Checked into convention center and spent day walking and in Old Town. The jewelry and art here is stunning and unique. I find it both exciting and overwhelming. I'm always eager to try the food and explore the culture here that's so extremely different from the PNW. Yes, this feels like a different nation, to Colin Woodward's point in American Nations.
What am I hoping to learn? I'm curious and confused about contemplation. I want to be stretched by people who're spending their lives thinking in new ways about this faith we all share. I'm interested in how the Trinity plays into all of this and why that's even important. I am intrigued by the speaker line-up and anxious to hear scholars on new ways to imagine Christian spirituality.
So far, I've been blown away. The event is being held in the convention center and sold out, so roughly 2000 people here. The focus of the first evening (and the event) was on thinking and seeing, our incorrect beliefs and how the Trinity can help us move to new ways of seeing and being. A few highlights from Richard, Cynthia and Paul:
Without the contemplative mind, all else disappoints. Every reform start with dualism: "This new understanding is the right way."
Teach people “how to see” not what to see. The divine way: love it first then know.
Contemplation is a long, lovingly at the real. These leads you to an acceptance posture, a state of living and looking that opens us up which is a great surprise.
The rational way of life, meaning of life, is winning, not the truth. This divided nature of reality has been for all of history.
“Most human thinking is repetitive and useless.” Meister Eckhart
We are addicted to our own way of thinking, and the ego has won. Observe the way you think. In time with the disciples, when Jesus saw they were getting too into their brains, he would bring a child by and say, Be like this.
We worship education and achievement. Instead, allow all the world to be a pointer to something else, on the mystical journey, every animal, change of weather, etc. This is widening the screen, not just left brain in charge. Move from depreciation to appreciation. The analytical mind just dismisses it, this is ‘just’ a plant. Mary Oliver's poetry introduces you to bigger and wider worlds. We have to choose to widen.
Recognize when you’re narrowing, using concepts that start with "just." Literalism does this which is the least helpful way of looking at something. One way, one meaning, narrow.
Conformity is only possible with fundamentalism, making community impossible. Human unity is uniformity; divine unity protects diversity. The ground of being- to the core, real, true, universal. God preserves unity, god is one, god is also three.
Desert fathers and mothers found and taught a new way of seeing and prayer became functional. Jesus said don’t need to pray in public; contemplative seeing means praying/seeing all day/life stance. You will recognize when you’re not doing it.
We don’t know how to operate without a problem. Start with the negative and never get out of it. We divide everything into two then wrap self around one side. The Trinity defeats dualism and welcomes openness, energy, radiance, like all that is reflected in nature. If you're in an alive universe, you're never alone again.
We’ve been told divine identity is something to work toward, like a carrot on a stick. This leaves you in a state of perpetual self-doubt with no inherent dignity. So you go and try and find it elsewhere. If we don’t know our identity, we will create a culture for ourselves out of money, celebrity, busyness, achievement, etc.
The contemplative mind depends on displacement of centrality of me and ego. This is not about understanding; this is about being, a posture.
God loves things by becoming things. What God loves, God becomes. The first incarnation was nature (feminine). The second incarnation was Jesus and Mary (masculine and feminine).
It will be hard to displace the idea that God is “an being”. Perichoresis the divine dance. God is a circle dance. In the Law of two, there is no room for "I". Most theology is transactional, not transformational.
Ego wraps itself around opinions: “God said…” Then the ego becomes almost untouchable.
“One of the safest ways to get rid of God is to quote God.” M. Eckhart
Move from economy of merit to economy of grace, an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance. The Trinity says God is face to face in relationship with itself and us.
We don't want to consider a relationship with God because of our trust issues. People wear their losses in their bodies/shame, head down, something wrong with me.
These things dominate our thinking, and this is not what God says about us (unless this is actually what we were taught).
We are on the cusp of a new way of thinking and seeing, and the Trinity helps make that shift.
*****
In short, all of what I heard tonight resonated deeply in my soul. This is what I need for where I'm at.
Practical exercises to shift our thinking and being included chanting, connecting to nature, rejecting literalism and fundamentalism, contemplation in all forms, love.
Trinity Now!
