This is Part V of an eight-part Northeast Wisdom Home Page Blog series that began on Sunday January 12, 2020, with posts every Sunday and Wednesday during the season of Epiphany. Please share your reflections in the Comments section below. In Parts III and IV, Cynthia introduces us to her own opening through Raimon Panikkar, noting in Part IV his observation that the biggest threat that Jesus represented to the powers that be, was his "filiation" to God —"this unauthorized prophet was standing too close." Panikkar's theological vision of a moving, intercirculating, mutually infusing world of worlds, includes us all: we are each and all part of a cosmotheandric universe where, as Cynthia discovers, "God is not a first cause, not an explanation, but rather meaning itself, throbbing through the entire dynamism, suffusing the attuned heart like the air we breathe, like the atoms still reverberating in our bodies from the big bang." V. A Brief History of Consciousness “I solemnly declare that I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the Word of God and to contain all things necessary to salvation.” It is the occasion of my ordination to the Episcopal priesthood,

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This is Part IV of an eight-part Northeast Wisdom Home Page Blog series that began on Sunday January 12, 2020, with two posts weekly, Sundays and Wednesdays, during the season of Epiphany. You are invited to share your responses in the Comments section below; and check out the end of this post for Cynthia’s introductory message to this series! In "Part III: Panikkar," Cynthia recalls first reading Panikkar's Christophany—her heart being "blown wide open by this theologically exacting yet breathtakingly nondual rendition of the Christian mystical vision." Panikkar offered new origin to the Trinity; and gave us a new word: "Jesus’ experience of God was cosmotheandric, the infinite and the finite continuously interabiding one another, dynamically changing places through a process of continuing self-giving, or kenosis." The stunning vision of the Trinity that emerges from Jesus' experience—the "Abba, Father" pole on the one hand, and the "I and the Father are One" pole on the other—comes into motion with the third of Jesus' master sayings, "It is good that I leave." This new vision reveals a beautiful movement of active infusion, an intercirculation of realms, which Panikkar sees as World—God—Human in abundant, dynamic relationship. Panikkar affirms theologically what science calls

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This is Part III of an eight-part Northeast Wisdom Home Page Blog series that began on Sunday January 12, 2020. Cynthia introduced the series with this message:               “Dear Wisdom Friends, As the new decade gets underway, it feels like an appropriate moment to share one of my earlier essays, which is still to my mind one of the best things I’ve ever written. It was originally published in the 2018 anthology, how I found GOD in everyone and everywhere.                   I will be sharing my entire essay in eight successive posts, which will be headed your way in bite-sized doses over the upcoming season of Epiphany. I look forward to you sharing your reflections in the Comments section. Enjoy! And Happy New Year!!! May this "year of perfect vision” indeed shed some new light.”   In "Part II: Panentheism," Cynthia remembers how frequently she met resistance teaching Centering Prayer with its understanding of levels of consciousness: "Clearly the whole notion of a divine indwelling, for all its certifiable theological orthodoxy, continues to make many traditionally reared Christians squirm." Inevitably, the word "panentheist" would come up, a term which Cynthia says, "like a 'jet airplane'… tries to define itself in terms of a prior

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This is Part II of an eight-part Northeast Wisdom Home Page Blog series that began with “Part I. The Light Within” posted Sunday January 12, 2020. Cynthia introduced the series with this message:   “Dear Wisdom Friends, As the new decade gets underway, it feels like an appropriate moment to share one of my earlier essays, which is still to my mind one of the best things I’ve ever written. It was originally published in the 2018 anthology, how I found GOD in everyone and everywhere. I will be sharing my entire essay in eight successive posts, which will be headed your way in bite-sized doses over the upcoming season of Epiphany. I look forward to you sharing your reflections in the Comments section. Enjoy! And Happy New Year!!!  May this "year of perfect vision” indeed shed some new light.”  In "Part I: The Light Within," Cynthia shares an experience of an immediate knowing that she had as a young child, one evening in the sunset light of a pumpkin field: “…this holy, intimate radiance suffusing the picture was in me and in everything, if for no other reason than because it was from the inside that all of this seemed to

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Dear Wisdom Friends, As the new decade gets underway, it feels like an appropriate moment to share one of my earlier essays, which is still to my mind one of the best things I’ve ever written. It was originally published in the 2018 anthology, How I found GOD in Everyone and Everywhere, edited by Claremont School of Theology faculty members Andrew M. Davis and Philip Clayton and published by Monkfish, our intrepid publishing partner here in Northeast Wisdomland! Compiled in honor of Marcus Borg, this anthology is broadly structured around the theme of Panentheism and features the usual suspects among Christian nondual teachers, including my colleagues Richard Rohr, Matthew Fox, and Ilia Delio. It's well worth a read in its entirety.                 I will be sharing my entire essay in eight successive posts, which will be headed your way in bite-sized doses over the upcoming season of Epiphany. Part II will be posted here on Wednesday January 15. Look for the next posts to follow Sundays and Wednesdays through January and into early February. I look forward to you sharing your reflections in the Comments section. Enjoy! And Happy New Year!!! May this "year of perfect vision” indeed shed some new

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