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Letter from God

“Now, about my new change of address. My old address was Supreme Judge Outside the Universe@heaven.com; most of you were familiar with that old address. My new address is: Wisdom Within the Universe@humanheart.com. Please make changes in your address book.”

Jerry Wright (Reimaging God and Religion Seminar; “Wisdom Within the Universe and the Human Heart,” Letter from God)

          At his seminar on Reimagining God and Religion, Theologian and Jungian Analyst, Jerry Wright, presented us with a nine-page email letter from “Wisdom Within the Universe and the Human Heart.” It is, of course, tongue and cheek, but also a reminder that the Divine is right here, right now, within, and among, and around us, and there is no way we can possibly be separate from it. At least, not if we reside in this universe.

          Our own holy books have said as much, too. Jesus calls us the “salt of the earth” and tells us that the Kingdom of Heaven is, not in the sky, but in our midst. In Revelation 21:6, God identifies as the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end—the always and ever. Our perception of the Divine has somehow not caught up—God is not out there in some distant never-never-land called “heaven.” God is right here and right now in our human interactions and deeds, and in everything in this universe. God is the life-force itself.

This is how Jerry Wright described it in his letter from God:

“… your species continues one of your most creative gifts: that is, giving names to all things wherein I reside: all the flowers of the field, the trees, the aforementioned birds, and those planets and stars, and the Sun and Moon.”

          Our primary mission as the human species is to not only name things, but to be in awe of the incredible world within which we reside; created, not by the hand of some far-removed, super-natural Being, but by millions of years of evolution. It is a balanced environment, ideal for life of all sorts to emerge and thrive. The only question is, will we maintain it in a form that will continue to allow creation to survive, much less thrive? This is the body of “God” from which we humans emerged just like everything else. It seems we have begun to worship the words we created about that Source, while losing their true meaning and implications.

          Here is a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke describing the Divine:

“You are the future, the red sky before sunrise over the fields of time. You are the cock’s crow when night is done. You are the dew and the bells of martins, maiden, stranger, mother, death.

You create yourself in ever-changing shapes that rise from the stuff of our days, unsung, unmourned, undescribed, like a forest we never knew.

You are the deep innerness of all things, the last word that can never be spoken.”

          How beautiful is that? What if each of us were to truly grasp that our understanding of the Sacred One is misplaced, out of date. God is not out there, but right here, right now, in all things and all beings, in the ordinary stuff of life. Would we walk differently on this earth? Would we look differently upon one another?

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane