Wisdom's Cry

A discussion of th first path, "In the Via Positiva. In awe, wonder, and mystery of nature and all beings, each of whom is a ‘word of God,’ a ‘mirror of God that glistens and glitters,’ as Hildegard of Bingen put it. This is Path One.”--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/wisdoms-cry/messageSupport this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wisdoms-cry/support Get full access to Creation's Paths at www.creationspaths.com/subscribe

Contrasting Creation Spirituality and the Fall/Redemption tradition--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/wisdoms-cry/messageSupport this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wisdoms-cry/support Get full access to Creation's Paths at www.creationspaths.com/subscribe

This week, we begin our study on Concentration (samādhi), this is the still, focused mind we develop through meditation and mindful living.  It is the 4th of the 5 powers, and a strong tool in our awakening to God and things as they are.Mindfulness develops Concentration, and Concentration causes us to experience the deep interconnectedness of all things and the basic joy and peace that is our natural state.  In this state of Concentration, we are closest to the Holy Spirit, and are most capable of hearing the Still, Small Voice of God, our gentle and subtle Guide.“For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him (Eph 1: 15-17).”A Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation of ChristWisdom is the gentle guidance of the Unseen, as well

This week, we have been building up our Energy/Effort/Persistence (viriya) by focusing on the virtue (middah) of Order (seder).  That may seem like a strange choice, but with a little discernment, we realized it was the right thing to do.Effort is one of the Five Strengths, and as such, it controls Laziness.  When we thought about this, we found many examples of Effort in our lives, and while I would not say our Effort is perfect, we had a difficult time finding the flaw we needed to work on, or how exactly we could work on building up the virtue.When we turned our eye to what it is meant to control, Laziness, we saw that while we couldn't call ourselves lazy, there were significant aspects of our lives that were blocked.  There are messes so big and projects so daunting, so we choose not to expend any effort at all toward them.Ah ha!  That is the biggest problem with our practice of Right Effort.  When we couldn't see a way forward, we turned and went another way.  The messes seemed insurmountable.  So what

When I originally posted about this January 15, 2008, a lot of people wrote in with questions.  The inquiry is important.For Christians and non-christians alike, the common question asked is, "Why did Jesus have to die? Was Jesus’ death a sacrifice to an angry God, or was it something else?"  Fundamentalists have their answer, and people are more familiar with it.Blasphemous movies like The Passion of the Christ proclaim quite loudly, that Jesus death was some sort of Divine torture porn.  A spiteful little god needed to see suffering and bloodshed to appease his wrath.  They say that Jesus had to die because of the Law written by men and angels (De 4:14; Acts 7:53; Gal 3:19; Heb 2:2).  It is true that this law charged and condemned God with Blasphemy for saying that he is God.  So the question they should be asking is, was Jesus killed to satisfy Moses and the Angels.Whether or not Jesus died as a human sacrifice to a God of Wrath all blood boils down to the answer to one question very important to the answe

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the future of religion.  We are living in an age of solipsism and spiritual materialism that is at odds with the authoritarian past of our faiths.  There has to be a middle ground.Living in the Bootheel of Missouri, there are not many practitioners of Creation Spirituality around.  Adding to that, the Catholics in the area are far more akin to Southern Baptists, so I don't have much support there either.I find myself longing for the community I used to have in Oakland and Frederick, but I know that if I moved to either, it wouldn't be the same.  You can never go home again.Solitary religion or spirituality is dangerousI know that isn't a popular view.  Yes, our relationship with God is intensely personal, but we are meant to grow in a community.  Even the Buddha sent his followers out as a Sangha, even though the practices are so very personal in nature.St Benedict warned against the Sarabaites and the Gyrovagues.“The third kind of monks, a detestable kind, are the Sarab

I've noticed in myself that every time there is bad weather in the forecast, I start asking myself about God's Providence.  I admit that part of it is my own primal fear of severe weather, but mostly it is because of what I hear people say on the news after a storm devistates a town.My great aunt was in Joplin, MO, when it was blown off the face of the earth.  She was picked up, thrown across the lawn into a tree.  She survived, and the family all said that God was with her, or her guardian angel saved her.I believe in guardian angels, and I believe that God can intervene in extraordinary situations, but I am not sure that situations like this should be held up as signs of God's Providential Protection, because it begs the questions:* Why didn't God spare the others?* Why didn't the victim's guardian angels help them?Why would God protect some and not others?The rote answers are trite and meaningless.* Because God has a plan for them* Grace is undiserved* They had stronger faith* They had better moralsGive me

Why did Jesus have to die? Was Jesus' death a sacrifice to an angry God, or was it something else?Whether or not Jesus died as a human sacrifice to a God of Wrath all boils down to the answer to one question very important to the answer to a single question: If there was no sin, would Jesus have been crucified?The Orthodox answer is yes. On the Cross, Jesus stood on the threshold to mediate between us and God. Now follow me closely. On the cross, he stands between life and death, faith and doubt, hope and fear, pain and release, God and humanity. In this singular act, he mediates between all these opposites and shows the way to Life. The cross is the gate to the sheepfold.Christ is the Word of God, nailed up as an edict from the Eternal Father for us to read and therein find the Son of Man and the Son of God pointing us to our true Humanity and the true Divinity.Christ is the manifest book of Life in which the Mind of God is made know. “This is the book which no one found possible to take, since it was reserv

We have been talking a lot about the nature of God and the most fundamental beliefs of the the faith of the prophets and mystics. Of the hundreds if not thousands of ways we could take the discussion of the nature of the Deity, I have decided to continue my posts inspired by Brian McLaren's a Generous Orthodoxy.In the book, McLaren describes the God he sees in creation in a simple yet profound way.God is a:a unified, eternal, mysterious, relational community/family/society/entity of saving Love (a Generous Orthodoxy, 85).This is a phrase for meditation and quiet contemplation in the night. We have already talked about Rabbi David A Cooper's image of God as a Verb (see this post). This notion of God is very close to the glimpses of Providence we get in our everyday life, but McLaren has found a way to describe our encounter with the Divine.UnifiedThe testimony of the Prophets reveals to us a God that is One. On the night before he was crucified, our Lord prayed:That they all may be one; as you, Father, are in

 We have followed the star to the new born Christ, and behold the one in whom God is made manifest to the world. We stand by the river Jordan and watch the skies open as the dove descends upon our Lord. We drink the wine at the wedding at Cana and marvel at the one who produced it. We celebrate the revelation of the Lord.This is the day when we remember the revelation of God to humankind, but how can we celebrate the revelation the one who:Clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne (PS 97:2).This is the God of whom Solomon says:It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honor of kings is to search out a matter (Pr 25:2).While I do not believe that anyone can every describe or define God in any great detail, I believe that God can be found by those who seek him out. All religion is an attempt for us to put these experiences in words. God is hidden from us by the minutia of our lives. Anyone can find God by relaxing, and coming to the present mom

 Domine Iesu Christe, Filii Dei, miserere mei, peccatoris.Lately, I have noticed that the Jesus Prayer has been spontaneously popping out of my mouth. I don't even notice that it is happening until it is happening.It has become so common to refer to Jesus as the Son of God that I think most of us have never stopped to consider what it means.McLaren suggests that the phrase "Son of God" is the same as saying "Embodying God (80)," or "Embodying the Essence of God (80)." But it is almost as important to ask what the word God means before we can discover the meaning of "Son of God."Rabbi David A. Cooper found the most brilliant way I have ever seen to discuss God:"The closest we can come to thinking about God is as a process rather than a being. We can think of it as 'be-ing,' as verb rather than noun. Perhaps we would understand this concept better if we renamed God. We might call It God-ing... [Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi] suggests that God-ing is a mutually interactive verb, one which entails an interdepend

You may want to skip ahead and then come back to this paragraph. I don't want you to think I am saying something that I am not: I think heaven and hell do not play a large enough issue for the followers of Jesus.I know what you are thinking. There they goes, I knew this was coming, Fire and brimstone, but it is not what you think. I am not talking about a hell in the hereafter to which few will fall, I am talking about the hell that we ignore everyday.Heaven and Hell, like the Kingdom of God itself is with us even now. Look at the turmoil in the world, the wars, the famines, and plagues. As Joseph Campbell said, "Heaven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us (Power of Myth, 39)." It is all here set before our eyes. When we look into the war ravaged regions on the world, we are looking into hell. But even in these places, it is possible to find sights of heaven.We forget the Good News that Christ came to tell us:And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he

I have been reading Brian D. McLaren's, a Generous Orthodoxy, and it has really been making me think a lot about my faith. At the end of each chapter, he asks numerous questions, and I have been learning a lot about the faith I actually believe.Over the next couple of weeks, I will be sharing with you my answers to his questions. I invite and encourage you to read the book and share your answers too. We discern the voice of the Spirit in the witness of the faithful.McLaren begins by talking about the Many Jesuses he has known in his life. I thought I should use his labels (and one of mine) and share my own story.The Conservative Protestant JesusI grew up in a Baptist home. My grandfather and great grandfather were both Baptist ministers. I used to go up to talk about the Bible with my great grandmother all the time. I would read the story and we would talk about the text. In many ways, some of my happiest and most disturbing memories of religion come from this period of my life.The happy memories are all with