Essay #21:  Practicing the Presence V:  A New Way of Being and Greeting in the World

The new order that awaits us in the Kingdom will usher in new ways of being and greeting in the world.  Our perceptions of one another will change radically.  We will cease to see the things that separate us as the “most real” things about us and come to see them as odd or interesting curiosities that deserve no more attention than, say, a feathered hat.  We will know beyond doubt that the path to fellowship lies open between us and work doggedly and tirelessly to walk that path.  The more of us who do this, the more will be called to question their old ways, put down their spears, and take up the gauntlet of the peacemakers and soul-sharers.

It always takes a certain number of “early adopters” behind a cause for economic, social, cultural, or spiritual change before that pitch of vibration can be collectively reached which produces a “system jump” into the next highest level of progression or enlightenment.  Before that there is always resistance, and resistance which seems hopeless and immovable. It may very well be that such resistance can never really be overcome by us–not on our own, not without the assistance of the Divine.  That view accords well with our foregoing opinion that it is through a kind of harmonic resonance that we summon the Divine, that we call to open the doors of the Kingdom.  And it gives us just the right metaphor to keep us protected from “activism” with its all too serious belief in the efficacy of its tribe.

Becoming an early adopter of the Kingdom does not mean becoming an activist for an as yet unpopular human cause.  The problem with activism is that it relies too much on its own sanguine efforts.  It often springs from an ideology which divides the world into “those for us” and “those against us” and defines success as the elevation of line items in its “platform.”  There is little time or room in it for surrender.  Indeed, surrender is usually seen by activism as its antithesis and as failure.  But we know from the Christology that surrender is essential to receive wisdom that transcends ideologies.  It is just what is needed for us to be led beyond our “demonization” of the other side to true knowledge that “nobody’s gettin’ to heaven ‘less we all gettin’ to heaven.”

Early adoption of the Kingdom–or “early discipleship”–cannot spring from an ideology precisely because it cannot be fully known what lies beyond the limit border of our failed understanding, our failed economy, and our failed classist social structure.  We have been able to sketch some of the outlines of the Kingdom, but its true greatness and scope are known only to God, as well as the means to its realization.  Our role is indeed to pursue the Kingdom with the current wisdom that God has given us.  But it is never to become entrenched in beliefs or ideologies which we will not surrender tomorrow if he delivers discernment to us of a better way.

On the other hand, to become an early adopter does not mean to promote economic, social, and cultural change after the manner of the “establishment” either.  There aspiration does not rise high enough nor dedication run deep enough for something truly new and wonderful to come to light. Most economic changes, for example, tend to sweep in and out with their administrations or regimes.  Or they are chiefly the product of corporate or other secular economic entities which show little or no interest in the public welfare.

Social changes may become better established unless they are merely fads or fashions, but in the absence of the Kingdom the separation of social groups may persist despite the ascent to power of previously background minorities.  The rise of blacks in social status, for example, since the Emancipation Proclamation has not kept apace with it the level of trust between the races.  There is arguably not significantly more trust today than there was in the years immediately following the Civil War, certainly not if we take account of the increased opportunities for such trust that have gone unanswered.

Cultural changes usually happen more within established groups than between them, such as shifts in attitudes among Catholics about birth control or about celibacy or among gays as to what labels they prefer to go under.  In general, the most sweeping changes in society as we know it tend to be extremely shallow such as the kind of electronic gadgets that are current or the latest diet or food fad or girlie fashion.

At the same time, the lack of certain sweeping changes is arguably killing the planet and us along with it.  The lack of an effective international policy on climate change is one glaring example.  Another would be the scant global effort to establish sustainable agriculture.  And another would be the lack of significant worldwide resistance to strip mining and widespread deforestation.  Once again, we could point to the lack of widespread conversion to alternative energy sources and emission-free vehicles.  We have not even mentioned any worldwide call to lay down arms, as armed conflict seems to have become so much the norm that hopes for peace are no longer seriously embraced even by countries that used to try to broker it.  On the surface at least, despite a few “anomalies,” we seem to be spiraling downwards, not upwards, and our rate of descent would seem to be increasing rather than decreasing.

If one looks squarely at the scale of the problem, one would not reasonably be inclined to come out on the side of hope.  The anomalies of such organizations as World Vision, the Red Cross, and the World Food Programme notwithstanding, enormous numbers of people are dying from starvation, poverty, and disease.  The wealth of the upper class is growing larger and the world’s wealth as a whole is more narrowly concentrated in their hands.  Faith in the good will of political leaders is low and in their ability to effect positive change still lower.  This would not seem to be by anyone’s estimation a time ripe for the emergence of the Kingdom.  Indeed, the most ardent religious organizations seem to be gearing up more for Armageddon than for peace on Earth.  But this cannot possibly be what adopting the Kingdom is all about.

It is a good thing and a very good thing indeed that Jesus held out hope for the planet.  For he lived in a time where his own land had been both overrun and occupied by an aggressor.  He lived during an age where the religion he grew up in was fearful, hidebound, and intent on protecting its own interests.  He was loved neither by those in his own town nor by those in faraway positions of authority who should have sought to know him better.  Nevertheless, and despite all these things, Jesus held high hopes for God’s people and for the planet.  Even within a fortnight of his death he appointed his disciples to go out to the cities and deliver the good news.  He gave them specific instructions even where to find safe harbor, not as a reckless anarchist or activist casting people about like human stones, but as a considerate reformer who knew that his “word” would take hold in all parts of the world.

If that was true for Jesus then, in conditions no better than our own, it can be true for us today.  If Jesus brought keys to the Kingdom as he said, then the Kingdom is still among us today as “unclaimed treasure.”  What would it really take to claim and adopt this treasure, open up the treasure chest, and begin to enjoy its contents?  In today’s world, communication can be instantaneous.  Word can spread like wildfire and virtually nobody’s business is assured of being only their business.  The technological means for assigning, delivering, and tracking resources have never been more sophisticated or impressive.  The same could be said about the technology given to harnessing and utilizing those resources.  None of the problems we outlined above lies beyond our abilities to solve them and to solve them rapidly and well.  Our difficulty does not lie in a lack of solutions but in a lack of implementations.  We are rather like those who started out building the Tower of Babel.  All went well at first, and the tower was progressing according to plan.  But then God decided they weren’t ready and caused them to speak all manner of different languages.  Once that happened, they could not understand each other well enough to implement their plans, and the tower failed.  We are like them in that a sufficient commonality is once again lacking to us; however, in our case it is not so much a commonality of language that is lacking but of spirit, and of purpose. 

Imagine for a moment what the world could be like once more united under a common spirit and a common purpose.  Imagine if the whole world and not just limited sectors of the globe united behind the purpose of eliminating world hunger.  Imagine that the rich were all too willing to liquidate all but a minor portion of their holdings, and all the world’s governments planned a cohesive and pervasive effort to redistribute those holdings in the form of food and sustainable resources to those who need it most.  What would it take?  Five years?  Ten years?  Maybe in two years nobody would be starving on the planet, including the formerly wealthy, who would now be more wealthy in spirit.

Truly our lack does not consist in a deficit of resources, technologies, or manpower.  It consists in a lack of implementation due to a lock on resources, technologies, and manpower.  And this lock is due to narrow-mindedness around purpose, fearfulness of heart and spirit, and a highly myopic vision.

Even so, Jesus said to be of good cheer.  Even so, at the very hour of his arrest and the start of his march to death, he stayed the sword that had cut off the ear of his enemy, and he restored the ear.  He meant for all to stay and to put away the sword of the ego that would dismember us and instead to listen as one body to the prompting of the Spirit.

“Come,” we can still hear it.  “For the time is nigh and the time is here for those of you with a glimmer of light to let your light shine and to add it to others’.   The time is here for you early adopters to come forth and say, ‘Yea, the Kingdom is ours–all of ours–and let us have it.’  Then take the unclaimed treasure of your inheritance and free it from the dusty chains of your own misconceptions.  Free it from the specters of weight and burden that have discounted it.  Remove the speck of lead from your own eye that made you see lead and not gold when God sent Jesus to you with the keys to the treasure.  Come–more and more of you–to know instead the incredible lightness of being that is in that vault, the doorways into undreamt of mind-states at the back of that armoire you had heretofore unnoticed, the glorious history of its design and manufacture until at last that stretches forth also as your beautiful, sumptuous, collective future.”

Indeed, the time is now for us to reclaim the treasure of our inheritance.  The time has come for us to listen deeply to the Spirit once more and also to hear one another in the unity reclaimed through that deep listening.  Then it is for us to lock arms with our brothers and sisters and declare to the world the Glory and the Kingdom of God.  Such manner of communication and greeting common to all seekers and makers of the Kingdom confounded many in the days of the early church.  For many spoke in tongues, and some in their own languages, but all were understood by the power of the One True Spirit.  We also ought to give ownership to the Spirit of a particular manner of greeting by which we would meet and know one another and spread the Good News.  What should it be if not a greeting at once universally understood and an invitation to friendship, common purpose, and collaboration in the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth?

Perhaps we could take this as our greeting:  that we would clasp our hands in a handshake, only reaching up beyond the hands to take hold of the wrists and thus cover the wound where Christ was pierced by the nail.  Thus we would communicate to each other both our own woundedness and our desire to heal and be healed.  We would touch the hurt place–at least symbolically–to make and to show our first labor of love for the Kingdom.  For the next person I meet and greet is the anybody and everybody in the body of Christ who would co-inhabit the Kingdom.  To God there is no one person more or less special than the next.  All are special.  Then let it be so for us.

Along with this greeting, perhaps this could be our speaking:  “In Him with you.”  Four words which say it all.  “In God with you.”¹ We thus would let each know God in her own way, according to her own religion and tradition.  Yet our goal would be to come though that, into God, and from Him toward one another.  Let us not imagine that we could ever come out of separation  into a null zone that would have any power at all to heal and overcome separation.² Rather, the power of this proposed greeting lies in the effort of its outreach, no less in its surrender to the Divine, not a bit less in its intention that “God’s will be done, His Kingdom come, on Earth as it is in Heaven.”   Both its power and the realization of its goal lie in the Oneness behind the greeting, the Reality that ever beckons and calls us to own it, the rightful inheritance of one and all to enjoy together.

If enough of us were to join together and enjoy only this manner of greeting and speaking, we should believe that the vibration from it would begin to build significantly.  If we were to meet and greet one another thus, the momentum gained could indeed become unstoppable.  For after the greeting would come the natural inquiry, “How can I be of help to you?”  Or it might be, “What can we do together to serve the Kingdom?”

The Spirit will lose no time–no time at all–entering into any sincere opportunity we create  to further the Kingdom.   Intentional ways of greeting and speaking may seem like small or peculiar steps, but small steps taken by increasingly large populations multiply into significant forces.  And when significant forces come to play in harmonic resonance they summon still greater forces to their aid and in the furtherance of their goals.  These are none other than the sound principles built into the design of the cosmos.  Starting small, we will end up large, or as Jesus put it, “The last shall be first, and the first last [and] the meek shall inherit the Earth.”3

It is not in the pretentious gestures of the ego nor in the sweeping claims of the understanding that our prowess lies.  Rather by the gift of pure knowing through the subtle prompting of the Spirit upon our heart we become a formidable force.  We should indeed be of good cheer.  We should take Jesus literally and at his word when he said to us, “Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”  We should know that it is not just the odds that are with us, nor even only the gods, but that God himself assures us of the outcome of returning to Him in the end.  It will be either now or later, so why not now?  By the gifts and power of the Holy Spirit invested in us, it can be now.  It can be in the next step that we take, and in the step after.

 

Notes:

1. In practice, this greeting may be give as, “In Him.”  Then the other person may complete it by saying, “With you.”  This “call and response” variation is simpler to say and has the advantage of involving both parties in its completion.  It makes an absolutely lovely overture for the first person to put all else aside in his greeting and simply and clearly presence the Father.  And it is an equally lovely response for the second to acknowledge that presence and insist that she dwell in it only with the first.  In that brief exchange of seconds is affirmed the whole upon which life in the Kingdom depends.

2. It is critical to comprehend the significance of coming from the Divine in overcoming separation and developing effective means of communication.  Heretofore the greatest difficulty in bringing disparate groups or factions together has been the inability of the mediators to draw them out from their histories of conflict into a zone of trust.  Such a “zone” inevitably appears to members of such groups to be a “null zone”–that is, an empty place which no amount of talking, prodding, or convincing can ever free from the painful projections of history, be they bomb blasts, killings, pillage, rape, or the more subtle connivings of usury, class containment, and discrimination.

Connection and communication in the Kingdom has nothing to do with arguing the finer points of cease fires, treaties, land grants, ruminerations, and reverse discriminations.  It starts with the intention to return to the root from which all histories grow, the buried spring from which all desire emerges and then quickly goes astray like a thousand rivulets tumbling down a mountainside.  When we cover each other’s wound with our hand, we are symbolically reaching deeply inside of it and behind it to the place where we literally both dwell “in Him.”  This is not metaphorical but factual, and its importance cannot be overstated.  For out in front of our histories, any meeting place between us will inevitably appear to be a null zone frought with the dangers those histories foretell.  But when we reach back through and behind our histories to the root which unites us not in time and temporal unfolding but in a blood-lock that finds us joined in the heart of Eternity, then the space between us appears freshly opened to infinite possibilities and unforetold opportunities for good will.

3. Here we would do well to recall the practice of passing through the eye of a needle discussed in Essay #18.  What we said there can be applied here to practicing even the smallest gesture that serves in realizing the Kingdom:

In a very real sense, we have to do it so that we come face to face with the resistance which makes it hard. We have to find this place of resistance and press into it–press into the qi. The paradox is that by pressing into this resistance we actually gather strength; we gather qi.

We need not grand, impressive gestures performed by a few but small, finely-attuned, and dedicated expressions of Spirit performed by many.  In these alone shall that resonance be achieved which at last throws open the gates of the Kingdom and brings to our aid the thrust of change already potent within the husks of creation.