Monday, February 15, 2010

"the pattern that connects"

"What is the pattern that connects?" What connects the crab nebula in the sky with genes of a crawfish on earth or the genes in our bodies? The spiritual tradition proposes that the Cosmic Christ is "the pattern that connects." The ancient hymn of the letter to the Colossians states:
He is the image of the unseen God and the first-born of all creation, for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and everything invisible. . . . Before anything was created, he existed, and he holds all things in unity (Col. 1:15-17; emphasis mine).
Does it matter that our spiritual tradition has a name for the Cosmic Christ and a grounding in a particular historical person who incarnates that Christlikeness? How would a scientist respond to this naming of "the pattern that connects"? The Cosmic Christ, seen as "the pattern that connects," affirms the scientific quest for such a pattern. It offers hope by insisting on the interconnectivity of all things and on the power of the human mind and spirit to experience personally this common glue among things.

The Cosmic Christ personalizes and localizes the experience of the "pattern that connects" in a manner that is utterly nontrivial. It grounds this interconnectivity in the cosmic experience of the joy and suffering of the historical Jesus [or even Thomas A. Anderson for that matter! d.b.]: the Colossians hymn ends with a statement about the price this human, Jesus, had to pay for incarnating the Cosmic Christ. The crucial connection is made between our moral behavior and our knowledge and love of the universe. Not even scientists are exempt from acting out the wisdom of the universe. "God wanted all maturity to be found in him and all things to be reconciled through him, and for him everything in heaven and everything on earth, when he made peace by his death on the cross" (Col. 1:19-20). Irony and paradox are also celebrated in this passage--peace comes from violent injustice in the crucifixion of an innocent man. The cosmic pain that the cross represents is named. Our sacrifices are cosmic in size; our suffering is cosmic in scope; and the peace too is cosmic in its promise. The paradox is that this "pattern that connects" also disconnects. Continuity and discontinuity accompany one another. A violent wrenching--even on divinity's part in lettering Jesus die an ignominious death--produces cosmic peace. A death--any death--is always a disconnection. Yet this particularly ignominious and cosmic death on a cross, violent in its disconnection of humanity and divinity, of justice and injustice, of light and darkness, does in the last analysis, connect. It connects heaven and earth, past and future, divinity and humanity, all of creation: "everything in heaven and everything on earth."

The cosmic peace coming by way of the cross instructs us in a second way of mindfulness: emptying. This kenosis, or "emptying," is also connected to mindfulness and to the entrance of the Cosmic Christ into our psyches. "Only those who have dared to let go can dare to re-enter" warns Meister Eckhart (ME, 67). The Cosmic Christ hymn of Philippians also celebrates this way to mindfulness. Emptying precedes filing. "His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a salve, and became as humans are; and being as all humans are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross: (Phil. 2:6-8). Paradoxically, out of this emptying, fullness occurs. "But God raised him on high and gave him the name which is above all other names so that all beings in the heavens, on the earth and in the underworld, should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the creator" (Phil. 2:9-11). Again the pattern connects divinity and earthiness; emptiness and fullness; suffering and accomplishment. It connects all creatures in the entire universe.

To believe in this "pattern that connects" is to start connecting once again. For all belief is about practice, not just theory. Belief is not belief if it is not launched into praxis. The practice of making and seeking connections, and of seeking even "the pattern that connects," can now begin in earnest. This enterprise will require those "new wineskins" or "new paradigms" that a living cosmology represented by the Cosmic Christ ushers in. These wineskins will offer themselves as vessels for the Spirit rising afresh among the young in all institutions of church and society; making new connections between world religions; reconnecting our lifestyles to our capacities for creativity, imagination, play, suffering, sexuality, knowledge, and wisdom itself. Embracing the Cosmic Christ will demand a paradigm shift, and it will empower us for that shift:
A shift from:

from anthropocentrism

from Newton
to Enistein

from parts-mentality

from rationalism
from obedience as a prime moral virtue
to creativity as a prime moral virtue

from personal salvation
to communal healing, i.e., compassion as salvation
from theism (God outside us)
to panentheism (God in us and us in God)

from fall-redemption
to creation-centered
religion
spirituality
from the ascetic
to the aesthetic.
. . . The historical person of Jesus offers a "pattern that connects" substantially different from the anima mundi ("soul of the world") tradition of Platonism, which lacks all concern and therfore connection with the anawim, the little and forgotten ones, the oppressed victims of social injustice. The Cosmic Christ liberates all persons and thus, like Moses of old, leads a new exodus from the bondage and pessimistic news of a Newtonian, mechannistic universe so ripe with competition, winners and losers, dualisms, anthropocentrism, and the bordeom that comes when our exciting universe is pictured as a machine bereft of mystery and mysticim. The Cosmic Christ is local and historical, indeed intimate to human history. The Cosmic Christ might be living next door or even inside one's deepest and truest self. The reign of God may well be among us after all(133-135). ~Matthew Fox The Coming of the Cosmic Christ

9 comments:

toure said...

Simply amazing. i was reading those words, but- talk about disconnecting to connect- i was almost lost in the simplicity of the ideas. the emptiness gets filled and belief becomes praxis... a living cosmology. indeed. it's all happening.

i've been hearing a quote from The Siege in my head recently; "Belief is Power"... as the actor says this, tho, he's not on his knees praying, he's strapping on a bomb, taking up his role as the last piece of the puzzle, prepared to disconnect through death in order to connect through the mask of an ideal, of an act. could i have inadvertently suicide-bombed myself (and my blog) with that last post? by lifting the veil of belief that defined my own pattern-search?

just downloaded Lil Wayne's newest album "Rebirth"...on to the next life/post/One... black star resurrection! of course.

Thank you for this. I was almost feeling a sort of pretentiousness about the empty feeling behind the mask of my ideal, if that makes sense. i'm still trying to figure this all out, but i feel better about it.

Michael said...

Wow. If only I could get a sermon like this at church! I hand't realized that Jake Gyllenhaal was Donnie Darko, that would have fit in perfectly with the Spirit of the Lord Upon Joker post.

Enjoy the early spring...

Word veri: beings. :-)

Eunus Noe said...

gald to help Tye!
I had something to say to you too, but it's gone now.
I had this whole conversation with you in my head when I was in the shower, but its' gone for now. . .

Michael,
the guy who wrote that is a former catholic priest.
I found him because he has the same name as one of my current heroes. Will look at you post soon. Looks interesting and applicable to my current path.
take care.

StrangEye said...

The Secrets of the Sh-e-khinah and SHIN of GOD


ACTS 20 - Moses/Mo-She/M-Sh / "w"-"sh" /Holy Water and Fire SPIRIT/SHIN ש/SHEKHINAH and the "Burning Bush"

30 And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of mount Sina an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush.

31 When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight: and as he drew near to behold it, the voice of the LORD came unto him,

32 Saying, I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Then Moses trembled, and durst not behold.

33 Then said the Lord to him, Put off thy shoes from thy feet: for the place where thou standest is holy ground.





Revelation 10 (KJV)


1 And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire:

2 And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth,

3 And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices.

4 And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.

5 And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven,

6 And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:

7 But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.



~SE~

StrangEye said...

In the post comment above...
It is rabbinical encryption that you see in action...


"mount SINa" = 'SHIN' / 'SIN'

... and then to make sure we understand the point they are making they say outright...

"flame of fire in a bush"

3 yods [fire] connected in a 'bush'
= SHIN ש



The BIBLE takes on a different meaning when you know how to read it!


~SE~

StrangEye said...

"when forty years were expired"

the number "40" is the character MEM = WATER

as HOLY WATER/HOLY SPIRIT it is the character SHIN.

~SE~

StrangEye said...

She-khinah

The female [creation] aspect of GOD, the spirit and hand of GOD in the UNIverse

"Shekhinah", represented by her aramaic character SHIN ש.

She is represented in the hand gesture of the "Vulcan" to "Vulcan" [VV] greeting created by Mister Spock in Star Trek.

Leonard Nimoy used the exact hand formation of the Hebrew blessing from his youth in the synogogue to create the hand gesture used by Vulcans in Star Trek (the double VV)

Shekhinah, SHIN ש , is the Hand of God and the Holy Spirit (Holy Fire and Holy Water).


~SE~

StrangEye said...

I Wrote above:


"when forty years were expired"

the number "40" is the character MEM = WATER

as HOLY WATER/HOLY SPIRIT it is the character SHIN.


I oversimplified and I don't want it to be a source of confusion to those who are just learning this stuff...


We read that when the "MEM"/Water was expired...
the meaninig conveyed by using the phrase "40 Years"

It has multiple meanings...

When and where there is no "water" (regular old water) FIRE [of the HOly kind (shin)] can be started.

When you have no WATER you are thirsty. But in this case is the thirsting of the soul. The THIRST is your vessel, you and your soul crying out to the Lord for 'W'isdom and 'U'nderstanding.

That 'W'isdom and 'U'nderstanding is then presented in the form of the 'burning bush', the character SHIN ש, the She-khinah female creative inspirational action of the HOLY SPIRIT and HAND OF GOD.


~SE~

Anonymous said...

Tonight is a blue moon and I am bathed in Hyssop in the presence of it all.