Do you want to join the ultimate dance?

I have not found a better description of eternal Love than these words by Richard Rohr

The God whom Jesus talks about, and includes himself in, is presented as unhindered dialogue, a totally positive and inclusive flow in one direction, and a waterwheel of outpouring love that never stops! ... Nothing human can stop the flow of divine love; we cannot undo the eternal pattern even by our worst sin. .... God is always winning, and God's love will win. Love does not lose, nor does God lose. .... You can’t stop the relentless outpouring force that is the divine dance. And God is not just a dancer; God is the dance itself.[1]

I tried to paint a picture of our experience of this love in my previous post "A Glimpse through the veil" and it created some controversy when I was asked by a friend on Facebook:

"Stephan, as a well-respected person of science, how is it that you believe in the above? I don’t understand how you succumb to such contradictions. Virgin births, Noah’s Ark, Adam’s rib as the explanation to creation, stoning your neighbour to death for working on the sabbath etc We know these beliefs were accepted before science was understood, why don’t you, as an intelligent human being, still believe in that nonsense? I ask with respect because I truly don’t understand."

I answered:

"Thank you so much for asking. As a scientist I can't be the classic fundamentalist Christian anymore. I approach the Bible and especially the "Old Testament" from another angle. A handy metaphor is that of a tricycle - introduced to me by Richard Rohr. The front wheel is experience and that is balanced out by writings as one wheel and tradition as the other wheel.

I cannot deny my experience of the last 50 years with Christianity and with a person I got to know, called Jesus. But at the same time, I have become open to other influences from a whole body of evidence called "Perennial Wisdom" that underlies all the religions of the world....

If you look at the life and words of Jesus, he presented radically different from the God of the Hebrew Scriptures he claimed to have been the exact image of. He actually broke many of those traditions you speak about and criticised them.

I think in short, as a scientist, I believe in my current experience of the Unseen, in my relationship with an unseen Friend, mentor and example (the Buddhist word for it is Guru), called Jesus, although knowing that my current understanding is definitely not correct for the god we can describe is not the Ground of all Being. I don't have to be correct, I just have to live my life loving Jesus, all things, all people and every moment as far as I have been awakened to the beauty and glory of that love.

I find the life of Jesus and the sacred writings like the New Testament extremely helpful in that quest, but I don't regard them as infallible or as a legal document. I believe they describe truth but not the only truth. Humanity has been on a journey to discover truth and I think we should look further than just Christianity for clues about the nature of the Unseen.

I have done my homework on that and after a couple of years decided that I can be a Christian without in any way thinking that any other tradition or person that promotes the honest, loving search for the Truth is wrong or second rate.

The Jesus I have come to know is inclusive, has been sent as an example of how one should live and die to get to discover the Ground of all Being who fills all in all, and he said, "no greater love has anyone than to lay down his life for his friends".

That is the essence of what I believe and to do that and be a scientist, is quite compatible."

There was quite a bit of reaction to that and after some rather harsh posts, ("Who has bewitched you?"), some friends "unfriended" me in spite of my plea to just talk to me. To be "unfriended" is not the issue here. To be judged unfairly without having had an opportunity to communicate, was hurtful and sad because I have known these people for forty years and walked a very intense spiritual walk with them in the beginning of our friendship.

I was summarily dismissed. I am convinced that loving and honouring go hand in hand. I believe that honouring people includes honouring their opinions ... all their opinions, even the ones I disagree with. I cannot afford to be so sure that my opinion on a matter is the correct one that I can demean someone else's opinion and then go so far as to write that person off as if he/she had committed an unpardonable sin.

At least I know that the Lord, who is committed to all brokenness and broken people like me, will not and has never dismissed anyone with or without a discussion. He always loves, he always includes and he always gives and never demands for that is the innate being of the Trinity.

Love and grace supersede the law of the Hebrew scriptures and love "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things ... love NEVER fails ... but if there are prophecies, they will fail ... if there is knowledge it will pass away ... " (1Cor13)

For me, these questions remain: "Did I love unconditionally? Do I love disregarding the desire to find a reason, a 'because' before I love? Am I committed to stay the course until the unconditional and unreasonable love of God in me shows up to bring me into his/her purposes?"

This is really challenging but has to be done if we want to make an authentic statement to people who are asking genuine questions. When we are confronted by honest questions, the place to start is to know that we don't know and to be honest enough to confess it. We are learning to honour people who think differently from us, and to learn from them. But to do that we have to accept and love questions, learn to live with them and allow them to become our teachers. Can you imagine a Christian church where that happens?

Many fundamentalist Christians shoot their wounded and they believe that they are justified for in their minds their god does that. They believe he banishes the wounded (those who have not "accepted" Jesus as their "personal saviour") to hell forever. In that light it becomes easy to dismiss a person when her questions become uncomfortable. Just send them to hell. I am so glad that Jesus and Paul did not have that attitude. "Father forgive them ..."

Those of us who have come to know the "other God", have begun a revolution that will include and care for every person we see as wounded and imperfect (including ourselves and those who do not agree with us). We are joining the Dance of the Trinity and reaching out to touch one another and be together.

There are more and more people from all traditions who are joining the revolution and when a tipping point is reached, we will live in a world where the Unseen is manifested, where Love is real and the Dance is the main attraction.

All I have to do right now is not break relationship ... Love will do the rest.

[1] Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance (2016) Whittaker House. (My compilation)