A Universe to Explore

I just love this explanation … it just seems to open up space on so many levels!! I have never seen Christian escatology teaching in this way before. Simultaneously I never seen love relationships in this way either. All I can say is that its pretty damn cool. 

http://peterrollins.net/blog/

While John the Baptist preached that the kingdom was coming, Jesus preached that this kingdom was already among us. However, in saying this he did not overturn the message of John the Baptist but rather deepened it, for Jesus spoke of a kingdom that was here and yet as simultaneously being something that was looked to as still to come.

Following the image of the kingdom that was spoken of by Jesus, we encounter the idea that while it is still thought of as “to come” this does not mean that it will one day arrive at the end of a certain period of time, but rather that the kingdom is “to come,” i.e., the kingdom is already among us but in a manner that implies it is absent. ..This view of the kingdom is something that we also find confirmed in the writings of Paul, such as when he speaks of the kingdom as both the now and the not-yet.

Is this initially bizarre logic not what we also find being played out when we contemplate the presence of those whom we love? Is it not a great romantic truth that the presence of our beloved is always of a spectral kind? To truly know and love someone involves acknowledging that person’s inscrutable eschatological depths, understanding that the presence of the one before us is always manifested as a type of absence, as an opening. For each person is a universe for us to explore. In this way it is wrong to imagine that we long for someone we love to enter into our world, to come. Rather, when the one we love arrives in our world we encounter that person as precisely the one who is “to come.”

This is why our desire for those we love is born in our encounter with them rather than satisfied there. We cannot desire the one whom we do not know, for the simple reason that we do not know that person. We can only desire the one who is before us, the one who remains mysterious in his or her presence. The other is both the origin and the unreachable destination of our desire, for there is always something Other about the other, something “to come” amidst the presence of those we love. In the eyes of the beloved a universe opens up and envelops us.

Turkey Recall

 It’s true that the older you get, the less knowledgeable you become. A younger version of me arrogantly thought I could change the world. You can imagine my surprise when my world ended up changing me!

A couple of years back, I travelled to Turkey for six months on an English-2^nd Language teaching secondment with the school I had been working for in London. The idea was to serve the people I met, get to know them and share my spirituality with them. I guess it was also an experiment. I wanted to see how my faith would stand up in a completely new culture, one where even the calendar didn’t remember my Christian heritage! When I got there was that I felt completely overwhelmed and alienated. I remember being initially quite freaked out by the Islamic call to worship every morning. The evening classes started and I made friends with the business English students. I didn’t expect to feel as lonely as I did. Then each student, one by one, invited me to their house, took me on visits to the sites of Istanbul and took me out for meals. I was readily included in every social activity and warmly received into the community. They showed me a tangible kind of love, a love that doesn’t just talk but actually is shown in action.  

I know that my culture does not place such a high value on welcoming foreigners. I know my faith does but bizarrely the Turks showed me what the story of the Good Samaritan is all about. I was humbled by their love. I found God there. On the day I left the school I was laden with gifts. Not just feeble, last minute gifts but beautiful ones: a little Turkish carpet and bag, a beautiful delicate Turkish plate and a fantastic coffee book on the sites of Turkey. I was flabbergasted. My perspective on my earth-shaking abilities changed. If I did change their lives in any small measure, I think the favour was reciprocated in triplicate.  I guess I have issues with the whole evangelism thing. But I’m not exactly sure what my method is, if there is one. It doesn’t rest easy with me to impose faith on others, unless they are genuinely interested and ask. I don’t know how the rest of you feel about this…  

But I totally identify with this discovery:“Instead of bringing God to unreached places and unreached peoples, I find countless missionaries who say that, while this was how they once thought, time and again they find that these unreached places are the very sites they must go to find God and to be reached. How many of us have learnt too late that that our initial idea, that by serving the world we will bring God to others, has eclipsed the wisdom that in serving the world we find God there.”  Peter Rollins  “How(not) to speak of God”