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Wisdom Words
Ken Wilber, in the Foreword to Alex Grey, The Mission of Art , writes:
When an artist is alive to the spiritual domains, he or she can depict and convey those domains in artistic rendering, which wrestles Spirit into matter and attempts to speak through that medium. When great artists do so, the artwork reminds us of our own higher possibilities, our own deepest nature, our own most profound ground, which we all are invited to rediscover. The purpose of all truly transcendent art is to express something you are not yet, but that you can become…
It calls us beyond ourselves, it takes us beyond ourselves, to a transpersonal [not impersonal] land where Spirit is real, where God is alive ... where our own original faces shine with a glory that time forgot and space cannot recall. We are confronted with the best we can be, the deepest we can feel, the highest we can see, and so we go away … a little better than we were the minute before.
Comments
The One Spirit is the Artist, and One Reality, all of It living through matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit~Spirit, is the Artwork. Each of our lives, and all creatures together, as well as the world we live in ~ Nature, Kosmos ~, is an Invitation to transformation into Godness.
So, the artistry of Incarnation of Logos impels us to live more deeply with ordinary life and ordinary persons, like you and me. For in that fleshly ordinariness is Heaven, here and now, always Heaven ~ for Heaven is a spiritual geography and has nothing to do with what one could find on a map either of a place on this earth or elsewhere (This does not deny an afterlife, but affirms that we can begin enjoying Life now and will to the extent of surrender to the God-Loving now ~ the same applies to all the intimations of the word hell, for we can choose to begin living in hell on this earth plane).
The spiritual Christian sees the flesh of Jesus signifying Christ, the Logos “descending” into the world and "ascending" to the Father, as Logos and in the Spirit. And this Logos, Word and Reason, is the foundation and sign of our deepest potentials and fullness of our innate Divineness.
This artful~operation of God is within Nature, immanent and transcendent. Jesuit scientist Teilhard de Chardin wrote of the unity within Nature: "My starting point is the fundamental initial fact that each one of us is perforce linked by all the material organic and psychic strands of his being to all that surrounds him." Likewise, he writes of, [T]he belief that there is an absolute direction of growth, to which both our duty and our happiness demand that we should conform. It is his [the human] function to complete cosmic evolution." He relates this to Christ: "Christ is realized in evolution."
*"Teilhard de Chardin and the Noosphere," by Rev. Phillip J. Cunningham. CMC Magazine, March 1997 (www.december.com).
Imagine, the fullness of the Word is being worded, now, in Nature, and with a pull toward a consummation of all things in Christ! This is described in an encultured, anthropomorphic, and concrete way in Philippians 2:
9 So God raised him to the highest place.
God made his name greater than every other name
10 so that every knee will bow to the name of Jesus—
everyone in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.
11 And everyone will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
and bring glory to God the Father. (NCV)
Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, of spirit and of flesh, immanence and transcendence one, human and Divine in perfect union, is a summons to do more than adore, worship, and follow Jesus Christ. For Jesus Christ is a Living Portrait, pulling us onward to become all we can become in the Holy Trinity.
We do not only look back to Christ, we feel the pull of the Christ ~ a teleological one ~, inwardly and outwardly and toward an End Point, an Omega attraction inherent in every beginning, every birth, every life, and every death, as a single-variegated Grace-Life.
Love-the-Artist is expressing: calling us, confronting us, consoling us, moving us, and echoing God and our True Self. The Artist does this through the sensations of heart and thoughts of mind, fully incarnated in each and all ~ for this Work is both intensely personal and supremely communal. To be fully present to the Self is to be fully present to this Love loving and by the loving making of all things Art to adore and live through, as well as move toward the End with all things through and for, in God. Here, all energies will be oneed in blissful oneness with the Word and by the force of energy and the Word interacting to reconcile all divisions in Nature. This is contemplation, which is not a disembodied Act, but a profound unification of energies in Christ, one resulting in at-one-ment, in reconciliation.
To be present to Divine Presence in Christ is to be transformed into Vitality, to Reality, to Beauty. To be sacrally awake is progressively, habitually to live awe-fully as Nature, within and without as one. Nature "exclaims" and "sings" gleefully “I Was, I Am, I Am Coming!” So, being Nature in movement to the final Act of Art, a spiritual person in Christ sings and exclaims the Story of the Word, as in progress and complete.
And, now, right now, as you read these words, this whole Drama of Divine Display, Sacred Dance, Immaculate Symphony "descends" and "ascends" in perfect Harmony. Such is made more beautiful by Its giving of Itself artfully with and through the diversity in which God expresses and offers GodSelf, freely. This One invites us to allow This to live in us, with us, and for the Holy Spirit to awaken our hearts and enlighten our minds to the Glory of the OneLife!
Hence, the eros-impulse to transcendence, which is a vocation to union of "descending" and "ascending," Love's nondual loving, is artful. Any expression, thus, of religious faith that lacks the Quality of Art as incarnation forfeits the power of inspiration, an inspiring to lift feelings and thoughts beyond mundaneness to sublimity. In this sublimity we find the heavenly in the variety of the expressions of Nature, we discover God in discovering who we each are in God and for God, we move with Christ as complete and, yet, moving to find completion in all incomplete ~ for Christ is the Fullness that humbles Itself to help all Nature find Fullness In Christ, and all nature is incomplete until it shares the Fullness with all else and in Christ, in God, through the Holy Spirit.
Reflections
What role does art have in your spiritual devotion?
Contrast artless and artful faith?
What is the eros-impulse to transcendence?
Explain your thoughts on the following words and how they apply to the spiritual Christian life:
To be sacrally awake is progressively, habitually to live awe-fully as Nature, within and without as one.
For Brian's on-line audio sermons, go to www.wherethelightshines.org and select Pastor's Corner; on the following page is his weekly sermons given at Christ United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL.
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For replies and biographical information, and submission to "The Light Shines" daily devotionals ~ a ministry of Christ Community United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL, see next page:
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