John 1:1-5 (NRSV) - The Word Became Flesh

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."

How poetic, beyond all our thoughts and words there is something more, something full of mystery. Take a moment please and think of the Gospel of John, where it is written. 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” Indeed, think about how God brought creation into existence, how God created your life and my life. 

Genesis 1:1-3 (KJV) - In the Beginning

Before there was creation itself, there was a wordless nothingness, an openness waiting to be filled, a formless void.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light, and there was light”. 

And creation was formed out of the formless void, and there with God in this moment of creation, in the beginning of all things, was the Eternal Word, perhaps born from a single desire and thought of God. 

"In the beginning was the Word.” 

As a person of any faith, have you ever thought of how your own relationship with creation is grounded in the Word or words, in poetic symbols and metaphors.  And how your life arises in and through all your relationships, with all creation? 

How words from any culture and sacred tradition form your concept of reality and construct your world. And that words, like sutras, bind the family of humankind together. When we take time to dwell on our relationships, even those beyond our immediate family and friends, we begin to see how life arises from these many interconnections. Words - Concepts - Images - Symbols - Metaphors.

Can you begin to imagine how you have touched my life, even if we have never met or spoken? Can you begin to imagine how you have touched the lives of other people too, and will continue to touch them? 

This is how powerful relationships are in the world. This is the Word, the Holy Spirit, actively at work within the world. And then imagine, please, how our own thoughts become words of our own, shaping our world, shaping our lives, our communities, our reality. 

We are all interconnected, perhaps even more so now, as we listen and come to know one another within any sacred community, as we listen to or even read each other’s words. Words have a life of their own, they shape our lives, and they interconnect us in marvelous ways.

This is why writers love to write and use words to express themselves, it is why people love poetry, good plays, a compelling novel or story, or any appreciable writing in which we form a connection with one another. 

In Buddhism, this concept of our interconnectedness with life, all life, reality itself, out of which our lives arise, is called Dependent Origination or Dependent Arising, Pratītyasamutpāda in Sanskrit. 

Dependent Arising is hard to wrap your mind around, unless you know and have the right vocabulary, unless you have devoted time and energy to understanding Buddhism's beautifully symbolic and complex language, its words. 

For now, let’s simply say that it is a reality of shared interdependence and one that tells us, we are intimately interconnected to everything else in life, with one another, with all of creation. The Buddhist monk and teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, calls this concept interbeing, in his book, The Heart of Understanding, where he teaches that “To be” is to inter-be, and that “we cannot be alone, exist alone without anything else.” 

In the Christian tradition, there is a remarkably similar and beautiful concept, it is found in a marvelous Greek word used by the early church fathers and mothers, to describe the mystery of the Trinity. It is the word, Perichoresis (peri-kor-es-is). 

Perichoresis is an ancient term in Christian theology, which refers to the indwelling of the Trinity, of how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are so intimately connected within their unity as one that there is an indwelling between them all. And that this indwelling is shared with us, in and through Christ, in the Paschal Mystery of Christ as the Incarnate Word, the Word Made Flesh. 

How poetic, since not one of us can imagine living without words, living a life without words in some form. It is a metaphor that points us towards the deeper mystery of creation, of the divine.

Let me go back, please to the wordless beginning of things, ultimate reality perhaps, to the Buddhist concept of Śūnyatā–Nirvana, emptiness, or rather the openness of creation that is ever changing and expanding.  Endless, Worlds Without End, to use a poetic image.  

I’m struggling for a clear image or a metaphor to use in this dialogue, and it’s hard for me to find one. This is why I love to write poetry, because poetry for me is a transformational and transcending language. 

Perhaps it would help, as Christ or a Tibetan or Zen Master might, to have you visualize the emptiness or openness of an empty cup. The space that can be filled at any time, by anyone, by you, by God. This space, this openness, can be seen as the pure and infinite potential of all eternity, out of which all reality arises in an open universe of infinite possibilities, or even of a given intimate moment within eternity.

Now in this present moment, in these words, even in the spaces between each word. You may also visualize it as an empty cup, a cup that is ready to receive the new wine of life or hot jasmine tea. 

What I’m trying to say, with all these words, is that sometimes we simply need to let go of all our words, all our images, all our thoughts, even becoming lost for a while. Becoming lost can be a goodly thing, a needful thing. 

Because in doing so, we can develop a whole new language, and new images, like an artist, does when they are creating, be it a new symphony, improvisational jazz, a beautiful painting, a poem, a play, or a photograph that takes your breath away and leaves you speechless. 

I love that feeling of speechlessness, of emptiness, of being empty and ready to receive the next new thing. The secret I think is in understanding that each moment is the next new thing. It is a moment that is open and full of infinite potential, a newness that is born out of every moment. 

I love the dialog we may find within any sacred community, and the many gifts it brings us to discover such moments, to discover the newness of a moment, and to discover a new meaning in life within one another, new words even. Words that arise from a single point of emptiness and words that help us to shape the life we live into a new language, a new life. 

Words that help us to breathe together as one body, with one breath, in one spirit. There is something truly sacramental and spirit driven, inspired, by such a dialog, by such relationships. It is an indwelling where we learn to dwell within one another. 

Perichoresis. 

I'm thinking of Jesus now and the words we hear him say in John 10:10; "I came that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.” 

And I'm thinking how much your life enriches my own life; how we enrich one another in our lives that arise within and out of one another. In a life that God has given to us each and that arises out of the mystery we find within creation.  

I just want us to realize this fully, to appreciate it fully, and know fully that we are all a part of that gift too, and to be grateful for the sacramental moments we share together, where we come to know and be fully known by God, where we come to be blest. Where through a greater understanding of how our life arises from our many relationships, we are living a blessed life.

The Buddha would certainly agree with all this, in a sheer Buddhist enlightenment and wakefulness practicing sort of way.  Practicing this way, this journey — this celebration of life in a marvelous divine dance, a perichoresis.


Many Blessings,
​Ron Starbuck



Saint Julian Press, Inc. © 2014 and © 2018-2019

 
 
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
 
Kýrie Eléison ~ Christe Eléison
 
I have seen thy holy 
places in the Old City
of Jerusalem.
I have walked the 
cobblestones Christ
once walked.
 
I have stood before
each station of the cross
and marked the time
of day you stood there 
in pain and agony.
 
I have felt the hurt of all
thy people,  be they
Christian, Jew, or Muslim
from any sect across
the Holy Land.
 
Kýrie Eléison ~ Christe Eléison
 
I have been to the Western
Wall and heard it wailing,
crying out in prayer for some 
compassion, 
some small mercy. 
 
As I have seen your
people praying in the mosques
upon the Temple Mount ~ 
Al Haram ash-Sahrif, the 
Noble Sanctuary. 
 
Each is claimed by many 
as a holy site. 
So many, O Lord.
 
I think that there is
nothing here, we may
claim completely as our own,
that is ours. 
There is nothing 
here that any may claim 
that is not yours first.
 
I hear them crying 
on all sides for these
their holy places, 
but not yours, 
O Lord.
 
Kýrie Eléison ~ Christe Eléison
 
I have seen them 
bend their 
words and 
intentions, their 
prayers, into 
something far 
from holy.
 
I have seen 
and heard 
them miss the mark 
more than once, 
in their quest for 
your holiness, your
presence in
their life.
 
Lord God, I wonder 
when will we ever 
learn that 
true holiness is not 
found 
within these 
places alone, 
these monuments 
and 
images of you, 
who are
unseen and invisible, 
without image.
 
Kýrie Eléison ~ Christe Eléison
 
Lord, I wonder when
they will find your
holiness 
resting in themselves 
as an
indwelling of 
the Spirit, 
the Holy Spirit.
 
There was an 
infant child
once born upon
a holy night, 
a silent night.
 
Who rested in a 
humble manger,
where cattle fed, where 
ox and ass and sheep
all dwelled.  
The innocent 
of creation.  Where angels, 
shepherds and wise men 
bowed in homage to a 
new born king, a heavenly 
kingdom only, not of this 
earth or world. 
 
Kýrie Eléison ~ Christe Eléison
 
Let us give birth too, 
in this most holy of nights, 
in the silence and stillness 
of this night to the
Christ child 
that dwells within
us all. 
 
Kýrie Eléison ~ Christe Eléison
 
of a memory
that has
faded
 
in reflection
in knowing
where we
 
only desire
to be
known 

By – Ron Starbuck
Saint Julian Press © 2016 – Poem is from:
There Is Something About Being an Episcopalian
​

INDEPENDENCE DAY
 
July 4, 2018
 
“Such a restructuring of space and the objects in it, unaccompanied by any reconversion,
must in the first instance be considered an impoverishment.”

 –Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects
 
“The introduction of actual objects, often with direct popular connotations such as
the Coke bottles, was interpreted as a riposte to the high-flown discourse of the older
abstract expressionists. Rauschenberg specifically rejected the idealistic aspirations they
represented. . .To paint, he said, is no more important than anything else in life.”

 –Dore Ashton, The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning
 

The B train. The people from Edward Hopper who do not look at one another.
The ads for things that will be forgotten in another generation. The station.
Petals on a wet black bough. The cracked pavement. Bright sunlight. Taxi horns.
The walk to 53rd Street and right turn, slow, because the physical object
Of my body in this space is in hypertensive crisis. My swollen feet, shortness
Of breath. The elegant lobby, spare, atmospheric. Against all advice I take
The stairs, because they are the system of ascent. Fourth floor.  These words.
It is of course not July Fourth when I am there. The MOMA is closed
For Independence Day. Here are the Pollocks, the Warhols, the Rothkos--
I could step inside a Rothko and be safe for eternity, though dead, but that
Is not how objects work, and thus another story—the Rauschenbergs, and there
Is Jasper Johns’ “Flag.” It is two years older than I. It is an American flag. It is not
An American flag. It is the object of the object of an American flag, which
Though not a specific reference in Baudrillard’s first book will lead directly
To Simulacra and Simulation. But this is also, technically, neither simulacra
Nor simulation. It is “The American Flag.” 


                                                                        For that reason it has an origin,
Although the origin is not what we might surmise, not the flags flying everywhere
Today. The origin was a dream Johns had 64 years ago. The next morning
He began to assemble three plywood panels, 42 1/” by 60 5/8”—call it
Three-and-a-half x five feet--and then the resined newspapers, McCarthy era,
That fear, that American fear of America, not an object, though present
Once again. The object of newspapers, their fragments of communities,
Their warning. The thick oil paint over the resin, the red and white stripes
And so on. The thick white of the stars over the thick blue, stars held 
In place in this place on earth by paint, of all things. Rauschenberg was right
Up to a point and then he was wrong. These words.The disaffection
Of millennials, their caustic irony, their objectified performance of despair.
You will die, Siddhartha. Then I will die. Hesse. We must see the scintillation
And its impoverishment for what it is. Then we must descend the system of assent.

​
_____________________________________
Thomas Simmons
July 4, 2018

BRING YOUR NIGHTS WITH YOU ~ New & Selected Poems 1975-2015, in two volumes by author Thomas Simmons, will be released on July 6, 2018 by Saint Julian Press.

Thomas Simmons taught for 24 years in the Department of English at the University of Iowa; in the spring of 2016 he started something new and has been writing ever since. Before that, he was an assistant and associate professor in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; before that, he was a doctoral student in English at the University of California, Berkeley, a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford, and a Stanford University undergraduate. His seven previous books, one of which (The Unseen Shore: Memories of a Christian Science Childhood, Beacon Press, 1991) caused some offense in Boston, may be viewed at amazon.com site listed below. He lives in Grinnell, Iowa.

Ron Starbuck © 2018  –  With a very special thanks to all those who serve on the Altar Guild in every Episcopal & Anglican Church.

​GOD’S LONGING


It isn’t known when it began,
God’s longing,
certainly no one mortal knows.
The angels might know,
but for most, it is still a heavenly secret,
a mystery of mysteries
long hidden.


Some would say that it was always there,
has always been there,
from the first instant,
long before the big bang.
Banged!


Leading up to the first 
thought that caused
creation, to explode suddenly
out of the emptiness and nothingness
of all reality, which is still expanding,
still growing
still arising within us each.


Many would say, and I would be one,
that God’s longing is eternal.
It is a deep longing, a true longing,
a longing that lingers slowly
and perfectly 
stretching out far past our own imaginations.
However, far back or forward we are able to imagine.


It is almost as if God suddenly awoke
and being alone.
In knowing loneliness from the beginning
sighed deeply, sighed so deeply
in that loneliness,
that in breathing out
some portion of God’s breath left
his body and being
to seed all creation.


Perhaps it was then, in that moment
when the breath of God first moved
across the waters of earth
or moved through the depths of
nothingness giving birth to creation.
Or gave breath to both Adam and Eve,
and then to all humanity.


Sometimes a thought crosses my mind,
a single thought, born out of my own breath,
as I breathe in deeply during meditation
and out once again quietly and stilly.


Sometimes it comes to me then, in a split second
that this was when God’s Holy Spirit first appeared
and continues to appear throughout all history.
I even imagine that in some secret way
my own loneliness and longing are helping to give birth
to God’s Holy Spirit
and the compassionate loving-kindness
that follows God’s gift to all humankind.
I know this much, that God’s longing for us 
runs so deep
and so true
that He gave up His only begotten Son, even unto death.
So that we might come to know Him and He us,
and that by this miracle of love
God’s Holy Spirit comes to dwell and rest in us.








​


Copyright © 2016, Ron Starbuck
All Rights Reserved
 
 There Is Something About Being An Episcopalian
 
 
ISBN-13:  978-0-9965231-7-2
ISBN-10:  0-9965231-7-0
Library of Congress Control Number:  2016906673