Sunday, March 10, 2019
Saturday, March 2, 2019
The Creed and Tao of God
When
I read versions of the Nicene creed, I am drawn to memory of the way I recited the
creed as a profession of faith in the Catholic Mass. I am drawn also to
the rosary and how we would use that as a variation of meditative prayer.
We say these things over and over in order to foster a sense of reverence, and
I can still verbatim recite each prayer and the profession that we learned
then. That is a unique way to do meditation by reciting common phrases
and prayers -- and a great way to learn them. Since I do not fully
subscribe to the Nicene or Apostles Creed these days, I look for other ways
that might describe how I believe without being constrained to them.
Today,
I turn to the Tao Te Ching and ask which is so important that I would want to
incorporate that into my meditation rather than as an empty mind or mindfulness
meditation.
Since
the Nicene creed calls God into being through Jesus Christ and the holy Spirit,
I am drawn to particular verses that talks about being born and into being. Let
us meditate upon being.
40b
“Returning
to the root is the movement of the Tao.
Quietness
is how it functions.
Ten
thousand things are born of being.
Being
is born of nonbeing. “
42a
“Nonbeing
gives birth to the oneness,
The
oneness gives birth to yin and yang.
Yin
and yang give birth to heaven, earth, and beings.
Heaven,
earth, and beings give birth to everything in existence.
Therefore,
everything in existence carries within it both yin and yang,
and
attains harmony by blending these…”
Meditating
on this, I feel the different dimensions of God. Perhaps, others also
might feel and see the different dimensions of God working with us and around
us as trinity, God and spirit or as spirit or as Jesus.
The
power of God perhaps can be described, but like the words of the Tao, words
cannot contain God. From God, the onenness, "maker ...of all that is seen
and unseen", we have the spirit, Jesus and beautiful beings in Heaven and
Earth.
What
this tells me in this meditative reflection is that whether Jesus was God
incarnate, "God from God, true light from true light, begotten not
made," a divine being created by God as an intercession to us, or a person
with strong connection to God "by the power of the Holy Spirit",
Jesus's work here on Earth, "for our sake... was crucified ...suffered,
died..." is a powerful testament of Truth.
How
do we live out our testament of Truth? That we all are born of and made of the
work of God that binds us to the being of God and how we work with each other
is important. When I meditate on these, I can feel how God is of the yin and
yang as we are in this world that has been gifted to us.
In
fact, Jesus teaches a version of the yin and yang and to find contentment
rather than to persist in expectations through the sermon on the plain that we
read during the weeks of lectionary in Luke.
51b.
Giving
birth,
Nourishing
life,
Shaping
things without possessing them,
Serving
without expectation of rewards,
Leading
without dominating:
These
are the profound virtues of nature,
And
of nature’s best beings.
“Love
your enemies, do good and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward
will be great and you will be the children of the Most High.” (Luke 6: 35)
Let
us be one with the Spirit, "the giver of life", that surrounds us and
binds us. Let us be profound virtues of nature and expect nothing in return
while nourishing life and shaping the world we live with our love .
Amen.
*As
translated by Brown Walker, B. (1995). The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu. First St.
Martin’s Griffin Ed: New York.
Then,
Reading the material around Dionysius, it is fitting we might read
this on the week of Transfiguration Sunday with such a mystical stories of Jesus
and Moses. I again sense Taoism and parts of the Tao Te Ching, but this time, I
would like to meditate on the principles of the duality very present in Dionysius work: the opposites as they
all form as part of the one.
Let our spirit rise and fall with this meditation.
From the Book of Chuang Tzu (translated by Martin Palmer p
188)
“Life Follows death and death is the forerunner of life.
Who can know their ways?...
As death and life are together in all this, which can be
termed bad? All the forms of life are one…, yet we regard some as beautiful …others
as ugly… but even the diseased and rotting can become the spiritual and
wonderful, and the spiritual and wonderful can become the diseased and rotting.
“
The mysticism of this weaves with the Dionysius line into
this discussion: “outshining all brilliance with the intensity of their
Darkness” and then, “yet in a ..sense, it does not possess them since it
transcends them all;”
Thus, we witness transcendence from left to right and light
to dark.
We see transcendence from right to left and dark to light;
From death to life and life to death.
Out of darkness came light and from light we go to darkness.
All are one with the presence of the Holy One, the Divine
Wisdom.
And suddenly transfiguration is a transcendence that we can
witness in our own lives.
With the “One who is beyond all”, we cannot literally
comprehend that infinite image who embodies both the divine light and the
Darkness to reveal the naked Truth: that we cannot speak it because we cannot
describe it, but we can know it.
How do we allow the light and darkness to transcend within
us and in our being? How do we reject the perfect light and darkness by our feeble
attempt to define its trueness, its being?
Spirit of the living God fall upon us and be with us in all
of your splendor and murky ways.
Spirit of the One who gives us life and death, be nearer to
our understanding and our denials.
Reveal to us so we might be able to truly embrace what we
cannot describe and allow that to be the naked Truth in our lives.
Spirit of the light and the Dark, be far from us so that we
might be comforted in your presence.
That we may continue yours in no-words language,
actionless-action and thinkingless-thought,
And through your holy Spirit, open our questions and hearts
to your True presence.
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