Deeper, Further, Beyond

“God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.” ― Voltaire

For those of us who’ve been on this journey for a while—this god thing, we began most often in some religious tradition, some denomination, Protestant, Catholic or even other faith group.  That provided us—me, with a framework, a starting place. We listened to our ministers, our priest, our teachers. We read, not only the Bible but things about the Bible broadening our knowledge.  Some of us even went to seminary to learn more to enable us to serve others.  But somewhere along the way the framework was just that.  It was like the studs, joists and rafters of a house.  We don’t decide to live there—it’d be rather breezy.  We build out around the framework.  

With faith it is the same.  As writers like Rohr say, those first decades we constructed the container that holds all this experience, these teachings up until—we notice cracks.  Some, if not more, of the teachings we heard were incomplete, inadequate if not even misleading.  Our own experience over those years did not support what we’d heard, what we’d been told.  The term these days is deconstruction.  I lean toward describing it as a re-framing (still sticking with the construction metaphor) because we don’t totally discard all of what has been (although some do), we just go on, beyond.  

Jesus was meant to be the full representation of God.  We and others refer to him as the son of God, but then we too are told we are the sons and daughters.  Jesus himself said that his purpose was to show us God, his father.  In sci-fi terms, Jesus was/is a portal, a window.  He said more than once, look through me that you might better know the real character of God.  He said don’t just stare at the portal, the window frame—although it, He, was the point of connection.  Yet Jesus was not just Jesus.  He was the fullness of the Godhead incarnate.  We have lots of windows at our house and as I sit with my coffee I don’t just gaze at the window (unless it’s dirty).  I look through the window.  I see beyond, through it. It is a means, a transit that offers me more.  Jesus is that window.   

That is what Jesus did, what he does.  In some almost bizarre way, this relationship with him, presents us with another view, a reality beyond what we ever dreamed possible. On tougher days, we are tempted to believe that it IS impossible.  But then we see that this ‘kingdom’ regularly referred to is internal, within us.  We come to relate to a God within us yet all around us as Voltaire said.  There are mini-portals everywhere.  It comes down to will I or won’t I walk on, walk through. 

I’ve seen enough, come to experience enough, that jumping through portals is a way of life, particularly the Jesus one.  

Fear not. Jump.