…One of the amazing insights I have found in the interfaith dialogue is that, no matter what you name that source, from which all life comes—you can name that source God, Abba; you may name that source Yahweh; you may name that source Allah; you may name that source “the great emptiness;” you can name that source many things, but what all the faiths in their wisdom have acknowledged in the interfaith dialogue is that, you and I, we’re not the source. We receive from the source, and what we are asked to do is give back to the source. In other words, what the interfaith dialogue has recognized is that there is a Trinitarian structure to life. That’s what I’m driving at this morning. We make the Trinity much too complex. The Trinitarian structure of life is this: is that everything that is comes from the source. And you can name the source what you want to name the source. And our response to that is with hearts of gratitude and thanksgiving, to return everything back to that source, and there’s a spirit who enables that return. Everything comes from God. We give it back to God. And the spirit gives us the heart of gratitude. That is the Trinitarian nature of life. And you can be a Buddhist, you can be a Muslim, you can be a Jew, and that makes sense. And we all develop more elaborate theologies, but the truth is we live and have our being in a God who asks only one thing of us: to grow into people who give thanks that God is our center, God is our life, that we are one with God. And as we grow into realization, that we are one with this God who lives in us, and the only thing God asks us is to give back everything in thanksgiving, we live. It’s what the Syrians said, “we will know what redemption truly is, we will come alive, we will be made to live,” because we will know—not because someone told us—because we know that God gives us life. And all God asks of us is “give it back to Me in return.”OK, fess up: you didn't read it all, did you?
Come on, be honest, now.
Well, who can blame you? Did you get the sensation, say about three sentences in, it was just a bunch of impenetrable new-age, multi-culti, narcissistic gobbledygook? It was. Did you notice something else? If you actually managed to slog through this spectacularly inept remaking of the Holy Trinity, did you find a single reference to, you know, Jesus? Do you have a clue just what this fellow had on his mind, if he had one (to borrow from Wodehouse)?
There was a time, long, long ago, when those on the left, those proponents of the so-called counter-culture, were considered to be on the vanguard of the intellectual frontiers. Many of them were proud members of the Episcopal Church. Looking over the blather above, penned by a future bishop of the once-upon-a-time "prestige" church of the United States of America, the church of 16 presidents, one can only conclude whatever intellectual capital once found in the Episcopal Church is spent. When considered along with that institution's ever increasing expenditures suing the bejesus out of those parishes and dioceses fleeing in desperation, despite its plunging membership and revenue thus forcing it to pillage its dwindling endowments, you are witnessing an institution in a death spiral. How terribly sad.
(Thanks to the MCJ)
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