THINKING LIFE IN CHRIST'S MIND

‘Thinking’ is not just some ‘linear thing’ people do. There is a kind of thinking called ‘contemplation’ in which one ponders one’s being and one’s fit with the world. We deplete ourselves if we restrict ourselves to acting as just a human-doing. Getting a comfortable sense of being requires some work – work that is never busy-busy but work that is mainly about ‘being still and knowing that God is God’. It’s about knowing who Christ is as the True Christ and gaining a precise understanding of His Gospel.

THE PARADOX
The paradox of knowing that we are one with God is that we ae hidden in Christ and revealed as us – the real us.

This is real grace. People are not sons in the law. They are potential sons living as workers and slaves. But in the Spirit, which is oneness with God, they are sons in spirit and in truth. These daughters and sons know who they are because they live in their real self in Christ. Christ minister to others powerfully through this Real Self.

NOT SPACE/TIME DEPENDENT
Real rest is relief from the need to establish the self. It’s rest from self-made grace. This is the Sabbath life stated by the author or Hebrews.  This is being in Christ as in being rather than as doctrinal assertion. The enormity of a lived full grace is that Christ manifests Himself as you. Thus we are the Body of Christ in reality rather than in talk.

PEACE AND REST IS JESUS
Once we know what ‘contemplation’ is - we can do it without being a hermit. You might do it looking out the window of the train on the way to the city. Or picking the tomatoes. We can do it any time we make a break in our routine. Or on a holiday. Yet there is a deeper contemplation that is beneficial if we wish to break the cycle of incessant activity and take stock. This is the mind of Christ that is ours when we agree with Him that our being and who we are is the effect of our already inclusion in Him. He has taken steps to include us in His life. Jesus is our peace from self-criticism and self-justification. He is us.

TO BE STILL IN THE WILD
Thomas Merton writes, “Teilhard de Chardin has developed a remarkable mystique of secularity which is certainly necessary for our time when the vast majority of men have no choice but to seek and find God in the busy world. But where did Teilhard acquire this perspective? In the deserts of Asia, in vast solitudes which were in many ways more " monastic" than the cloisters of our monastic institutions. So too Bonhoeffer, regarded as an opponent of all that monasticism stands for, himself realized the need for certain "monastic" conditions in order to maintain a true perspective in and on the world. He developed these ideas when he was awaiting his execution in a Nazi prison.” (1)
BE STILL AND KNOW GOD AND YOU
Knowing God and knowing self often comes when stillness is imposed by life. In Christ we have rest from the self-vindicating activity that we engage in to avoid the truth.
PEACE AND AGENCY
Life and knowing Light does not come from self-vindication. Our rest/union with God is Christ Himself in whom we are. This is more ‘Sabbath’ than any formality of the Sabbath. Many Sabbath keepers have never experienced a real spirit of Sabbath or a Sabbath life. Union with God differs from the Jewish Sabbath in that it may be had all the time and any time. In oneness with God, we are in perpetual sabbath because we are in God in Christ. We are released from self-vindication into the joy of perpetual oneness with God.
LIFE COMMUNION
The original Sabbath, before there were any Jews was Adam and Eve’s fellowship with God. The Greater Sabbath since the cross and the incarnation is an interwoveness with God that exceeds what Adam and Eve had with God. Since the cross union with God has surpassed the union of Adam with God. We now have the John 17.22 type union. The similar union, thanks to Christ that the trinity have with each other. You are included in this fellowship.
AN INNER YOU
Those who make a difference in the outer life have an inner life that is alive with imagination and agency. Yet contemplation is more than creative thought. It is the joining of your mind to God’s being and mind. It’s the experience of sonship as a state of being that transcends ‘the when and the where’ in which you happen to be.
THERE IS MORE TO YOU
Every one can manage a degree of contemplation even if not all are contemplatives. For many it would be the difference between being a superficial person and a person of substance. For some of the politicians we know it would mean the difference between being a promoter of guff and a person of integrity.
Richard Rohr would agree that the satisfaction of passing from the false self to the true self is enhanced by contemplation. We will not have much of substance to offer the world by way of the sharing of the self and spirituality until we have made the transition from us our life to Christ our life. It’s largely to do with being born again but not entirely. It is being still and knowing God and being still enough to know yourself in God and in the world. Sadly, many folk don’t experience this kind of ‘knowing’ until hours before their death. But with a little focus we can make it a way of life.
 
(1) Merton, T. Contemplation in a world of Action.