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Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Saturday, February 4, 2017

Always beginning

“As long as I am breathing, in my eyes, I am just beginning.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy
______________________________________________

In the beginning
God,
Creation,
Newness,

and then life happened
and somehow
in some way
we lost touch with the Love
that created us ,sustains us, transforms us

and so revelation

God again
and again
and again
and again
progressively

revealing Sacred Presence
Sacred Nature
Sacred intent

for us, divine children
created in divine image

revealing, in many ways
in many places
through many people

Behold!
Behold!
“God’s new thing, can you not see it?”

well, no
not very well

those who would be “God’s people,”
seem so often to get it wrong

they exclude rather than include
hate rather than love
grasp rather than give
seek power over, rather than servanthood

they turn God’s guidance into a burden

all too often people have sought to control God
and use God
rather than love God

and so always
there have been the “righteous”
who instead of being open to God’s new thing
block the emergence of the Kingdom

In Jesus’ time there were Levitic priests
Pharisees and Sadducees

well intentioned
thinking God needed their protection
(as if God cannot take care of herself)

but ultimately cementing faith
killing it
taking what should be alive and powerful
and making it stone like
and dead

and so God
the same God who is shown
moving history a new direction
in the Garden
with the call of Abraham
in the Exodus
through David, the King
through defeat and restoration

did it again

yet again

through a radical named Jesus
revealing in a new way
Sacred Nature

revealing in a new way
how the Sacred functions in human history,
in human lives

In Jesus Law became grace
The Beatitudes became the new code
for God’s children.

and the world was tilted
as hate was conquered
and death became life

the pattern is clear

God continually comes
and comes again, God
continually reveals

bringing forth the new
shattering the bonds we create
moving us forward toward the full revelation
toward what we call the Kingdom

a world in which God’s way rules

but now it is happening again
the church (especially the church in America)
has decided that there is no “new thing”
only the old thing

once again law reigns supreme
and we pretend that God is not free
to act

it is as if we believe it all stopped almost 2000 years ago
it is as if we believe all revelation ceased
and nothing new can emerge

no new understanding

nothing
new

and so the church teaches that the earth is young (its not)
and presents a God of hate (God is love)
and worships words written in stone (the Bible can become yet another idol)
as well as power and wealth (whatever happened to servanthood?)

so the church excludes (when it has been called to include)
and fails to feed the hungry, and help the oppressed (and sides with power and the status quo)
instead it sides with that which is not godly

and so
once again
we need
we really, really, need
God’s new thing

Come Oh Sacred one
Shake us up
Wake us up

We are always just beginning

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