THE NATURE OF GOD: Reaching down to pull us up.

I find it interesting that each time I speak of the nature of God, I must add a disclaimer: any language is only for human benefit and doesn’t come close to describing who God is. With that in mind, I offer my latest reflections from my Lectio Divina (Philippians 2:5) on the covenant romance between divinity and humanity.

GOD’S NATURE ALWAYS REACHES DOWN TO PULL UP HUMAN NATURE TO THE NEXT LEVEL

I must admit to a disclaimer. When I use the example of reaching down, remember that this is only an image meant to help humans grasp what is essentially beyond their mental capacity, collectively and individually. As one who has only lived in this space-continue continuum for eighty-one years (so far), my reflections on who God actually is are, first, an attempt to know what it means to be fully human. Fortunately, “God reached down” in the best way possible; he sent himself, the Son, to not only be one of us but to lift us to a new level. This level takes pure energy to pull our nature to the next stage of our evolution, one we could never imagine with mere human intelligence, but one that makes perfect sense through the Christ Principle.

THE DIVINE STAIRCASE

In my reflections with the Holy Spirit (more like I keep my mouth shut and be present to the ontic possibility of the manifestability of all being, and beyond that, to the invisible whispers of Jesus), the notion of God “reaching down” to save humanity from something took on a rather unconventional view I had never thought about before.

The idea of a staircase appeared, like the one from Eiligha coming down from heaven. God reaches down to humans, because humans can only bump against the first step of the staircase of human evolution, not solely because of human intellect, but because human nature lacks the spiritual energy to lift itself by its bootstraps to the next step.

The floor is the human nature which exists (in the mind of each individual) as the world of matter (on which we depend for existence) and mind (which we use to look at matter and ask the interrogatories: (who, what, why, when, how, and so what).

Science, human literature, psychology, and each person’s common sense are languages that help us choose what has been and what is. These languages result from collective human consciousness, and we must use them within the parameters set by human nature.

The problem comes when science and those other strictly human expressions of meaning (poetry, literature, secular meditation) look not at the past or the present, but to the future- one of supposition, of deductive logic, and one that is invisible- and the human languages worked out over millennia don’t work. The conclusion, and rightly so, is that God does not exist.

Humans firmly expect that what cannot be seen cannot be real. What you see is what you get, which is true. But the same human reasoning that is so very good at looking at what is (at least in the past century) also looks to the future. To do so takes a different set of assumptions and languages that are not limited by human reasoning but instead enable faith informed by reason and choice to be the very instruments to have the possibility of moving (remember Teilhard and the movement of all reality in complexity and consciousness) to what matter and mind alone are incapable of comprehending. This is where the syncretic analogy of stairs comes into play. God’s playground (existing for humanity with the fullness of matter and mind, as completed by the evolution to the highest form of humanity (not God) is a set of stairs where you have to see it to climb it, and you need help from that upper or second floor to make it up one step. There are many steps to the second floor, and each person has their own ladder.

God lives on the second floor, which we call divine nature, where pure energy exists, the only power that can lift us to the next step on our way to the second floor. Humanity is not used to this new citizenship (that of being an adopted son or daughter on our way up the steps of our life to that second floor, where humanity reaches its highest potential of evolution.

The problem is that we do not know the way amid all those competing allurements that keep us from fulfilling our destiny. That siren’s calls, like Circe, wail within us like a nagging “thorn of the flesh.” Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee, says St. Augustine. The three invisible throbbings I have in my breast are: to know more, to love more, and to be human at the deepest level I can be, using human tools of reason, choice, the senses, the emotions, choosing a way that leads me to the fullness of what humanity, by its natural evolution, can only take me to that first rung of the staircase.

Flailing around for centuries, humanity evolved to a point where God selected one people, twelve tribes, to be a light to the Gentiles and a glory to its people, Israel.

Remember, all matter, all mind, and all spirituality are in motion from Alpha to Omega, and humans need help to move to the next level of complexity and consciousness. This evolution depends on my using reason and choice to recognize that there are even stairs to the second floor (covenant). This last of the three principles of evolution (creation, reclamation, and restoration), spirituality is accessed only through a free act of the individual will (beyond what matter and mind alone have the energy to perfect to completion).

One more dimension. Someone had to come down from the second floor (the one we just became aware of) to walk DOWN the stairs from divinity to humanity, to show us the way, to open up the truth (absolute truth, absolutely), so we can begin to lead a life here on earth as both citizens of the earth and now citizens of Heaven.

This person was the Son of the Father, the Word made flesh and dwelt among us, who took on our nature to die on the cross as a ransom for many and to open up that last spiritual dimension to allow us to be fully human, full of the energy that, when Jesus reaches a hand out to us on the second rung of the ladder of our life, we grasp it, and He pulls us up one rung. Our lifetime is climbing those stairs to the next level, one rung at a time.

The problem is, Jesus died on the cross to allow us to be adopted sons and daughters of the Father and heirs to the kingdom. This is usually when a leader who is the movement dies, and it falls apart because of original sin and human nature’s tendency to fracture into individual religions (the Protestant Principle).

The Church is the guardian in each age of the umbilical pipeline directly from God through Christ, through the Church Universal, through the diocese, local parish, so that I, the individual, have the energy from Jesus to make that step through private prayer in the upper room of my inner self, and through attachment to the local parish through the Sacraments and personal ministries.

When each of us dies, which we all will, Jesus will welcome us at the top of the stairs with hands outstretched. We grasp them only to feel the nail imprints. We are escorted to meet Jesus’ mother and take possession of that mansion the Father has prepared for us.

So what is Heaven like? Here are some ideas I have (remember, I am only a broken-down, old Lay Cistercian temple of the Holy Spirit).

In Heaven, we experience a different awareness, one of degrees of what we have discovered to be true, depending on the capacitas dei, or how we were one with the Alpha and Omega and grew daily in transforming ourselves by transforming anything around us, with the energy of Jesus. Heaven is a place where humans live out what they have become on earth.

In Heaven, we decorate our house with what we have discovered as truth and live a life where Christ is our center, not our own selfish needs.

In Heaven, we continue what we have discovered on earth about “How to have in you the mind of Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 2:5)

Heaven must be a place where we can use those familiar landmarks of humanity, threaded with the golden thread of Christ own self through each sunset I attach to Jesus, with those people I threaded with the golden thread I want to take with me to Heaven, with a thread through all the nature, animals, pets, and smells and tastes that I consciously wish to be in Heaven. This is why praying for those in Purgatory is so important to me. I can pray for the dead that they be loosed from their sins now through the devotion to Our Lady of Akita, so that they might have a chance to one day be in Heaven. Most of all, I pray for me, that I might receive mercy from Christ for being so absent-minded about the reality of spirituality all around me.

Heaven will be available to me then, as I am available to Christ as my Center now.

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