Wholeness

“God of the Sparrow”

“...God of the neighbor

God of the foe

God the pruning hook

How does the creature say love

How does the creature say peace...”

Jaroslav J. Vajda (“God of the Sparrow, God of the Whale, 1983)

This is verse 5 of one of my favorite contemporary hymns. It manages to describe lyrically the expanse of that which we call God. God is not only love and compassion, peace and brotherhood, but also the flood, the earthquake, the pruning hook. God encompasses the sparrow, the whale and the storm. And God can also be found in our foes.

In one of the Gnostic Gospels found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945, The Secret Book of John, John recalls a dreamlike encounter with the risen Christ, in which Jesus tells him that humankind has fallen into a “bond of forgetfulness.” We have forgotten who we are, whose we are, and where we came from. Instead, we have fallen prey to a “counterfeit spirit,” full of ignorance, falsehood and anxiety. We have somehow separated reality into light and dark, and projected the dark onto others.

But God is inseparable. God is One and encompasses all. When we are able to grasp that and embrace it, both within and without, we will stop splitting off the parts of us and our world that we fear. When we lose touch with our own inner wisdom—with the image of God within—we feel afraid. There are good and bad parts to all of us, there are good and bad parts to our lives and our world, and all of them are part of the wholeness of God.

Today, lets focus on this piece of the hymn:

“God of the ages

God near at hand

God of the loving heart

How do your children say Joy

How do your children say Home.” (Vajda, verse 6)

In the Spirit,

Jane