Dear All of Us,
So what do you think?
Is God like
a comfy grandparent,
a lover,
a genius,
a Commanding General,
a best friend,
a guru,
a Teacher of the Year,
an ace quarterback,
a sage
a magician,
an architect,
a friend,
a coach?
The answer,
of course,
is
Yes!
That's because
when we try
to describe God
we have no choice
but to employ metaphor.
The part of us
that is mystic/poet
gets that.
We're not trying
to say
who God is.
what God is
how God is.
We are trying to say
a tiny little bit about
how we experience God.
For us
"God is like..."
We know darn well
that our metaphor
is to God
as a match
is to the sun.
We experience
a lot more
than we can say,
and we know/sense
that there is
infinitely more than
we can experience
just yet.
It will take forever,
and we're darn delighted
about that.
This metaphor matter
was clear from the get go.
Genesis is an effort
to stammer something
of God's exuberant
outgoingness,
God's vast creativity.
It used the metaphor
of a worker/artist
as contemporary science
uses the metaphor of
The Big Bang.
Now hang on!
Let's admit
the whole thing
is so
and at the same time
so is it
exactly otherwise.
It's time to flip
the paradox pancake.
Same pancake,
different side up.
God is infinitely
more than all those
metaphorical "likes"
mentioned above -
comfy grandparent,
lover, genius,
ace quarterback...
God is God
and we do not have
the lenses, circuitry,
spectrum nor span
to grasp or convey
who and how
God is.
The startling thing is
not that "God is like...,"
but rather that
WE are "like" God.
What a flip of the pancake!
Then God said,
"Let us make
humankind
in our image,
according to
our likeness..."
Genesis 1:26
We are a partial
of the Whole.
Jumping back to
more metaphor,
we are babies
and spitting images
of our Parent.
What a "likeness."
And we have
a divine set of genes.
It will take us forever,
endless eternity,
as they mature
to ever more fullness
and excellence.
This side of the pancake
is a mind blower,
a heart enthraller.
It shows that
we are sacred.
And so is every other
coloration of person,
those appealing, displeasing,
those similar, quite different.
We are all in the image,
in the "likeness" of God,
whether others know it or not,
whether we know it or not.
The implications
for our spiritual lives,
- our absorption in God -
for human relatedness,
for social justice,
for our practical,
everyday living,
for communal sharing
will take all our earth years
to understand and live
and yet never finish.
In painfully too many cases,
it will mean to reorder
to loving justice.
We are more than
fellow anythings.
We are at core
one in the Oneness
of our creative God.
Then the King will say,
'I'm telling
the solemn truth:
Whenever you did
one of these things
to someone
overlooked or ignored,
that was me -
you did t to me.'
Jesus
Matthew 25:40
The Message
That's a "likeness"
unto divine union.
Here's a simple,
rule of thumb
guide for behavior:
ask yourself
what you want people
to do for you,
then grab the initiative
and do it for them.
Add up God's Law
and the Prophets and
this is what you get.
Jesus
Matthew 7:12
The Message
What a "get"
What a oneness in Oneness.
Here's a gift I received.
It all started long ago.
I was a teen,
trying to be real
and not having much luck
with the endeavor.
The Joe McCarthy Pandemic
was infecting and distorting
the nation and me:
There's a communist
under ever bed,
and certainly behind desks
in the federal government,
and reporting for the media,
and menacing the military.
At that time
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
were sentenced to death
as spies for Russia.
I hated them for
betraying my country.
Dirty, rotten Commies!
I wanted them executed.
My soul was in turmoil.
Also at the same time,
I was hopelessly
tossing about in
the churning sea
of puberty
with its flood
of sexual energy,
most of which threw me
into mortal sin more than
a few times a week,
as per my RC context.
EEEKS!!
I was going to burn
in hell forever
but I couldn't stop
being sexually energized.
It just keep coming my way
in all sorts of new ways.
Tough to sort out.
Father Joseph Sheehan,
ever patient parish priest,
to the rescue.
He helped me see that
absolutely every person
is created in the image,
the very likeness of God,
even if that image
is distorted or smeared.
That freed me to love
and pity the Rosenbergs,
to move through
the limit of hate
to holy union.
******
UPDATE
What about
our now and
Derek Chauvin?
******
Back to puberty.
How about
the sex sin stuff
(and burning in hell)?
Well, Father Sheehan
helped me to see that
a beautiful girl
is not to be bedded
in fact or fantasy
simply because both
she and I were hot.
Way better,
we both are sacred,
created in the
very likeness of God
and called to/capable of
much fuller and
more genuine sharing.
Too darn good to mess,
to trivialize.
Father Sheehan
helped me to see that
what we do
with/to another
we do to God.
As I grew,
these adolescent insights
matured to realizing
that yes we people
are actually a "likeness"
of God way more
than God
is like a genius,
an ace quarterback.
a comfy grandparent.
We are a presence
of God to others,
each and all of us.
People experience
a bit and more of God
through us.
We just need to let the
Divine DNA in us
function and flow.
Each of us
makes present God and
that in unique fashion.
I also learned that
what attracts me
to another person
is their special likeness
to/of God.
They presence God
by their beauty, intellect,
prowess, character, talent,
holiness, depth, warmth,
humor, ...
a vast array of divine
marvels and epiphanies.
That's even so when people
are twisted and destructive.
We have to work extra hard
to see through all that
to their divine core
and God's presence.
Mystics and poets
get all this.
They realize that
no metaphor
shows more than
a shade of God
and that we all
presence a partial ray
of the sun that is God.
These are helps
as we happily fall into
the mystery of
God Love.
We don't yet
see things clearly.
We're squinting
in a fog, peering
through a mist.
But it won't be long
before the weather clears
and the sun shines bright!
We'll see it all then,
see it all as clearly
as God sees us,
knowing him directly
just as he knows us!
But for right now,
until that completeness,
we have three things
to do that lead us
toward that consummation:
Trust steadily in God,
hope unswervingly,
love extravagantly.
and the best of the three
is to love.
1 Corinthians 13: 12-13
The Message
We can only know
so much now.
But nothing to keep us
from experiencing
way more and ever more
in mystical embrace.
Lovers entwined
aren't bothering to know
because they are lost
in the wonder of each other.
So it is with us in God
and God in us entwined.
God metaphor
gets us to first.
Experiencing God
in others
gets us to second.
Making God Love
is a Home Run.
It's not a
limited metaphor.
We have it on good,
on God authority.
We are wanted
by what we want:
"God is love"
1 John 4:8
In that Love
and way more than
metaphorically,
John Frank
******
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from
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Special prayerful support to our
colleagues in Indonesia
and all elsewhere as the suffer
the surge of COVIC-19
"frankly speaking"
spirituality for the street
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Let's live our family lineage
It's rather divine
Have a free and full week.
******
In sheer clear candor,
all of then are
a tiny touch like God.
