WeCreating the Future of Christianity & the World
“WeCreating Together” – image by Christy Thrasher
Part One: A Spirituality of Divine Participation Here and Now
For much of the history of Christianity (especially Western), the central aim and work of the church and its members has been about getting to heaven. And heaven has been disembodied into a distant and separate realm only reached after we die.
Constructed systems of the afterlife and hell, rooted more in Platonic dualism and the medieval symbolic poetry of Dante than the teachings of Jesus, have kept Christianity in a place of perpetual deferment and fear. This has also steered the Christian life to be about morality rather than transformation, escape rather than resurrection.
While we wait for glory or worry about damnation for ourselves or others, we try to live in a morally holy way and recruit others to the cause to see them saved—or we bear our suffering and take solace in a future eternal reward (or retribution for the wicked). The real accounting is yet to come. And the joy of heaven is for after life.
I’m painting with broad strokes here, but the shades of transcendency bias in Christianity (and many other traditions) have so often dominated the religious landscape, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Transcendency bias is the over-emphasis of the “vertical” and ascending aspects of spirituality, to the often-extreme neglect of the immanent, material, and human dimensions. It orients almost solely toward that which is “beyond” this world or earthly plane.
Jesus, rather, spoke of the kingdom of heaven as being within us and at hand (meaning within reach and able to grasp, more than “about to happen” in the near future). In the Christ incarnation, Jesus came to reveal an immanent God who is in our midst, not removed and inaccessible behind the temple veil or the veil of flesh—or a distant heaven far above. He called us to our divine participation here and now, in this life.
Transcendency bias has also been prevalent in much of the Christian mystical tradition. Union with God is only met after long and arduous processes of purgation. Illumination is given from beyond as a special grace, which we receive only as empty vessels or passive recipients. God descends from above to a few worthy souls, and seemingly very sparingly at that.
A bit of over-characterization again, but this orientation is widespread. Much of Christianity has presupposed a distant and transcendent God who we need to somehow reach (or wait to be graced with a visit). Again, there is a gap between where/who we are and God—which is true to an extent, but it’s not the full truth. This is the stated or unconscious fundamental assumption behind the vast majority of approaches to the spiritual life in the tradition and in many other spiritual traditions as well.
There is nothing wrong with transcendence and acknowledging that God is naturally “beyond” us. Of course God is. It’s just not the whole story. We can look forward to the glory that awaits on the other side of death—and the glory and calling to fully live now. All too often, transcendency bias has kept us from inhabiting and further bringing forth heaven in the here and now.
Where the fundamental ground of our lived reality is God immanently present in us, among each other, and all throughout the cosmos.
Where heaven is our current and everyday home, and our calling is to weave it evermore into the fabric of life.
Where divine union is not the end point, but the place from which we open into living in Christ now.
With the state of the world today and all that stands before us, it has never been more important for us to take up the crucial work of living in the resurrected life now on this planet and with the earth for healing, restoration, and transformation.
John Heron calls this “the newly emerging power of the human spirit, the dawning age of divine immanence.”
This is the full calling of our divine participation. To be the living and moving mystical (holistic) Body of Christ becoming today. To co-create with God the necessary future and spiritual becoming of heaven on earth. To be enlivened in the here and now to live into the fullness of this life, with all the glory and all the grief, and all that is being beckoned and begged for by a hungry and thirsty world.
This is what I mean by “WeCreating the future of Christianity and the world”—which I believe is the vital calling of our time for followers of Jesus and the Christ-way.
Our lives are not about what comes next, but about actively engaging in the loving transformation of ourselves, our communities, and the planet now.
Throughout this series, we’ll be exploring what it is to WeCreate, and how we can step more into becoming divine co-creators of the future.
“New Life from the Heart” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
A Transcendent, Immanent Spirituality
“Mysticism is the integral, holistic experience of reality, life itself.” – Raimon Panikkar
Our mystical hope is not in an escape from this realm, but rather through the full and total embrace of the whole of reality.
This necessarily includes the imaginal and spiritual realms which go beyond and permeate this everyday world we live in. But they are not separate and distant. They are interwoven in the fabric of consciousness we can learn to inhabit more and more. This is an integral mysticism.
Through spiritual practice or mystical grace, we can ascend to a transcendent, cosmic state of mystical experience. But this is not our permanent destination or spiritual ultimate found in a separate, distinct reality of experience. Rather, our mystical transcendence can serve as a dynamic expansion into more than what we already know, more than what we have seen, more than who we have been. And sometimes this movement feels rather like an inner deepening than an outer extending.
We integrate the more into our divine being in the here and now—which is now experienced in ways bigger and deeper, and more intensely present. A transcendence into greater immanence.
Or, to put it another way, joining heaven and earth.
“Christ the Way” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
The Mystical Body of Christ Abiding and Attending Now
We might even call this the living, Mystical Body of Christ, which is not the organizational church or ecclesiastical institution.
It is the global collective of people who are awakened and engaging with divine reality in interplay with the world in its becoming. Remember, “Christ” is not a single person (it’s not called the body of Jesus), but the living consciousness of God in and through matter—the earth and humanity.
So if the Mystical Body of Christ is not a transcendent, distant reality of heaven above, nor a religious system of restricted power, what is its purpose here on earth?
If it’s not about recruiting more members or saving people from a non-existent hell, nor being morally pure or righteous for the sake of a fabricated, eternal scorecard, how does it live and move?
From the teachings of Jesus, we might distill it down to two main ways of being: Abiding and Attending.
Abiding is about dwelling in and as Christ. Remain in me as I also remain in you. That our deepest being is in God and God is in us. This co-indwelling lives not just in us as individuals, but in the collective body of Christ in communion. Union together. This is our fundamental and ultimate identity. And here we can rest and reside in the intrinsic value of our divine oneness.
But again, this is not where it stops but where it begins. We bear fruit. We respond from this upwelling of divine life from within and among us to an outpouring to flourish, to give, to serve. And from your innermost being (womb) will flow rivers of living water. Jesus spoke often of caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, and living a life of love, blooming with the fruits of the spirit. This is attending to the world, to life, to caring for our neighbors.
What is the act of service that we are being called to in this day and age? How is the Mystical Body of Christ alive and moving today?
“Open Hand” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
We are always called to small acts given with great love. And we may also be called to attend to the primary act of God: creation.
Creation is not a one-time event set in motion by a cosmic deity. Rather, it is a continual irrupting and unfolding act permeated throughout all of creation. And as participants in divine nature, we are invited to step into this co-creative divine process.
This is our divine becoming both in who we truly are (abiding) and in how we live in this world (attending).
In ICN, we might see this as integrating both WeSpace and what we’re beginning to call WeCreating.
More on this in part two.
“Blooming Life Anew” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
What is WeCreating?
In this understanding, we can say that WeCreating is about mystically (holistically) attending to the world in its divine becoming. This is an act of love, giving ourselves in service to the loving evolution of all of creation in its ongoing emergence.
This is a proactive engagement with the world. It is not simply about responding to situations after they have happened and offering care—though this is a vital act of service as well. But the scale and scope of problems the world faces today are such that simply reacting in love will not be enough.
To truly serve and care for the poor (and us all), we are being called to take part in a bigger evolution. A transformation of consciousness and revolution of our ways of being that can lovingly transform the earth into a resurrected body of God, a divine flowering of a new reality for us all to live into.
What will this look like? How will we get there?
While we’ll be exploring this throughout this series, I certainly don’t have all the answers. The vision is not cast from any single vantage point.
It’s clear that we’ll have to do it together. Each and every one of us.
We won’t wait around for things to get worse, counting on some transcendent escape plan. We won’t resign ourselves to simply waiting for paradise after we die. Heaven cannot be deferred any longer.
How will you be a part of WeCreating heaven on earth? Of transforming the world, one another, and ourselves into who we truly are and what we can become?
Begin as creation, become a creator.
Never wait at a barrier.
In this kitchen stocked with fresh food,
why sit content with a cup of warm water?
—Rumi
“Evolutionary Christianities” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
All Images are open-source, used with permission, or created by ICN