My own response to "The French Silk Connection" was one of awe. I didn't know what to do with it, except to put it out there and wait to see if anyone was touched by it. Only gradually did I come to see it as the centerpiece of my theological thought and of my faith. My scholarly friend said this: "I very much enjoyed your last mailing. It's a masterpiece, beautifully written and thorough, inspired no doubt, a culmination -- though hopefully not THE culmination -- of all of your previous mailings." And I couldn't even take credit for it; I didn't know where it came from.

My friend then offered suggestions about where my affirmations might take me: 1) into further exploration of what it means to be "one with God;" 2) into compassionate action as an expression of my sense of oneness with all humanity; 3) out of my head-stuff and into poetry; and 4) what I interpret as an excursion into the meaning of evil as he questions whether my "oneness with humankind" includes oneness with Hitler, Charles Manson, Snoop Doggie Dog, and O. J. (Ours is a friendship that pulls no punches.)

With respect to the first of these, the "Musings" have been about little else, but I have reached a certain point of consolidation that calls for a new look at the basic question. I hope to be able to provide greater clarity for the "One with God" issue.

It is easier to stay in my head than it is to act compassionately and with intention, but in these latter years I have chosen to come to terms with some shadow areas of life that have not been sources of great pride for me. For example, and for reasons that I need not spell out here, I have expended a lot of energy avoiding conflict in my life and my career. Consequently, or should I say, nevertheless, a few years before my retirement I applied for and was chosen for the position of University Ombudsman, a position in which I was required to hear complaints and grievances from members of the University community and to attempt to resolve them informally. Conflict resolution became my function, and I think I received a lifetime of experience in my three and a half years in that job, which required both compassion and action. Similarly, one of the pastoral responsibilities I found myself least able to perform during my brief sojourn as a clergyman was visitation of the sick and the elderly. Now I find great satisfaction in being a hospice volunteer. Better -- much better -- late, than never.

The urgings to poetry and to the issue of evil will receive attention, but for now these other thoughts occupy my mind.

* * * * *
Was Jesus divine? I have been suggesting that it was the fullness of his humanity that qualified him to be thought of as divine. He was fully himself. He was all that this man Jesus had the potential to be. In that fullness, he was divine.

If that is the case, we are also able to claim divinity for ourselves to the extent that we are what we have the potential to be, the extent to which we express that Spirit which is within us. Jesus is different in degree, but not in kind. He is human and divine; so are we.

As I read Crossan's Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, I become aware that it was common in the first century C. E. to claim divinity for one who is prominent, one who is deemed, by any group, to be exceptional. It is a way of claiming specialness. Caesar Augustus was so acclaimed, and a special statement was written to establish his divine status.

This was a time, or only a few hundred years past the time, when in Greek and Roman mythology gods and goddesses were known to walk the earth, to commune with humans, and even to mate with humans. And the early Christian myths include angels coming to earth to talk with Mary and Joseph, and to announce to shepherds the birth of Jesus. Certainly the visit of the Holy Spirit to impregnate Mary is an expression of the belief that the gods are not totally other, distanced, entirely separate from humankind.

Celsus, a Roman Cynic and writer, was not surprised with the claim that Jesus was divine, though he expressed genuine doubt that Jesus could be divine. That is to say, he did not believe that a mere peasant could be thought divine.

Divinity, then, was in the eye of the beholder. Augustus could be divine to the Romans, not to the Jews. Jesus could be divine in the eyes of the early Christians, not to the Romans. The directory of those for whom divinity was claimed was probably rather bulky.

Has it changed? Do we mean something different by "divinity" today? Or is it better left undefined? Is it a matter of faith? If I wish to ascribe more than earthly qualities, godly qualities, to someone, I can speak of him or her as divine. That is not, I think now, a literal statement that the person somehow has a different origin or a different relationship with the supernatural, but simply a judgment of the person as seen through the eye of this beholder.

We see everything through a filter. Filters are formed through the education, informal and formal, that we receive as children. The filters of the culture begin to replace the awe and wonder of natural, child-like reactions to the world of experience.

Is control the issue? Adults want to control how children will perceive everything around them, and they do so through parenting, educating, churching, and other kinds of controlled monitoring. We live in a world of such control that the possibility for surprise is eliminated insofar as possible. I once heard the president of a large university say that he did not want to be surprised, because most surprises that came to his attention were nasty surprises. He wanted to be prepared to meet any new situation in a controlled manner. He built a staff that filtered out surprises.

In the book, Management and the New Sciences, Margaret Wheatley draws from modern science the insight that it is through surprise that new developments, discoveries, and innovations come. Managers, in trying to eliminate the oddballs, the misfits, the eccentrics, tend to eliminate the prospects for growth, for the new idea that can move the firm forward. Every situation is too complex to control, and thus a better strategy is to allow for the exceptions to the rule, to encourage each person to bring their best to the situation, to create a field of energy that fosters the values of the firm, and to flow with change as it comes.

Children love surprising others, and they love to be surprised. We breed this out of them, to our loss. To be sure, frames of reference need to be developed, but the price is very high.

Therapy is one way of putting aside old, painful, destructive filters. The process of living in the present, of becoming the person that we have the potential to be, is a process of developing our own filters, filters of our own choosing, to replace those that have been chosen for us. Educational and religious institutions have the sensitive and difficult task of helping us to grow in knowledge and in faith THAT IS OUR OWN, acquainting us with ideas and values that we may adopt as we discover who we are without limiting our freedom to make our own choices. Mostly they don't do it very well.

Among the things we want to control is what is in the eye of the beholder.



(Copyright 1997 by C. Grey Austin, all rights reserved.)

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