This is a continuation of my former July 17 entry wherein,
while in Hawaii, I explored the deeper thoughts stirred by the Trinity prayer,
I continue with the prayer’s middle stanza:
--as Savior, you clothed yourself in human
flesh and entered
time as Jesus to show us how we are
to live.
God, you created matter—the solid stuff of being that has
weight and dimension. Teilhard has told
us: in Being there is a 'within' and
a 'without'. The within—the Word and
Spirit—preceded materiality. At the
appointed time your creativity brought forth mass and form—the without—and life, in an evolutionary process that
revealed endless possibilities—reaching for the form most appropriate for
containing the seed of spirit. The
mechanism of the process was that of complexity-consciousness: a progression from simple to complex (the
without) and ever deepening consciousness (the within). Through eons of time, slowly evolving to
eventually produce the human form that came to know itself and emerge from a
primitive state to become a communicative, creative being—developing language
and utilizing tools to shape their environment.
Slowly the light of awareness increased—knowing without knowing they
knew—they were to gather together to organize and build while paying tribute to
the unknown beyond their comprehension. Mankind
emerged as an altogether new species. Beginning
with limited awareness, the ‘without’ received more attention than the
within—managing food and shelter, refining communications, gathering together
to establish roles and rules and rituals, growing in awareness that there was
something greater than what they could see and feel and touch. Looking backward from the present to some four
thousand years ago we see a people gathering their tribes into a nation with a central focus binding them together; their belief in One God, creator of all that
is.
When outer and inner development was sufficiently
established to sustain fuller consciousness of meaning and direction, You, God,
entered time as Jesus, accepting both the process and the limits of being human to
demonstrate the full measure of human potential—the power and goal of our
freedom: to create a world of peace and love by acknowledging our
interdependence and together willing that
our world be so.
Jesus came into the world in a male body full of strength,
courage and intelligence, with a feminine soul living the truth of love,
compassion and self-sacrifice. The
‘without’ of Jesus was here but briefly, while the ‘within’ remains in
Spirit. God, you aren’t ‘out there’ or ‘up
there’ beyond our reckoning but right here in our midst, waiting for us to
discover you, not in the many conflicting ways men have designed you, but as
you truly are.
