you have said, "Welcome, Christ!" If you are not willing to say "Welcome" to Christ, looking so unlike what you thought, you may never truly know Him, regardless of how much you say you love Him and believe in Him. Amen.
Responding
1) Has the Divine sent someone, a Christly person, into your life, to have a profound influence on you? Who was it? What did you learn from that person?
2) Do you see how the Divine sent you as Christ into the life of another person? How did your presence influence the other person for Good?
3) Is it possible you have ever turned away a disguised Christ? Explain.
* * *
*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, with friends and under a vow of simplicity. Brian is an ecumenical-interspiritual leader, who chooses not to identify with any group, and renounces all titles of sacredness that some would apply to him, but seeks to be open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He affirms that all spiritual paths lead ultimately back to Jesus Christ. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*Contact the above email to book Brian for preaching, Spiritual Direction, retreats, workshops, animal blessing services, house blessings, or other spiritual requests. You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
|
