Wandering, wondering ...

The mind wanders incessantly including during sleep, including dreams. My only recollection of afterward being aware that that had not happened is waking from being anesthetized, totally under for several hours and realizing I'd not dreamed, that it was a lost time when I "was not." 

Wandering this morning as I think about Sunday's confirmation class, which, time-condensed to 50%, will be quite different from what I've done in the past and finding myself hopeful about that; and on to this day in 1819 the United States acquired the rest of Florida from Spain

and my thought that what was seized in 1810 and 1813 (see map above) is actually part of Florida, all the way to Baton Rouge. And we must insist that the governor call up the Guard and take that back, by threat of force and force itself if necessary, from the Perdido River to the Mississippi River, including Mobile, Florida to Baton Rouge, Florida. I'm willing to go along as Chaplain General of our armed force, a two-star rank.

The next thing was stirred by an email from my second cousin Carol (first cousins share grandparent, second cousins share a greatgrandparent), the likely first photo from our new colony on Mars, 

which no doubt will petition to become a State or perhaps an extension of West Texas, at which Time Texas can go forward with their wish to withdraw altogether, and reassemble on Mars.

See, with enough B&D, the Friday morning mind making perfect sense. 

It goes on to contemplate Richard Rohr's meditation for today (scroll down), which theologically resembles panentheism* and likely goes beyond what Jesus himself, though not necessarily The Gospel according to John, thought of himself, a wandering Palestinian Jew teaching a gospel of Love, that how we treat each other is more important to God than keeping sets of rules, the Law; to a Jewish messiah in David's line called to restore and ascend the throne of David with the specific hope to overthrow and eject the Roman occupation; to a savior of the Gentiles by, per Paul, gathering us, with messianic and all Jews, into the faith of (genitive) Jesus Christ (Messiah), i.e., to Jesus' Jewish faith in the one true creating God, so as to make us eligible for salvation into the kingdom of God on earth that would be established with the imminent Second Coming of Christ; to a cosmic Being, the Son of Man himself, offering salvation to all who believe (dative) in him. To a religion of people obsessed with making sure we believe in Jesus, not so much to emulate his life and message of Love as to claim eternal life after death and be, as Jerry Falwell had it, as sure for heaven as if we were already there. My father used to combat that egocentric theology by saying, "we have a religion to live by, not a religion to die by."

And now with Fr Rohr's vision that clarifies the Nicene Fathers, we have God's plain and clear Son (aren't we all sons, children of God), messenger of "Love God & Love Neighbor", reimaged into pre-eternal Essence, above, beyond, and without, who speaks the Big Bang; in multiverse, conceptually, over and over again worlds without end.

Me, I rather like it. I can't be an Episcopalian without wandering, "wondering, wondering," and thank you very much, Webb Pierce.**

T  

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Christ Since the Beginning

An Incarnational Worldview
Friday, February 22, 2019

What I am calling an incarnational worldview is the profound recognition of the presence of the divine in literally “every thing” and “every one.” It is the key to mental and spiritual health, as well as to a kind of basic contentment and happiness.

Ilia Delio, an expert on geologist and Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), writes:

Building on the idea that love is self-communicative, Teilhard indicated that in the [first] incarnation, the “self” of God is in the “self-emptying” of God. God is that which is constantly becoming “element,” drawing all things through love into fullness of being. God incarnate invests Godself organically with all of creation, immersing [Godself] in things, in the heart of matter and thus unifying the world. This investment of divinity in materiality is the Christ. The universe is physically impregnated to the very core of its matter by the influence of this divine nature. Everything is physically “christified,” gathered up by the incarnate Word as nourishment that assimilates, transforms, and divinizes. The world is like a crystal lamp illumined from within by the light of Christ. For those who can see, Christ shines in this diaphanous universe, through the cosmos and in matter. [1]

Christians believe that this universal presence was later “born of a woman under the law” (Galatians 4:4) in a moment of chronological time. This is the great Christian leap of faith, which not everyone is willing to make.

We daringly believe that God’s presence was poured into a single human being, so that humanity and divinity can be seen to be operating as one in him—and therefore in us! But instead of saying that God came into the world through Jesus, maybe it would be better to say that Jesus came out of an already Christ-soaked world. The second Incarnation flowed out of the first, out of God’s loving union with physical creation.

My point is this: When I know that the world around me is both the hiding place and the revelation of God, I can no longer make a significant distinction between the natural and the supernatural, between the holy and the profane. (A divine “voice” makes this exactly clear to a very resistant Peter in Acts 10.) Everything I see and know is indeed one “uni-verse,” revolving around one coherent center. This Divine Presence always seeks connection and communion, not separation or division—except for the sake of an even deeper future union.

* panentheism, all is in God; the divine interpenetrates all aspects of the universe and transcends it.

** and now Webb Pierce will sing in my mind for the rest of the day. But then, I heard him sing it on stage of the high school in Gainesville, Florida sometime in 1955, 6, or 1957 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxZYHqn_TsY