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I am drawn to you
for
God is drawn to God
Home is drawn to Home
The role of art is to serve as a pretext. All nature, including you and I, can become art to one receptive to its function as pretext. You and I can become to each other art, again when prepared to receive the other as a pretext of a Text, a living Word, not contained in the pretext. Christ signifies the pretext, the Word, of the Father, the Source, the Text. In Grace, Signified and signifier become one. We become signs and symbols, but only to one who is able to receive the indication of Otherness, Presence being communicated through your or my particularized presence. Only one receptive, like Mary, can receive the Christ-birth within. We are particularized as words of the Word, for we are extensions of Presence, so a pretext of the living Word not contained in any book or teaching, only hinted at, and ineptly at best. So, if I receive, you become the sign of Otherness you are, and Otherness becomes Nearness. In you, the felt-distance between Grace and me, that dissolves in the Presence. Through you, then, and in you, Grace is born anew, now, here, and each birth of Grace is new. Grace never repeats, as you never repeat, and our meeting together as pretext with pretext never repeats, regardless of how many times the meeting happens. Each birth of Christ is fresh, unpredictable and unrepeatable, for not of time, though within time. Jesus himself said, in the Gospel of John, "When you have seen me, you have seen the Father."
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There was a day, over 10 years ago, when the presence of someone I had not met before broke into my life, and my presence broke into his life. A joyous splitting of the veil of otherness happened, timeless. Kindness we two shared, one kindness. Call this fate, if you wish, or divine providence, if you wish; regardless, the communion is new now, as fresh today as then. We find in such kindly, timeless sharings a replenishing self-surrender, an absence of self. Love is there, happening. This meeting I will speak of today. Possibly, you will recall such a meeting with another that graced and graces your life. And you may see anew, we are always changed, our lives always enlarged, by such moments of meeting in which moments as we experience them is no more.
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He was homeless. I met him at the homeless shelter, where he, with many other homeless, came to enjoy a Thanksgiving meal. I served as pastor at a nearby church. Being single, with no family nearby to share Thanksgiving with, I decided to serve at the shelter.
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