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Friday, April 1, 2016

The Inspired Words of Diarmuid O’Murchu, from Ancestral Grace


Hope, more than any other virtue, is what is needed in these troubled times-- hope born out of the conviction that the living Spirit of God imbues and endows everything in creation. That which emanates and sustains all beings and continually begets new possibilities for birthing and flourishing is that dimension of the great mystery we invoke as the Holy Spirit of God. A more dynamic understanding of this living and abiding Spirit is crucial for a more hope filled future. In the Hebrew Scriptures the Holy Spirit indwells primarily through the Temple whereas in the New Testament the Holy Spirit regenerates in and through the people.
Fortunately theology is beginning to reclaim a more foundational role for the Holy Spirit as that divinely imbued empowering energy operative in creation from time immemorial. Our ancient ancestors readily identified such empowerments in the elements of nature--the living Spirit of God is depicted as the vivifying breath, healing wind, living water and purgative fire. 
For much of Christian history the Holy Spirit was dimension of understanding of God that received least attention. It was that nebulous birdlike entity that lacks the anthropocentric characteristics that would have made it more credible.  God the Father epitomized power and governance so important for patriarchal cultures.  Jesus, son of the ruling Father, had an embodied existence on this earth that could be historically verified; but the Holy Spirit was too big for these otherwise narrow and quantifiable horizons.
When those horizons begin to stretch in the latter half of the 20 century, the Holy Spirit was gradually rehabilitated, with a much more significant role. As humanity outgrows its biological conditioning in which our physicality confers our identity and grows into higher levels of spiritual maturation, then the relationship to God as Spirit becomes more central in experience and more empowering for growth and development.
God as Holy Spirit has a particular appeal for our time because that dimension and articulation of the divine-in-our-midst embodies most readily and tangibly what we are being lured into as evolving creatures today. This is not about God changing. Rather, it is about humans undergoing a new moment of transformation and recasting our relationship with the divine in a more empowering way for this new moment of emergence. It is a new way of recognizing and naming the role of the Holy Spirit of God, congruent with the graced experience of this time.
Grace triumphs in the power of this animating and enlivening spirit but it is always an awakening toward a new and better future. The spirit that allures us also awakens in our hearts dreams for a future that will often feel threatening to the guardians of conventional reality. The living spirit lures us to a culture of alternate thinking… that may look both strange and dangerous {but this is} where resurrection and new life stand the best hope of thriving today.

Alleluia!!

2 comments:

Kathleen Kunster said...

Wonderful post, Bridget Mary. Kathleen Kunster

Kathleen Kunster said...

Wonderful post, Bridget Mary. Kathleen Kunster