The Sacred Unity of All
This Hindu blessing, from the Bhagavad Gita, is said before meals:
This ritual is One.
The food is One.
We who offer the food are One.
The fire of hunger is also One.
All action is One.
We who understand this are One.
Indeed, it is all One in the immense and undiscriminating Love that is God.”
The concept of the unity of all things, represented by the ‘P’ version, as opposed to the division of all things, represented by the ‘J’ version, is not new. The Bhagavad Gita originated in the Indus River civilization some 7,000 years ago, 5,000 years before Jesus, and the unity of all things with God and with each other and all creation is one of its major themes.
Jesus taught unity. At his last meal, Jesus prayed,
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
The existence of these convenient but devastating and un-natural separations between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, rich and poor, saved and unsaved, clean and unclean, more and less than, and on and on, are failures of the human-kind to live our created purpose to be the Lovers of, and for the Great Spirit, and failing to receive the reign of the Spirit on earth that Jesus inaugurated. In plain fact, all ‘sins,’ whether against self or humanity, come down to a failure to Love.
• • •
Friends with Her?
So where did we take the original wrong turn, and how might we begin again and start over? When Jesus said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again,” he was saying you people are so far down the wrong path in your relationships that you need to return to where you took the original wrong turn and begin again, but this time taking the right path. When walking the wrong path, turning left or right at an intersection will not fix the problem. Admitting that we are wrong in this most fundamental of all relations between women and men takes humility and will be painful.
There is no hierarchy in friendship.
Power over cannot exist, or it is not friendship. How might women and men befriend one another, as in the above example? We must make things right, but these things run deep. What might it take to make friends with her? Shall I make up for her lost opportunity?
What if:
I stopped believing I am more of something than she.
I would stop wantonly consuming and surrender to her all that a foul history has given me and has not given to her.
I would defer my desires in favor of hers.
I would fully submit myself to her so that she might be all that the
Spirit has created her to be.
I would be for her what I would have her be for me.
I would quit thinking of her primarily as a woman and, instead, as one of the human kind.
I would serve her.
I would die for her.
Certainly, this is a list of what needs to be done, but even if compassion is the motive, it all comes from a place in me of power (above her), fulfilling the hopes of a less entitled person (beneath me). And that changes nothing.
• • •
Submission
Or, I could invite her to a relationship of being mutually and fully submitted to one another’s healing.
And that would be friendship, and friendship is what Paul was encouraging the Ephesians to embrace; and what Jesus extended to his followers when he said:
“No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”
Western culture imagines friendship as a lower-level relationship. For Jesus, friendship was the highest order of connection.
Friends are equals, and they meet in the emotional and cultural middle, where there is no question of power over, ever, or it is not friendship. It is something else entirely. The foundation of friendship, as defined by Jesus, is submission. Each intentionally puts the needs of the other above their own. Precisely what Jesus showed by the life he chose to live and the death he chose to die.
The common and mistaken thinking about equality assumes that excellence must go unrecognized and all must be reduced to the lowest common denominator. But, in the reign of the Spirit, the best of us conclude they are one with the least of us in all things, and there is equality.
• • •
The Spirit spoke, saying,
“Your healing is in the hands of those
for whom you have received healing.”
There is healing reserved for us in the amount we will heal others. Do we genuinely want to be the fully human being She created us to be? Then, finally laying our egos and our ‘holy wants, needs, and desires’ (Eugene Peterson) aside, we must sacrificially lay down our lives at the feet of our broken, hurt world (as Jesus did) and heal somebody else. There is an entire world on our doorstep still waiting for the healing that God has put in our hands for their sake, and until then, we will not be fully healed. Jus’ sayin’.
Our Creator wills that we experience ourselves one with the entire universe. It was to encourage my understanding that the Spirit placed my healing in the hands of others. I cannot heal myself. I must seek and submit to others for the healing I desperately need. They, likewise, must seek me and submit to the recovery the Spirit has put into my hands for them. This is the kingdom of the Spirit at work. We need each other; there are no individuals in the Kingdom. Individuality is a misset mythology of Western culture.
• • •
Again, the Holy Spirit spoke, asking,
“…and could you be satisfied being one grain of sand among many on my beach, or do you need to be the brightest pebble on my beach?”
Truthfully, I have always wanted to be the best, better than everyone else. And I have always been willing to be faster and run farther than everyone else to prove my point. I expected to be rewarded in my more religious years by appearing remarkable, even anointed. Am I willing to be as loved as anyone else but no more so? Am I willing to concede to others the specialness that, in my mind, belongs uniquely to me? I either must or I must stop calling myself a follower of Jesus.
He said,
“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
And,
“The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
Also,
“If anyone would be first, he must be last and servant of all.”
Today, I accept I am as loved, remarkable, unique, special, and anointed as all are. I am content to be with you, Her favorite.
• • •
A Submitted Life
“The bread you hold back belongs to the hungry; the coat you guard in your locked storage chests belongs to the naked; the footwear moldering in your closet belongs to those without shoes. The silver you keep hidden in a safe place belongs to the needy. Thus, however many are those whom you could have provided for, so many are those whom you wrong.”
― Saint Basil (330-379 AD)
Imagine a world where everyone lives
fully submitted to one another’s healing.
When I am fully offered to you, your wholeness is more important than mine. You are my friend. My first concern is your hunger, thirst, loneliness, nakedness, sickness, or imprisonment, even if I am hungry or thirsty. We know no enemies, for we are one. If some act wickedly, I know I have the same potential, given the right circumstances. I am one with them.
When I am submitted, I do not covet what you have since what I have belongs to you. And, you are not poor or hungry if I have money in the bank and food in my pantry
The Prophet Micah, speaking of our Creators’ dream, wrote,
“[She] shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more, but they shall sit [everyone] under [their] vine and under [their] fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.
And the Prophet Isaiah prophesied,
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
Until the foundational love relationship between the human Female, the Human Male and the Holy Spirit is healed, nothing truly excellent shall be.
There is a time coming when females and males will mature as a result of our evolving relationship with the Holy. Then, the Sacred Feminine and the Holy Masculine shall emerge, and standing shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, one, as we were created to be, before Her. We shall give our account of human history. Come, let us seek wisdom together. The future of the human-kind is at stake.