A few thoughts before moving on to ideas about Atonement. As I referred to this quote in Anthony's blog, it occurred to me that one could replace the word "love" with the word "God." I think it stuck out for me because in class today, we were given the question: Do we seek God, or does God seek us? Class discussion seemed to support the mystical answer, which is essentially: yes! What if we reframe the question to be asked in this way: Is it our task to seek God, or does God seek us? Rumi's words give a meaningful answer if we change the quote to: Your task is not to seek God, but to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. My mom would add "seek and destroy!" By finding the barriers (and destroying them), we inadvertantly seek a greater experience of the Divine- an experience that was always available and attainable. Is God drawing us toward It? I think that the absolute truth of anything has a gravitational pull on the soul. Because the power of the Divine is so pure, true, and the Source of all that is, I think it does draw us near. Is that the same as seeking us? Eh. That blurs the anthropomorphic line a bit much for me. I think a better question could be: Does the Divine desire our awareness of It?
Ah shoot! I asked "a better question." It would probably be really lame of me to not offer a response to that question. I said in my post that included my Theological Essay (second post on this blog I believe) that a metaphor that really speaks to me is that the Divine is like the ocean and our souls are like the waves of the ocean. We appear for a time, never really separate from the ocean nor any other wave, and then return to the source. Breathe that in for a moment- it is such a beautiful metaphor! Yeah, I'm stalling a bit. Ok ok. Given this train of thought, if the natural flow is to return to source...then there must be what can be described as desire. Gravitational pull? Isn't that a desire for balance? What emerges out of the water must return to the water. That "pull" or inclination for balance can be described as desire. Sure, why not? My search for wholeness is my desire to know my true nature- the wave searches for the ocean ignorantly. I think a thing desires to know its wholeness, is inclined toward balance, and requires awareness. (Jeez- for which class am I writing??!!) Even one of the 12 powers is Love- which we call the power of Desire... God IS the power of desire. Back to topic.
The title of this post indicates a topic of Atonement. I think the whole idea of Atonement is rooted in this question of seeking/desiring God. When we judge ourselves to be 'sinners', we look for a path back to the Divine...thus meandering the paradox that we are never truly separate from God, though we often have an experience of separation (in the ego mind, human experience, sin, sickness, helplessness, etc). I offer that a path for Atonement (at-one-ment) is largely required by the human mind in order to navigate our experiences of 'sin' (defined as missing the mark of our Divine nature). We desire God, and when we discover the barriers within ourselves that keep us from fully experiencing our Divine Nature, we often require a path that involves forgiveness, compassion, redemption for the purpose of reconciling the gap created in the experience of separation from God. When the barrier is understood and destroyed, there is a gap that will immediately be filled with God awareness. This is the true Atonement. We take our burdens to the cross, releasing the human constructs of separation and fully immerse our beings in the Divine.
