Look up and look out …
perfect love casts out fear… (1John 4:18 )
I recently went to a conference on Theosis where Jonathan Pageau presented the case for looking vertically, as well as horizontally, when connecting with God and metaphysical reality.
In other words, if we’re just looking out at the world, horizontally, things can seem very flat, but if we are also looking up towards God, towards the world of sacrament and mystery, there is a connection with things beyond the world, that makes the world a richer, deeper, more magical place to be. This means in the real sense, the world becomes fully alive, and it is this ‘other world’ our imagination resides in and which authors like Tolkien and Lewis captured so vividly in their books about rings and animals that talk and that go on quests which always involve risk and self-sacrifice and being a pilgrim on the journey. These stories always show us the deeper realities of life that are unseen, our souls. There is a world of spirits, of angels, which we inhabit and which, as we look up, we become aware of.
The cross is a symbol of this connection. You look up and you look out, it points both ways- you have the vertical and the horizontal. And in the centre you have love. That perfect love that casts out fear. And how does it cast out fear? It has overcome the fear of death by overcoming death itself. It has passed from this life, into the next. The “godman” who replaces Adam banished by the first tree- he incorporates both the ‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ and the ‘tree of life’. As St. Paul says, “The first and the last Adam”. This Godman this Christ.
The empty Cross is empty, but it is not empty. For Christ is risen from the dead, but he present with us.
As we move from Ascension, to Pentecost, we talk of moving into “ordinary time”. Yet, after the Cross there is, in one sense, no “ordinary” time left. All of time now is “extraordinary”, for God is beyond time, but also within it, He is in our hearts, but also beyond them.
Perhaps today take a moment to contemplate the Cross as a symbol of God uniting himself with the world and of being reunited with him. The portal for looking up on the vertical beam and at the same time, with arms open wide, looking out and embracing the world around us, with love on the horizontal beam.
Perhaps now, if you can, shut your eyes for a moment and open your arms wide. Imagine that embrace of love filling your own heart now fully- breath in- breath out. Feeling as you breath in, you too can go out, filled up with the spirit of God, and so love the world better around you.
Breath in that love, deeply, now and…
Be blessed!
Helen