Oned with God

“For before he made us, he loved us; and when we were made, we loved him. And this is our substantial goodness, the substantial goodness in us of the Holy Spirit. It is nothing we create; it is our substance. God revealed to me that there may and there will be nothing at all between God and the soul. And in this endless love, the human soul is kept whole as all the matter of creation is kept whole.”

(Julian uses the Middle English word “oneing” to describe this whole-making work of God. God is always oneing everything: making twos and threes and fours and divisions and dichotomies and dualisms into one. As she explains, “God wants us to know that this beloved soul that we are is preciously knitted to him in its making by a knot so subtle and so mighty that it is oned with God. In this oneing it is made endlessly holy.

                                                                                                                Julian of Norwich/Richard Rohr

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God is about oneing

God is about helping us find

unity

union

wholeness

everywhere

the Sacred is about re-connecting us (that is the meaning of the word religion, “re-ligio”)

to the ground of being (God)

ourselves (our essential self)

and others (all others)

God is about breaking the patterns of

thinking and behaving

that shatter that unity

(so for God’s sake don’t envy, steal, kill, lie, etc)

and yet religion

has become about disruption, not unity

faith, which should draw us together drives us apart

faith which should move us forward to the Kingdom

is used to pull us back into old patterns of fear and hate

(conservatism is on the wrong side spiritually – read the Bible)

religion has become (Yes I am including Christianity)

a powerful force for destruction in our world

because we see it as making us unique, special, and privileged

rather than seeing it as a means to become “normal”

simply what we were created to be

oned with God

and seeing it as a bond to all others

who were all “created to be”

and are, essentially oned with God

it is not in being exclusive and excluding that we are holy

it is in being woven together

with the Sacred and all other beings

that we find our “substantial goodness”