DOUBLE LIFE: WHAT THAT MEANS FOR MY CATHOLIC CHURCH.

This blog is the second in my meditations on being a dual citizen of the world and, at the same time, of the kingdom of heaven on earth. Notice I didn’t say dual personalities, although I have been accused of that. My notion of Lay Cistercian spirituality takes up with me using Pauline duality (Galatians 5) of a realm of the world (what I can see by being just a human every day citizen of the earth) by adding to it my free choice to go beyond mere human matter and mind to that of a way of life that leads to my holding certain assumptions to be true. These, in turn, are a life that answers the Divine Equation, the six moltings or deeper transformations I have experienced in this time on earth. Only I can choose the answers to these six levels of evolutionary maturation, and, like any other choice I make, it can be a good choice or one that leads to dissonance rather than resonance with my human nature.

• What is the purpose of all life?
• What is the purpose of my life within that life?
• What does reality look like?
• How does it all come together?
• What does it mean to love so much that its energy lifts you up to a whole new level of evolution?
• I know I am going to die: now what?

So, where I get my answers to these six questions matters a great deal. Again, my choice is mine alone (good or bad for me). Still, I must choose a center or set of principles against which I measure whether what I have chosen is actually authentic and produces the energy I need to move to the next level of my evolution.

The Divine Equation, as you may or may not remember, has nothing to do with proving God exists (mainly because humans have neither the capacity nor the capability to know God as a divine nature). We would fry our neurons if we were even exposed to this pure mind, pure love, and pure truth. Sounds like a Chinese fire drill, except that we have help if we use the correct set of assumptions, ones that do not come from our physical or mental citizenship, because it has no innate power to lift us up to where we are destined to be by our human nature. So, are we orphans to our humanity, condemned to wallow in the dissonance of a nature that wants to move to the next step but does not have the power or the knowledge of how to do so?

This seeming enigma is identified in the Genesis Principle (see Teilhard’s map of the evolution of nature), as condensed in the Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-2. With the evolution of humans (Adam comes from the Adama or earth), they have no book to learn what it means to be human as intended by their nature. Genesis Principle shows how humanity is good, as is all matter and life (including humans), but that something went wrong when humanity gained the power to know that they know (reason) and to choose anything they want as their center, even if it is harmful to their fulfillment. The condition between what humans should be and what we are as ones who have animalistic and mental capabilities is called original sin, one that affects all humans.

Jesus, the Christ Principle, is the template I use to fit into those four locks to open up each one consecutively to move not only deeper in the mystery of my humanity, but also to fulfill the deepest level of human evolution, that of being an adopted son or daughter of the Father and heir to God’s kingdom. Whatever heaven is, it must be consistent with my human nature and the level of knowledge and love. and the truth that I have acquired by using the Christ Principle (or some other way of thinking) to be what nature intended. Spiritual citizenship means I look to the Way of Christ as identified in the four Gospels and Letters of St. Paul et al., as my North on my Compass, the authentic and only way that leads to the truth outside of my human nature, one that raises me up daily to make new wine skins to hold the wine Christ provides for my deeping of faith, hope, and love. I prepare on earth to take with me what I have discovered about these six questions and the answers that Christ provides me, so that I can decorate the mansion the Father has prepared for me in heaven. I simply continue living out what I have discovered about “Having in me the mind of Christ Jesus” and follow what Christ said to do, as contained in the Catholic Church’s heritage.

One way I have freely chosen that helps me focus on Christ and grow more and more each day is the Lay Cistercian approach to being an adopted son (or daughter) of the Father. I do this in the greater context of my Catholic parish of Good Shepherd in Tallahassee, Florida, but also linked as one, holy, catholic, and universal, entanglements of power through the Church Universal to the Father, using Christ as mediator and the Holy Spirit as Advocate.

Spirituality, or the citizenship of heaven on earth (and thereafter with God in heaven in heaven), is important because, although I must choose to continue human evolution, not through matter and mind alone, but rather through the use of my reason and then choices based on my individual reasoning, I do so by abandoning all that holds me back from that next step, going where no one wants to go, leaving behind my will and lifetime of reasoning, only to adopt those of Christ as my corridor to reach the deepest level of my human evolution possiible. Christ’s way is not the easy road, nor is my human road, marked by a lifetime of wrong choices and their consequences. Just because the road is rocky doesn’t mean I am on the wrong road. With Christ as guide and in the real presence to me as I make my journey, the road to Emmaus, it is work and I must battle the martyrdom of ordinary living, but I have all I need because Christ said His grace was sufficient.

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