T
trickster
Guest
The status quo thinking of most Catholics is that we are “end-products” of a Divine Will “out there” that has been determined ages ago and is static in its execution. We are limited through our sinful nature designated to us by Augustine’s “original sin”, arguments which we validate as a church. We spend most of our times begging for the mercy of God in helping us to etch out some semblance of daily living practices that are consistent with the way the scriptures imply that we should live and/or we try to reach the “high bar” of expectations that the Church lays out for us. We emphasis our sins, sacrifice, guilt and dependency in our practice. I, am of course, creating an extreme scenario for purposes of comparison and example.
Yet, there is another tradition in our faith and that is celebration, participation and “co-creation” if you will. St. Francis says it well in the famous prayer “make me a channel of your……”. Where there is (whatever) let me bring (whatever). We are the hands, eyes, mouth, voice, bodies of creating God’s Will; we are not needed by God but we are created by God as co-creators in the sense of doing and implementing His will. Prayers often don’t get answered because we don’t follow our “gut feelings”, our instincts, our senses. We, who are supposed to be the channel of God’s will, are “plugged up” and those blockages delay the work and will of God. That is interesting because it carves out a co-creation aspect of our Christianity.
We complete God’s vision and therefore we are “creator’s” too, albeit junior apprentices in this great work. The other notion that I visualized is the feelings of parents with respect to the innovation, uniqueness and creativity of their children. While parents have an idea in general, they continue to be amazed – if they are not too controlling – in the vision of their children and the vision of the children in conversation with the direction set out by the parents is a co-creative process. I believe it to be much the same way with our Creator.
Thoughts?
Yet, there is another tradition in our faith and that is celebration, participation and “co-creation” if you will. St. Francis says it well in the famous prayer “make me a channel of your……”. Where there is (whatever) let me bring (whatever). We are the hands, eyes, mouth, voice, bodies of creating God’s Will; we are not needed by God but we are created by God as co-creators in the sense of doing and implementing His will. Prayers often don’t get answered because we don’t follow our “gut feelings”, our instincts, our senses. We, who are supposed to be the channel of God’s will, are “plugged up” and those blockages delay the work and will of God. That is interesting because it carves out a co-creation aspect of our Christianity.
We complete God’s vision and therefore we are “creator’s” too, albeit junior apprentices in this great work. The other notion that I visualized is the feelings of parents with respect to the innovation, uniqueness and creativity of their children. While parents have an idea in general, they continue to be amazed – if they are not too controlling – in the vision of their children and the vision of the children in conversation with the direction set out by the parents is a co-creative process. I believe it to be much the same way with our Creator.
Thoughts?