RETREAT FORWARD
OUR LENTER RETREAT
here at
frankly speaking
begins in just two weeks
with a week of preparation
and seven weeks of seeking
"Essential Christianity"
The ancient
Desert Mothers and Fathers
model for us how to
RETREAT FORWARD
from the futility of
Empire's Life Lie
to joyous Reality in
The Kin Domain of God,
to
"Essential Christianity"
STARTS
WEDNESDAY
FEBRUARY 7, 2024
Please share the news
and invite
family
friends,
colleagues,
folks from church or no church,
to gather each week as a
Lenten Small Group to
RETREAT FORWARD
.
*******
PART I
Dear All of Us,
It's been a while.
Ollie
my little
GRAND SON
active, most lovable,
card carrying toddler,
two and a half now.
Yah, I'm nuts about him!
Among his endless
favorite things is
a beginner's version of
Hide and Seek
It always calls for
at least four encores!
Hide and Seek
is fun as play
with children.
It's absolutely
no fun at all
when it's at play
in our spiritual lives.
It drags us into
a futile fix.
Sometimes
we hide both
our true self and
our false self
from ourself and
everyone else
so faux-fully that
no seeking finds
the hidden self.
It is too often
so with nations,
religions, corporations,
institutions of
all sorts and strips.
It's a Hide and Seek
that is impossible
and in which no one wins.
The worst of the worst
is getting drawn into
the futility of seeking
a hidden God.
It's like a Road Race
to find what's right there
in front of us.
God isn't hidden.
Rather, we aren't focused
on seeing God
in plain sight
right there in that
"front of us"
in us, in others,
in all Creation.
Over time just about
all religions have
posited and positioned
a god
up there, out there -
hidden somewhere we aren't.
Thus, distance and division
with consequent and futile
dickering/dealing,
seeking a far out
and hidden god.
This god they created is
"made in the image
and likeness of" us,
is a sort of
Superman/Woman.
Since this god
creates and controls all,
we need to seek him/her
and make "Nice Nice"
for our protection and
our hoped-for prosperity
here and hereafter.
The game is lost
from the start
as we scramble seeking
a god not at all hidden,
and not created,
much less made in our
human image and likeness.
Yet, too many priests,
pastors, philosophers,
gurus, theologians,
shamans, rabbis
and imams
have created a cult,
made a career
and cash
of this
"hide and seek."
It's fundamental flaw
is that
dreadful distance,
us here,
God there,
and thus that
dreadful "art of the deal"
with the divine.
It falls and fails into
transactional
not transformative
spirituality.
Look what and where
all that hidden god
has gotten us!!
We're at a crisis time
in history.
There's a call on
what's what.
We are finding
we have come up
spirituality short
for centuries.
Our spiritual
health and growth,
indeed,
civilization's survival,
depend on a
refocused spirituality.
Let's give it a go,
starting right where we are.
Be advised:
heavy lifting required.
There simply is what
"IS"
We're born into it,
actually of it.
That is true of all -
be it universal and
probably beyond that
energies, vegetables,
puppies, planets, people,
elements of matter
in the mountains
and elements for
tonight's supper,
music, media, concept, ...
All that is
exists in this
"IS."
All that exists (ex "is" ts)
is an instance of this
"IS."
All that exists is part of
what really
"IS"
Reality.
That's really good,
and we delight to call
this unlimited good
God.
God doesn't exist
in existence.
God is existence.
All exists in God
God "IS"
more than pretty close,
and endlessly so!
God "IS"
what, where and how all
"IS"
We are part
of that Good,
part of what
"IS"
Of course,
there's a heaven of
a lot more than
we see, figure, fathom,
know, or experience
of God just yet.
It's not hidden.
It's that we are not yet
tall enough,
evolved enough,
matured enough,
to see more of
the God Good Horizon
as it ever out-goes.
There's plenty of
"IS"
in which we can
meet and mix
with God
right where,
as and how we "is".
We are gifted to be
immersed in it,
in God.
God is not hidden
out there somewhere.
Go inward, go outward -
God "IS."
Our spirituality is
immersion in what
"IS"
immersion in
God
"God is my deepest self" (1)
"God is closer to me
than I am to myself. (2)
"It is in him that
we live and move
and have our being." (3)
God is the "IS"
of every person,
thing, power, pulsation
in which and with which
there is and we "is."
We are family -
same last name,
different first names.
The physicist,
Neil de Grasse Tyson
notes our solidarity.
He says we are all
fundamentally connected
to each other biologically,
to the earth chemically,
and to the rest of
the universe atomically.(4)
All
"IS"
ONE
splendidly diverse.
Our spirituality is
to be present to God
in all within and
in all about us.
It is not to be
chasing after
a hidden, far out,
a somewhere else God.
God is right
in front of us,
all around us,
all the way inside us.
That's where
we commune with God -
Everywhere Always
What about the evil
in existence?
Sadly, some spoilers
there are.
They try to fracture what
"IS"
grab pieces of it to fashion
a cult of isolated
and isolating self.
It's their hellish efforts
at dominating what
"IS"
It causes chaos and pain.
We suffer that evil.
Evil is a violation of what
"IS".
Evil is Good disordered.
We are part of
a challenge to that.
We work at the
redemption of evil,
to rightness as it really
"IS"
Our spirituality is
to live in God.
We work, play, pray,
love, share together
in God Good.
Rather than stress after
a god somewhere
out there,
we are immersed in God
right here, right now.
It's our milieu.
Chardin calls it
The Divine Milieu.
It's where we
encounter God.
No hide and seek to it.
There's so much more
to see and say,
so some time down the line,
perhaps after Easter,
let's do just that.
Thanks for plowing through
all this.
Hopefully that next time
will be a lighter lift.
******
(1) Catherine of Genoa
(2) Augustine
(3) Acts 17:28
(4) Referenced in
Richard Rohr's
Daily Meditation,
The Center for
Action and
Contemplation,
July 4, 2023
******
frankly speaking
spirituality for the street
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******
Welcome
First Timers
Some Timers
All The Timers.
It
"IS"
So God
to be together here.
See you next week.
Love to all,
John Frank
******
