A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY

I’ve never been able to engage easily with the story of Jesus’ Ascension into heaven. I remember as a young curate declining to take an Ascension-tide service for the local junior school because I couldn’t see what the story could helpfully mean to a group of young children.

Artists have usually portrayed The Ascension as a group of men standing looking up as a pair of feet disappear out of sight. But my friend James recently reminded me of Dali’s painting of The Ascension and I find very moving not least because it is so mystifying.

A cruciform Jesus is being lifted head first, it is unclear how, into an almost womb-like circular golden space. A female face looks down at Him. At the very foot of the image is a tiny stretch of water, but the rest is all mystery.

I don’t understand it but am deeply moved by it. It obviously touches something deep in me.

I’ve just finished reading ‘Meeting God in John,’ an excellent little book about John’s Gospel by the theologian David Ford, and he’s enabled me not only to get a handle on the story of Jesus’ Ascension but to feel excited about it. He describes the meeting of the risen Jesus with Mary Magdalen in the garden where His tomb was. She doesn’t recognise Him, and thinks that He is the gardener, until He calls her by her name and then goes on to say to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’

Ford comments that “Up to now, she has been able to touch him and see him on occasion because he has been present like anyone else, in one place at a time. But Jesus ascending to his Father means that, in the future, he will be present as God is present, free to relate to all people, at all times and in all places. Jesus is preparing her for that. He will be real (indeed, supremely real, divinely real), but not ordinarily to be touched or seen in person here in the world. This is, in fact, far better.”

At once the lights went on and I understood and believed. Jesus ascending to the Father means that He will be invisible but free to be present everywhere, to everyone, and always, as God is present everywhere, to everyone, always. That makes sense to me. It speaks to my own experience. When I have known that God was close to me, speaking to me, I can just as easily say that it was the Risen Jesus, the Cosmic Christ, being close or speaking to me.

If this is true for me then its true for everyone, regardless of faith or none. In the light of that, I now read John’s opening chapter thus:

“In the beginning the Word was Jesus, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Jesus was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Jesus, and without Jesus not one thing came into being. What has come into being in Jesus is life, and the life is the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through Jesus. John himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

Jesus was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. Jesus came to his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, Jesus gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us as Jesus, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

Wherever there is Life Jesus is present, wherever there is Light Jesus is present. Jesus is ‘the true light’ enlightening everybody and everything, not just those who call themselves Christians but everybody. The Cosmic Jesus, returned to being with God is available on a global & presumable universal basis, not as an exclusive local event for the Church. This insight is widely known, while variously described. I am reminded of poems which speak to me out of it, despite sometimes using different words and coming from different times and faith traditions.

“Gods Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins: speaks of God [aka the Risen Jesus, the Cosmic Christ] meeting us in the natural world:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil,

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And, for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastwards, springs –

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright

I’m grateful to my friend Antoinette for drawing my attention to two poems:

“Breath of Life” by Emily Dickinson

Life’s essence whispers,

Unseen, yet ever near,

A gentle breath that stirs,

Both solace and revealer.

Within this sacred breeze,

Divine love takes its form,

Guiding souls with ease,

Through trials and life’s storm.

Oh, Holy Spirit’s grace,

Envelop us with light,

Renew our weary pace,

And make our spirits bright.

“The Dove’s Whisper” by the Muslim Rumi

Within the silence,
A gentle dove whispers,
Guiding us towards love,
Where the Divine envisions.

Its wings, soft and pure,
Carry the Spirit’s grace,
Uniting souls in love,
In an eternal embrace.

Oh, Holy Spirit’s flight,
Reveal the truth within,
Unveil the guiding light,
And cleanse us from all sin.

“Poetry by Pablo Neruda: describes how the poet was overwhelmed on discovering his vocation, in an experience which for me sounds & feels like an annunciation.

And it was at that age…Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don’t know how or when,

no, they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names,

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire,

and I wrote the first line,

faint, without substance, pure

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open,

planets,

palpitating plantations,

shadow perforated,

riddled

with arrows, fire and flowers,

the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

My heart broke loose on the wind.

And finally words of the Indian mystic, Tagore:

“The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.”