Focused on Disaster
Moments in the Flow…Am I Ready For This?
Hello again,
To tell the truth about this Friday Post, my mind is preoccupied. Inspirations come but they go as quickly. I’m not forming the whole picture.
This time it’s not politics, the threat of war, the constant geophysical disasters or the brutality of ICE that is capturing my attention. It’s the ‘ice’ that doesn’t melt, but quickly coats everything: powerlines, trees, roads, homes, and everything else. The truth is, I’ve never experienced a weather event like this before.
But as I was having lunch, I decided to pick up the book I’ve been studying, Original Blessing by Matthew Fox and do some Bibliomancy. I held the book and opened it to random page. It was a topic that surprised me, but I read it and pondered the truth it contained.
To introduce Matthew Fox if you don’t know of him, he is now an Episcopalian Priest, was a member of the Dominican Order in the Catholic Church. They tossed him out when his philosophy and religious leanings changed after he learned that our concept of Original Sin did not exist until Augustine in the 400s AD. The realization that this caused all those in the Christian Religion to be indoctrinated with a Sin and Redemption philosophy caused him to research theology with a focus on the thinkers throughout history that embraced a different, completely opposite point of view.
In his book are quotes from women, like Hildegarde of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Starhawk, and Simone Weil. Men like Meister Eckhart, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Ghandi, Rainer Maria Rilke and frequently, the prophet Isaiah.
This philosophy is called Creation Spirituality. And it proposes we were born with an original blessing (goodness) which we can reclaim. I’ve read the book once, I realized the manipulation that results from living a life of shame and waiting for someone to save you, and I have seen the truth of the 4 pathways and the themes within.
I know I will be reading it again several times soon to expand my understanding and be supported in my release of the negative and move further into the creative. Along with the Native American, Buddhist philosophies or that of Druid ancestry, Creation Spirituality is a philosophy that could turn our society around in a good way.
The page I opened is in the “Via Positiva”, the ‘first way’ of being. And the introduction to this speaks of how both society and religion in the West have lacked a way or path of affirmation, thanksgiving, and ecstasy. Via Positiva awakens us to the beauty of creation and the constant flow of this creative energy through all things.
This Via has ten ‘themes’ and the one I had opened to was Theme 9. “Holiness is a word worth retrieving,” the paragraph begins. What we consider holy reflects a way of living and celebrating. And there follows a discussion of the fall/redemption teaching as indoctrination in the need to be perfect.
The Bible taught that we were perfect until the Fall of Eve and so we are told, ‘Be ye therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect.’ It’s a hook with original sin behind it. And truthfully, how can we possibly be perfect…when we try it’s so exhausting. So we need someone or something to help us. We need a savior.
It’s not hard to understand this need would result in negative psychological repercussions. As he says, it creates an ego quest instead of a spiritual quest. The discussion about this reveals the beauty of imperfection and how it exists in all of creation. Nature itself does not manifest in a perfect cookie cutter pattern and neither do we. Then there is the unusual idea that it is imperfection that unites us and draws from a group the gift of the power to heal.
The quest for perfection carries the tendency to focus on the past, where perfection is believed to exist, a nostalgic quest for a time that never was. And ultimately, we discover that in our English version of the Bible there was a mistranslation of the Greek word teleioi as ‘being perfect’ when it actually means being ‘full-grown, be adult, be complete and whole’. Imperfections and all.
I add on the voiceover my thoughts that if we were not in the Siin/Redemption mode we might focus less on the birh and death of Jesus and more on his actual teachings. He taught us that the divine was within us and showed us the way to experience this.
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As I wondered ‘’why this page?” and shared this information with you, I knew the reason. Perfection is an issue of my negative perception today. It’s in my attitude to the coming weather and how imperfect it is, being ice instead of snow, and my own perfection in taking the right precautions, and how imperfect and difficult my life will seem during and after if our power goes out.
Yes…I’m glad to know that I can release this, too. I can “Be Here Now” and enjoy the comforts and privileges I have, the sunlight that has just broken through the clouds, and know I have prepared, and I will make it through.
I do plan to have the Moondays Report done tomorrow and scheduled for this Sunday evening. We have Neptune’s entry into Aries as the week begins and the 13-degree Leo Full Moon as it ends on February 1st.
See you next time!
Excellent post and beautifully put. As promised, you are in my thoughts and prayers that the forecasted weather is less severe than that which has been suggested! xx
Not about the upcoming weather :) but perfection. Robert Browning wrote, "God's in his heaven, and all's right with the world." The concept that everything is actually perfect and just as it should be is one of the most paradoxical and difficult to comprehend, and accept. We see "imperfection" all around us and, in this world of duality, the existence of good and evil seems not only self-evident, but the recognition of good and evil seems to be a practical necessity from a moral standpoint. This view forms the basis for one of the most unsolvable philosophical dilemmas - "the problem of evil," which is: If God is omnipotent, They cannot be all good because They at least tolerate, if not have created, evil. If God is all good, They cannot be omnipotent, because Their goodness has not been able to destroy evil.
Yet good and evil is a dualistic construct and Oneness is almost by definition beyond good and evil. Mystics and many philosophers will tell us that Oneness is the only Reality - all else is unreal, an illusion, a non-existence. Yet all this illusion proceeds from, is a projection of, the One and, the One being Perfect, so is Their Creation - though it is at the same time imperfect because it is ultimately non-existent or, in another sense, its existence is contingent, absolutely dependent on the existence of the One Existent.
From another viewpoint, God is Love, and Love is Perfection. Since there is nothing other than God, there is nothing other than Perfection. The entire Play of Creation is a manifestation of Love. It is all Perfect as it should be. It is only our limited vision and understanding that fails to see the Perfection that is all around.