Christian revelation is always pointed, concrete, and specific. Our word for that is “incarnational” or enfleshed. Walter Brueggemann calls it brilliantly “the scandal of the particular.” Christianity is not a Platonic world of ideas and theories about which you can be right or wrong, or observe from a distance. Incarnation is not something you measure or critique or analyze, but Someone you meet!
This pattern reaches its fullness in the enfleshment of the Divine in one ordinary-looking man named Jesus. We dare to believe that God materialized in human form, so we could fall in love with a real person, which is the only way we fall in love. It is almost impossible to give your life warmly for an idea, a force, an energy, or a concept. We are programmed to give our lives away to other persons.
Merton's
Voice: Just as no one can know my inner self except my own "spirit," so
no one can know God except God's Spirit
Zen and the Birds of
Appetite, (New York: New Directions, 1973): 56
Psalm 31:
6: Into your hands I commend my spirit; you will redeem me, LORD, God
of truth.
Contemplative
Pause: Throughout this day, pause, take a breath, and listen with
your heart. Show others the joy in your spirit.
The seeds that are planted in my liberty at every
moment, by God's will, are the seed of my own identity, my own reality, my own
happiness, my own sanctity.
Merton, Thomas. Seeds of
Contemplation. (Norfolk, CT: New Directions Books, 1949),
27
Thought
for the Day
To refuse them is to
refuse everything
Seeds of
Contemplation: 27
Contemplative
Pause: Throughout
this week, pause, take a breath, and listen with your heart. What seeds do you
accept? Which do you discard?
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