Expressions of the Word: Exploring Reality

The day came when we decided to grow more of our own food.  We live on the side of a mountain with rather poor soil and, rather than spend a couple of years building soil in our subarctic home, we would simply buy some.  One company advertised rich soil, but guaranteed to be low in weeds the first year; they had sterilized the soil.  As neophytes in gardening this sounded good to us; how could fewer weeds in the first year be a bad thing?

We did grow some things that first year, but not nearly as much as we did in years to come.  We were simply ignorant of the society of organisms needed to make soil productive.  We had never heard of mycorrhizae or any of the other “plant friends” necessary to make soil productive.  And so our first year, with this essential soil community sterilized away, was a bit of a disappointment.  In later years, the soil turned out to be much more productive…and we learned that some of those unexpected wild plants were also tasty—unexpected “guest plants” don’t always have to be thought of as weeds, after all.  Indeed, we were later to learn that some plants actually help each other in a variety of ways, forming “guilds” that flourish better together than apart.

This teaching also tells us something of what it is to live in right relationship with God.  Living in right relationship with God also requires living in right relationship with all of creation, including tremendously important relationships that exist between organisms, some only at a microscopic level, normally unseen to the human eye.

The presence of God in our midst is often unseen to the human eye.  In fact, there is something of God in all things.  Celtic spirituality (J. Philip Newell, Christ of the Celts) points out that in a very real sense God did not create the universe out of nothing (the old creato ex nihilo theology), but creates all things out of God’s own self.  That is, all creation, including you and me, exist within God and come out of God.  Scripture writers vary in their own perception of this reality, but I have noticed hints of this teaching in a variety of places in Scripture.  Here are two that come to mind this morning as I write:
1.      John 1: The Word (the essence of what is and of what can be) existed before the beginning, and the expression of the Word is always Christ—a manifestation of God’s possibilities in created reality.  That is, all creaturely existence is a communion with God.[1]

2.     Colossians 1:17:  “(Christ) himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”  The Cosmic Christ described in Colossians portrays the Christ-in-communion with all creation as somehow fully present in the man, Jesus. 

This description of God and reality open up many possibilities for understanding what we see and experience in the world around us.  The relational partnerships (guilds and more) that we see in the world around us reflect both the relational nature of God (more on this if I feel moved to write more on the Trinity one day), God’s delight in the relational nature of the created order, and even a sense that God actually participates in the guilds that build life, and the evolution of life, as the possibilities for relationship evolve (God seems to take delight in the growing complexity of life on this planet, and probably elsewhere).

However, this view of the Christ needs to be expressed more than it is within Christian circles.  Too many Christian people seem only to understand the Christ as beginning with the  man, Jesus, rather than as the preexisting Word through whom all existence is held together.  This does not belittle the person and the work of Jesus, the Christ, but rather clarifies and expands our grasp of Jesus.  It is my belief that the world needs this larger grasp, because the more truncated view held by many believers today lends itself to a dualistic, competitive view of creation that can too easily justify the “use” of creation societal worldview of  today that inevitably leads to  damaging creation, and to the competition for resources and power that so damages all human relationships.

Losing track of the relational nature of all creation—that sense that participating in the Sacred is participating in the whole of the universe, and in all the small relationships of the universe—is to live in sterilized soil.  At some level we will still live in relationships, but they will be less so much less fruitful than what is possible, and the harvest of quality life (which is a good part of what Scripture means when it speaks of Eternal Life) will be disappointing.

One last thought:
As someone who contemplates the spiritual quality of all creation I have found it difficult to do two things.  I have found it difficult to find upbuilding community to explore what I find in Scripture and in life.  Spiritual things are things of the heart.  People know these things are sacred, and we know that this kind of thinking is hugely important; it helps develop the way that we build relationships, how we share power and empowerment, and how we share resources and ideas.  We fear being left out, or of somehow “getting it wrong” and letting God down and then God leaving us out.  We therefore act defensively which usually means aggressively, shutting down conversation.  As a result people sometimes treat me as a heretic, either attacking what I say with vehemence, or shutting down the conversation, and limiting our ability to be fellow pilgrims on this kind of a journey.  That is to say, as much as I speak of the relational nature of all things, and of the human creatures, I have not found myself to be much more adept than anyone else in building better relationships or better ways of building relationships.  At some point there needs to be some conversation about the practical aspects of being “in community” with other people and all creation.

I believe that will come about on other writing days than today.

[1] This is a daily journal, and not a completed systematic theology.  Other theologians have written about this somewhat differently.  Kenotic theology picks up on God’s character as revealed in Jesus, the Christ, as a kenotic (biblical Greek for self-emptying) character.  This comes from Philippians 2:7 and describes the theological understanding of God’s creative creative and salvific (i.e., healing/saving) nature as a “making room” within God’s perfection for the created order.  That is, we exist within God, because God chooses relationship with a created order.  This describes the nature of creation as sacred in itself.  This kind of thinking also lends itself to a panentheistic view of God and creation, rather than either a pantheistic (creation is God and God is creation) or a dualistic view (God is wholly separate—and perhaps distant—from creation).

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