Acts 2:16, “but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel:”If you break it down to the simplest explanation, what teachers do is define an experience. In Acts chapter 2 Pentecost had come and Peter is trying to define the experience in verse 16. Similarly, when a math teacher is demonstrating calculus he is doing so from an ability to articulate an experience.
For me, my purpose, my spiritual call is to proclaim the kingdom of God is at hand. That is God’s command to me. But to do this, to say that the kingdom of God is here, it is available right now I have to experience it, and thus this entire blog is born out of that experience. It is not an intellectual exercise. It is not a test of logic.
The kingdom of God is at hand so that we can be in relationship with God Himself. Do not murder no longer is a command. It is something unfathomable because of a relationship to the creator and an understanding that to do so would be in direct opposition to Him.
Some may say they are holy because of their doctrine, their dress, their ability of self control. I say that I am holy because Christ is in me and He is holy. I say that I am holy not because I am sin free but because there have been enough crises of doctrine and belief in my life to understand that those things were only there to lead me to the encounter with the True Source of holiness.
I get to a place where I believe… where my doctrine says… where finally I have discovered an absolute, only to have that absolute tested with an exception. Physical crisis, health crisis, financial crisis, relationship crisis… all there to say our faith in our beliefs is insufficient. There must be relationship. Only where we understand that our best is still contaminated, that our most complete belief is grossly inadequate do we spiritually come into the position of being able to enter the kingdom of God. Out of the confusion God is standing there with open arms saying come My child into My kingdom and sit on My lap. Let Me show you peace beyond comprehension. Let Me show you joy in the crisis.
St Augustine said this very same thing in defining his experience this way, “You were within, but I was without. You were with me, but I was not with you. So you called, you shouted, you broke through my deafness, you flared, blazed, and banished my blindness, you lavished your fragrance, and I gasped.”
Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Priest, seems to have had this very same experience. And he has articulated it this way -- calling the experience the “second half of life.” “In the second half of life, we do not have strong and final opinions about everything, every event, or most people, as much as we allow things and people to delight us, sadden us, and truly influence us. We no longer need to change or adjust other people to be happy ourselves… We have moved from doing to being to an utterly new kind of doing that flows almost organically, quietly, and by osmosis… concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have – right now. (Good or Bad)… Strangely, all of life’s problems, dilemmas, and difficulties are now resolved not by negativity, attack, criticism, force, or logical resolutions, but always by falling into a larger ‘brightness.’ (Surrender) Hopkins called it ‘the dearest freshness deep down things.’ This is the falling upward that we have been waiting for!”
He goes on with, “By the second half of life, you have been in regular unwelcome contact with your shadow self, (what God intends you to be) which gradually detaches you from your not-so-bright persona –stage mask in Greek—that you so diligently constructed in the first half of life. Your stage mask is not bad, evil, or necessarily egocentric; it is just not ‘true.’ It is manufactured and sustained unconsciously by your mind; but it can and will die, as all fictions must die.”
St. Augustine, Richard Rohr, a few of my friends have taken the first steps into the kingdom of heaven here on earth. Invite yourself in today. That is the only way I can say that you too can share in the experience.
I was baptized Catholic; I was raised early on Methodists. In middle school we were members of an Assembly of God church. I attended a catholic high school. And in college I started a 17 year love affair with a charismatic non-denominational church. None of which has any importance in the availability of the kingdom of God and the experience of the abiding presence of God. You do not have to be a teacher, a minister, an author, hold a title, or be affiliated with a particular denomination. All you have to do is ask to come in. All you have to do is knock.
This is not salvation. This is what salvation is for.
Will you knock on that door today?
No comments:
Post a Comment