THEME              From Answers to Questions

THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION

1. It is a wise person who knows their ignorance.
2. You can never grasp all of the mystery.
   You can only allow yourself to be grasped by it.
3. We are not liberated by the struggle for understanding, but by the acceptance of the mystery.
4. In the realm of thought, four straight lines form a prison, one circle creates a dancing space.
5. Beyond the definitions there is a boundless space of dancing delight,
   Beyond the search for answers lies the place of belonging.
6. We are not here to make timeless statements but rather to contribute to the ongoing river of thought.
7. Wisdom is not a crusade but a walk in a fragrant garden with one’s inner sage.
8. There are no permanent certainties – only interim flashes of wisdom along the way.
9. We should view our lives not so much in terms of conformity or non­conformity to static ethical, ideological, religious  or political norms but rather as an evolving thread.
10. Beyond the black and white definitions of good and bad lie infinite combinations of love and destruction which we seek to push into simplistic formula for the sake of lazy or insecure minds.
11. The answers we get are to a large extent limited by the questions which we ask.
12. Embrace the unknown for it is the doorway to wisdom.
13. When the line becomes a circle the logic becomes bent and breaks but then intuition dances and sings the mystery of inclusiveness.
14. If you desire to find all things enter the nothingness and they will find you.
15. Nothingness is No-thingness i.e. seeing behind the world of things to the neither this nor that which is the everything.
16. Beyond our attempts to circumscribe mystery, the oneness of nothingness dwells.
17. Do not search for the gate of wisdom; only stop believing in walls and their security.
18. Definitions are only useful as descriptions of experience, not as prescriptions for it.
19. Over-simplification usually involves some form of dualism.
20. Chaos can either be disorder or an infinitely complex order.
21. What seems two is in reality one. What seems one is a complex whole for nothing is as simple as it seems.
22. Between the tree of knowledge and the tree of wisdom flows the river of life.
23. Chaos is the complex patterning we have not yet understood.
24. Commonsense comes from the common senses.
25. Foolishness lies in seeing other people as fools and oneself as wise.
26. The divine is encountered beyond our prejudices.
27. Ideology is the deification of simplistic analysis.
28. Let thinking be the servant of intuition and not its master.
29. In the interaction lies the confirmation of wisdom.
30. Hope lies not in what shall be but in what is, for in the moment of oneness we encounter everything.
31. Faith is choosing to believe beyond the limits of our experience and of our reason.
32. Having a framework of belief which is held loosely can be empowering but having a framework of belief which is held tightly can be dis-empowering.
33. The permanent invitation from God is to say Yes to love and to life.

 

PRAYER

Save us, O God from the fierce pursuit of truth and the illusion that reality
is so simple that it can be contained within the confines of the human mind.
Give us instead a commitment to the journey into the unknown and an openness to receive the loving embrace of the mystery.

 

HYMNS

The darkness and the light. (BL)

Not in grasping or in holding. (BL)

We are always part of the other. (BL)

Beyond the boxes we create. (BL)

When masks of God both age and die. (BL)

You are the process God. (BL)

 

O God the great all-knowing One.

www.methodist.org.nz/whakapono/online-resources/hymns/with-heart-and-voice

There shall be life and love.

www.methodist.org.nz/whakapono/online-resources/hymns/with-heart-and-voice

Darkness is my mother.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/whakapono/online-resources/hymns/the-mystery-telling

Buried in my being.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/whakapono/online-resources/hymns/the-mystery-telling

Between our thoughts.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/whakapono/online-resources/hymns/the-mystery-telling

Come let us dwell in that place.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/whakapono/online-resources/hymns/the-mystery-telling

All will be well.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/whakapono/online-resources/hymns/the-mystery-telling

Christ the tent.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/whakapono/online-resources/hymns/the-mystery-telling

 

Empty lay the tomb. (STS1)

Epiphany of wisdom’s dawn. (STS1)

God the Sacred Cosmic Life-Blood. (STS1)

What image shall I use? (STS2)

Though rocks move. (STS2)

When Earth wakes from out of sleep. (STS2)

Singing the Sacred Vol 1 2011, Vol 2 2014 World Library Publications

 

POEMS / REFLECTIONS

DYING IMAGES

Must dying images

be replaced by new images

or can we worship an imageless God?

A God who is more than a human face,

who is indeed a cosmic presence,

indefinable, beyond limitation,

a rainbow beyond all rainbows,

an inclusive divinity.

 

NOT AS IT SEEMS

All sound is surrounded by silence,

All stillness is part of the cosmic dance,

All light is composed of color

 

THE IMAGE

Jailing –

or liberating

the image

bears

and

unmasks

the power

and plight

of oppressed

and oppressor

in provokingly

unpacking

layered reality

of God-like

mystery-filled

life-evoking

pictures

of unlined

unframed

existing.

 

CERTAINTY AND DOUBT

Into the temple of reason bring mystery,

Into the temple of humanity nature,

Into the temple of order the chaotic wind of Spirit,

Into the temple of light the nurturing darkness

of the all mothering God

 

SECURITY

Outer security you will never find.

Inner security you already have.

All you need to do is to be aware of it and rest in it.

 

A PUZZLE

I used to believe that the ultimate mystery was death but now I wonder, for killing seems an even greater mystery – not the how for that has a thousand forms but the why.

I suppose I should be filled with gratitude that I have not been directly involved in the horror of killing another human being.

However that does not mean that I am not a killer! for I have killed mice and rats, flies and spiders, mosquitoes and sand-flies, ants and cockroaches, silverfish etc, etc. Indeed if I hadn’t killed some of them I might well have died or at the very least become seriously ill.

But there are also all the things that other people have killed in order that I might live – cattle and poultry, fish and sheep, etc etc.

Of course I could have become a vegetarian but that would not have been the end of the killing for the lettuce and cabbage etc have been killed before I eat them.

And what about my garden – the limbs I have severed from the trees, the grass cut, the pests destroyed in order to protect my flowers and vegetables.

No it seems that I cannot escape the cycle of killing for all living is dependent on some form of killing.

So what sort of God is there that could allow all this to happen – to have killing built into the very fabric of the universe. And if there has to be killing could we not be spared the sight of animals eating other animals while their victim is still alive.

What answer does the Cross provide for all this? A rather strange one it seems for according to the Christian story God did not intervene to stop the killing of his Son on the Cross but rather seemed to accept it as an inevitable consequence of the behaviour of Jesus. After all Jesus did say that the rich would not be blessed in an afterlife, that the poor would inherit the Earth, that religion can be the enemy of spirituality and compassion, and that we should listen to the wisdom of the earth as well as to human wisdom. Small wonder then that all this inevitably led to crucifixion.

For better or for worse it seems then that God is acquiescent in the process of killing or indeed may even be part of the process. It is then useless to rail against the reality or to pretend that the process does not exist. What we can do is to be as compassionate as we can, to avoid creating unnecessary physical or psychological suffering and to leave behind thoughts of retribution and revenge.

Then when it comes to our time of decrepitude, the time when all other parts of nature are killed by something which is stronger and younger then perhaps we might have the grace to allow each other the dignity of ending our own life rather than idolizing senility.

 

THE JIGSAW

My life

is a pile

of jigsaw pieces.

In the past

I struggled

to fit them together

into one coherent picture

but every time

there were pieces

that would not fit

so now I have

abandoned

the puzzle.

Perhaps one is not meant to fit them all together.

Perhaps living is more important than problem solving.

Could this be what Christ meant when he said

“I have come to let people encounter life in all its fullness?” (John 10:10)

 

UPSIDE DOWN

The beams

of the Cathedral’s ceiling

looked like

ribs of an upturned

lifeboat

providing

protection

from elemental

fury.

God when the church

becomes a

life-denying canopy

insulating us

from the full

beauty and passion

of your love

overturn us

that we may sail
boldly

on the waters

of questing faith.

 

FOCUS FOR ACTION

1. The new cosmology speaks of a universe in which we are surrounded by an invisible world of dark matter, matter which we cannot see. It has been estimated by some cosmologists that 90-99% of the matter in the universe is dark matter! However, the visible and the invisible are not two separate ‘worlds’ but are in constant inter-action. (For example although we cannot see dark matter, its presence is measurable by its gravitational pull and its effect on light waves).So it is with the known and the unknown. One thing we can be certain of is that the more we come to know the more we realize how much more there is to explore. In the light of all this perhaps our services should begin like this: “Be aware of the mystery; be aware of your own complexity.
   The only absolute certainty is mystery! So let us abandon the world of comforting, simplistic illusion and enter the waters of questing imagination. Be baptized by mystery, be confirmed by uncertainty and live in the vast sea of unknowing. How could we shape the rest of our worship to harmonize with such an introduction? How could we provide opportunities to see, touch and smell the mystery of God as well as hearing the Word of God? If certainty is but a temporary phase between uncertainties, should we redefine faith as trust in the unknown, rather than belief in the known, embracing Abraham as the model of adventuring into the unknown.

 

2. If what was once thought to be produced by Divine Intervention can now be clearly demonstrated to be the result of cosmic processes or the consequence of human actions where does that leave our belief in God? In my opinion it leaves us with a non-dualistic God, a God who is involved in the processes but who does not step outside of them to engage in actions which contravene one or more of those processes. What is your response to this claim?

 

LOGO NOTE: At the heart of the mystery all the separate boxes disappear and all is one, all is love.

Text and graphic © William Livingstone Wallace but available for free use.