We see the earliest creed in the Christian Baptismal questions: Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty.
God, the father almighty. There’s a whole issue of gender I don’t want to engage with here and now. I’m not a father. Like Jesus. I’m a son. I’m a friend. I’ve been a brother. I’ve had a loving mother and father but no sister. I’m an uncle, a grand son, a cousin. I’ve had brothers and sisters in Christ. What I wished to address here however is “God, Almighty.”
This expression, “God, Almighty” is critical to being a Christian. It’s been further described as “God of all things seen and unseen” It’s also summarized as God, Omnipotent; God, Omniscient; God, Omnipotential.
God is existent and transcendent, present and never ending. In the beginning and in the end, alpha omega.
I listened to a sermon with a fresh minted priest from Vancouver School of Theology. I’d attended Vancouver School of Theology and enjoyed their Christian spirituality .I didn’’t like this new mint Anglican priest. He got off saying in the sermon. “I don’t believe in the virgin birth. I don’t believe in miracles. I don’t believe Jesus was son of God.’ Indeed this fellow prided himself on his hip slick sensual secular rationalism. I wondered how he passed. My other priest friends from VST were not such unbelievers. It’s like the United Church minister who recently confessed to being an Aetheist but felt she should be able to continue as a minister because she saw her self as doing good ‘social work’.
Miracles are the essence of Christianity and spirituality. The laws of man made science don’t limit God. God is Almighty. God is the Creator. God can be in and outside of the string theory though in reality the string theory posits a place for god. There’s this magical limit to the knowing of the human mind. However the more godlike our minds the more capable of appreciation of God. All is God. God is all.
In John,the last of the Gospels, it says that ‘in the beginning was the Word’. That’s electromagnetic energy to the scientific. Creation was the unpoetic thinking “big bang’. In reality the Big Bang is uncientific because without ears there can be no sound. So the Big Bang posits the presence of God. In the Zen Koan, the mystery is approached by the question, what is the sound of one hand clapping? If there is no one in the forest to hear, what is the sound of a tree falling?
Catholics were best with their humble appreciation of the Mystery. God is mystery. I spend each day in a game with God of hide and seek. even knowing well the poem Hound of Heaven.
More importantly, my training in neuropsychiaty has taught me to reflect well on freedom, free will and determinism and fate. Science is said to arbitrarily rest on the pillars of determinism, empicism and rationalism. It doesn’t say that the only game in town. Love is not empirical, rational or determined nececessarily. The joy is found in the dance and the search. The feeling is called the ‘flow’, or ‘synchronicity’.
I simply accept through faith that I am God, but I’ am not God. God is God and God is not God. I am God, in that I am of the fabric of God, of the family of God, since all is God. I’m the Word. I’m God Stuff. I am however the created too. I don’t have the arrogance to think I’m the prime mover. I’m even humble enough to suspect my role in creation. At best I like to say I’m a kazoo in the symphony of life.
In neuropsychiatry studies the actual volition ‘follows’ the action. Collectively we ‘re great confabulators. Studies of the brain with the latest in functional MRI show that the ‘thought’ to move a finger simply doesn’t precede the movement of the finger but rather follows it by a nanosecond. My thoughts are the product of my action.
One of the heresies of the early church was a sect that put limits on God. Another said that there was ‘secret’ knowledge that could be passed from one follower to another. Christianity has always hid in plain sight. The truth will set you free. Another of the heresies was that there was a separation of matter and spirit, and essentially a separation of God and man. God is One. That’s the most ancient of Jewish prayers.
The fact is I’m a co dreamer in the dream of God. I read that St. Francis would say he’d be somewhere, ‘brother ass willing’, describing his body as shanks mare. Yet there is no separation in science between matter and energy. E=MC2. There is slow energy, called matter, and fast matter called, energy. We are star stuff. Dark matter is the stuff of modern physics.
I once said I was the ‘voice over’ on the cartoon of life, believing that life with all it’s interconnected multidimensional parts was determined by fate , but that my thoughts were reflections of ‘free will’. Of course that limits God. God is limitless. Also God knows the beginning and end. There is nothing God does not know and no limit to God’s potential. So if I move my finger today and moving, like the proverbial zen butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world, set off the a myriad streams of reality, so what. God can handle it.
This becomes interesting in Time Travel because yesterday, something St. Augustine reflected on, may simply not exist or may be deteriorating like memories. The finding of fossils assumes a linear reality when indeed the fossils and their find may derive from the collective unconscious that Jung spoke of. I may not be able to ‘create’ a space ship but if enough of us visualize one then hopefully Space X will move on providing me a Harley Davidson rocket powerd space craft capable of hover, infinite power and distance with room for a passenger and a dog. I happen to enjoy Laura’s and Gilbert’s company. We’re a mundane trinity of sorts.
God almighty. That’s the beginning of the creed. Father , we’ll address later, as well as God, the Son and God ,the Holy Spirit. For now I still feel I’m limiting God. Anglican priest, Phillips wrote the little gem of a book, “Your God is Too Small” . I love Pascal’s Gamble. That speaks to God and Heaven but for now I’m looking atthe Christian creed’s beginning, God, almighty!
God, Almighty! I don’t need to open up my brain so much as let God in. In Christian spirituality the lock on the door is never said to be on the outside. Please God let me unlock my heart and mind to you today. God almighty!
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