Posted by PS on March 20, 2005 at 19:47:10:
In Reply to: "This do, and you will live." posted by giveawayboy on March 20, 2005 at 16:14:34:
I think of the country bumpkin's reply when asked for directions: "You can't get there from here." Au contraire, my funny friend, I can. I will blaze many new trails for the tangential journeys of disoriented bunnies.
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PS said:
: : I don't know how to explain it any better, except maybe to say that I can hear Jesus saying, "This do, and you will live."
Bill said:
: You know, sometimes I want to turn off that idiotic chatter, those little angelic-gremlins crawling up and down some kabbalistic grid in my mind trying to turn everything into gold. Sometimes it's good to bring everything outside myself and quit endless repetitions inside, where I am my own spiritual universe. Sometimes, after reasonable thought and consideration, it's time to DO STUFF, like help that old lady cross the street, slip your offering in the poor box, say your prayers or read your Bible. All those things, to me, are ACTION things. Steven used to tell us about this stuff comparing orthodoxy (what we believe) w orthopraxy (what we do). I think we need both. It sounds reasonable to me. In this sense I sometimes envy the kid in rabbinical school who has to don a talit, daven and say Shema. I mean at least, he knows what to DO. I guess I want to get to the point too where none of this is quite conscious. In this sense my actions will be a natural, egoless response to He who is acting in and through me. No isms. No systems. It is no longer I but Christ.
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And the excited bunnies embark...
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PS:
Now I can relate to this. In fact, we had another reasonably long thread a few months back (CAV was involved in it) in which we ended up considered the benefits and healing power of returning to the traditional, that is, the ritual forms that were foundational in our faith. It is not so much an answer to the complexity of the inner spiritual universe as it is an inevitability and a reaffirmation.
It is an inevitability on many levels. In the most basic sense, the man is weary; he seeks rest more than another journey taking him farther and farther from his childhood. He finally comes home and sleeps in the same bed he slept in when he was 12 years old, even though his mom and dad are long dead and the house is falling apart. He enjoyed going to Mars and Venus, but now he lays silently and remembers the magic of learning to spell and learning to draw and playing catch and teasing his sister.
In is also an inevitability in a more mystical sense, like the primal religious myth of the eternal return to the creation state. Our New Year festival commemorating the death of the old and rebirth of the new was the central ritual in all cosmological religion, marvelously antitypical of the cycle of all life. Even the cave-dwelling hunter/gatherer dreamed of the return to innocence and purity before the loss of the paradisal creation state (see Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, Princeton University Press.) I would suggest that in applying this journey to our faith, we would do well to think outside the Christian paradigm (box) of "before conversion, after conversion, final reward." I think that within our lives of faith there is also a cycle of creation (spiritual birth) and a return to it (a dying and rebirth) which is ongoing. The return to simple sacramental faith is like the homecoming of the wanderer. It is the return to that which was before all striving.
The myth of the eternal return can be meaningful on many levels. The concept of linear history, while affirming sovereign purpose in the world and the expectation of final resolution, clouds the natural cycle of resolution that is active and immutable. So too our faith seeks resolution. After a lifetime of learning and striving, after whatever power is revealed and whatever daunting heights may be scaled, I pray that my last words are as simple as those of my father: "I believe in Jesus; I believe in the Lord. I feel just perfect now." Those words could have been spoken by a dying child just as easily. The great theologian Karl Barth, when asked the greatest insight he had ever attained, replied, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." Right on. The Return.
The return to simple sacramental actions of faith is also reaffirmation. It tests the foundations of the tottering tower and finds them solid. Yes, rebuilding is possible--there are perhaps many cycles within the cycle of birth and return--but in the end, ultimately, I will lay me down on the ground level. If the tower is still by some miracle standing, I will knock it down myself so as to better see the stars. I will see what I saw when the foundations were first laid and I rejoiced. I will watch all my art and my craft crumble into ruins with a last word of power...like my father spoke.
My structure is an antitype, my activity an unconscious and imperfect attempt to imitate the great mansion builder and universe creator. I believe He has a place for me, an unending world of wonder; perhaps I have tried to create it. But it is more than a castle, more than a universe, more than any reality I can conceive; it is no-thing. But I can apprehend it in meaningful ways, in metaphors and antitypes and rituals and myths. It is not the ritual or myth I embrace, but the mystery I cannot grasp, spoken in words I cannot understand. There is a creature who hears and responds and answers in words I do not know, who lives in me, perhaps in spite of me, who dwells in light I cannot yet approach. I do not know yet who or what I am. The eternal return is the unending thrill of discovery and rediscovery, the celebration of birth and rebirth, of life and love and all things good and true -- none have been lost.
We seek affirmation in all temporal rites of return. It is inevitable. The need is intrinsic to the creature. Why would we try to escape it? To be gods? We are like salmon making their way back to their birthplace, the spawning grounds where their parents died, where they also will die, where new life begins. I do not wish to deny my birth, nor my death which testifies of my birth and the hope of rebirth. I am a creature, still learning who I am. I journey far and wide in search of answers that mean nothing until I bring them home again. I return to see what I was, what I have become, what I have always been, and what I will be. I return in faith that God awaits, like the loving father of the prodigal, to welcome me home.
Now I know God has gone with me every step of the way, and has never been farther than my own breath. I have metaphors for that blessed truth. But life is a journey, and sometimes I need a metaphor that can make some sense of all of it, irrespective of great accomplishments and broken dreams, and not require metaphysical gymnastics that I am far too tired to perform. And so I say that I am going home. In many actions at this time in my life, I find I am ritually enacting the sacred hope of that eternal return. These ritual acts are not just mechanical and uninspired, however. Every one is like a fulfillment of a sacred decree that I should perform that act, and that it should have a permanent effect according to the will of God. As such, simple acts can involve profound revelation that changes me forever as well. I cannot begin to find words to explain the power that can be revealed.
That is why I remember that story John told me ten years ago.
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Look, the bunnies have miraculously returned home.