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6/21/2020 BE RECONCILED WITH ONE ANOTHER
BE RECONCILED WITH ONE ANOTHERThere is Something About Being An Episcopalian
BE RECONCILED WITH ONE ANOTHER
—AS we grieve for so many African Americans who have died violently and still endure a systemic oppression that has lasted centuries. Please take a moment to think about these thoughts in the context of a more profound racial reconciliation that asks us as a people of faith to approach this dialogue with a greater sense of commitment and compassion. In which, we are called every day into a new and renewing relationship with one another by God. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.” —John 17:21 “There is something more important than dividing a church or a nation into conservatives and liberals. We must be both. We must conserve and liberate at the same time. We can never severe our ties from that part of history, which belongs to us.” — Robert P. Starbuck, PhD, MDiv, In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions (Saint Julian Press, Inc. November 1, 2018) Indeed, we live in a “network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” No matter where we may be on our journey in life. As Christians, we are reconciled through Chris. The Holy Spirit dwells within us each. We live in this spirit of reconciliation. Indeed, the Holy Spirit is actively at work within the world and within us, teaching us to be as one, to be in union with the divine and one another, across all of humanity. Just as the Holy Spirit is calling us as Christians to be involved in Social Justice, and the critical social justice issues of our time. “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” —John 14:26-27 We are one people, created by God, we live within the world and within in this “network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Do not let your hearts be troubled, do not be afraid. This beautiful concept of Unity and Non-Duality compliments one another intimately. Unity and Non-Duality are spiritual concepts found in Christian scripture, in all the great core religions and wisdom traditions of humanity and human history, in myth and metaphor, in storytelling, and most especially in poetry. All sacred scriptures are poetry. Imagine the literature found in all the books of the Bible, the literature of all faiths, as sacred poetry—Spiritual Poetry. Imagine scripture as a type of software program we are using to program our minds; the Spirit-Soul operating system, the Divine Core Language of Creation (DCLC) perhaps, with many variations or versions. If Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the WORD, the Incarnate Word of God, we must also come to realize that our words, spoken or written to one another matter a great deal. What we say and how we say it matters, because it shapes the reality that arises within our communities and across any society. Our thoughts and words spoken out loud become litanies, even when, especially when we speak or misspeak thoughtlessly and incompletely, or with intentional deceit. As believers, this makes a mockery of the WORD, dwelling within us each, binding us together as God’s people, and the sacramental spiritual practices we follow. We betray that heritage as a people of faith when we misspeak or misuse language or the Word of God, and in doing so dismiss the suffering of others within the world. We forget, who we are and ought to be as God’s people. We must remember, as in the word —Remembrance, that our sacramental spiritual practices (praxis): liturgy, ritual, prayer, and meditation are an extension of the Holy Spirit working within the world. Such practices and participation in a sacred community are helping us to grow spiritually, programing our mind —reconciling us with one another and renewing us as a people. And they are marked by an outward and visible sign, and an inward and spiritual grace in union with Christ and new life in the Holy Spirit. For many traditional Christians, these sacramental practices center on the celebration of the Eucharist & Great Thanksgiving (Holy Communion), Holy Baptism, Confirmation, Reconciliation & Forgiveness, Healing & Unction, Liturgy & Prayer —literally the work of the people, Marriage & Ordination, and participation in a sacred community of faith, seeing God working within and all around us. We hold these things to be sacred and life affirming, just as we are asked to hold each other as sacred and affirm one another’s life. We fail to do this when injustice is allowed to reign within the world or across our communities. We fail to do this by not seeing these injustice and continue to do nothing. “Lord, forgive us for what we do not do.” “Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.” —The Book of Common Prayer According to the use of The Episcopal Church. One of the many reasons I love being an Episcopalian—Anglican, is the liturgy we use is poetry. The writing is inspired. It is both spiritual and poetic in nature; it has a literary quality and uses symbolic imagery, which are an invocation to the Holy Spirit. Reading or listening to inspired poetry is a sacramental experience, in this sense, it is similar to the Eucharist, where we receive the body and blood of Christ, the Logos, Christ as the Word. God's sacred Word, Christ as the Logos, the Trinity, as well as the words we hear and pray as liturgies are absorbed into our being, they are what we are becoming, a more Christlike future self. Except there is no time, time is an abstraction, and God is a Verb. God is Spirit and Love; God is eternal loving-kindness working within the world. Here are the Eternal Now and the Reign of God that are both imminent and infinitely present; where God is found here and now, and known in this moment. This future self already is, since God's love is eternally transforming and boundless, without end. This spiritually whole, and holy reconciled, part of us, exists now. It is God's Spirit reaching within us to lead us forward, to discover the fullness of our own humanity. The Holy Spirt dwells within us and is an intimate part of our whole being, moving within us and across all creation. It is a Mystery. We know this, it is written within us, it is part of God’s universal plan. And the close connection our Spirit-Soul has, an eternal one, to the Divine Ultimate Mystery of God, knows this at the deepest levels of the soul-spirit-self-mind, —our full spiritual consciousness. In a subtle divine memory that flows and moves throughout our whole being. In Christian theology, we speak of Christ as being both fully human and fully divine. Christianity has celebrated this divine aspect for over two thousand years. What has been so often, not understood or celebrated as clearly, is the human side of this equation, this dance, this Perichoresis, and living in the fullness of our humanity and living a more abundant spiritual life. 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 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. Our presence on this earth, in this reality, is no accident; it is a gift. We are here to learn and, in many cases, to teach or help one another, to love one another in our fragile common humanity, to heal the world, to create heaven on earth. When we take time to pay attention, it is a blessing. It is a blessing to see how God, the Divine Ultimate Mystery is calling us into a relationship with one another. When we stop judging one another so quickly, and start loving one another in the frailness and vulnerability of our humanity, this is a blessing. And in the end, invoking our human nature to love, and to come through with grace and graciousness. Indeed, embracing the fullness of God's love for everyone, is an intimate part of our faith and practice. Being gracious and accepting of others, especially those whom we may not fully understand or appreciate is how we work through our human diversity and come to know and be known. In his interfaith dialogue book titled, Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian, in writing about Thich Nhat Hanh’s idea of “interbeing,” pluralist theologian Paul F. Knitter tells us that understanding God through relationships is critical and that the source and power of our relationships are driven by the presence of the “Holy Spirit.” Ephphatha, be opened —in the words of Christ, uttered by Christ when healing the man who was deaf and dumb ( Mark 7:34 ). Be opened to the Holy Spirit at work. There is and can be no exclusion of others here. Our lives unfold and happen for a reason. God has prepared and repaired our hearts for this moment in time, this moment of reconciliation, normalization, and acceptance. A moment where we are completely open to one another, just as we are, as who we are now, as God has touched and helped us to form the life we live and hope to live. The importance of this concept is summarized by this: “behind and within all the different images and symbols, Christians use for God—The Creator, Father (Abba), Redeemer, Word, Spirit, the most fundamental, the deepest truth Christians can speak of God is that God is the source and power of relationships.” This is true across any sacred community or faith where the Spirit, unseen and invisible, is moving in and with and through all of humankind, calling us into a relationship with one another, even across faiths, across all of humanity. There have been many times in my journey when I have known this, where I feel the Spirit actively at work in all of our relationships, and in this process opening up new relationships. Another way to view this, as Paul Knitter explained to me once in a conversation, is that in meditation, Buddhism asks us “to let go of all concepts, and to let go, and open ourselves radically and utterly to the present moment, and in the trust, this moment contains all we need.” “This setting aside of words and imagery and opening oneself to what St. Paul calls God as Spirit, letting that Spirit make itself (or herself or himself) felt within us, grow within us, to lead us.” It is ultimately a process of letting God be God, of being itself, and then living abundantly into the promise of our life, where we are truly given all that we need. We find this idea beautifully expressed in these two scriptures from the Gospel of John, and the book of Romans. “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” --John 14:26-27 “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” --Romans 8:26-27 IN this spirit of deep understanding, in how we are intimately interconnected with one another now, these words bear repeating. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. 
Take some time please to listen to and explore these thoughts from the Ninth Bishop of Texas, C. Andrew Doyle.
The Bishop of Texas
7/26/2018 The Dialogue - Engaging in the Dialogue Buddha In Blue by Colin Clark As Christians engage more and more in an interfaith dialogue with Buddhism, and other faiths, they are constantly challenged by a vocabulary, which is quite different from the one they know and love. This is especially true in working with and studying Buddhism, with its non-theistic approach to understanding the nature of reality.
How may a Christian perceive and understand the Buddhist concept of Śūnyatā – Nirvana, written of in the Heart Sutra, Mahāyāna Buddhist literature? Where the Heart Sutra teaches Śūnyatā–Nirvana, is that, which is empty of emptiness, and is that, which, points a Buddhist to an experience and union with Ultimate Truth, Ultimate Reality, as the Perfection of Wisdom. A teaching that leads a Buddhist to great wisdom and compassion. How may we understand “emptiness is form, form is emptiness,” coming from a spiritual tradition like Christianity that is theistic? May a Christian embrace a non-theistic approach to understanding the Divine Mystery, and still hold on to their theistic relationship with the Divine? My simple answer is, yes. One that I have learned from Paul F. Knitter, author of Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian, as well as other writers and theologians. I believe that we may do both, understand and see the Divine through both a Buddhist and a Christian lens. In Buddhism, emptiness points towards a concept, which tells us that our sense of self as being permanent is false and that the self we may actively identify with is empty of such permanence. Buddhism refers to this false self as not-self, or no-self, anattā (uhn-uht-tah), it is an ego clinging self that leads to suffering, misperceptions, and false projections. Indeed, what we may think of as "oneself" is largely the ego, who is not our truest deepest self in union with the Divine Mystery, or for a Christian, in union with Christ and through Christ, in unity with the Holy Trinity. Quite often, the ego is selfish and self-centered, blind to a greater and more meaningful spiritual life. The Buddhist concept of anattā (uhn-uht-tah) is not proclaiming that humans have no soul, as a Western mind might think of a soul. There is a soul in Buddhism, Ātman, seen as our intrinsic nature, even our Buddha nature. It is seen as a greater self, a truer self, and to find this self, they learn to let go of all concepts of the self. I know that this may sound strange to Western ears. A Christian might think of it as the image of God within themselves, the spirit within that belongs to God, their Christlike nature, or the Holy Spirit who dwells within us each. Even in Christianity, it is taught that to find our life in Christ, we must give up the life we know and who we think we are. In this sense there is also a letting go of the self. Matthew 10:39 (NRSV): "Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." . . . Luke 9:23-24 (NRSV): "Then he said to them all, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it." Buddha In Blue by Colin Clark http://www.artmastery.com/enlargement_blue_buddha_07.html  "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.” - John 17:21 The concept of our Unity, of Non-Duality, can be found in all the great core religions and wisdom traditions found in human history, in myth and metaphor, in storytelling, and most especially in poetry. All sacred scripture is poetry. Poetry, especially Spiritual Poetry, is like a software program you are using to reprogram the mind; the SPIRIT-SOUL’S operating system, the Divine Core Language of Creation (DCLC) perhaps, with many variations or versions. Sacramental spiritual practices (praxis), like ritual, prayer, and meditation are an extension of this as well. Such practices and participation in a sacred community are helping you to grow spiritually, reprograming your mind. The Word or Words (Logos) you are taking into your being now are what you are becoming in your future self. Except there is no time, time is an abstraction. That future self already is, it exists now and is reaching within you to lead you forward, to discover your own fullness. The Holy Spirt dwells within you and is an intimate part of your whole being within and across creation. It is a Mystery. You know this already, it is written, it is part of God’s core operating system. And the close connection your Spirit-Soul has already, an eternal one, to the Ultimate Divine Mystery of God, knows this at the deepest levels of the self-mind. In a subtle memory that flows and moves throughout your whole being. In Christian theology they speak of Christ being both fully human and fully divine. Christianity has celebrated this divine aspect for over two thousand years. What has not been understood or celebrated as clearly is the human side of this equation, this dance, this Perichoresis. Your presence on this earth, in this reality, is no accident; it is a gift. You are here to learn and in many cases to teach or help one another, to heal the world, to create heaven on earth. Take time to develop a spiritual practice and to join a sacred community that helps you to discover where you belong, that you belong here, and that you are being called into new relationships every day of your life. Take time to pay attention, to see how God, the Divine Ultimate Mystery is calling you into relationship with one another. In his book, Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian, in writing about Thich Nhat Hanh’s idea of “interbeing,” Paul F. Knitter tells us that understanding God through relationships is critical and that the source and power of our relationships is driven by the presence of the "Holy Spirit.” The importance of this concept is summarized by this: "behind and within all the different images and symbols, Christians use for God – Creator, Father (Abba), Redeemer, Word, Spirit, - the most fundamental, the deepest truth Christians can speak of God is that God is the source and power of relationships.” Another way to view this, as Paul Knitter explained to me once in a conversation, is that in meditation Buddhism asks us “to let go of all concepts, and to let go and open ourselves radically and utterly to the present moment, and in the trust that this present moment contains all that I need. This setting aside of words and imagery and opening oneself to what St. Paul calls God as Spirit, letting that Spirit make itself (or herself or himself) felt within us, grow within us, to lead us.” We find this idea beautifully expressed in these two scriptures. The Gospel of John, and in the book of Romans. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” - John 14:26-27 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” - Romans 8:26-27  |
Publisher's BlogRON STARBUCK is the Publisher/CEO/Executive Editor of Saint Julian Press, Inc., in Houston, Texas; a poet and writer, an Episcopalian, and author of There Is Something About Being An Episcopalian, When Angels Are Born, Wheels Turning Inward, and most recently A Pilgrimage of Churches, four rich collections of poetry, following a poet’s mythic and spiritual journey that crosses easily onto the paths of many contemplative traditions. Archives
August 2024
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This arrangement does help to sustain the press and allow us to publish more books by more authors.