HOW TO REALISE LIFE AND BE ALIVE

The Law led to Christ. But Christ does not lead to the law. Christ leads to Himself and lives to draw us into Himself and His oneness with God. Jesus is both for us and, in a manner of speaking is us – as the eucharist denotes. We are talking the vicarious humanity of Christ – the resurrected Jesus infusing our being with Himself so that as a self and as the church we are the expression of His Person.

BEING REAL
We can, if we are not alert dissipate our lives in as not real persons in a gospel that is not Christ’s real Gospel.

The Kingdom is Jesus and His multiplication of spirit and life in us. In The Healing Presence, Leanne Payne writes, “We .. cannot force the person's will. We can only paint the most glorious word pictures we can of what it means to choose Heaven and the real. The unredeemed, in choosing self rather than God, Hell rather than Heaven, choose inessentiality rather than an incarnation of radiant life. They refuse Incarnational Reality, the infusion of the Spirit of God into their insubstantial and inessential lives.” Payne is talking about the exclusion of Christ as the Way. However, her remarks apply to the Christian who makes do with religion and the Believer who lives legalism in place of the reconciliation and incarnation of Christ our life in their being. Not incarnated we are not real and not alive.

THE FALL MAINTAINED
The law retains us in separation from God and in adamic self-effort. Legalism is the quest to be worthy of Christ. The legalist may not live in hell but often creates hell for other Christians in the Christian workplace. Living in externalities with the law as one’s mediator, we are perpetually separated from God in our mind even though Jesus has made us one with God. As active as we are, we fill our space with inessentiality because the non-incarnated person does not produce spirit and life. Thus, a life of activity that is the product of a law mindset may appear to have substance. But it fills up space and time with an insubstantial life.

MARY
A caricature of Mary, Martha and Jesus might leave us with the impression that Martha was active, practical and lacking substance as a person while Mary was spiritual, grounded in wholeness and aware of where real life was to be had. Since this was a real event and not a parable it would be interesting to know how the story ended. Hopefully Martha became more grounded in her being, less judgmental and more genuinely Godly while applying her Godliness in her practically. Hopefully Mary became more herself in spirit and in life, living out her vocation in fruitful ways that were intrinsically Mary.
FRUIT OF THE SELF
Whether or not we are contemplatives or activists and whether we are fruitful in a Kingdom sense depends on the uni0n of the self with God and the resulting spirit and life that flows from our being.
Thomas Merton writes, “The fact remains all the truer: the monk has a quiet, relatively isolated existence in which it is possible to concentrate more on the quality of life and its mystery and, thus, to escape in some measure from the senseless tyranny of quantity.” One can however contemplate in normal life since Christ is in us and with us. This is the joy of the incarnation – an ordinary life that is alive with Christ’s spirit and life.
QUANTITY
Ostentatious ‘doing’ is  done to validate the self. The senseless tyranny of quantity surfaces at times in the anti-spirituality that can be common among activists. This sector of the church too often, can see no further than the perpetuation of the institution and can present itself as the main opposition to Revival, to life in the Spirit and genuine intimacy with God. This is partly because those who do it think their activity is godliness. Many are heavily involved in earning acceptance with God and the entitlement they think is theirs. People can be glued to a sense of entitlement because religion tries to persuade us that we have earned something.
PEACE AND BELONGING
Yet one does not have to be a monk to escape the sense of ‘getting home and finding no one there’. One can live meditatively and contemplatively when one is not a contemplative. We can do this by reading books written by people who are contemplatives. We can learn to listen. We can adopt the stance of a learner full stop. We can go on holidays and learn to justify it as necessary to the health of our being. We can ponder what we are doing in the midst of our activity. “Being” is to a large extent a state of mind. Particularly wholesome being is found in the mind of Christ – not as an addiction to Christian workaholism but as a passion to enter that oneness with God that is ours in the Christ of God.
POINTS TO LIFE
Merton observes, “The monastic life has a certain prophetic character about it: not that the monk should be able to tell what is about to happen in the Kingdom of God, but in the sense that he is a living witness to the freedom of the sons of God and to the essential difference between that freedom and the spirit of the world.”
In the world you get what you earn. In Christ you are gifted with life and freedom to be. Freedom to be you as a son rather than a worker. You are gifted this where you are.
HUMILITY OF MIND
We can just as easily use the words ‘thoughtful life’ as monastic life. The witness of Christ within always points to a ‘better way’ and a way that is more alive for more people. Thoughtful contemplation will not leave us inertly conservative, living to justify old things or habitually denying that things are as bad as they are. There’s a kind of conservatism that is anti-knowledge, anti-education, discriminatory, selfish and anti generosity. ‘Holding on to that which is good’ is not about clinging to and supporting vested interests.
ITA
Someone once said to Ita Buttrose, ‘She "wasn't a bastard enough" and "too honest" to be in a leadership role.’ It could easily be added -  as is the case with some politicians -  ‘Not mediocre enough.’ Thoughtfulness will set us free from the influence of demagogues and the folly of appealing to them as leaders. Habitual thoughtlessness and lazy thinking leave us vulnerable to stupid conspiracy theories, dim-witted leaders and any kind of whacky idea that pretends to be messianic. Foolish messiahs are chosen by the thoughtless – the kind that cling to bad messiahs and who put Jesus anew on the cross.
YOUR STATE OF BEING WITH GOD
Richard Rohr writes, “Deep prayer on the inside heals the outside and the in-between simply by reconnecting everything at its core and at our Center. And let us be honest–Jesus talked a lot more about praying and healing than any of the issues that continue to preoccupy most of our churches.” Deep prayer grows in our being once we exchange religious activity to knowing Jesus personally and deeply. Deep prayer is not necessarily verbal. It’s just living in your oneness with Christ. This is rest for human restlessness and the start of maturing in the Spirit of Sonship lived as Sue and John and all of us. It’s the Kingdom of Christ as you and of us.