So who was Jesus the revolutionary? To answer that question, we need to look at the Historical Jesus from an entirely new perspective: as a mystic, and as a prophet. And this new perspective requires Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time – which is the title of a marvelous book by Marcus Borg. I like that title a lot, because we all think we’ve met Jesus, we all think we know something about Jesus. Well, Borg was a pastor... Read more
Before I move on to look at Jesus as a revolutionary, I want to take a brief detour and make one important comment about consumer capitalism as we practice it today. As consumers, we’re deluged with advertising 24/7 on TV and the Internet and all the other media, and then there are the shopping malls where we can work it out. At that end, where of course the poor and middle class are – the receiving end – there is... Read more
In my last post we looked at the men and women who are risking their lives to speak out for justice against the powers of our times. Their stories show us that it’s no less daring to walk the Christ Path today than it was 1,700 years ago. So what are the issues that Jesus would speak out against today? I can think of a number of them – and any one of them is worth our complete attention and... Read more
There’s such a depth and breadth to what Jesus did and called forth in his teaching that it’s almost overwhelming. He addresses all the aspects of culture and provides his disturbing perspectives. Again, it’s much easier to fall into the culture’s definitions – what is family? What is religion? What are piety and purity? What is economics? So much more comfortable to do that than to raise the kind of questions that Jesus raised 2000 years ago and that we... Read more
I want to welcome you to the conversations of the second Christ Path Seminar – Cosmic Christ and the Historical Jesus. As we enter these conversations, Andrew and I both feel the time has come to urge more and more people who want to follow a Jesus path, whether singly or in tandem with other paths, to really wake up, because time is running out for our planet as we know it and our species as we know it. These... Read more
So we’ve looked at some personal experiences of walking the Christ Path…but what might it involve for you to step onto this path I’m not going to unfold it for you now—I’ll do that later. But what I’m going to do is to tell you a story, because if I can communicate this to you, I will have done much, much more work than unfolding the mystical path for you. If you want to read it, I wrote a book,... Read more
I’ve shared two stories with you on the experience of walking the Christ Path. The third story…a story at the core of my heart… comes from my father. My father was a very beautiful person, very regal and very humble, very strong and very gentle. And he had a very, very profound inner life about which he never spoke, except on his deathbed when I happened, through grace, to be with him. And I asked him, “Who is Jesus for... Read more
In my last post, I said very grand things about the transformative power of an intimate relationship with the Beloved. And I want to share three stories with you to demonstrate just how intimate and personal this relationship is. The first is the story of Kevin, my chiropractor. Kevin is a tremendous buddy of mine, and I love this man because he radiates sweetness and kindness and joy. He is a dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalist so we avoid fundamentalist theology. But we... Read more
Before anything, more than anything, with absolute urgency and sincerity, I want to write in letters of fire upon your heart that we have in Jesus our great evolutionary, revolutionary brother, a living, powerful, unbelievably tender, vulnerable, eternal friend, brother, Beloved. Second, I want to say is that the historical Jesus—and I said this again and again in different ways in my previous posts —the historical Jesus is crucial not just to Christians but to the entire human race, because... Read more
So we’ve looked at the four paths of Creation Spirituality – the awe-inspiring, wonderful cosmic oneness of the Via Positiva; the grief, loss, and letting-go of the Via Negativa; the visionary, creative birthing and problem-solving of the Via Creativa; and the fierce, inspired action of the Via Transformativa. So how do we apply these to our actions in the world? As Rabbi Heschel wrote: “There lies in the recesses of every one of us a prophet”–and of course a mystic.... Read more
Christ Path Seminar
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