It is not about becoming spiritual beings nearly as much as about becoming human beings. The biblical revelation is saying that we are already spiritual beings; we just don’t know it yet. The Bible tries to let you in on the secret, by revealing God in the ordinary. That’s why so much of the text seems so mundane, practical, specific and, frankly, unspiritual!
We have created a terrible kind of dualism between the spiritual and the so-called non-spiritual. This dualism precisely is what Jesus came to reveal as a lie. The principle of Incarnation proclaims that matter and spirit have never been separate. Jesus came to tell us that these two seemingly different worlds are and always have been one. We just couldn’t see it until God put them together in his one body (see Ephesians 2:11-20).
What unity does the Incarnation reveal?
Saturday, 27 December 2008
Richard Rohr - From Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality
Newer
Older
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
We obviously both get these daily emails! I'd just read mine and then the first blog I check this morning is yours. I am so often struck by how almost miraculously relevant Rohr's words are to my state of being, and how often I think "well doh, how blind I've been" and this is one of those times. I may give lip service to seeing the spiritual in the mundane, but I often forget. And I realise that yes, in my own life I perpetuate the dualism. This is so helpful to read.
ReplyDeleteThank you for passing on that passage by Richard Rohr. Incarnation is the centre of my spirituality, I'd like to think. A Romanesque Virgin of the Annunciation hangs in my prayer corner. It is worth spending a lifetime pondering.
ReplyDeleteTess - it befuddles me how the "duh" things are the ones that we need to keep reminding ourselves of over and over because we forget so easily. Duh. :)
ReplyDeleteBarbara - that's a nice centre of your spirituality to have, incarnation. I'm happy to lifetime ponder that one also. Cannot be contained in one mind, the magnificence :)