1“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. 2 There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.”

5 “No, we don’t know, Lord,” Thomas said. “We have no idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. 7 If you had really known me, you would know who my Father is. From now on, you do know him and have seen him!”

8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”

9 Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I speak are not my own, but my Father who lives in me does his work through me. 11 Just believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Or at least believe because of the work you have seen me do.

12 “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father.

Christ is the way to the Father. His human nature and personality is the door to his divinity. By identification with him as a human being, we find our true self ~ the divine life within us ~ and begin the process of integration into the life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Christ came to communicate to each of us his own personal experience of the Father.

*Thomas Keating. The Mystery of Christ: The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience.

Jesus says to his disciple Phillip, “Have I been with you all this time, Phillip, and yet you still don’t know who I am?” Phillip was, among all persons, of a select group given opportunity to know Christ most intimately. Christ says, “Do you still not get who I am?”

Possibly, no Scripture calls us more to the sober realization that there is a difference between being associated with Christ and knowing Christ. Knowing, biblically, reminds us of the Buddhist concept “realization.” Realization is integration of the Person of Christ into our person.

Imagine with me two persons lying in bed nightly and reading to each other books on sexuality. One night the husband reads, the next night the wife reads. They do this every night. Then, they say “Good night,” smile, and go to sleep. Over time they both feel something within themselves lacking. This sense increases and becomes quite painful to both. They have difficulty naming this, however, for no one has ever told them what it is. So, they read more books on sexuality, thinking this will satisfy the longing. The something lacking increases. This cycle continues, until they read a book together, and it ends, “Now, feel free to forget everything I’ve written in this book. Just do it!” Now, they enter realization. They never substitute words again for the union with and in each other, and they come to appreciate that the books never came close to sharing what they longed to enjoy in and with each other. Indeed, they feel a true sadness for all those couples who keep clinging to the books and seem unable to enter the realization of knowing oneness.

As Thomas Keating says, “Christ came to communicate to each of us his own personal experience of the Father.” Jesus says, “Look at me. Look at my words. Look at my life. Then, do it!”

Christ does not enter union for us, so that we can simply gain the benefit of his oneness with the Father. We enter Christ, through the Holy Spirit, to enter union with the Father.

This is the Mystery of the Trinity, as ongoing dynamic communion, for in this union each one of us enters into all of God and all of God enters into each of us. This is the sacred Intercourse, a dynamic, interactive love~sharing with the Divine Lover, Beloved, in the Triune Unity, Who is in eternal, interpenetrating Embrace of Ecstasy. This is the fulfillment of the mystery of human gender and sexuality.

Somewhat an aside, and possibly a risky one, at that ... Present discussion of human sexuality, gender, and diverse sexual orientations, or life choices, cannot be addressed in simply a rationalistic~moralistic manner. These discussions among us Christians must be Trinity-focused and arise not just from belief or opinion, but out of our sharing realization and practice of union with the Triune God in a Loving that every human aspires for, even when he or she does not know how to name that longing.

In Christ, the Church is present to help persons name that longing for Realization and move to it through trusting self-surrender, which leads slowly but joyfully into abandon to the Grace of God in Christ, at ever deeper levels of grace and faith, through the immediacy of the Holy Spirit, who effects the Union in our trusting surrender.

How does intimacy with the Triune God image for us the true and sacred meaning of intimacy among persons, whether that intimacy is emotional or both emotional and physical?

How does growing intimacy with Christ evidence in our capacity to have deeper spiritual intimacy in Christian fellowship?

Look up the word for “fellowship, partnership, sharing” in the New Testament~koinonia. Do you enjoy koinonia with anyone? With a group? What does that mean to you in your growing koinonia with the Triune Bliss?

See next page for Invitation to writer's contemplative village, purpose of OneLife, data on ordering author's book and upcoming devotionals 2008, and material on citations.