Time Transcending Time
Interpenetrating our universe in time is God's no-time, which is all time and transcends time. The Christ event is not a breaking into history but a breaking open of history, to show who God is and how God acts throughout creation from eternity.
We wrestle with the first and second comings, but they are one. it is the God of the burning bush who is born in the straw and does not consume. The apocalypse begins with creation. We say, "Maranatha, come quickly," but Christ indwells and transfigures the creation now.
The prophets and apostles knew this spaciousness of sacred time and wrung it from their language in an effort to break us free. Isaiah proclaims, "Thus says the Lord, 'Behold I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create, for behold I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.'"
And the Letter to the Ephesians: "In Christ God chose us before the world was founded...made known to us the hidden purpose—such was God's will and pleasure determined beforehand in Christ—to be put into effect when the time was ripe, namely that the universe, all in heaven and on earth, might be brought into a unity in Christ."
Release from the tyranny of time enables us to break through perspective in our solitude. It is in solitude and silence that we hear and utter the ineffable Name of the One who uttered Being. God is, therefore I AM. The word and the Name are one. And we can neither hear nor speak with words at all, just as Jesus had to use parables to describe the kingdom of God, just as the liturgy of the Eucharist is cosmic shorthand, just as these words are foolishness.
'The Fire of Your Life: A Solitude Shared' forthcoming, Seabury Press, January, 2007
We wrestle with the first and second comings, but they are one. it is the God of the burning bush who is born in the straw and does not consume. The apocalypse begins with creation. We say, "Maranatha, come quickly," but Christ indwells and transfigures the creation now.
The prophets and apostles knew this spaciousness of sacred time and wrung it from their language in an effort to break us free. Isaiah proclaims, "Thus says the Lord, 'Behold I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create, for behold I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.'"
And the Letter to the Ephesians: "In Christ God chose us before the world was founded...made known to us the hidden purpose—such was God's will and pleasure determined beforehand in Christ—to be put into effect when the time was ripe, namely that the universe, all in heaven and on earth, might be brought into a unity in Christ."
Release from the tyranny of time enables us to break through perspective in our solitude. It is in solitude and silence that we hear and utter the ineffable Name of the One who uttered Being. God is, therefore I AM. The word and the Name are one. And we can neither hear nor speak with words at all, just as Jesus had to use parables to describe the kingdom of God, just as the liturgy of the Eucharist is cosmic shorthand, just as these words are foolishness.
'The Fire of Your Life: A Solitude Shared' forthcoming, Seabury Press, January, 2007
posted by Maggie Ross at 3:34 pm
1 Comments:
Amen, sister! I have long felt (encouraged by Pillars of Flame) that the incarnation and the crucifixion are shadows (projections into space-time?) of the same aspect of the nature of God, what Simon Barrington-Ward in 'Love Will Out' calls "the wounded man at the heart of God".
Post a Comment
<< Home