![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.christpathseminar.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/Matthewlistening-cropped.jpg\" "\\"Matthew")
<\/a>In my last post, I wrote of the passing of imperial Christianity, and the archetype of the Cosmic Christ that lies, largely ignored, at the mystic heart of the Christian tradition. But while the mystic experience of cosmic connection has been viewed with suspicion by the institutional church, it has not vanished!<\/p>\n
John Dominic Crossan,\u00a0 in his book In Search of Paul, <\/em>concludes thus: \u201cDoes Paul think, therefore, that only mystics can be Christians, and that all Christians must be mystics? In a word, yes.\u201d Whoa! To be a Christian you\u2019ve got to be a mystic.<\/em> What that means to me is that you\u2019ve got to shut down about 98 percent of our seminaries, because are we turning out mystics? Are we training mystics? Do seminaries even know how to train mystics? I\u2019m glad to help them there because we did it very successfully over a 29-year period, at the Institute of Culture and Creation Spirituality and the University of Creation Spirituality.<\/p>\n Crossan continues: \u201cPaul is a mystic\u2014he thinks mystically, writes mystically, teaches mystically, and lives mystically, and expects other Christians to do likewise.\u201d Paul, the first writer in the Christian Bible; the very first theologian in the West, was a mystic. And the earliest hymns of Christianity are about the Cosmic Christ\u2014Colossians, Philippians, Ephesians and many more. So the original followers of the Christ path were mystics, cosmic mystics of the Cosmic Christ.<\/p>\n Teilhard de Chardin, who of course was a scientist, Jesuit, mystic, and poet, said this about the Cosmic Christ: \u201cThe cosmos is fundamentally and primarily living\u2026. Christ, through his Incarnation, is internal to the world,\u2026rooted in the world, even in the very heart of the tiniest atom\u2026. Nothing seems to be more vital, from the point of view of human energy, than the appearance and eventually, the systematic cultivation of such a \u2018cosmic sense.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He also said: \u201cthis third nature of Christ\u201d is not an argument about whether he\u2019s divine or whether he was human, but the cosmic<\/em> Christ, \u201chas not noticeably attracted the explicit attention of the faithful or of theologians.\u201d Teilhard was frustrated that no one wanted to talk about the Cosmic Christ back then. He also says, \u201cBecause it is not exalted by a sufficiently passionate admiration of the universe, our religion is becoming enfeebled.\u201d\u00a0 Religion is becoming enfeebled because it\u2019s not connected to the exaltation of the universe itself; it lacks the Cosmic Christ therefore.<\/p>\n The Cosmic Christ, then, is about the divine Presence, the divine Image found in every being in the universe\u2014in every whale, in every tree, in every forest, every lion, tiger, polar bear, human, galaxy, supernova, planet, and atom. It\u2019s a macrocosm and it\u2019s a microcosm. And it is a reminder of the sacredness of all being.<\/p>\n I heartily recommend Mary Oliver\u2019s brilliant poem, \u201cAt the River Clarion\u201d which I explore along with Hildegard of Bingen\u2019s teachings on the Cosmic Christ in my recent book, Hildegard of Bingen, a Saint for Our Times.\u00a0 <\/em>Hildegard from the twelfth century and Mary Oliver from ours both get the Cosmic Christ.\u00a0 Oliver talks about \u201cthe holiness in all being.\u201d\u00a0 That is the Cosmic Christ.\u00a0 Once you know this, everything changes, and our energy comes back.<\/p>\n Mary Oliver again: \u201cGlory to the world, that good teacher.\u201d Glory to the world, that good teacher. Glory<\/em> is a very important theological word, doxa<\/em> in Greek\u2014it means radiance, the divine radiance, you see. It\u2019s found whenever you talk about the Cosmic Christ, that word glory<\/em> shows up. The Transfiguration experience, for example, but the doxa<\/em>, the radiance that the three disciples experienced with Jesus at the top of the mountain.<\/p>\n She says: \u201cThere is only one question: how to love this world.\u201d The mystic is a lover, folks. That\u2019s as simple a definition as you can get. The mystic in you is the lover in you. We have to go through these processes of purification of our love, and that too is a very big part of the via negativa and the dark night.<\/p>\n She adds:<\/p>\n Let me keep company with those who say<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cLook!\u201d and laugh in astonishment,<\/em><\/p>\n and bow their heads.<\/em><\/p>\n She\u2019s often talking about bowing your head. That\u2019s reverence. That\u2019s what you learn from falling in love as a mystic, is that beings deserve our reverence, they deserve our bows. And we deserve it back, because we too are Cosmic Christs.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to remember that Mary Oliver did not tiptoe through the tulips\u2014she did not have at all a pleasant childhood. She was sexually abused by her father; she told her mother, who took her father\u2019s side; and so she had to carry that burden her entire childhood. The day she graduated from high school she left home and never returned. And she says \u201cIt took me years to learn to love my life.\u201d So the fact that she can share with us her love of the world and her love of life is of great consequence, because she went the hard way. She was detoured, as everyone who\u2019s been abused, not just sexually but emotionally, physically, or religiously\u2014there\u2019s a lot of that floating around. Anyone who\u2019s been abused, it takes you a while to learn to love your life.<\/p>\n Still, what I want in my life<\/em><\/p>\n is to be willing<\/em><\/p>\n to be dazzled\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n to cast aside the weight of facts<\/em><\/p>\n Willing to be dazzled\u2014that\u2019s mysticism, folks, our capacity for dazzlement.<\/p>\n ___________________________________________________<\/p>\n To learn more\u00a0 about the upcoming Christ Path Seminar weekend being offered online and on-site in Pittsburgh, PA, 6\/28\/30, see http:\/\/www.christpathseminar.org\/ai1ec_event\/cosmic-christ-and-the-historical-jesus\/?instance_id=123<\/a><\/p>\n