MIND AND SPIRIT
Last night our community read 1 CORINTHIANS 1, in
which Paul of Tarsus writes:
"While
Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical
wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like
an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are
personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is
God's ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so
tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can't
begin to compete with God's
"weakness."
Here is a book that I think
approximates, to a greater extent, the mindset of Western Cultures. We are prone
to a spirituality that is primarily in our heads-- words, ideas, competing
views. I think of how addicted I am to words and ideas that tend to be
fragmented from experience, body and emotions. Why do we look for God in the
pages of a book more than in the face of a friend? We tend to have ideas about
God more than encounters with God. I believe we treat God more as a theoretical
idea than a present reality. Is the name and power of Jesus something to be
understood or a force to encounter? How do people who have been groomed in a
hellenistic mindset recover from the separation of body, mind and spirit?
Most people who are Christian have had
a primitive encounter with the Spirit of Jesus that transcended rationality. And
yet very quickly the mind sabatoges that experience of faith in search of a
rational explanation. What if there is no rational explanation-- or what if the
impulse to understand chases the Spirit away?
How do we learn to inhabit the
presence and power of the glorified Christ?
By learning to be
still.
By cultivating an immediate awareness
of the presence of the Spirit.
By putting
ourselves in new and challenging situations that we don't have control
over.
By reading and talking less and loving
with action more.
Last weekend I spoke
at a retreat and during the music set I kneeled down on the floor. I think that
act did more to align myself with God than all the words sung in those songs.
The mouth is too quick to say what it knows is an empty promise.
It is amazing how we can keep on
"learning" and discussing-- without doing much of anything to actually change
how we live. There must be great resistance to the work of the Spirit. And we
have created ways of relating that do not expect transformation. The solution:
Do whatever is necessary.
Posted: Thu - May 18, 2006 at 09:22 AM