Ever your Scissortail,
One Love 

Some quotes...

"Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees, takes off his shoes, the rest sit round it and pluck blackberries."

"Secondly, it follows from this that Christ as Creator-Logos is to be envisaged, not as on the outside, but as on the inside of everything. It is a frequent fault of religious writers that they speak of the created universe as if it were an artifact of a Maker Who has, so to speak, produced it from without. God the Creator becomes the celestial Clock-maker Who sets the cosmic process in motion, winding up the clock, but then leaving it to continue ticking on its own. This will not do. It is important to avoid such images as the divine architect, builder or engineer, and to speak rather in terms of indwelling (without thereby excluding the dimension of divine transcendence). Creation is not something upon which God acts from the outside, but something through which he expresses Himself from within. Transcendent, He is also immanent; above and beyond creation, He is also its true inwardness, its 'within.' "

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Wait...one for Tom...

Distinctiveness. If we are to see the world as sacrament, then this signifies that, first of all, we are to discover the distinctive and peculiar flavor of each created thing. We are to perceive and to value each thing in and for itself, viewing that thing in sharp relief, appreciating what in the Zen tradition is called the special “Ah!” of each thing, its “is-ness,” or haeccitas . The point is vividly expressed by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame … each mortal thing does one thing and the same … selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells; crying What I do is me: for that I came.

To see nature as sacred is, in the first instance, to recognize how each thing “selves” and “speaks myself .” We are to perceive each kingfisher, each frog, each human face, each blade of grass in its uniqueness. Each is to be real for us, each is to be immediate. We are to explore the variety and the particularity of creation — what St. Paul calls the “glory” of each thing: “There is one glory of the sun, and another of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory” (I Corinthians 15:41).

Holla BACK, dawg...

Post Edited (One Love) : 8/22/2008 7:07:25 AM (GMT-5)

Did y'all know that you can save $1.50 on Happy Meals at McDonalds right now?   That was just to lighten up a serious but important conversation.

Anyhoo...I just read this ENTIRE THREAD yesterday over a period of a couple of hours (really wanted it to sink in). Over-all, I'm inclined to go with Tommy on this one.

It seemed to me that what I was hearing from D was that there is truly a loss of identity when thinking about a bipolar relationality between the Spirit of God and the human spirit (think of the prism picture). I think you both have come to an agreement that the intimacy with God as close as it gets, will be very much like the Daniel Belt and Chopin analogy but without "confusion." But even still, I said this along time ago and really, I don’t think Dwayne is really any farther along that there is not a sense of identity loss even with the Chopin example as much as he wants to say otherwise ie. there is distinction. There is much that Dwayne says that Tommy can affirm i.e. that one yields themselves utterly unto God (synergistically), but this seems to end where God is the all determiner of all of expressions of Daniel such that one could say that “Daniel” doesn’t exist but rather only God does. I say, just admit it, divine-human synergy is a paradox. That is, where God ends and where we begin and vice versa is paradoxical. What I hear Tommy saying is that we are the free determiners of movements though this doesn’t mean that God is not at work in our parts synergistically. However, I seem to get contradictory messages from Dwayne. There’s still the distinct Daniel (isn’t this something you desired would be replaced or displaced or annihilated?) but at the same time the “spirit of” Chopin so indwells “Daniel” (whoever that may now be if he still exists) that Daniel for all intents and purposes should no longer exist--no longer “I” but Chopin who lives in me! Sure, I see that Dwayne says that we are still distinct, but this just seems to be an assumption on his part--meaning he has yet to show me how one can be fully determined by God yet still remain distinct from God.

Second, this may be beside the point, but I was reading Kevin Vanhoozer’s “Everyday Theology” in which he quotes Ricoeur on cultural texts.

“‘It is the text, with its universal power of world disclosure, which gives a self to the ego.’ In a real sense, in choosing how to respond to the texts of popular culture--to their propositions and to their projection of a proposed world--I also choose myself.”

And Vanhoozer:

“When we appropriate the world hypothesis projected by a cultural text, we embody its proposal for our existence and make its vision visible.”

In other words, there seems to be a synergy when we choose cultural texts in which a cultural text is really forming the ego--the “I”--the self. For me though, this seems to happen on an unconscious level in which we don’t take the time understand or pay attention to what a cultural text is proposing such that we are automatically being formed towards certain ends by those cultural texts. If such is the case, then a sort of cultural synergy is presently taking place within us and upon us on levels that are unbeknownst to us (until someone shines a light on us) such that we are not the only determiners our becoming. All of which is to say, that the no-evil, no risk environment is also an important eschatological aspect for our becoming.

* In the online book viewing..."Conclusion: The Person of the Holy Spirit".  See what Moltmann says about the Spirit...kenotic Spirit as "Mother"

Post Edited (One Love) : 8/26/2008 1:20:22 PM (GMT-5)

Read the section "A Mediating Position"

Post Edited (One Love) : 8/27/2008 6:38:03 AM (GMT-5)

This is why some Christians see Mary as a type of sign for the Holy Spirit's working in bringing Christ to the world. (The Orans/Theotokos/Panagia ideas) I personally don't see anything wrong with associating the maternal perceptions of God that we articulate with the Holy Spirit's working in Creation and Re-Creation.

But that's just me.

Post Edited (One Love) : 8/27/2008 11:09:28 PM (GMT-5)