Divine Solictor

 

Our universe, and each of us, is a genesis of becoming.  God is not separate, but involved in and emerging from the life force of everything.  God is both on the borders of our experience and within every part of it. 

God is the insisting one, unpredictable and surprising in the greatest and smallest moments of our lives.  God is the upsetting intruder who may not be the reassurance we think we want, not a lulling for our recklessness or a safety net for our crazy plans.  God is more like a solicitor, an accident, a storm, an inconvenience, an interruption, a disturbance, an alarm, an appeal for help at an importune time. 

The name of God is a call in which we are solicited to respond.  We may decide to accept the call or not.  Nothing guarantees it will all turn out well in the end.  It may be a disaster.  This is the risk we take.  The call to collaborate, to cooperate with God’s plan will widen our consciousness, but we can reject that option. 

Calls can be declined.  Messages lost. Proposals turned down.  Signals ignored.  Our deeds birth the coming of God into the world – or not.

Retreat with Ivan Nicoletto, author of Journey of Faith, Journey of the Universe: The Lectionary and the New Cosmology

Desiring God

 

Birth unconstrained by the biological past rooted in a cosmic future -- that is our heritage.  The dispossessed self, naked of ego, becomes a home for the indwelling God.  We enter the kingdom of God by losing our grasp of it. 

The new possibility is a grace, a resurrection.  Then we behold a desiring God at the heart of the world’s ecstasy reaching out in frenzied risky adventuring to the end of the earth in the craving of the flesh and the yearning of all beings.

God is a desire beyond desire that is never fulfilled, part of a widening, transfiguring movement beyond all opposition and obstacles.  The insurgent impulse of liberation, our small desires, our shaken upsets, our dismantling allows the desiring of God to erupt into our life.  God is the propeller and attracter of the heart, opening us to what is yet to come.

Retreat with Ivan Nicoletto, author of Journey of Faith, Journey of the Universe: The Lectionary and the New Cosmology
 

Emergent Interiority

 

Illegitimate interests always cause suffering and death.  But tragedy and violence are powerful catalysts for resurrection and the future that resides in God.  It is Life, not Death that God desires and brings into form through loving hearts anticipating with patience, faith and trust. 

The emergence of interiority and advent of this one unique woman opens our hearts to welcome God, birthing the Christ that is emergent and incomplete in our own lives. We are united in the discovery of God in the torn places, the openings in our world.  This is the womb of possibilities.  Tomorrow is on the way. The promised land is near even though we are experiencing suffering, fears and limitations. 

How can we discover this promised land?  For us it is not possible except with God.  It happens within and beyond what we take to be the real.  Our powers are finite.  When we recognize that, a gracious sustaining force transforms our incapacity into new capacity.  

Retreat with Ivan Nicoletto, author of Journey of Faith, Journey of the Universe: The Lectionary and the New Cosmology