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There is one mind, one energy, that sustains all of life.
You are part of that mind, part of that energy.
Julia Cameron, Answered Prayers
A Story
A disciple spoke to his Teacher, “Teacher, you talk of our being one with God, but I do not feel like I am one with God.” “Son,” said the Teacher, “I do not talk about you feeling one with God.”
Scripture
15We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God's original purpose in everything created. 16For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. 17He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. 18And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.
He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. 19So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. 20Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the Cross. (Colossians 1, The Message)
Thoughts
After several years of practicing meditation and contemplation, I approached one of my first Teachers, Faye. We were sitting at a table at the Prayer House. I spoke, “I am confused about whether God is personal or impersonal.” Faye replied to my conundrum, “Oh, I think God is both.”
See, I had come up taught that God is a big Father, somewhat a big Man in the heavens. Buddhism and Christian contemplation had introduced me to nonanthropomorphic ways of referring to God. Anthropomorphisms are ways of attributing human traits to nonhuman things. The God I had come to experience could no longer be contained in anthropomorphic language. In fact, this God could no longer be, but by symbol or sign, “God.” Anything, indeed, said of this Reality was a sign or symbol, or both. I was coming to be able to joyfully exclaim, as did the Franciscan mystic Blessed Angela Foligno (b. 1248) repeatedly while on her deathbed, “O Unknown Nothingness! O Unknown Nothingness!” (Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism)
Foligno had direct, or contemplative, encounters with God. She described that Presence in the world:
The eyes of my soul were opened, and I beheld the plenitude of God, in which I did comprehend the whole world, both here and beyond the sea, and the abyss and ocean and all things. In all these things I beheld nothing except the divine power, in a totally indescribable way; so that through excess marveling the soul cried with a loud voice, saying “This whole world is pregnant with God!” (Complete Works, trans. Paul Lachance)
Jesus gives a human face to this ever-present, ever-flowing plenitude; Jesus gives a face to the Word, which is Plenitude. While Christ, as Plenitude, cannot be reduced to Jesus, neither can Jesus be deducted from Christ: such is the union of Spirit and Flesh.
This is a mystery pointing to another mystery. Creation is the embodiment of the Word. Without the Word, Creation could not be. Without the Word, you could not be. Without the Word, I could not be. Without the Word, the plenitude of all, nothing could be, for the Word, Christ, the Son, is the plenitude of Being-Becoming. For the Word “was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment” (Colossians 1.17, The Message).
We see the union of Christ and Jesus, in Jesus Christ, as calling us each to the realization, with Foligno, that everything is infused with Divinity, all things—including you and me, indeed, all called animate or inanimate—are part of Grace, as Creative Potency.
Christmas, as Mystery, leads us to this mystery of Spirit and Flesh, God and Cosmos, Transcendence and Plenitude. Christmas gives a face to Infinity, while that face to God leads us to the Mystical Marriage, the actualization of experiential Union with Infinity, even as Christ is the perfect Union that shows us the Way to the fullness of love, joy, and peace.
Quote of the Day
If the doors of perception were cleansed
everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
—William Blake
Question
What does it mean for you to be an expression of the plenitude of God?
Affirmation
I am one with God.
OneLife Ministries is a pastoral outreach and nurture ministry of the First United Methodist Church, Fort Meade, FL. For Spiritual Direction, Pastoral Counseling, spiritual formation workshops, Christian meditation retreats, or more information about OneLife, write Rev. Dr. Brian K. Wilcox at briankwilcox@comcast.net.
Brian's book of mystical love poetry, An Ache for Union, can be ordered through major bookdealers.
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