3.0:A Loose String In Ancient Galilee’s Eco-fields
Soon, I will launch an exploration of Carl Jung and propose that he, too, has been basically misunderstood. But first I attend to a loose string, an anomaly in the Jesus narrative. The string from the ball of yarn keeps getting longer and longer the more I delve into the story. The dangling string seems to issue not from a theological perspective but from both a pre-biblical and post quantum physics perspective. If I follow this string a bit further, perhaps I can let go of this portion of the discussion. Something keeps niggling at me.
In this blog series I have explored Pieter Craffert’s hypothesis that to understand Jesus you have to immerse yourself in the Galilean culture and language, not Greek, Jewish, or Roman culture. Especially, not modern Western Civilization’s culture. If you dive deeply into Galilean culture and language, he argues, you will soon see that Jesus fits the shamanic framework. True enough.
But, here is that pesky loose string: after a few weeks of contemplation, I see that Craffert too has missed a most basic key. As I looked at beautiful, virtual images of the Sea of Galilee, it dawned on me that the most powerful epiphany in Galilee was not Jesus as an avatar individual but rather the Galilean eco-scape seeking to express itself through a favorite son, Jesus.
The major revelation given is through Jesus not from Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount is field-centric not human-centric. Startling truths emerge not from an individual inspired from a distant god but rather from the rich intertwining of relationships within a particular eco-field as that system of fields relates to the Whole.
There. That’s the string I mention in a nutshell. To me, the string leads us to The Great Return. To get my point here, you have to return, if just for a moment, to an immersion into the fields.
I don’t expect many of us to grasp this approach suggested by the dangling string easily. Such a grasping is not a simple thing: to overturn the thousands of years of Western Civilization’s conditioning which has lead us humans to think we are the center of all things. It staggers us to consider that Jesus—in some ways the apex of humans-first thinking—really is at rock bottom a beautiful expression of an ecology.
But is the string dangling enough for us to re-think thinking?Even allow a new form of thinking to emerge? Let’s proceed, briefly, to consider that possibility.
Eco-fields Express Themselves In Different Ways
In a recent book I examine the new science of eco-fields. In the science of fields, an eco-field is defined as a space configuration/meaning carrier, under the epistemological umbrella, of an individually-based landscape. In other words an eco-field transmits information and meaning between its various parts through the medium of fields, including gravity and electro-magnetics(See The Mother Tongue, part II). The specific field links to a matrix of field that is a Whole.
Am I saying that the Whole(God, as it were) is the sum of the parts? No, in my view, a Whole is greater than but not equal to the sum of the parts. Let’s go on.
For example, I live on a tract of acreage. No, that’s not quite it. I live IN an acreage, which consists of an overlapping and intricate system of eco-fields. My deck is one eco-field. Ten yards away is a wild eco-field. Different eco-fields have different patterns of energy, intensity, and information. There is a large difference between the Teotihuacan Pyramids and your local freeway, yet both consist of eco-field systems with different patterns of communication. I am not an “I” apart from the locale where I live. Boundaries between me and all around me are convenient, especially in Western Civilization, but certainly not definitive of me. I experience myself as more an expression of the eco-fields of my life than vice-versa. In short, my identity is defined by an intricate set of relationships. The same, I advocate, is true of Jesus.
Galilee’s Gospel
Here is my proposal: the Galilean system of eco-fields sprouted a favorite son in Jesus of Nazareth. Yes, the culture was important. Yes, the Aramaic language was crucial. But these human features were bubbles on top of the waves of the eco-fields. Consider that this little tract of land—the Sea of Galilee is only about five miles long and two miles wide—gave birth to where the Torah was written and, later, to the Nazarene and his first students. Note: the New Testament was not written in Galilee but mostly in more urban and civilized eco-fields such as Jerusalem, Corinth, and Rome, 35-100 years after Jesus’ death. Such a fact might explain why much of the New Testament, especially Paul’s letters, seem so disconnected from the natural order and, thus, from Jesus himself.
Friend Rocks
As I mentioned earlier, I have not been to Galilee. I have to consult eco-fields where I live in hopes that they connect with Galilee. Limestone rocks are all around me everyday, and I have a sense they link to Galilee. Google confirms my intuition—limestone is a central feature of the Galilean eco-scape. I hold my close friends– these 260 million-year-old rocks and invite them to introduce me to their friends across the oceans. I trust them more than I do European and Ivy League scholars. Certainly more than Paul, or even Luke or John, though my lack of fluency in rock language limits me. I am not nearly as advanced as Bear Heart or Einstein in knowing rocks as quantum packets of photons.
Igneous intrusive and extrusive rocks also are near my sweat lodge where I live, and I find that Jesus held rocks like these in his hands since he lived on a seismic rift created by the African and Arabian tectonic plates. What did the rocks express through him? What prompted these rocks to send forth the Sermon on the Mount? Is it possible that by holding these rocks, a profound intelligence was transmitted and mixed with Jesus’ inner life to offer guidance to the ages? If so, to what purpose?
Local Juniper Trees
As I write in my eco-scape, local junipers are mating with the males sending out an orange powder and the females dropping beautiful blue berries. Most people where I live fight these trees, even hate them. My wise grandmothers—Louiza and Talitha—passed down the healing practice of eating two or three berries from November through January. It works for me. No allergies. The berries can be poisonous if you aren’t in harmony with them. They can heal if you know them as your relatives. As I gently touch the berries and ask permission to suck on them for a minute or so, I wonder what intelligence their juices impart. I wonder what the local junipers said to Jesus, prominent as they were in his ecology. Were their roots, the roots of consciousness? Were they a source of wisdom and healing? Could Jesus have given sight to the blind without them? Do even the questions shock our sensibilities?
Rolling Hills Into the Sea
The mount in the title, Sermon on the Mount, was really not a mountain but a gentle hill that descended into the Sea. As I view images from Galilee, the hills look familiar, beautifully familiar with limestone breaks and prickly juniper adorning them. I can see 5000 or so people gathered on the slopes listening. Listening to a man? Or to the gentle breeze wafting through the juniper needles? Or to the crunch of rock as the folk shift their posteriors to gain comfort? Or to the rich tones of a Bedouin tribesman from nearby Nazareth? Are these hills alive as the scientist James Lovelock claims? And do the sounds of music roll across the hills, alive as Rodgers and Hammerstein imagined in another time and place?
Fresh Water And Miracles
The fresh water Lake of Galilee and its surrounding area are special. The first century historian, Flavius Josephus, was so touched by his first sighting that he wrote,”One may call this place the ambition of Nature.” It is fed by natural springs and a system of streams, including the fount of the River Jordan. Though surrounded by mountains, it is 686ft below sea level. It is the lowest fresh water lake in the world,and currently, it is the principal source of drinking water for Israel and parts of Palestine. As he walked down the hill into the depths of Earth, did Jesus learn the importance of descent before ascent?
In Jesus’ era fish usually abounded, especially one of my favorites, tilapia filli. In 2005 270 tons of Tilapia alone were caught by local fishermen. Pause for a moment and contemplate. Jesus seems to have had a strong link with the tilapia. He knew where they were. He knew their behaviors. He could sense when they were on one side of the boat or the other. They “knew” him. He was of them. And, I propose that it was this intricate linkage that made possible the feeding of the 5000.Not just Jesus himself but the linkage. They may have “told” him how provide for the hungry. See what I mean: the eco-field hypothesis is difficult for us to wrap ourselves around. We just end to getting lost in our abstract reasoning.
One final feature of this beautiful lake: during a routine sonar scan in 2003 scientists discovered an enormous conical stone structure. Though assessment is not complete, it is likely 13,000 years old. It is only 33 ft below the surface. Is it somehow a transmitting device that can send information throughout the eco-fields in the area? Is it possible that such an ancient architecture, like the pyramids, linked in some way with humans who were available to perceive? Why had it been missed over these thousands of years? Does wisdom mean the capacity to widen bandwidth to consider tuning into such possibilities inherent in the structure?
No Firm Conclusions
I almost lost myself on that last point. Really? An ancient conical transmitter? If we are to be part of The Great Return, we will have to transcend our critical thinking. Include Western thinking, yes. But reach beyond. We will have to put all possibilities on the table. The one I find most viable is this: within the system of fields we– and the sensual world– are invested in the transmission of intelligence throughout the universe with a movement toward intimacy. Humans can be part of that cycle, but only if we rethink our stinking thinking.
Next, I will turn this lens on Carl G. Jung.
3.0: Ancient Galilee’s Eco-fields
Soon, I will launch an exploration of Carl Jung and propose that he, too, has been basically misunderstood. But first I attend to a loose string, an anomaly in the Jesus narrative. The string from the ball of yarn keeps getting longer and longer the more I delve into the story. The dangling string seems to issue not from a theological perspective but from both a pre-biblical and post quantum physics perspective. If I follow this string a bit further, perhaps I can let go of this portion of the discussion.
In this blog series I have explored Pieter Craffert’s hypothesis that to understand Jesus you have to immerse yourself in the Galilean culture and language, not Greek, Jewish, or Roman culture. Especially, not modern Western Civilization’s culture. If you dive deeply into Galilean culture and language, he argues, you will soon see that Jesus fits the shamanic framework. True enough.
But, here is that pesky loose string: after a few weeks of contemplation, I see that Craffert too has missed the most basic key. As I looked at beautiful images of the Sea of Galilee, it dawned on me that the most powerful epiphany in Galilee was not Jesus as an avatar individual but rather the Galilean eco-scape seeking to express itself through a favorite son, Jesus.
The major revelation given is through Jesus not from Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount is field-centric not human-centric. Startling truths emerge not from an individual inspired from a distant god but rather from the rich intertwining of relationships within a particular eco-field as that system of fields relates to the Whole.
There. That’s the string I mention in a nutshell. To me, it speaks to The Great Return. To get my point here, you have to return, if just for a moment, to an immersion into the fields.
I don’t expect many of us to grasp this approach suggested by the dangling string easily. Such a grasping is not a simple thing—to overturn the thousands of years of Western Civilization’s conditioning—which has lead us humans to think we are the center of all things. It staggers us to consider that Jesus—in some ways the apex of humans-first thinking—really is at rock bottom a beautiful expression of an ecology.
But is the string dangling enough for us to re-think thinking?Even allow a new form of thinking to emerge? Let’s proceed, briefly.
Eco-fields Express Themselves In Different Ways
In a recent book I examine the new science of eco-fields. In the science of fields, an eco-field is defined as a space configuration/meaning carrier, under the epistemological umbrella, of an individually-based landscape. In other words an eco-field transmits information and meaning between its various parts through the medium of fields, including gravity and electro-magnetics(See The Mother Tongue, part II). The specific field links to a matrix of field that is a Whole.
Am I saying that the Whole(God, as it were) is the sum of the parts? No, in my view, a Whole is greater than but not equal to the sum of the parts. Let’s go on.
For example, I live on a tract of acreage. No, that’s not quite it. I live IN an acreage, which consists of an overlapping and intricate system of eco-fields. My deck is one eco-field. Ten yards away is a wild eco-field. Different eco-fields have different patterns of energy, intensity, and information. There is a large difference between the Teotihuacan Pyramids and your local freeway, yet both consist of eco-field systems with different patterns of communication. I am not an “I” apart from the locale where I live. Boundaries between me and all around me are convenient, especially in Western Civilization, but certainly not definitive of me. I experience myself as more an expression of the eco-fields of my life than vice-versa. In short, my identity is defined by an intricate set of relationships. The same is true of Jesus.
Galilee’s Gospel
Here is my proposal: the Galilean system of eco-fields sprouted a favorite son in Jesus of Nazareth. Yes, the culture was important. Yes, the Aramaic language was crucial. But these human features were bubbles on top of the waves of the eco-fields. Consider that this little tract of land—the Sea of Galilee is only about five miles long and two miles wide—gave birth to where the Torah was written and, later, to the Nazarene and his first students. Note: the New Testament was not written in Galilee but mostly in more urban and civilized eco-fields such as Jerusalem, Corinth, and Rome, 35-100 years after Jesus’ death. Such a fact might explain why much of the New Testament, especially Paul’s letters, seem so disconnected from the natural order and, thus, from Jesus himself.
Friend Rocks
As I mentioned earlier, I have not been to Galilee. I have to consult eco-fields where I live in hopes that they connect with Galilee. Limestone rocks are all around me everyday, and I have a sense they link to Galilee. Google confirms my intuition—limestone is a central feature of the Galilean eco-scape. I hold my close friends– these 260 million year old rocks– and invite them to introduce me to their friends across the oceans. I trust them more than I do European and Ivy League scholars. Certainly more than Paul, or even Luke or John, though my lack of fluency in rock language limits me. Igneous intrusive and extrusive rocks also are near my sweat lodge where I live, and I find that Jesus held rocks like these in his hands since he lived on a seismic rift created by the African and Arabian tectonic plates. What did the rocks express through him? What prompted these rocks to send forth the Sermon on the Mount? Is it possible that by holding these rocks, a profound intelligence was transmitted and mixed with Jesus’ inner life to offer guidance to the ages? If so, to what purpose?
Local Juniper Trees
As I write, local junipers are mating with the males sending out an orange powder and the females dropping beautiful blue berries. Most people where I live fight these trees, even hate them. My wise grandmothers—Louiza and Talitha—passed down the healing practice of eating two or three berries from November through January. It works for me. No allergies. The berries can be poisonous if you aren’t in harmony with them. They can heal if you know them as your relatives. As I gently touch the berries and ask permission to suck on them for a minute or so, I wonder what intelligence their juices impart. I wonder what the local junipers said to Jesus, prominent as they were in his ecology. Were their roots, the roots of consciousness? Were they a source of wisdom and healing? Could Jesus have given sight to the blind without them? Do even the questions shock our sensibilities?
Rolling Hills Into the Sea
The mount in the title, Sermon on the Mount, was really not a mountain but a gentle hill that descended into the Sea. As I view images from Galilee, the hills look familiar, beautifully familiar with limestone breaks and prickly juniper adorning them. I can see 5000 or so people gathered on the slopes listening. Listening to a man? Or to the gentle breeze wafting through the juniper needles? Or to the crunch of rock as the folk shift their posteriors to gain comfort? Or to the rich tones of a Bedouin tribesman from nearby Nazareth? Are these hills alive as the scientist James Lovelock claims? And do the sounds of music roll across the hills, alive as Rodgers and Hammerstein imagined in another time and place?
Fresh Water And Miracles
The fresh water Lake of Galilee and its surrounding area are special. The first century historian, Flavius Josephus, was so touched by his first sighting that he wrote,”One may call this place the ambition of Nature.” It is fed by natural springs and a system of streams, including the fount of the River Jordan. Though surrounded by mountains, it is 686ft below sea level. It is the lowest fresh water lake in the world, currently, it is the principal source of drinking water for Israel and parts of Palestine. As he walked down the hill into the depths of Earth, did Jesus learn the importance of descent before ascent?
In Jesus’ era fish usually abounded, especially one of my favorites, tilapia filli. In 2005 270 tons of Tilapia alone were caught by local fishermen. Pause for a moment and contemplate. Jesus seems to have had a strong link with the tilapia. He knew where they were. He knew their behaviors. He could sense when they were on one side of the boat or the other. They “knew” him. He was of them. And, I propose that it was this intricate linkage that made possible the feeding of the 5000.Not just Jesus himself but the linkage. They may have “told” him how provide for the hungry. See what I mean: the eco-field hypothesis is difficult for us to wrap ourselves around. We just end to getting lost in our abstract reasoning.
One final feature of this fertile eco-field: during a routine sonar scan in 2003 scientists discovered an enormous conical stone structure. Though assessment is not complete, it is likely 13,000 years old. It is only 33 ft below the surface. Is it somehow a transmitting device that can send information throughout the eco-fields in the area? Is it possible that such an ancient architecture, like the pyramids, linked in some way with humans who were available? Why had it been missed over thiese thousands of years? Does wisdom mean the capacity to widen bandwidth to consider tune into such possibilities inherent in the structure?
No Firm Conclusions
I almost lost myself on that last point. Really? An ancient conical transmitter? If we are to be part of The Great Return, we will have to transcend our critical thinking. Include Western thinking, yes. But reach beyond. We will have to put all possibilities on the table. The one I find most viable is this: within the system of fields we– and the sensual world– are invested in the transmission of intelligence throughout the universe. Humans can be part of that cycle, but only if we rethink our stinking thinking.
Rmaya, this is so true. When in an environment, I sense it, then I might if I am aware think it. The first awareness is totally embodied. For instance, I was born in the white limestone hills of Fort Worth. One of my earliest memories of childhood is running on that rugged terrain. When it came time to retire, where did I go? To what I love, I returned to the white limestone hills with juniper trees of the hill country.
Eco-Field Expressions The River Jordan
Eco-fields don’t feel like they are accessed with the linear brain and the place words come from. My body has many eco fields and expressions and different combinations, continuously changing as I move in and out of energetics/eco fields. Each thing, whether it be rock, valley, river, body is a different combination and experience of these ecofields.
I have been fortunate to walk in and experience a few ecofields in the Israel, Palestine area. Being touched by so many different lands, each resonating and awakening a new color and sound within my bones, I began to relearn how to open myself up in remembering. This is a way of attuning my body to recognize the different qualities/eco fields. We are each created out of these different ecofields experiences. Perhaps we are an expression of earth and human soul coming together, becoming whole, maybe that is the path that Jesus was really showing us.
Walking in the land where so much history has occurred, I felt the impact as a palpable energetic. My other tribe(group) of EarthHealers did a connecting, healing ceremony to open and blend. We worked with the fluid energies of the water from the River Jordan. Reaching back to blend with another time, it was important to be connected physically to this place(ecofield) in order to connect with that ” Jesus” energetic. Then each of us gathered sacred water for ceremony. Water is an important carrier/holder of vibration, knowledge and life. I felt the multiplicity of many ecofields of time. Energies left behind of old creations and ancestors. Walking the lands of “Burning Bushes” and David and Goliath was surreal because the “ecotime” had changed it to farmland. The land wasn’t very clean, litter all around surprised me, that sacred wholeness could still be accessed.
How do we let go of critical thinking? Perhaps it is about reconnecting our brains to the rest of our own eco-fields (mind/body). In simply remembering to reconnect to our own wholeness, mind, body, spirit and feel with our entire being, it happens. As above so below. As below so above????
Will,
Just out of interest , how do you navigate the hermeneutics (anthropological historiography) that Craffert employs? (1) surely we all agree that monoculture is a thing of the past when looking at history, how do you avoid a positivism of “ecofield” interpretation that could be as much of a fetish as is positivism of the text?
(2) given that many people who knew Jesus, saw him via what they wanted to see in him, how would the majority of his close friends and des piles define who he was? How would he define himself? I see him using his knowledge of the created world quite intimately. Would John, Peter, Thomas or Judas see this as Shamanistic?
3) an observation – looking at how things hung together in the past, we all must maintain a dialogical humility. I am awed by your approach as this is what the Syrian exegetes do in many ways. If you want to feel the temptation of making hunger your Achilles heel, go to the desert. If you want to consider death as did Elijah, sit under a juniper tree and watch its berries hall near your hand. Once we experience the ecofield, we should continue to dialogue with it over time and dialogue with others to examine and interact with its evolving truth.
Being a member of a Syrian Orthodox Church for the last 5 years has turned my Christian experience upside down and my theological training inside out. Most of the Syrian priests and bishops are not educated in the classical Roman mind. Many of us in the west have little clue of how modern science and the enlightenment subtly infiltrate our western ways of remembering ancient times.
For the western theologian, something new in theology is always something we get curious about. No so the Syrian Theologian. His curiosity is fed by finding ways to go deeper into his own mystical experience; in syurrendering kore deeply into the mystery of God’s presence and love.
There is a joke among the priests and bishops. “How many Syrian Orthodox priests does it take to change a lightbulb?” The answer: CHANGE???????@#$$%^&. The liturgy of Saint James (James the brother of Jesus) is till used without change and sung in Syriac (essentially the same language as Aramaic).
What is also most significant is how mystical the whole experience of the eucharist and even a sermon is.
This kind of practice brings to biblical interpretation a whole different level than what a protestant or catholic theologican brings. First of all, Niel Douglas Klotz is right on about levels of allegory and symbolism being as much a part of a translation as the literal words. And you can find the best of these translations and the sermons that emerge from them when the priest or Bishop has spent long hours alone in his ecofield plumbing its secrets.
The eucharist is a phenomenological experience (for those of us who attune to it) of going through the veil and becoming present with the angels, principalities and powers who are present at the service. Kadosh, kados, kadosh cry the angels when the eucharist is raised, if you have ears and eyes to witness it.
This kind of priesthood is shamanic in some sense of the word in that they live the daily death (shadow), experience other realms regularly, do miracles, and accompany the dying through the tunnelwith the intent of calming their souls before they reach the life-review.
Mysticism, like shamanism, is essentially iconoclastic. It sure shows in the fact that there is no one pope. Saint Augustine’s structures were never much of an influence much less his Theology of the Head. CHurch Father Origen reigns among the Syrian Orthodox. His was a Theology of the heart. And the teaching of theology should only be done once somene has spent years in hesychastic prayer. Often, like with my own Bishop, this is done alone in the wilderness, becoming a small part of the ecofield that is supporting you with food, shalter and comany. It is about living in faith, awe and humility. It is the way of saint Francis (OK, he was a Roman catholic), who was in touch with all creation.
Very little separation of body (earth) and spirit (heavens) in a neo-platinic fashion is present within these folks. Priests can be married (before they take vows), but a Bishop must be solely devoted to prayer and service ( no wife). Not because of any idea that the flesh weights you down as much as because of the call and committment to become a slave to the congregation – praying and being at their becon call.
If anyone wants to get a feel for what it was like to be in a first century middle eastern Jesus-based ecofield, getting to know a Syrian Orthodox priest or Bishop is one option. Here is a church that will not take offerings in the House of God. here is a church that has never and will never have a standing army. Here is a church that makes a very high calling f giving to the poor, the orphan, the widow and the infirmed to the point that they are always broke themselves. Indeed, the ecofield will likely turn you upside down as it did me.
I really resonated with the discussion on the lake and the tilapia. At first my inner skeptic is “really..that is a jump”. Yet, is it not what this discussion is about…making that jump..that leap to something larger. In seeing Jesus as a Shaman I must quote from “The many colored buffalo” one of my favorite quotes, page 128: “The Shaman is the guide into the tension zone between these energies and calls it Medicine Power. The shaman makes no attempt to escape from the tension of opposites both inside himself and outside, but embraces these opposites, sometimes in celebration and sometimes in terror, walking hand in hand with the paradoxes and contradictions with the full knowledge that the awareness that results from sitting between them is his or her power. Most of all, he or she walks with the tension between ordinary personal realities and transpersonal reality”. In my assessment, my understanding and experience of Jesus…he held the tension of opposites right up to his death on a cross. Which can be seen as a symbol of opposites being held in tension.
Interesting discussion, would Jesus have been the person he was if he had grown up in a different eco-field? Can we change and grow by consciously placing ourselves in eco-fields that stimulate growth of sensitivity, patience, awareness? What would an eco-field capable of generating such feelings look like, feel like? Most certainly a Nature based eco-field would be more conducive to generating feelings of contentment and peace than an intersection in downtown Manhatten during rush hour! Are there areas of the Earth where concentrations of energy are greater, where the eco-field is more powerful? When I walk in the woods I know there are places where I am compelled to stop and feel because there is an energy there that feels so good it catches my breath.
Taking the concept of eco-fields to another level, can we say that we are constantly surrounded by fields of energy, especially when there are other people around. Sometimes the energy is good, sometimes the energy is not so good, but still there is an energy that we can sense, that we react to. Can eco-fields be generated by large groups of people, how about a single person? Do each of us generate an eco-field? Are wisdom, compassion, love sensed in the emanation of an eco-field? So many thoughts, this discussion of eco-fields is an interesting one!
Your discussion is in itself healing. Jesus as shaman, transmitter of the eco field, is so much more tenable, real, vibrating than anything else i have heard so far. The traditional Chrisitan model so separates body/earth/from spirit and soul; I have always felt Jesus in my heart , a way that was private and personal, as I could not bear that his sacredness seemed so co opted by the traditional/hierarchical/polarizing/polarized Christian ideology. Claiming Christ as shaman, so deeply connected to his place of origin, the original gift, restores wholeness.
Sense of place. All my life that I have always had this intense connection to place. When I write fiction, the characters seem to grow out of the earth with their stories. I can never know a character without knowing where he/she lives. Once I know where the character lives, there are a few unknowns left, the landscape informs everything he or she does. The eco field is living. No doubt. Remembrance , is indeed, the great teaching.
It is interesting to me that you bring up this string. For several nights after reading the previous articles I would lie awake and contemplate the formation of Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi and others by the eco-field in which they lived. Did this not form their wisdom and gifts to the planet? Jesus began his work with a journey into the rocky desert and a baptism in the River Jordan and an ally dove. He ended his ministry as history tells us in a garden on his knees on the earth and surrounded by olive trees. Spirit seemed to flow through him with wisdom and comfort. Buddha sought his enlightenment sitting on the earth beneath a tree. Gandhi sought understanding in a garden and remembered the sea. Perhaps, more accurately, the sea remembered Gandhi. Gandhi let the wisdom flow through him and walked silently a long distance to the sea to reveal that Spirit freely gives us salt from the erosion of rock. Government had no need to control and seek profit from an abundant gift from Spirit. These thoughts bounced around for some time without expression. These thoughts took me back to the quotation: below that was so freeing to my spirit.
Abwoon d’bwashmaya.
Our Father, who art in heaven…
A recent Aramaic translation of this same phrase is startlingly different:
O Birther, Source, Mother-Father of the Universe.
This Source flows through us and the remembrance of it calls us to prayer and reflection. Jesus according to history said, loosely translated, “Greater things than these shall you do.” For me this translates into a call for prayer in action for gratitude to be expressed toward the Source in care of our island home, an awareness of our eco-field, and our place within it. Does my soul instinctively know to search for this Source, when my eyes lift to the sky, to the stars, to the universe when I desire to pray around the fire, or in other moments?