Being...
Like most folks I find myself pretty much chained to my desk on a daily basis. Which is why I try to regularly get out for a long walk through and beyond my neighborhood. Even at a pace brisk enough to provide some cardiovascular exercise, I find I have time to just reflect and connect to a sense of awe.
Today was one of those rare, exceptional days in New Jersey when the sky was an incredibly intense blue, and the evergreens, the red and green maples and various hardwoods stood majestically against that backdrop. The air was filled with scents of incredible varieties of blossoming flowers. Squirrels and rabbits scampered across neighborhood lawns. Gardens contained the telltale signs of visits by whitetail deer during the night before. The voices of doves and songbirds, punctuated by a crow or two poignantly calling each other, provided a soft melodious background.
As I walked along the county road I watched two hawks gliding on currents of air, circling a large field in search of breakfast. They were silhouetted against a clear sky disrupted only by two dissipating contrails that stretched for miles.
At times like these, I find myself marveling at the height of Mt. Everest at being 5.5 miles tall, and the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean almost 7 miles below sea level. I wonder about the incredible world we cannot see without a microscope, and the expanse of the universe beyond our solar system, our galaxy, the reach of our telescopes. Im overcome with a sense of wonder at the bio-diversity of the planet on which we walk, the universe in which we live: the exhaustive array of insects and animals, flowers and shrubs and trees, organic and inorganic minerals. And not to be excluded is the wondrous diversity of the human species.
I get caught up in wonder that as Im strolling along, Im actually traveling on a sphere that is rotating at over 1,000 miles per hour. That together were traveling in an orbit around our Sun at an average speed of over 10,000 miles per hour, while our Sun revolves around the Milky Way galaxy on an almost circular orbit with a speed of over 492,000 miles per hour!! You and I are hurtling through our home galaxy at an accumulated speed of over 13.67 billion miles per second. And, all this has come lovingly into being, and culminating in this present moment which has unfolded over a period of 8 - 18 billion years.
Does that not just make you stop in your tracks? It is at times like these that I can only stand in awe of the One that sustains all these incredibly diverse and yet truly complementary ecological systems and holds them in balance. The One who in the biblical stories asked Jonah where were you when I set this all in motion? and told Moses to take off your shoes, you are on holy ground. This One, beyond the stories, beyond the myth, Jesus taught us to call Abba !!
Jesus was not concerned with trying to be a reformed Jew or reforming Judaism. He was concerned about being who he was. He understood how close God has always been to us. He knew in the depths of his (S)pirit that he was, you are, I am always a child of that Abba.
Being a child of that Abba led Jesus to connect especially with all those who needed to know that they were treasured. It led him to comfort, to heal, to cleanse, to call to ministry those who were at the edges, or outcast from proper religious society, revealing, as Michael Morwood would say, the God in and among us.
In many ways those closest disciples didnt get it. The early community, centering around Peter and around Paul, struggled to come to grips with the way gentile believers were called to live and manifest their faith. Rather than forcing gentiles to embrace the practices of Judaism, the community came to an appreciation that there was not just one way to be a believer.
Two thousand years later, the community left behind still grapples with many of those same issues, caught up in emphasizing what is peripheral rather than what is central to life in that Spirit of Jesus. Caught in a struggle between those in power and those who are powerless.
Time and again in our struggle to remain faithful to the charism of CORPUS, working for a reformed and renewed inclusive priesthood, the question surfaces What should we be doing to help effect that change?
Whether by baptism or by ordination we share in that same ministry of Jesus. As we grapple with questions of faith and priesthood, as we struggle to put into new words the implications of God in/among us might it be as simple as each of us finding our own way of living the way Jesus did?
Might it be as simple as not being concerned with trying to reform priesthood, but modeling a reformed priesthood? Exercising that ministry of leadership in teaching and ritual that reveals, unfolds, makes explicit the wonder of who we are, in the words of Morwood, - a life form giving "God" a wonderful way of coming to expression.
Living in a way that we cherish the closeness of the One in whom we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:28) Celebrating that Oneness manifest in diversity. Relishing our living and loving. Crying with those in tears, laughing with those in joy. Creating bridges between people and promoting understanding. Challenging those who need to be challenged. Manifesting our life in the Abba of Jesus.
Russ Ditzel, President
Russ enjoys hearing your comments. He can be reached at crditzel@corpus.org
