Tom's Tomes for April
In the last couple months we have had a lot of deaths and I mourn them as I see how the deaths have ripped families apart and me as well. Ben Jonson, a contemporary of Shakespeare, chided those who mourned with this rhyme: “He that fears death, or mourns it, in the just,/Shews of the Resurrection little trust.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 20th Century Jesuit Paleontologist and Mystic opined: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Going through the human experience means that we will go through all that it means to be human; pain and joy, sadness and ecstasy, love and alienation, fear and courage, defeat and victory, faith and doubt, life and death – all that flesh is heir to. When the Christ poured out Godself and became Jesus; he suffered and enjoyed all that it meant to be human.
However, as Spiritual beings we cannot stop being; we only change. The teachings of Jesus help me to live to the fullest IN this human life to make the world a better placein which our children's children can live and move and have their being. We face that God's love is infinite and since Divine love does not die, so also we will live in that infinite love. I do not know what that life will look like in that new stage of spiritual existence and the Bible only used symbols to hint at the indescribable but it seems to me meaningless speculation to nail down literal descriptions of streets of Gold when poetry is my best guide.
I turn to George Herbert's The Dawning:
In the last couple months we have had a lot of deaths and I mourn them as I see how the deaths have ripped families apart and me as well. Ben Jonson, a contemporary of Shakespeare, chided those who mourned with this rhyme: “He that fears death, or mourns it, in the just,/Shews of the Resurrection little trust.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 20th Century Jesuit Paleontologist and Mystic opined: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Going through the human experience means that we will go through all that it means to be human; pain and joy, sadness and ecstasy, love and alienation, fear and courage, defeat and victory, faith and doubt, life and death – all that flesh is heir to. When the Christ poured out Godself and became Jesus; he suffered and enjoyed all that it meant to be human.
However, as Spiritual beings we cannot stop being; we only change. The teachings of Jesus help me to live to the fullest IN this human life to make the world a better placein which our children's children can live and move and have their being. We face that God's love is infinite and since Divine love does not die, so also we will live in that infinite love. I do not know what that life will look like in that new stage of spiritual existence and the Bible only used symbols to hint at the indescribable but it seems to me meaningless speculation to nail down literal descriptions of streets of Gold when poetry is my best guide.
I turn to George Herbert's The Dawning:
Awake, sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns;/ Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth;/
Unfold thy forehead, gathered into frowns; /Thy Saviour comes, and with Him mirth:
/Awake, awake, / And with a thankful heart His comforts take. /But thou dost still lament,
and pine, and cry, /And feel His death, but not His victory. / Arise, sad heart ; if thou dost not
withstand, /Christ's resurrection thine may be ; /Do not by hanging down break from the
hand /Which, as it riseth, raiseth thee: /Arise, Arise; /And with His burial linen drie thine
eyes./Christ left His grave-clothes, that we might, when grief /Draws tears or blood, not want
a handkerchief.
Shalom:
tom+
Shalom:
tom+
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