Thursday 18 October 2007

Today we continue on with a look at how parables and instruments like the Enneagram, serve to subvert our reality.

This subversive rearrangement of reality is called "conversion" and biblically has nothing to do with joining a denomination or accepting a new religious set of practices. I am personally convinced that this transfigured universe is the only thing that Jesus means by "the Truth." This is the only Truth big enough to "set you free," which any little doctrinal or moral certitudes about anything cannot do. If we are unwilling to live askew for a while, to be set off balance, to wait on the ever spacious threshold, we remain in the same old room for all our lives. If we will not balance knowing with the kind of open ended not knowing - nothing new seems to happen. Thus it is called "faith" and demands living with a certain degree of anxiety and holding a very real amount of tension.

I find this to be a dynamic explanation of conversion. So often, we hear about conversion being a movement from one position to another position - as though a person is now "got it." The unfortunate piece of this picture is that we create more and more people who become more and more inflexible. At this point, people are often ready to convert others...whether they want it or not. Thus we come upon actions like the crusades or jihad or...door-to-door evangelists. But Rohr pushes us to see conversion as being within something new...something that introduces us to more than we can handle and therefore we are standing in the presence of possibilities. We might want to call that the "Truth" or the presence of God. Both work for me...especially when I realized that in the presence of all this, my life is, as he writes, one that I live "askew for a while." It is there at that point where everything is not clear and in place that I must wrestle with the new and be thrown off balance...maybe have my hip knocked out of place like Jacob at the Jabbock.

Connection: Live the day askew for a while and learn to simply walk there without the fear or anxiety that the world will collapse. It may really just begin to blossom anew.

Lord of the New Day, encourage us to be open to how life changes and how we are invited to step off our our self-assured plots of land and begin to take steps out into the vast domain of your gracious Reign. This is not something we do very easily...so move us...draw us into your presence and open our hearts to the life you offer that is not yet ours completely. Amen.