Christ the Way
Yeshua the Christ
Many of us are aware of our
deep longing and need for God but may be confused about the way to God. In the Christian tradition we are given both the
personal Yeshua as gift of God's own Self, the disclosure of the human hands
and face of God, and the universal Heart of Christ as the ocean of God's Love
and Mercy.
In the season of Advent, in
particular, we make a special effort to return to the essence of our spiritual
life, to make straight the way of the Lord. We return to what is simple and
what is truest in our tradition.
The great simplicity and wisdom for Christians is this: Christ is the
Way. The Prayer of the Heart is
the "way" by which we enter into communion in Christ. The Prayer of the Heart, Breathing
Yeshua, is the way by which we become consecrated to Him, the way we unite our
lives with the Life of Christ. Prayer of the Heart in Breathing Yeshua is the
way by which we become accessible and given to Christ who is our Way.
In Prayer of the Heart the
deeply intense personal love we experience in Yeshua becomes the means for
uniting ourselves, uniting our humanity fully, with the universal, mystical and
risen Christ. The scriptures and
the theologians and the mystics affirm the more we enter the mystery of Christ,
the more our experience of Christ becomes limitless, and infinite. We discover
that Christ is much bigger than our conception. The entry point may become intensely personal, and it opens
to include all that is. That is
the wonder of it.
In this book I want to share
some teaching and practice in how we can follow and unite ourselves utterly
with the One who is Agape, the Way of self-giving love. To be fully given, fully consecrated to
the love of Christ in all things, in all aspects of our humanity, is the
essence of Prayer of the Heart. To
follow Christ is to become Christ, and that is the transformative calling of
all Christians. I’ve often held
the question in my life, as many seekers do, "Who really is Christ?"
I’ve been one who has lived the interfaith dialogue. I live it in my marriage and in my earliest years of
contemplative practice I practiced in the Soto Zen Buddhist tradition; so I have
an understanding of how other traditions approach contemplative practice. But there was something that called me
back into my tradition, and that is the experience of Christ. There is a common
ground of unitive Divine Life that the contemplative wisdom traditions of the
world share. However, the experience of the personal Yeshua drawing us into the
Life of the universal mystical and Risen Christ defines the uniqueness of the
Christian contemplative path that I call the Way of the Heart. And I
have wanted to explore and articulate this uniqueness. In an important time of
interfaith dialogue and understanding it is vital to have insight into the
areas of common ground shared with other Faith tradition while equally being
able to express the unique gift of one's own tradition to the world. That
unique gift in the Christian path, is not just the teaching, but the One who
imparts Himself as the path.
Some years ago I was in the
spiritual direction training
program at a Benedictine Center (Shalom Prayer Center, Our Lady of Angels
Monastery, Mt. Angel, Oregon). We were just beginning a two-year journey
together of training and formation in spiritual direction. As we often do in
such a group, I looked around at the faces before me and wondered, "Now
who am I really going to connect with here? Who am I going to have common
ground with?" What actually
developed over the two years was a surprise to me. By the end of the two years, the companions in the group
with whom I bonded the most were of evangelical tradition. Since that hasn't been my background at
all, it was a curious phenomenon.
I found a spirit in them and their "way" of approaching
Christian spirituality that touched me.
I come from a liturgical tradition where, in my view, the doctrinal
teaching is more expansive.
Nevertheless what touched a chord of love and understanding in me was
the singular devotion to the person of Jesus. I found this simplicity and
wholehearted devotion to a personal Jesus was their gift to me. It opened me in
ways I hadn't anticipated. And
isn't that the way it often is! We are continually surprised and turned upside
down by grace. When we overcome our own xenophobia and befriend the stranger
they gift us.
Yeshua- the Doorway In
We know there are prominent
teachings that come to us from scripture about Jesus being the Way. Among those are from the Gospel of
John. He says, “I am The Way, The
Truth and The Life. No one comes
to the Father except through me.
If you will know me, you will know the Father also. From now on, do you not know Him and
have you not seen Him?” (John
14:6) Of course, some take this as an exclusion clause but I don’t. Having
undergone years of training in the contemplative practice of another tradition
I know from experience that awakening to the Infinite is not the exclusive
franchise of any religion.
Rather, I understand the words of John's Gospel as an invitation to
enter the Heart of the Abba (Source of all Life) through the Heart of Yeshua
and the intimately personal love and redemption He offers us as disclosure and
gate to the Infinite. Yeshua says,
“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
How can you say, Show me the Father? Do you not believe that the Father is in me and I am in the
Father?" (John 14:9-10)
When Yeshua wasn’t using the
term “Abba,” which means
"papa" for God, He used the Aramaic term “Allaha,” the essential unity from Whom all life comes. He personalized the universal Allaha into Abba, or Papa. Biblical scholars say this must have
been a source of shock and scandal to the people of his time. They were shocked
and even angered that Yeshua might presume this intimate, personal relationship
with the transcendent Divinity who is so beyond us. The Jews dared not utter or
write the name of Yahweh, or "I AM", and instead used other terms,
such as Allaha, Adonai, or Lord. ("Allaha" has the same root word as
other Abrahamic Faiths as the Hebraic "Ela," "Elohim," or
the Islamic term, "Allah")
Yet the daring disclosure of the Gospel of Yeshua is that the
transcendent Unity and Source of everything is Love, and is intensely concerned
and in relationship with every human being, every being, every thing that
is. This intense loving concern,
this gift of self-giving love or Agape, is the divine disclosure in Yeshua. The
Gospel teaches us that we are so intimate in our belonging that Yeshua invites
us to address Allaha, or the Source of all Life as parent. ( Being a patriarchal society, the
Source would be seen as "Abba." but "Amma" could equally be
true in a more matriarchal society.)
In his ministry Yeshua in the
Gospels tells us again and again how He is the Way, how communion with Him is
the way in to the Abba. Yeshua
begins his ministry with the startling announcement of what he calls the Good
News. (It took me a long time to
discover out what the good news was in Christianity because the oppressive fear
based indoctrination I received as a youngster wasn’t really very good news.)
Yeshua proclaims: “The Kingdom of God is very near. Repent." (Mark 1:15)
He teaches that God (Allaha) is accessible to us, here and now. Change the direction
we seek for happiness. So the
Life’s journey is for us to become accessible to God. In other words, Yeshua is saying, "Allaha is
always offering Himself in love to each one of us." Our spiritual task is to receive this
gift of God’s own Self to each one of us.
By the end of His historical ministry Yeshua tells us in the Gospel of
John that by uniting ourselves utterly with Himself, personal emanation and
human face of the God of Mystery, we become equally one with the Abba. He
whispers to us, "Come close to me, Come close to the Abba."
In the Christian path we
understand the Divine as relationship. Christ is the Way into relationship, in the way we open in our totality
to receive Christ’s gift of Himself, and in the way we offer ourselves in trust
and in love to Him. In this
process we uncover who we are. We
find our home, we find our belonging, and we find our true identity. In Breathing Yeshua we actualize this
opening and offering in self-gift in communion with Christ, a communion of
mutual giving and receiving of the gift of self in love. The experience of
relational life in communion with Christ is both intensely personal and
intimate, and oceanic and inclusive.
Some Christians will talk about the experience of salvation as a moment
in time where they experienced a conversion of giving their life to Christ.
This can be a powerful and transformative moment. The mistake can be that one might see this as an historical
event that happens one time and one time only. The practice of the Way of the
Heart is an ongoing conversion, an ongoing giving of one’s self to Christ, and
receiving Christ's self-gift of Love.
This is why Prayer of the Heart is called Consecrated Life, an
ongoing act of consecration.
Salvation through
Communion with Christ
Salvation can rightly be
thought of as healing. In fact it
comes from the same root word as “salve," a healing ointment. Salvation is a healing of the wound of
our separateness, a re-ordering of our person, of body, soul and spirit, a
restoration of our belonging in God.
Our being is restored with God at the center in the true Heart or
Spirit, rather than the separate-self ego at the center. The wound of this
separateness, the wound of this false consciousness comes when our spirit
remains dormant and unawakened.
Our true spirit in Christ can remain locked away and hidden from
awareness, covered over by the conditioning of the mind. So there is something we must do in
order to become accessible and given to this relationship of awakened
rootedness in Christ.
Being given to Christ is not
a single moment, but a lifetime of moments, connected by the actualization of
our deepest longing to be given because this is what we most desire. It’s what
brings us to silent prayer retreats and to seek teachers of prayer and
spiritual formation. It
takes deep, desire -deep longing for Christ- to take off an entire day, or weekend, or week long silent
retreat, sit down and to refrain from talking, to release from the traffic of
the mind again and again in order to just be present in giveness, in love, in
adoration, to Yeshua, our Heart's desire. This longing is so
powerful; and the more we feed it, the more we give ourselves to that longing,
the more powerful it becomes. For
the author of The Cloud of Unknowing this desire is the doorway in, and it is
the singular desire that brings us to healing communion in Christ. When we
do this consecration, then salvation happens. This transformative discipline and practice is what the
ancients call "purity of heart". They called it so because it was the
"undivided heart", because nothing else is allowed to intrude upon or
impede our deepest desire to be One with Christ. In this consecration Christ
becomes fully alive in our soul and lives through our humanity, the goal of the
Christian life.
The Eucharist of Our Life
in Christ
In the Eucharistic liturgy we
have the act of consecration, where the elements of bread and wine are
consecrated and offered. The
elements are made holy, are divinized and made a vessel of Christ's Presence. Such is our life. When we awaken
spiritually, our life is Eucharist.
In the Christian path of the Way of the Heart we give ourselves to the
act of consecration and receiving God's Self-Gift in Christ. The Eucharist is the liturgical
enactment of that mystery of human existence, the mystery of the Incarnation,
the mystery of the Resurrection, enacted again and again and again in the
Eucharistic liturgy. What is asked
of us is just our willingness to be surrendered to our deep desire to be given
to Christ and porous to Divine grace.
Sometimes we can be so taken with the beginning act of conversion that
we think, "Oh, this is the end, this is such a great thing, we've got it
made. We've arrived. We can just be on power glide from here on out." Proceeding with this premise is a
guarantee for a great fall. The
first conversion is only the beginning of a process, a lifetime practice of
contrition, conversion, and consecration.
Calling on the Name of
Yeshua
Yeshua is the personal face
of God turned towards us. Yeshua
tells us, "Receive me, receive me in your humanity. Live me in your human life each
moment. I am accessible to you in
the most personal and the most intimate way."In John's Gospel He says,
" I will not abandon you, I will not leave you orphaned. My spirit will be within you. Because I live, you will live.” (John
14:8) That’s a wonderful promise, isn’t it? “Because I live, you will live." He promises us "Your true life is
My life," so let it be, let it happen, let it take place within you. Receive me because I want to give
myself to you."
When we want to be close to
someone, really close, when we want to really be in their presence, the first
thing we often do is think of their name, isn’t it? In the Judeo-Christian tradition to be called by name means
a condition of intimacy and the scriptures speak again and again about being
called by name by the living Lord.
So it is also the reason why we choose a name as our prayer word in Prayer
of the Heart. Scripture invites us
to call upon the name of the Lord.
That very act then makes us accessible to the Divine. The Lord is already here, so it’s not
as though the Lord is around the block or somewhere and you’re whistling,
saying, "Hey, over here!"
Yeshua is already here and ready to offer Himself, and *is* offering Himself. By invoking the name of Yeshua, the
name of the Lord, we are given to God and our longing for God, we make
ourselves accessible. This
is Breathing Yeshua. Returning again and again and again to the name of our
Beloved makes us accessible to the Beloved. The name
of Yeshua and breath become our anchor in the middle of life so that we are not
overwhelmed by the culture we live in and the culture we carry around in your
mind.
In the Abrahamic Faiths
prayer takes place in the invocation of the name of the Holy One. In the Prayer of the Heart, the name of
Yeshua, the personal manifestation of the Holy One, the Christos, the Risen One
of our heart is our anchor and the One in whom our self-offering is continually
expressed. In Breathing Yeshua,
every breath, every invocation of the Holy Name, carries with it in our
intention of self-offering. "Here I am, I am yours."
In human relationships, isn’t
that what we do when we are really in relationship and in union with another
human being? We say, "Here I
am – I am yours, I give myself to you." How much more it is in the relationship with Christ! "Here I am, I join my life with
your life. We are not
separate. Your life is my true
life." Thomas Merton says that to find who you truly are, to find your
true heart and your true spirit within you, is to find Christ. In our practice
of breathing Yeshua, we breathe and give ourselves to the reality of the Living
One within us, who is our true Life, and we receive the gift of God, the Living
Water of Christ, who suffuses our humanity from within– this is the receptive
interior movement of our life in Christ.
We are all like Mary of Bethany and Mary of Magdala, who receive and
heal in His presence and say:
"Yeshua is enough! The fullness of my Heart's desire is here and
now in Yeshua." There is no magic; there is no technique. There is just this opening in utter
trust to receive the One who continually offers Himself. This opening to the
personal and intimate love that Yeshua gives in Himself, opens us to the
Universal Heart of Christ that embraces the Universe and all Creation. Those
who have gone before us in the Way of the Heart say it this way in this reading
from Brian Taylor's book, Becoming Christ :
"In
this sense the Jesus Prayer becomes a way in which we become Christ, or He
becomes us. For Jesus' name itself has an energy, a force to it that invokes
all that Jesus is. Through the use of Jesus' name, His being soaks into our
being; we become more like Him. In this regard the ninth century monk Hesychius
of Sinai wrote:
'The
more the rain falls on the earth, the softer it makes it; similarly, the more
we call upon Christ's holy Name, the greater the rejoicing and exultation it
brings to the earth of our heart'. (quoted by Clement, The Roots of
Christian Mysticism, p. 241)
But
this is not all. Just as Jesus was attuned to all God's children and to all of
life, the repeated invocation of his holy name moves us into a similar harmony
with other people, with all creation. The author of The Way of A Pilgrim described
how he was affected by this saturation in the name of Jesus, how he began to
take on Jesus' own perspective, Jesus' own life:
Everybody
was kind to me, it was as though everyone loved me...The trees, the grass, the
birds, the earth, the air, the light seemed to be telling me that they existed
for man's sake, that they witnessed to the love of God for man, that everything
proved the love of God for man, that all things prayer to God and sang his
praise....I felt a burning love for Jesus and for all God's creatures.
"
(The
Way of A Pilgrim, trans. R.M. French, p. 85) (Brian C. Taylor p.
71-72)
In the Celtic Christian
tradition the daily prayers of practice and songs of the people reminded and grounded
them in an every day life rooted in the personal and Universal Christ. In His
face, His hands, and His Heart the Lord God of all things is brought near and
ever present, in the all-encompassing circle of ceaseless loving concern and
protection:
Celtic Daily Prayer
Christ as a light, illumine and
guide me
Christ as a shield overshadow me
Christ under me
Christ over me
Christ beside me
On my left and my right
This day be within and without me
Lowly and meek, yet all powerful
Be in the heart of each to whom I
speak
And the mouth of each who speaks
unto me
This day be within and without me
Lowly and meek, yet all powerful
Christ as a light
Christ as a shield
Christ beside me
On my left and on my right.
Celtic Blessing:
May the peace of the Lord, Christ
go with you. Wherever He may send
you, may He guide you through the wilderness, protect you through the
storm. May He bring you home,
rejoicing at the wonders he has shown you. May He bring you home, rejoicing, once again into our doors.
Jesu Who Ought to be Praised
(Celtic Prayer from The Carmine
Gaedelica)
It were as easy for Jesu
To renew the withered tree
As to wither the new
Were it His will so to do.
Jesu! Jesu !
Jesu! meet it were to praise Him.
There is no plant in the ground
But is full of His virtue,
There is no form in the strand
But is full of His blessing.
There is no life in the sea,
There is no creature in the firmament,
There is no bird on the wing,
There is no star in the sky,
There is nothing beneath the sun,
But proclaims His goodness.
Jesu! Jesu !
Jesu!
meet it were to praise Him.
