Incarnation, Jews, Covenantal People

Pray to be known, to be understood and to be welcome -- Anthony Gittens

Throughout the many religious traditions the world has known, the idea of both incarnation and covenant have been frequently embraced. Looking at these as a sort of continuum one is able to see the relationship between them. Writing on both these subjects, the author, Peter Kreeft, discusses them in his book, The God Who Loves You. Proclaiming "G-d is love, the incarnation," Kreeft acknowledges that this topic is perhaps one of the most difficult in Western thought to grasp.

The subject, in its knowable, yet untouchable mystery, is the trinity of creation, where all is love. There is the Lover, the beloved and their creation, together forming a tri-partite relationship, one to the other. Kreeft writes:

• G-d is love.
• Love is G-d's essence.
• Love is one with G-d's personhood and being.
• Love requires a lover, a beloved, and the act of love.
• G-d is three parts of one.
• The three know and love each other.
• The processes of love are without beginning or end.
• The Creator loves by knowing, and by his will.
• The Creator loves both in time and in eternity.
• The Spirit is love between the Creator and his beloved creation.
• There is holiness, sacredness in human sex. Two make three.

G-d is love. Nowhere in the Tanakh does it say that G-d is justice or mercy itself, or that he is anything, but love itself. Love is G-d's essence. This is absolute; as the Tanakh tells it, everything else is relative to this love. "Love necessarily means three things: there is a lover, a beloved, and the act or creation of loving.

Thus for G-d to be love, he must somehow be all three. The Creator knows and loves his creation; his creation knows and loves his Creator. The Spirit which proceeds from this act of loving is sometimes called the Holy Spirit, or the Incarnate. This Spirit is the love between the Creator and his creation. Their knowledge of each other is through, and by this Spirit of love.

As the Creator knows his creation, he generates himself, his love by knowing him. So it is through knowing and the will that love comes into being. Thus the trinity may be also thought of as being, knowing and loving [by the will].

Creation loves both in eternity and in time. The relationship of the three is one of equality; creation is equal in love to creator and love, the spirit is equal to both. That is the force and power of love. In two come three; the Spirit of love is the ultimate origin of holiness or sacredness of human sexual love, says this tradition.

"The love of G-d has invaded our world, and we see with new eyes."
The love of the Spirit is a mystery, modern man has, tragically lost easy access into, or indeed, conception of. There is another ultimate dimension that ancient man found far easier to access. In this realm there is not science, empiricism, nor quantification, but rather it is a place of myth, imagination, analogy, and sacramentalism.
Since "G-d is the Creator, and since creation reflects and reveals the Creator, and since G-d is love, all creation somehow reflects and reveals this love," this Spirit.

Unlike ancient minds, "modern" man is enveloped by an overweening atmosphere of science and tangible proofs; in earlier times, the connections between individual and Creator were more obvious, for the simple reason that the ancient mind believed. The ancients viewed a beautiful landscape, sunset or night-time sky and were filled with the awe of the creation. Or for example, human sexuality was easily seen to be a part of the universal dimension, the wholeness or oneness of the world.

In today's English language, the pronouns he and she have been nearly stripped away. They are avoided, dis-used. Left in their place is a socio-political idea that rejects this very principle of universal oneness. There are labels and divisions, parsing the world into diverse units.
To the ancient mind, this is akin to tragedy. What could take the place of the Chinese idea of the yin and yang? Or the Hindu wedding ceremony in which bride and groom pronounce one to the other, "I am heaven, you are earth;" to which the bride responds, "I am earth, you are heaven."

Many modern minds, especially in the West will find these ideas unintelligible, in part thanks to science. Our rational mind does not allow us to go there. It is all myth, we say. Science, in its aims to reduce things to quantifiable matter fails, it cannot see cosmic love.

Rather, science ignores the "final cause" of creation. It cannot rationalize what something or someone was made for, its purpose, its goal, its end. This reason is the most important to creation. The Tenakh tells us that both the historical and in the ultimate dimension, G-d is the final cause, creation the ultimate end; it is the alpha and the omega, both the beginning and end.

In this ultimate dimension, we are freed "of the dirty little dungeon of a universe that the Enlightenment thinkers" of past centuries have placed us into wholesale. Enlightenment thought, thought in which rationality and science are the reigning sovereigns gives to modern minds, "a universe in which love and beauty, praise and value are mere subjective fictions," invented by the self spinning aloneness of a human mind.

And yet science through all its triumphs has not been able to extinguish an ancient, almost primordial instinct from the deepest places in our soul, to realize love as the highest wisdom and meaning in a life. So then the Judeo-Christian Bible, or Tanakh, in its entirety is then to be read with imagination, with myth and analogy as a divine love story, says Peter Kreeft.

In both the Jewish and Christian telling of the story, the Word contained in the book is a covenant, an agreement between G-d, the Lover and his beloved; the persons he created, the Jews and all who come to him in the Spirit of the Oneness (adonai echad).

The word of G-d is the Christ, the unity of G-d, the Creator. And to the Christian mind, among other names we may call this oneness, the Christ, love incarnate. Christ has proved G-d's love for his creation by the example of the Cross. He has come because of, and for love, alone. He comes out of love.

Other manifestations of love are found in the connection between the "fall" from the garden of Eden. The connection here is found between the fall and freedom. Love does not enslave; love makes free. Because you are the Beloved, you are free. We are not the Creator's pets; we are meant to be G-d's lover.

In the redemption, love manifests. G-d's love is powerful and in full display as soon as Adam falls. He makes a mistake, he falls away from the covenant that he made in free will with G-d to obey.
as covenantal people, Jews traditionally see the "law" of the Torah as an expression of G-d's will. It is their joy to learn, to know this will. Thus they see their holy book as a love making manual, if you will.
In the ten commandments, the main covenants presented to creation by G-d, the Creator, are laid out. In essence, they form the whole of the "covenant-contract." G-d is to have this agreement with his people, who in free will grow to abide by this contract, or rule. In following the way of G-d in divine law, more love is made. Human-kind is "fruitful and multiplies."

Caring for the garden, the world of Creation, is so that human persons may learn to be more like Creators. G-d wishes to teach love through loving the world and the soil it comprises, to raise a crop to the benefit of all of creation.
The Creator starts small and then moves through the world until his love reaches the ears of his perhaps, most complex creation, mankind. As a lover, G-d is not jealous. Sharing in oneness is the essence of all.

"And the forbidden fruit of Adam and Eve is to teach the Beloved the reality of pure, "blind," love." If they had been told that the reason (a rational idea) was that the fruit was poison, would not Adam and Eve have obeyed; not from a trusting, free love, but from a selfish fear?
Yet G-d did command them, and asked for their love in return for no other reason than love itself. This is covenant. When we "fall," we lick our wounds, we gain a sense of the real, we dust ourselves off and remain in the moment, rather than a self-serving, spinning mind.
Thus we again realize the fall as a direction back to the source, back to the Creator and we, are his Beloved. This love is not sentimental, it is not cheap, easy or compromising. This love is in totality.

You are the deepest secret of G-d's heart. --Peter Kreeft

Bold Love and Evil

"If Christ, for one had practiced the love we advocate these days, he would have lived to a ripe old age."

In his classic book, Bold Love, psychologist and minister, Dan Allender writes compellingly of the face of evil in a world that is all things, not all love. He says, "We've come to view love as being nice. Forgiving and forgetting. Yielding to the desires of others. Yet the kind of love modeled by Jesus Christ, Ghandi, Martin Luther King and others has nothing to do with manners or unconditional acceptance. Rather, it is shrewd. Disruptive. Courageous. And as a result, often socially unacceptable."
Bold love is a harsh mistress, because there's nothing redeeming about a love that just blindly accepts.

What does it mean to love those who harm me? What does it mean, to love my enemy? The love of my friend is not so difficult. This story ultimately is about a forgiving love in a world side by side with the evil of the devil. Allender says that forgiveness surely does not mean forgetting the past, and ignoring the damage of harms past and present. Doing this would be erasure of one's personal history in the midst of a life. Human beings have been created lives worthy of love and forgiveness. We must first learn to forgive ourselves of the fault and failings that we have perpetrated. We must accept our humanness, our sometimes incomprehensible oddities and weaknesses.

"Bold love is a powerful agent of change that can transform both the lover and the beloved." The passion of bold love is a gift that brings a hardened heart face to face with a redemptive tenderness, and love of a Creator for his creation. We have all heard so much about God's love that his wrath and fury at our hardness and iniquity have been plowed under. There is no understanding of the Gospel message nor the centrality of the cross. Without recognition of the cross, its meaning and intersection of both, wrath and mercy are lost. It is a cross.

Mercy and its mysteries are great. Is it possible that we may be both passionately furious, and disposed to the doing of good?
Like the biblical figures Job and Jacob, we have the privilege to struggle with our failings, with God, and know that we will not be destroyed. Someone has been to the cross and shown us that. We are not to be in exile, nor a stranger to the promises of God. Not to be stripped naked and shamed, even in our darkest rage and most insolent self-justification, the face of God is there for the viewing. We may see his face and live.

The apostle Paul writes,  'For if we were God's enemies, we were reconciled with him through the death of his son.' Romans 5:8-10
"In his book, The Crucified God, Jurgen Moltmann expressed the loss for the Father and for the Son in this way: 'The Son suffers the dying; the Father suffers the death of the Son.
 The grief of the Father here is just as important as the death of the Son. The Fatherlessness of the Son is matched by the Sonlessness of the Father."

Allender writes, "Love is [now] before me, like a wall, like a deep cut on my hand. It is unforgettable; it is inflamed within me; it is a shrill, silent, noisy, still voice that captures my deepest and my most superficial thoughts." I am saved because he is mine and I am his. I am the deepest secret of God's heart.

Sadhana, the realization of life

"There is a bond of unity between our two eyes which makes them act in unison."  Sadhana; the Realization of Life by Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet, mystic and writer known for his elegant, lyrical writing style; he also is known for his Nobel Prize win for literature in 1913. Written in his philosophical prose style, Tagore's  book, Sadhana, the Realization of Life, addresses many aspects of the Self and the world. He writes for example, that opposites do not bring confusion; in reality they bring harmony. Rhythm can never be born of disharmony, or of  "the haphazard struggle of combat."

This principle is the chief mystery of all unities. Unity in Tagore's mind could be viewed as: the one which appears as the many. And while seeming to be opposite, it is the truth, a paradox of sorts. He writes of a great poem, as a compilation of most pleasing sounds, yet if one stops to hear the import of those sounds, something more emerges; 'the inner connects to the outer [meaning].'

In the following poem below Tagore writes a bit of this and other ideas further discussed in prose style in his book, Sadhana. The poem is 'a thing of beauty which transcends grammar, laws' and becomes unto itself.

I

By Rabindranath Tagore

I wonder if I know him
In whose speech is my voice,
In whose movement is my being,
Whose skill is in my lines,
Whose melody is in my songs
In joy and sorrow.
I thought he was chained within me,
Contained by tears and laughter,
Work and play.
I thought he was my very self
Coming to an end with my death.
Why then in a flood of joy do I feel him
In the sight and touch of my beloved?
This 'I' beyond self I found
On the shores of the shining sea.
Therefore I know
This 'I' is not imprisoned within my bounds.
Losing myself, I find him
Beyond the borders of time and space.
Through the Ages
I come to know his Shining Self
In the 'If ' of the seeker,
In the voice of the poet.
From the dark clouds pour the rains.
I sit and think:
Bearing so many forms, so many names,
I come down, crossing the threshold
Of countless births and deaths.
The Supreme undivided, complete in himself,
Embracing past and present,
Dwells in Man.
Within Him I shall find myself -
The 'I' that reaches everywhere.

Fearing the Beloved

"Most of us go into relationships to find security; we want to be with someone else who makes us feel safe… Spiritually the answer to fear… [is] you are already safe." The Path to Love by Deepak Chopra

Writing about a compelling topic, a concern for individuals and societies the world over, Deepak Chopra in his book, The Path to Love, makes a simply profound observation. That is the simple realization that we are safe, as safe as we can be in any given moment.
If we have suffered previously, we are safe. What has occurred is past and we have survived it. It is spiritually unnecessary to make events "larger than life." Everything as a part of the whole has its place in the world. Traumatized though we may be by events, they are survivable.

It may be part of your life experience that you were left alone together with your mother by your father to fend for yourselves; possibly your experience has been war, or criminal acts; maybe you have experienced the effects of serious illness, possibly ongoing events such as cancer or mental illnesses like serious depression.
But it remains true that you have survived each and all of these events day by day! The worst is not, what is before you, as you fear; it isn't unknown.
 Looking into the face of an assailant or one who abandons you, treats you poorly, may well inspire fears, or it may initiate a 'substitute life,' one provoked by the mind's imagination.

"If you felt truly safe, fear wouldn't arise," writes Chopra. He makes the point that from a position of spirituality, all fears are projections, a term coined by psychologist Carl Jung to state that one's thoughts, feeling and perceptions are outwardly focused or projected away from the self in an effort to defend the 'ego' from jolts.
"As long as these projections continue, you will keep generating fearful situations to accommodate them… the threats you perceive around you now, or coming at you in the future are the long shadow being cast by your past."
In relationships of long time standing, we often counteract this impulse to fear precisely because the lengthiness of the relationship.
In other words, according to this observation made by Chopra, if it was going to happen, it has already occurred, and you have already survived the worst of it. There is nothing more to fear today.

Now in romantic love, we feel protected and loved. But it was love, all along, whose protection we sought. "The love you have for one person is a safe zone and thus a good place to begin.'
'The beloved is like a harbor" in which you may take refuge. In an effort to protect ourselves from pain or disappointment, we may perform many maneuvers, either consciously or unconsciously.

Spiritually it is something like the child who places their hands over their ears. It's good for muffling overly loud noises or frustrating conversations. But it isn't selective; it blocks out most everything. So our efforts to protect our self from what we fear, often also accomplishes the banishment of the possibilities for love.

We can begin to replace controlling with allowing, writes Chopra. "If you can begin to replace controlling with allowing to your Beloved, the effect is to release you from attachment--both of you are spiritually served from the same act."
Examples of allowing are things like letting go of controls such as judgment, impatience, resistance; these may be replaced by allowing yourself and others some tolerance, acceptance, and open, non-resistance. There is a great freedom here; energy is released for other, constructive uses.

"Needing to control life, either yours or your partner, is based on spiritual desperation." When you allow, the self-serving facade of a demanding, critical, impatient, perfectionist partner begins to crumble.
An easy, more comfortable friendliness then may take its place, at least, in increasing amounts. Blame becomes unnecessary, love flows as a heart-felt sensation.
So then, from Chopra's view, the most loving thing one can do is to encourage and support these shifts within our self and our Beloved.

Popes and Diatribes

"a theology which out of love, wants to know the beloved better." --God Is Love by Pope Benedict XVI

As many, such as the writer quoted below, would like to distort the state of the world's largest Christian denomination with splenetic diatribes-- in other words, puking guts and not much else, T. Sanderson of the National Secular Society writes today:
"Under Ratzinger [Pope Benedict XVI] the Vatican has become despised and resented throughout the world. He has played a major role in reducing the Catholic Church's popularity and its authority.
Catholics have deserted the Church at an increasing rate, repelled by the inhumanity of Ratzinger's  unbending adherence to what are perceived as cruel doctrines ..."

It is a display of regrettable ignorance that one would attempt to characterize 1.3 billion persons of the earth's population as such. Are these world-wide Catholics fools? Why do they keep coming? Why does the Church increase world-wide in numbers?
Think carefully, seek creditable news sources such as Catholic News Service, before you form an opinion about another faith based on something different from your own.

It is in practice the truth that while the Catholic Church is regulated from the top down, from the Vatican to the world; equally true is that the Church is local. She, the Church, is regulated by the average person in the pews and by the local Bishops every bit as much. And in the working of the Holy Spirit, it is so that faith based on what one can know but may not see is true, like the truth of the wind blowing upon one's face. And that while some members may be in commission of grievous faults, the Church, the body of Christ is composed of those same persons in the pews who live the greatest call to "love one another."

That leaves little room for scathing diatribes against humanity. The Church is present upon all continents and under all governments from the most liberal to the most repressive dictatorships, offering care and comfort to the human family. May those same blessings of the Spirit be yours and mine.

Beggars From Calcutta

Carl Anderson writes boldly in his book, A Civilization of Love, "there is no gap between love of neighbor and justice." Attempts to contrast justice and love, serve to distort them both. Within justice is the meaning of mercy itself. To pursue justice without love is to engage in revenge. Love is not about revenge. From the earliest time, religions have pursued the liberation of the self, and the collective from every type of oppression and evil; they have promoted in degree, the dignity of the individual.

Within the civilization of love, there comes the realization that love is not mere sentiment, it is not mere feeling. Love is action, it is active; it includes the necessity of vocation, so that a civilization founded upon the dignity and value of all Creation may be realized. The sharing of love is basic to human life.  A heart which 'sees' and directs itself accordingly is one of the first actions taken in a civilization of love; priority must be given to the formation and re-formation of human hearts-- all hearts. The heart that 'sees' is one that has learned to see its own history, thus it knows how to recognize the other. Indeed, when the moment arrives that the heart in charity recognizes an experience of love and gift, it can no longer be perceived without awareness of one's own history. That is, the awareness of the loves that came before us: our parents, our family, the Divine, who loved us first and most.

There was, at one moment, a great act of Creation that begot us from seeming nothingness; we were brought into the world. In the civilization of love, someone's love is revealed as the initial source of our existence. The heart now awakened is able to see with 'eyes'. With the heart, events are viewed not only from one perspective, but from the greatest perspective of the acts of a co-creator in creation. The one who is blind, who does not see, then lives as if the divinity rests solely within them. Others may easily be forgotten or omitted. And yet it is not divinely demanded that we, as individuals, produce a feeling, or any feeling that we are not yet capable of producing. In the civilization of love, all are called to action for hope that our sight shall illuminate the way of the other. This is what is also called charity. Thus is the founding principles for actions such as those of the Missionaries of Charity, first of Calcutta, Blessed Mother Teresa, its foundress and now present in 133 countries including Peoria county, Illinois.

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta modeled her life upon this civilization of love. She called all to it; divinity and love are inseparable. She was well-seeing into the truth that loving one's neighbor was a central task of the heart in action. It is this which will form a better society for the common good, she wrote.

Eros Is a Verb

"It was Sappho who first called eros "bittersweet."  --Eros Bittersweet by Anne Carson

While hard to translate when applied to ancient gods, for the woman poet, Sappho who wrote the surviving poem Sweetbitter, the Greek word glukupikron translated into English might be thought of as bittersweet. Meaning a sort of sweetness when applied to eros and then a disappointment, or "first sweet and then bitterness in sequence," writes Carson. She says, "Many a lover's experience would validate such a chronology, especially in poetry..." In Sappho's poem, she does not seem to be recording the history of a love affair as much as she seems to be speaking of its geometry.

Desire is from without; it "creeps up upon its object irresistibly."  Recording in her poem, not the love but the instant of desire, Sappho sees the desire as "neither inhabitant nor ally of the desirer." And often poets write of the resulting crazed feeling of the one who most ardently pursues the beauty of another. "Foreign to her will, it [desire] forces itself... Eros is an enemy. Its bitterness must be the taste of  enmity. That would be hate." The convergence of both love and hate in the same pole constitutes a paradox. It is somewhat cliche to say that hate begins where love leaves off. And yet hate is not the opposite of love.

"There is something pure and indubitable about the notion that eros is lack." In Sappho's fragment 31 she writes of this. Here the poetess creates a stage, mise en scene where the writer herself seems to step mysteriously into the situation, between the lover and the beloved, forming what is a triangle. An obvious answer is that this poem is really about jealousy. Many have thought this about it, while others have thought not. The word 'jealousy' comes from the Greek zelos, meaning zeal or fervent pursuit. "It [jealousy] is a hot and corrosive spiritual emotion, arising in fear, fed upon resentment." The jealous lover fears that another is preferred over them, and that their primary place in the beloved heart is under threat by another. "This," writes Carson is "an emotion of placement and displacement."  Thus the jealous lover covets a placement in the beloved affections, and is filled with anxiety that another will take it instead.

In Italy during the Renaissance period a dance became popular called Jealousy in which pairs of dancers separated during parts of the dance to join with others; at several stages in the dance, one of the dancers must stand alone while others move on. They then rejoin the others. "Jealousy is a dance in which everyone moves, for it is the instability of the emotional situation which preys upon a jealous lover's mind." In Sappho's poem, she does not covet the man's place, nor fear for her own. And she directs no resentment at him. She is simply "amazed at his intrepidness." Yet it is the beloved beauty that so deeply affects Sappho as one in the triangle. And while jealousy may be implicit in this poem, it does not explain the geometry of the piece.

Finally jealousy, it becomes evident, is not the point: "the normal world of erotic responses is beside the point." It is, says Carson, "about the lover's mind in the act of constructing desire for itself." No claim beyond that does the poet make. Sappho perceives desire as a three point function, a triangle. She argues that it's a radical, necessary construction of desire. "For where eros is lack, its activation calls upon a three part structure--lover, beloved, and that which comes between them. Desire moves, and eros is a verb.

Inside the Grail Legend

“...if one is to find the Grail, [that] means not to fall prey to a mood.” The Holy Grail as interpreted by Robert Johnson


There are many, many truths to be gained from study of this most unique of legends, the Holy Grail. Following the lead of Carl and Emma Jung and Marie Louise von Franz, Robert Johnson writes in his book, He, that “what the Grail myth is telling us is that in his relationship to the interior feminine a man should relate to her, that interior feminine [self] on a feeling level and not on a mood level.” The author distinguishes the terms mood and feeling by explanation: he writes, a mood is the result of the interior self unconsciously in possession, the anima or interior feminine self of a man; a feeling is a value, the ability to value. “If a man has a good relationship with his anima, his feminine self, he is able to feel, to value, and thus find meaning in his life. If a man is not related to his anima... he has no capacity for valuation. So sharp collision between the two types of interior experience a man goes through."

In the Legend of the Grail, Percival is guided to his feeling senses, his anima. In discovering a bit of this sense, he is useful and creative; in doing so, he must not however seduce or be seduced by the interior feminine self. Granting himself seduction is destructive towards his goal of finding the Grail Castle. He is, in the legend, most thoroughly advised not to fall prey to a mood. “As soon as a man falls into a mood, he has no capacity for relationship, no power for feeling and therefore no capacity for valuation.” All moods, good or bad, are trouble.

While under the spell of a mood, the one who feels its effect is like a person bewitched. “He cannot think, he cannot function, he cannot relate; he may think he’s doing a great deal, but there is just so much churning inside. If something is not already wrong, a man in a mood will make it wrong.” And if they are not wise to it, a man’s loved ones may also fall victim to his moods. A man may, in fact, in that state of mind think that they are quite responsible for his moods!

Robbed of a sense of relatedness or meaning, a man in a mood we learn in the Grail legend, is a man who cannot find fulfillment. He is easily bored. Thus “if something is wrong with one’s ability to relate, the meaning in life is gone. So depression is another term for mood. One finds that most of the content of a psychosis for a man is anima. It’s a haunting, a possession.” A mood is a little madness then, which overtakes. Many times a person may be overtaken by a mood. There is then wild enthusiasm for this or for that, but the mood runs its course and then the thing is forgotten; much time and money is expended by those in a mood. While in this state he does not ‘run his own house’ and then is impossible to live with; he is terribly critical of exterior, in the flesh women at this time, soundly blaming them for any number of things to which they stand mystified!  A man must learn in his quest for the Grail to look for fulfillment but not good moods, lest he is again in possession by something destructive. It’s as if in the mood he declares, “You are going to make me happy--or else!”

The anecdote to this is to learn to live in time, moment to moment. One can learn to recognize the advent of a mood and refuse it. It is one's responsibility to know what is going on within himself so as to live consciously-- the point of this quest for the Holy Grail. “A man who has this kind of self-knowledge begins to develop ego strength,” writes Johnson. When truly enthusiastic, a man is filled with the Spirit of God. He is vibrant and creative. A great creativity flows, one which is stable and productive. It is not the petulance of a child.

The truest genius of a flesh and blood woman is that if she can be consciously aware of her innate feminine nature, not critical of others, and strong enough to stand up to this “spurious femininity” when a man’s mood presents such; he will likely come out of his mood and return to his senses. Many in this world are in the possession of a mental illness, a foul mood which befalls them either frequently or intermittently. They may say they’re having a bad day while in this state. And when comes its opposite, because balance is necessary, mania or depression appears. Chaos may also result owing to the lack of feeling or valuing. Careful reflection and conscious awareness is the point of Percival’s methodical search. The myth, if we follow it through, tells us that Percival triumphs.

Sufism

"Whoever has no Master, has Satan as his Master."

Sufism has been part of the corporeal body of Islam for most of its history. The term sufi is known from at least the eighth century C.E.; it is from the word for wool (suf), a symbol of purity by the wearer of such a garment. The suf indicated also that there was an obvious degree of spiritual proximity to God. It is a representation of the ideal mode of worship towards God, with the whole of the heart, mind and body. Sufism is practiced throughout Islamic history as a way to access the divine love, wisdom and knowledge of the Creator which are the basis of mysticism. Sufism then has nothing to do with what authors of the book, Sufism: Love and Wisdom by Jean-Louis Michon, Roger Gaetani call, "the sectarian movements which mostly in the Western world, have used its name, fame, and even some psycho-spiritual practices to attract a naive clientele with the promise of quick spiritual advances."

"The Doctrine of Unity," writes the authors is central to Islamic revelation; 'unity is expressed by the testimony of Faith." Also accompanying the Doctrine of Unity are the concepts of the Universal Man, Mohammad the Prophet and Envoy. All who strive to imitate his virtues, and perfect intellect, pray so as to recover ones' own "pristine nature." Then there is the "Way of Recollection" without consideration or acknowledgment of human free will, places man in a garden, "naturally submitting to the Creator, and thus celebrating His praise..." What is generally known as "The Book of God," the Quran guides the believer to the paths of salvation through the sacred traditions bestowed upon every human community in history.

Finally the Sufis say,"whoever has no Master, has Satan as his Master..." Those who dare to travel to God by their own means are doomed to fail in the Islamic mind. Islam teaches that the "rebellion against God takes place on the level of the psyche, not on that of the body. The flesh is only an instrument for the tendencies originating within the psyche." So then it is the mind and spirit which must be lifted up and trained so as to go the way of truth. These are a few of the topics considered in this book of essays by various authors.

Self-Forgiveness: Crossing Boundaries

"Self-forgiveness is a stance of hope, of freedom." Forgiving Yourself by Beverly Flannigan

Continuing consideration of the value and practice of self-forgiveness, author Beverly Flannigan writes about a topic few even think about, understand or practice. It is an important topic in most all spiritual traditions, certainly those who engage in actions for salvation, such as in Buddhism. She writes that "mistakes are harmful, rash, impulsive, foolish acts... a mistake is morally neutral... mistakes are errors." However she distinguishes mistakes or errors from transgressions, crossing boundaries as quite different. Unlike mistakes in which no harmful intention is made, transgressions often include malicious intent and are then not neutral. Most would think of those actions to be just wrong.

Transgressions typically cross over a number of boundaries such as moral, legal, interpersonal, or social. They are not morally neutral because the intent is to deprive, to harm, to impair or injure, usually for a self-centered reason on the part of the perpetrator. Many communities observe specific prohibitions regarding transgressions; these prohibitions may be called different things, such as precepts, commandments, rules, values, but their intent is similar or the same: to observe and regard commitments, and the resulting responsibilities made by groups and individuals to one another.
They may also observe the consequences.  For example, a legal transgression may be stealing, assault, battery or throwing your junk out on an isolated country road. Communities set forth moral rules regulating the conduct of persons for the benefit of the common good, and the good of individuals; we expect to abide by them, even if we don't agree with their premise.

On the other hand, perhaps the most common boundary crossed besides legal boundaries are moral. Moral transgressions "between people are special kinds of wrong doings; they are special because when two [or more] persons form a relationship [or community], their separate ideas of right and wrong combine to form a new construct of right and wrong, unique to those two people." All manner of constructs may be forged; the net result is a working blueprint of the social relationship between the individuals. For this reason, breaking or violating these agreements typically results in a strong sense of grief for the other party[parties]."When people transgress moral agreements with friends, spouses, beloveds, they cross the barriers of their own ideas about right and wrong by lying, withholding, taking resources, so as to typically deprive the other[s] of truth, or other goods and benefits." Violations are often ultimately of a spiritual nature.

"The pain of non-forgiveness is rooted in your mistakes, transgressions, evil intentions, your own shortcomings and limitations." To forgive yourself and others is a stance of hope; it is a newness of self which results from the freedom to start again.

Spiritual Destiny in the Vedic Tradition

"The path to love is never about externals... the path to love isn't a choice, for all of us must find out who we are. This is our spiritual destiny." --The Path to Love by Deepak Chopra

Socially "all of us must find a partner, marry and raise a family," writes Chopra in his book, The Path to Love. "But this social pattern isn't a path because it isn't automatically spiritual... A spiritual path has only one reason to exist: it shows the Way for the soul to grow. As it grows, more spiritual truth is revealed, more of the soul's promise is redeemed." People today, he notes are often filled with self doubts, doubts about others in their lives; like restless consumers, they adopt a shopping mentality, rather than a sense of free choice and self determination, they carry about mental check-lists of pluses and minuses.

However says Chopra, when you find the Way, you find your love; you find your heart. "However good or bad you feel about your relationship right now, the person you are with is the right person because he or she is a mirror of whom you feel to be inside to this moment. So when we struggle with others, in this view, we are in fact struggling with ourselves. As the French proverb says, "Qui accuse, s'accuse," or "He who accuses, accuses himself." Often we think that when we find that person, they will clear it up for us, they will either give or take something we do not already possess. However, when you do find love, inevitably, you find yourself.

"Therefore the path to love isn't a choice, for all of us must find out who we are. This is our spiritual destiny. Doubts reflect the ego which drives away from the path; love reflects God, eternal, divine essence." Ultimately the promise of faith is that you will travel the Way without any promises or guarantees, walking in the light of truth or Veda, beyond anything which your mind knows in this, or any other moment. 

Falling in love, once on the path, on the Way, you find yourself at the beginning of Love's eternal journey to the One, to wholeness, to sacredness. Learning to accept the present moment as it is, a growing acceptance and surrender to those moments arises, and a key to a spiritual relationship is realized. "The true need of the spirit is always to grow." As you grow, Chopra writes, "you exchange false, shallow feelings for deep , true emotions, and thus trust, compassion and devotion and service become realities" in your life. Your thoughts change; your changes and growth lead to the need for action; in a marriage, there is no faltering, because such a relationship is sacred, based on the Way of the divine. Such relationships are also innocent, because innocence thrives in environments which devotion, love and service to others is your primary motive.

Thus as followers of the Way, travellers on the path, the Beloved, the divine beloved, may be the one whom we meet in our life, or it may be internal, the one who is in their soul, their image of God, reflected onto them. As a vision or a call the awareness of the beloved, through surrender to that which is greatest, blossoms into love for the One. "All relationships are simply, ultimately a relationship with God." What does your relationship look like? What does your soul desire to be?

Henri Nouwen: Masculine and Feminine God

You have to keep searching for your body's deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body's superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity.” -Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

Masculine and Feminine God
"Often I have asked friends to give me their first impression of Rembrandt's Prodigal Son. Inevitably, they point to the wise old man who forgives his son: the benevolent patriarch.

"The longer I look at 'the patriarch', the clearer it becomes to me that Rembrandt has done something quite different from letting God pose as the wise old head of a family. It all began with the hands. The two are quite different. The father's left hand touching the son's shoulder is strong and muscular. The fingers are spread out and cover a large part of the prodigal son's shoulder and back. I can see a certain pressure, especially in the thumb. That hand seems not only to touch, but, with its strength, also to hold. Even though there is a gentleness in the way the father's left hand touches his son, it is not without a firm grip.
"How different is the father's right hand! This hand does not hold or grasp. It is refined, soft, and very tender. The fingers are close to each other and they have an elegant quality. It lies gently upon the son's shoulder. It wants to caress, to stroke, and to offer consolation and comfort. It is a mother's hand....'
"As soon as I recognized the difference between the two hands of the father, a new world of meaning opened up for me. The Father is not simply a great patriarch. He is mother as well as father. He touches the son with a masculine hand and a feminine hand. He holds, and she caresses. He confirms and she consoles. He is, indeed, God, in whom both manhood and womanhood, fatherhood and motherhood, are fully present.'

'That gentle and caressing right hand echoes for me the words of the biblical prophet Isaiah, "Can a woman forget her baby at the breast, feel no pity for the child she has borne? Even if these were to forget, I shall not forget you. Look, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands."
Also Nouwen writes: “Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body's deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body's superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity.”

excerpted from Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

In Return of the Prodigal Son, Nouwen describes love and forgiveness as unconditional. Though this is not a new idea, Nouwen's thought is arguably unique as he approached this theme from the view of the younger son, the elder son, and the father.
Each captures the unconditional quality of love and forgiveness in their own way. The younger son's life shows how the beloved lives a life of misery by thinking he can be loved only by meeting certain qualifications of the lover which he fails to meet.
The elder son's actions shows how the beloved can be depressed because he thinks he should receive greater love because he has done all the right things, or that he has met these qualifications.
The father alone understands how to love and forgive and is able to do so, and be happy. Nouwen explains that we are the younger son at times; when we think we don't deserve the love or the forgiveness, and the elder son at times; when we think we deserve love, or that another doesn't deserve it more than us-- that we are all called to be like the father; that by being like the father, we can come closer to being loved as the beloved.

About Henri Nouwen

Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) is a 20th century Christian writer, poet, teacher and mystic. He lived both in the Netherlands and in the United States. His books are now read in many languages around the world.