I usually don't preface my "Today's LBLC" posts with commentary, but I thought doing so this time would be appropriate. For the past few days I've been preparing my next article for the Emergent Jesus Way series. The last article was about loving God with our whole heart and our whole soul. The upcoming article, which I'll be publishing in the next couple of days, is on loving God with our whole mind and our whole strength. Of all the articles that I'll be writing in the EJW series, this one may perhaps be the most important. It goes directly to the heart of what the Gospel is about: our ability to overcome our inner brokenness and create Oneness. Yes. Our ability.

For centuries traditional Christianity has taught a Gospel that reinforces the notion that we are powerless over ourselves, and that only a cosmic deity can save us. This is nonsense. This not only diminishes our humanity, but also has the effect of excusing us from self-accountability and accountability to one another and our living world. This is our brokenness, and therefore ours to resolve. And it can be resolved. So I say it's time we realize that we can be its master, rather than it being master over us.

And now for Today's LBLC . . .

"Mindfulness, the capacity to be here, to witness deeply everything that happens in the present moment, is the beginning of enlightenment. The same is true of the Holy Spirit. Buddhists say that everyone has the seed of mindfulness in the deepest level of his or her consciousness, and that the practice helps that seed to manifest. This seed of mindfulness is the presence of the Buddha in us, called Buddha nautre (Buddhata), the nature of enlightenment. Christians say that God is in everyone's heart. The Holy Spirit can be described as being always present in our hearts in the form of a seed. Every time we pray or invoke the name of the Lord, that seed manifests itself as the energy of God. The Kingdom of God is in us as a seed, a mustard seed. If we cannot accept this, why do we say that God is within us?"

(Passage excerpted from "Living Buddha, Living Christ." Copyright © 1995 by Thich Nhat Hanh.)

Labels: gospel, mindfulness, oneness, today's lblc