Globes aren't supposed to shrink, and ours hasn't really, of course. But as I come into contact-through reading, hearing, watching the news, thinking and relating to old colleagues and new neighbors--with more and more cultures and religions and varieties of spiritual practice, the once familiar terra firma trembles with the collision of then and now, Jesus and Gautama, Gandhi and Mother Teresa, Jalalu'ddin Rumi and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
This planet still takes a long, long time to circumnavigate. In fact, there are more, not less, wonders to see if I had opportunity to try. The planet is fuller than ever- bursting with amazing marvels, and gorged with unspeakable atrocities-all inescapably in our face.
While all this is taking place, the divine keeps profoundly expanding at escalating speeds. I wish my heart could break. Something must yield to make room for this burgeoning awareness. How will this growing consciousness of infinite love find reconciliation with human frailty and fallibility? The shock of learning that the image of Jesus was found on the wall of Gandhi's private quarters stuns me. The Dalai Lama flirting, laughing, waving to a shyly smiling child in a vast sea of faces astonishes me, while his translator converts an extensive Tibetan ripple of sounds into simple, common English explanation.
The Dalai Lama says there is no God because there cannot be such an entity as an infinite person. A century and a half ago Mary Baker Eddy said much the same thing-and was denied ecclesiastical recognition in consequence. Thich Nhat Hanh says, “The rain was not born, it is only the transformation of the cloud” on his way to saying forthrightly, "If people knew that God is not a person, but is not less than a person, as Paul Tillich said, it will not be at all difficult to use the word God".
When Jacob and later Moses were touched by ultimate reality, a name for the infinite was withheld from them. When, how, will we learn that we live, and move, and have our being Outside the Box?
