How Do You Manifest Divinity?

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The Universe is God's Body

By Ian Lawton

For me it was becoming a parent; a wondrous creative expression. I had given birth to the world. Well, at least I had done my part. For me, parenthood was more a state of mind and spirit than biology. Conversations about who looks like whom never interest me. What matters to me is that each new birth reflects the universe. We all give birth to the world in our various ways. Whether it’s social workers empowering people to rebuild their broken lives, teachers educating students, adoptive parents embracing their children for the first time, or artists and poets giving birth to word and image, life is a divine, creative act.

Powell Davies said, “God is what the soul ‘breathes’ as the body breathes air.”

You are a manifestation of God in your creating and living. You are the way God experiences sibling rivalry and oedipal struggles. You are the way God builds bridges and tears down walls of hostility. You are the way God experiences success and failure, joy and sorrow. You are God imploding in narcissism and God intoxicated with human community.

Christians have described this as “incarnation”. God became flesh, and dwelt in the midst of life in all its grit and grind. This was radical new teaching in an age when flesh was just a temporary cage for an immortal soul. Body was inferior and ungodly. Jesus’ teaching turned this notion on its head. He didn’t just teach it. He lived a flesh affirming life. Just think of his engagement with the long haired, ‘Avon Lady’. She massaged his flesh, the flesh of the Son of God, with her indulgent perfume and luscious hair. Jesus said “she has done a beautiful thing”, i.e. the Son of God enjoyed the sensual touch of a woman.

The stage was set by the teaching of Jesus for a full embrace of humanity. Mind you, his teaching took some time to take root. He was clearly ahead of his day. First, the early church would claim incarnation with a tight grip of institutional ownership. For the early church, the holy had become human in one place and time only, in order to bring a message to a single chosen people. This message concerned parts of the human experience, in particular the salvation of the “soul” for another world.

The holistic essence of Jesus teaching remains largely hidden in churches today. Classical music is still more holy than contemporary music, silence more golden than sound, grand words more uplifting than daily conversation and sexuality is still left in the sacristy closet. The church remains irrelevant to so many modern people because it speaks concepts of yesterday in language of yesterday, and continues to separate everyday human experience from “spiritual” experience.

The progressive movement is exciting as it begins to include all of the Kosmos and the whole of humanity in the embrace of incarnation. We can do this with integrity knowing that the ministry modeled by Jesus was a ministry concerned with flesh and blood. We can celebrate along with Mary Oliver that “The spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes, shoulders, and all the rest.”

We can declare that the universe is God’s body. The universe is constantly incarnating God in humming birds and human beings, stars and stray dogs, cells and cedar. All of life is a revelation of divinity, a language of reverence, a vision of reality that contains within it the sources of an ethical, transcendent self-understanding.

The Buddhist notion of the Bodhisattva is similar to the Christian notion of incarnation. Particularly in Mahayana Buddhism, compassion is valued over wisdom. The one who is about to arrive at the gates of Nirvana vows and freely chooses to turn back and assist all others to get there as well. There is a common saying- "If I know how to swim, and even one other being cannot, then it is right to remain behind in this world to assist them until they know how to save themselves from drowning."

Buddhism, like Christianity, has been through a process of opening up the embrace of the Bodhisattva. The goddess Tara is a multifaceted deity within Tibetan Buddhism. Tara originated in Indian Hinduism as the Mother Creator, and spread to Ireland and Indonesia under many different names.

The inspiration of Tara is that she insisted on remaining in a female body while functioning as a bodhisattva, even though Buddhism was predominantly a male religion. While taking the bodhisattva vows, Tara refused to pray for rebirth as a male, as was the custom. Instead she vowed always to take female births. Tara’s vow was to save all beings, regardless of gender. She had extended the embrace of the Bodhisattva.

It’s no coincidence that Christianity and Buddhism share such similar concepts, and no doubt the Avatar in Hinduism could be included in this discussion. There is a universal striving for a more holistic embrace of humanity. A fuller experience of humanity is such a marvel that nothing less than divine poetry can come close to capturing Life’s miracle. God takes on flesh and enters humanity. Nirvana takes on form and embraces humanity. Each tradition will have its own language and concepts to describe the same universal yearning.

You manifest God in your flesh. You are nirvana on earth. How marvelous!

Independence Celebration Picnic this Sunday, July 1

As a result of your overwhelming support this year, combined with our carry-over from last year, our campaign to gain independence raised over $63,000. We have now paid the Classis Muskegon of the Reformed Church in America for the final time! All remaining funds raised from this campaign are being applied to permanently reduce church debt notes. Thank you for your generosity!

We will celebrate our independence in style, with a fantastic Independence Picnic on Sunday, July 1. Join us for food, music, a fabulous inflatable obstacle course, a dunk tank, and so much more! You will not want to miss this incredible community event. Please invite all those who have been a part of the C3/CCC community to enjoy this celebration.

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