Grace to you from the Mystery in whom we live and breathe and have our being. Spirit of truth.
When the Spirit of truth comes, The Spirit will guide you into all the truth.”
John 16:12-15
LIFE’S rIDDLES
Grace and peace to you from the mystery in whom we live and move and have our being. Jesus taught his disciples how to know God. He took them into nature, he served them, he encouraged them to share with strangers, He taught them compassion for the suffering and how to stand up for the bullied. Jesus welcomed his followers to wrestle with life’s riddles. He connected them to the presence of God in the elements. He stood up to emperors and dictators
Today we have division, mistrust, religious hatred, political unrest, economic disparity, disregard for the earth, ethnic discrimination, self-indulgence and I’m only referring to what’s within Christianity. Is this the “all truth” the Spirit of Truth would lead us into?
Jesus told the disciples he would send the Helper. He said, “The Spirit of Truth would lead us into all truth.” He said All Truth. Jesus didn’t say it’s for some people, he said it’s for all people. Jesus didn’t even tell the disciples all his truth. He said they were not ready to carry all the truth.
Perhaps Jesus was teaching them to be comfortable with uncertainty and the unknown. Letting the Spirit unfold all truth. Perhaps we don’t like the unknown, so we create a truth.
Jesus teaches about truth
Somehow, we’ve come to believe all truth can be known right now and comes from elders, pastors, priests, bible study teachers, youth pastors, deacons, and especially pop cultural icons and commentators. Sometimes the so-called truth flows unfiltered and unfettered from them. Not even Jesus flooded his friends with All Truth.
Jesus wasn’t concerned that the disciples would know all truth. All Truth unfolds according to each one’s capacity. It’s a compassionate and intimate engagement with the Spirit of Truth and each one of us can listen to Spirits guidance.
Jesus taught his disciples how to believe, and how to experience God. How to experience God in solitude, in community and in stunning simplicity. He was one with nature and the elements. It is enough to walk with Spirit’s guidance into All Truth. With Spirit there are no limitations to revelation. God is revealed in all things.
In our public discourse where is wisdom? Its lacking exposes a lack of Spirit guidance.
Instead, there is violent self-destructive division. Perhaps it’s a throwback to the kind of primitive faith that tortured “non-believers” during the Spanish Inquisition, or people like Paul the apostle as a Pharisee. They believed they were doing God’s work as well.
The ultimate reality
Jesus said there would be persecution when we rely on Spirit’s loving guidance in a world of competition and domination for the small “t” truth. My reality versus the mysterious Ultimate Reality that supports all of life and Oneness. When we choose to slumber in our own reality the uncomfortable will call for numbing silence. Spirit guides us to see that the complicit will always be uncomfortable with the All Truth of love and mercy raining down in the form of justice.
It makes me wonder who we’re listening to as our source for all truth. Jesus specifically said the Spirit of Truth will lead all people into all truth. Maybe we as the body of Christ just don’t know how to listen to the Spirit of truth or we don’t like what the Spirit might say.
Jesus said his words, the Fathers words, and the Spirits words are all the same. It’s about connection and belonging. The Father was the source of all words, Jesus was the physicality of the words, and the Spirit was the movement of the words that binds us together as one body.
So why are we divided when there is only one faith, one hope and one love? Perhaps we need to hear the poetic story of creation for a clue on the death of God-consciousness and wisdom.
THE BIRTH OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
In the beginning I was an observer. Innocent and conscious of every new thing that was in my vision. Gazing upward I saw the sky with its hues of blue.
My eyes were filled with cosmic serenity. Looking longer and deeper I resided in infinite wonder. “Where does it all begin and where does it end,” was yet a question. Even as I write of my innocent arrival, this language was undetermined.
I am one with blue.
What slips into my periphery? The color of life breaches the blue silence. Limbs of emerald frame the blue. Teasing my eyes downward, a connecting trunk dives deep into a dark brown soil that like the blue, meanders infinitely amid a million living things.
I am one, but I am not alone. There is not such a thing.
Feeling hunger, I ate from the palate surrounding me. Then, still full, I gazed in rapture at what appeared to be fruit. But it was not fruit. It emerged with dazzling allure, dangling from a vine. I was beguiled by its status among the others.
My eyes that beheld the sky, engaged the fruit. The others gazed at me with dispirited silence. Mystery cautioned and chilled my desire, yet the fruit’s surface beckoned.
My mouth dripped with curiosity and met the fruits rubicund. With lips caressing, my teeth sunk slowly into its flesh.
My eyes closed in rapturous delight; I was born to my senses.
My eyelids gradually unfurled. I was alone. The ground in view, the sky I feared.
The fruit was an illusion created by a desire for more. More control, more pleasure more…self.
Spirit of Truth
What I saw, I trusted no more, What I could not see, did not trust me. I built walls on the sides and a barrier above. All that was rooted became the servants of my mind and I lived in a shanty of self-consciousness.
The canvas of hues and the wisdom of the unknown were no longer my companions. I became eternally hungry and thirsty for more of the fruit that never quenched the desire for belonging.
Now all the days of my life are measured, while all nature is free to ebb and flow.
My self-consciousness is the God of my discontent. ©Henry Rojas
Perhaps it’s time to leave our state of disconnect. Embrace each other as the body of Christ.
God, Forgive us for our political and theological dismembered state. Guide us Spirit of truth, into all truth.
May we open an unconditional open-heartedness, and a non-judgmental mind and Spirit of Truth restore to us a God-consciousness.
Amen
Wednesday Respite is a 30-min contemplative service of scripture, prayer, music and a Spirited Touchpoint by Henry Rojas, spiritual director at Spirit in the Desert.
Touchpoint is a reflection on where God’s story touches our life story. It is a short homily based on a biblical story of people in the Old and New Testaments and their relationship with God. Our spiritual ancestors’ experience of God’s grace connects with our lives in the present and our relationship with the Divine. Previous Touchpoints are available as PDFs or on SoundCloud.
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