‘Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed…’1
‘Faith without works is dead…’2
‘Are you pure…’3
‘You could move that mountain if you only had faith the size of a mustard seed…’4
‘Some things only come by prayer and fasting…’5
These words and thoughts were often spoken, asked, and yes, required an answer from someone who was asking.
Whether it was my fifteen year old best friend, the ministry leader inviting me to join his church planting team, or my mother expecting me to follow every ‘literal’ command she had tried to follow. These were ways to measure my journey and often my worth.
These questions were asked time and again to determine the ‘readiness’ of a follower of Christ. I state it this way because it was measured. It was performative. If you didn’t measure up to the standard being surveyed, your measure of faith was not ‘ready’ to serve, lead or express.
One could argue that these sorts of steps make sense to have in place. We all can clearly see or name what can happen when someone is not ‘ready’ to lead or ‘serve.’ Makes perfect sense to measure, right?
The piece that makes it performative, in my experience, are the ones who are measuring, and why.
The yardstick of religious maturity is very long. Perhaps the intention in the beginning of the fourth century was to ‘secure’ some form of faith and practice and so the religious yardstick became the way to do so. The golden standard.
By the time the yardstick was presented to me in the way that I could begin ‘measuring up’ it seemed like the yardstick had grown from three feet to three thousand feet.
The rules, levers, and pulleys associated with ‘right living,’ ‘right thinking,’ and ‘right knowing,’ had become a machine. A system. One that I started seeing at age 10 was outward, judgmental, and performative. (My grandfather had his own expansion and I was a witness)
At Table on Wednesday we sat with Cynthia Bourgeault’s words from her book Eye of the Heart. As we moved from one person to the next around the virtual table I heard the desire from deep within them to…
know Jesus
to seek the Good
to experience Spirit
to practice the acts of love that are ‘out of this world.’
Yes, read that again. ‘To practice the acts of love that are out of this world.’ I felt my ten year old self longing for this. Wondering, in that moment, what if we had all had this experience growing up in the church… just these four practices.
In our diligence as people of faith to keep the ‘religious yardstick’ as the measurement of relationship with God, we have literally left out what Cynthia describes as the “Great Exchange.”
“Whatever we like to think we are up to in our philosophical or spiritual fantasies, saving the world, saving our souls… attaining full enlightenment.. in terms of cosmic exchange, we are transformers.”
She states that our presence here in this world is to realize the love, the transformation, and the expansion that is needed is ‘outside of this world and inside the imaginal realm.’ That we are literally the transformers of love on this planet. And the way to find it is from within our hearts. Sound familiar? Does it sound like an ancient practice?
Growing up in church we were handed the same scripts as everyone who had come before us. The same ‘narrow path’ that was intended to lead us into new life and profound love. A road we were told that ‘only the elect’ would find and follow. We can see right now in real time how this has played out. It doesn’t feel or look like the way of love…
When I began to discover for myself that Presence was expansive and not limited by what I was experiencing at church, I too expanded. First it was nature and the deep soul connection that I started sensing when I would walk. Simply walking in Presence began to shift me. Knowing there was more moving around me and within me than I could imagine with simple daily steps. Steps grounded to ancient love, wisdom, and spirit.
Through moments of silence and stillness or meditation divine connection expanded me as well. It was different than prayer. Being taught to fill the space with words to communicate with Presence is a challenge to unlearn. Hearing prayers prayed in the Pentecostal tradition was ‘power.’ If you didn’t pray with power then you weren’t praying. The prayer yardstick was not only long but also deeply embedded. Getting still and quiet would open and expand me.
Ultimately… letting go of the religious yardstick and consenting to more Presence would in itself prove to be a path. Not a narrow one but one that many before me had expanded by their very own presence. Their experience of The Good. The ways they let go of religion to find their soul. The number of times they would have to re-enter the stream without judging themselves or without someone telling them they had ‘missed the mark.’
If we are to experience more love in this world, in our lives and relationships, we need a path to greater and more expansive love.
Bourgeault is declaring that this expansive love feast happens in the ‘Imaginal Realm’ and that one way to experience this journey is through the eye of the heart.
Jesus pointed Mary Magdalene to this realm and she understood it to be ‘beyond this world.’ I believe the Gospel of Mary that was hidden, buried, and partially destroyed contained her understanding and Jesus’ reflection of her as she experienced the imaginal realm through the eye of her heart.
“When the Blessed One had said these things, he greeted them all, saying, “Peace be with you! Bear my peace within yourselves! Beware that no one lead you astray saying, ‘Look over here!’ Or ‘Look over there!’ For the Child of Humanity is within you! Follow it! Those who seek it will find it. Go then and proclaim the good news of the realm. Do not lay down any rules beyond what I determined for you, nor give a law like the lawgiver, lest you be confined by it.” When he had said this, he departed.”6
As we closed Table Conversations on Wednesday we asked ourselves…
what are the practices that lead us to experience the imaginal realm..
how do we expand more love in this world…
have we experienced the narrow road and missed the expansive way of love…
can we give ourselves permission to lay down the performative yardstick…
can we allow ourselves to open, open, open to presence…
Practices that are opening us to the Imaginal Realm
Ancient Remembering
Gathering stones to make an altar
Earth is our first sanctuary
Anointing as presence
Blessing rather than Blaming
Silence
Centering Prayer
Hearing without words
Break the rules
Ancient knowing
Embodied union
Remember who I am
Seeing from a place of oneness
Perhaps you have some to add that will also expand and bring more love and light into this world… even as we embrace a love that is out of this world.
Cynthia invites us on this journey to transform.. to even perhaps remove the religious yardsticks as ways of measuring and expand what our hearts have known all along… love is out of this world but not out of reach.
Join Table Conversations next Wednesday as we embrace more love and learn how the eye of the heart and the imaginal realm pours into this divine space between us. Message Table Chat using this link for how to join. Share and invite.
Love Expands the Table ~ Shelly
A Book Review Quote
“Cynthia's Bourgeault’s work has been a portal to seeing my heart recognized. On the heels of a spiritual experience I had no context for, at a critical juncture I could not traverse alone, the book arrived out of the clear blue, illuminating Wisdom robust enough to hold complexity I had never before perceived within Christianity.”
Expansionist Podcast
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Story in the book of Acts in the Bible
Story in the book of James in the Bible
Story in the books of Hebrews, John, and 1 Thessalonians in the Bible
Story in the books of Matthew and Luke in the Bible
Story in Matthew and Mark in the Bible
Story in the Gospel of Mary in the Gnostic scriptures