LUCY SEEING
01/10/24 08:51
It’s significant that in ‘Prince Caspian’ it is Lucy who is the first to see Aslan and she who insists she has seen him in spite of the cynicism of her friends. It is ‘Lucy’ who is the youngest, most innocent and un-burdened by the unbelief that can layer onto us as we age. More below.
HOLY
The summit of holiness is for God to be God. The peak of holiness for you is for you to be you. If you have another look at the movie, ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ you will see this point made twice in the movie.
The Glory of God is to be God. God is triune and yet one. Love is explicit in the relationship that Father, Son and Holy Spirit have with each other. Love is the manifestation of their being. Trinity is not a hierarchy but a communion. Love is who the trinity are as God. God is love. God and His act are one.
THE GLORY OF YOU IS TO BE YOURSELF IN CHRIST
You enter your glory as you are hidden in Christ and baptised into the trinitarian God. You rise to become yourself in increasing measure as you embrace Christ as your life. To be one with Christ is to begin the infinite unfolding/realisation of you.
A DIMMED LIFE
I know individuals who have lived lives as an intellectualised expression of Christianity. They lived as best they could, according to what they knew. But lauded as they were by their friends, as they should have been, they did not live in the simplicity of themselves as sons or daughters of God. They were somewhat shrouded by religion/law and got to the end of their lives without ever having lived as their True Selves. Religion that is not the religion of Christ, Paul and John will dim your life.
SONSHIP
The paradox is that selfishness is sin and death while the light of life in Christ is to be you as you were made to be and are in Him. One with Christ we get to be our True Selves separated from the path of selfishness.
When Richard Rohr talks of living in the ‘naked now’ he means a life journey in which Christ is our life – plus nothing. No accretions of any kind, no layers of religious insulation that insulate our nakedness from the naked Christ. It should be clear why Jesus calls us to make His life our life rather than living in the cardboard covering of the law. Only in deep oneness with Him are we ‘us’.
LUCY LIFE
Lewis uses the figure of Aslan to present Jesus in a way that slips under our religiosity. When I watch Aslan’s appearance in these movies I’m always moved and conscious that I am seeing a representation of Jesus. Nevertheless, Lewis has Aslan say, ‘I’m known by a different name in your country and you must learn to know me by that name.’ We must know Christ as the Christ in order to be us.
FALSE AND REAL PRESENCE
It is difficult for us to separate ourselves from the social fabric of religion and I’m not sure we should. The living way is to embrace the union with God that is ours so that our relationships, services and religious activities are the expression of oneness with God rather than a substitute for His interwoveness in our being and ours in His. You are yourself with life-giving agency when Christ is incarnated in you. Leanne Payne’s book Real Presence is about living incarnated rather than living in religious substitutes for The Presence that form religion. We have access to Christ’s full, direct Presence in the Spirit. If you reject non-being and the un-self, don’t settle for substitutes for interwovenness with Jesus and legalistic dilutions of His Life. Life in the law is a lie. Life in the Spirit is real life.
