Rev. Darby Christopher

01/24/2022

Increasingly, I find I don't believe in atheists or theists. We all have to navigate the dance between our small self (ego) and the larger world, we all have moments where we realize we are part of something larger and more interconnected and powerful than we normally perceive, we all know that we live inside of a mystery, we all struggle to see life as it is, and we all struggle with trusting the wider frame of our existence. How are we different? We could say that theists believe that some One or thing is holding it all -- yes, and I do, I have to! -- but we come back to the same mystery. And, we need to acknowledge that we either see God as a Super Person, or we rely on personal experiences of unity/expansion/love that are, blessedly, available to everyone, “theist” and “atheist” alike. In the end, we all share the same struggle to let go and trust. P.S. I believe Jesus’ message was: Yes, you can trust, which he based on his own experience.

03/18/2020

From Richard Rohr today :

"Most of organized religion, without meaning to, has actually discouraged us from taking the mystical path by telling us almost exclusively to trust outer authority—in the form of Scripture, tradition, or various kinds of experts—instead of telling us the value and importance of inner experience. (I call that trusting the “containers” instead of the “contents.”) In fact, most of us were strongly warned against ever trusting ourselves, told that our personal experiences of the divine were unnecessary and possibly even dangerous.

Discouraging or denying people’s actual experiences of God often created passive people and, more sadly, a lot of people who concluded that there was no God to be experienced! We were taught to mistrust our own souls—and thus the Holy Spirit within us. We can contrast that with Jesus’ common phrase, “Go in peace, your faith has made you whole!” (as in Mark 5:34 and Luke 17:19). He said this to people who had made no dogmatic affirmations, did not think he was “God,” did not pass any moral checklist, and often did not belong to the “correct” group. They were simply people who trustfully affirmed, with open hearts, the grace of their own hungry experience—in that moment—and that God could care about it."

04/30/2019

We really missed and goofed up the meaning of "born again." To be born again is not to adhere to or claim a belief, rather, it is to let go of who I was yesterday, so I can be who I am today.

03/26/2019

Description of Sacred Listening (a form of counseling/spiritual direction). I have office space in Atlanta, can work via phone or zoom, and I can travel to senior centers, hospitals, etc

02/14/2019

https://cac.org/the-unnamable-one-2019-12-14/

Jesus and Christ The Unnamable One Thursday, February 14, 2019 The only people that Jesus seemed to exclude were precisely those who refused to know they were ordinary sinners like everyone else. The only thing he excluded was exclusion itself. Think about what this means for everything we sense and...

01/19/2019

"I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.

so why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over."

- Mary Oliver, from The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

11/08/2018

Sacred Studies Weekend
Church of the Good Shepherd
Lookout Mountain, TN
November 3, 2018
Jerry R. Wright
(You may share, if desired, with credit.)
(As an introduction to my theme, “Reimagining God and Religion:
A Jungian Psychological Perspective”, here is a most urgent e-mail
from Wisdom Within The Universe, addressed to the participants.)

FROM: Wisdom Within the Universe
TO: Sacred Studies Participants
SUBJECT: Notice of change of address and a few religious reminders

Dear Ones …
I know that these are terrifying times for you, as they are for me, so I send this heart-felt message using the latest technology that your species has created. You have been very clever, and I applaud you for that; keep it up. Yet you have been slower to access the deep wisdom available to you in order to use what you have created for your common good. We can do better, you and I. We must do better. Thus, the purpose of this message.
First, let me advise you of my new address. The notice of my new domain was sent out more than 400 years ago, by Copernicus (1473-1543) and Galileo (1564-1642), yet apparently many of you did not take notice. I suppose it got lost in all the many things you have to keep up with. Believe me, I know how that is; I, too, have a lot to manage … billions of galaxies, each with billions of suns called stars; black holes; keeping the earth on its axis; and gravity … keeping your feet on the ground, as the earth spins at 1,000 miles per hour … just to name a few. Then there are seasons to manage, and the twice-daily tides that keep rising; and there is
2. reminding birds when and where to fly; managing the art of photosynthesis, etc. … you know these things, because it is your species that has named them all. Thank you for that; you have done a great job with your naming — more about that in a moment.
Now, about my new change of address. My old address was SupremeJudge@ OutsidetheUniverse.org. Most of you were familiar with that old address; it was used for centuries. My new address is [email protected]. Please make the changes in your address books. I will no longer be checking messages at the old address, and I do desire to keep in touch, as I know you do. We need each other. You cannot do without me, nor I without you. Partners we are. Co-creators of the future we are.
Now, a few words about the preferred new name, “Wisdom/Within/the/Universe” … I will still respond to all the names you have created for me over the tens of thousands of years – including Spirit, Zeus, Logos, Eros, Tao, Buddha Mind, Greater Self, and more recently God. I actually delight when you create new names. I must say that the name God has lost most of its pizazz for me. So many things have been done using that name and under that flag — things not very wise and atrocities that have caused me, and you, great grief. That three letter word has been so literalized, domesticized, commercialized, politicized, and militarized that, frankly, I cringe a little when I hear it. That name — God — was once a helpful name, when you were little and young. But now that you have grown up you may want to put it on the shelf for a few generations while it recovers from its overuse and abuse.
New names show me that your species continues one of your most creative gifts of 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. And you have named all those arenas of knowledge about me: Cosmology,
3. Biology, Microbiology, Anthropology, Neurology, Psychology, Theology, and more recently, Evolutionary Biology, and Evolutionary Psychology. There is so much of me that you have discovered and honored, and so much more to come! Where would we be if your species had not undertaken your primary mission of seeing, of wondering, of beholding, of looking through telescopes and microscopes, of naming what you have seen and experienced? Why, it would be as if nothing of me existed if you had not borne witness. You are indispensable to my manifestation, to my incarnation. Keep it up. You haven’t seen anything yet.
And, as I just mentioned, I delight in new names because I am so diverse and many-sided and multi-dimensional, and I dread above all being boxed in, or treated like an object or a possession. Though I honor your intent, I have never been comfortable with the phrases “Our God” or “My God.” It makes me feel like an object, a possession, rather than a Subject to be related to. And relationship is my greatest desire, and your greatest need.
You can never have too many names for all my Mysteries. I love it when your poets speak about me; I love it when they let their imaginations soar and say things about me like these lines from one of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poems:
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 matins, 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!
Oh my! Music to my celestial ears! How I love your beautiful words!
Just remember … words are your invention, not mine. Enjoy them. Use them to unite, not to divide; use them to build bridges, not walls. Don’t weaponize them,
4. for they can be lethal. And do not worship the words you have created, especially your religious ones, for they are all partial and have a limited lifespan; all religions and their necessary words and images are terminal. The religions you have created are no longer serving you well and are paralyzing your imaginations. All words are like the flowers of the field that bloom beautifully, then wither, and die, and return to the earth to serve as fertilizer for the next season, or the next generation.
Yes, I know you are inclined to attribute your religious words, sacred texts, and religious dogmas to me … to give them more supposed authority and power, to compete with other religious or political tribes, and to win unnecessary and un-winnable religious arguments. That is not helpful, nor is it very wise. It has caused too much grief for too many years.
So please … use your beautiful, sensitive bodies, your sharp minds, and your rich imaginations to come up with a better way to partner with me in co-creating the future. Access Wisdom, which you have inherited as an organic part of the natural world where my Wisdom has been stored for the ages. You are rooted in that Wisdom … like beautiful, strong trees are rooted in the Earth from which you, too, sprang, and to which you, too, will return.
If you do need only one word to replace the tired, abused word God, simply use the one I am borrowing from your lexicon for this e-mail: WISDOM. Wisdom has a certain mysterious ring to it, and yet so earthy, so available to everyone without distinction. Or even better, you could simply call me by one of your most familiar names: LIFE, for that is what I AM. Hmmm, “I AM”… I like that one too! I AM LIFE ITSELF … in all its mixture, colors and shades, visible and invisible. I AM … Cosmological Life, Biological Life, Anthropological Life, Sociological Life, Psychological Life, Religious Life; there I go again … borrowing your wonderful human names.
5.
By the way, although it is necessary for me to refer to the pronoun “I” when I am speaking with you, I am not a Being nor a larger, older version of you. I am not a He, nor a She, nor an It. I am an Experience … I am, first and foremost, an Experience of Life … encountered first by your body, followed by your mind and your imagination. Body - Mind - Imagination … these are your sacred organs for knowing me, honoring me, and sharing me; they are your Sacred Trinity. Trust not any religion or religious trinity that denies, devalues, or tries to by-pass the human body; the human body is your most sensitive instrument to detect my presence. Sadly, the body’s neglect over the centuries has caused much unnecessary suffering. When the body is denied, it causes people to behave badly … sometimes very badly. Keep in mind that your primary task is to become more fully human … not more religious … nor more spiritual.
Now regarding e-mails … many of you have sent urgent messages in the past few weeks asking me to intervene in the decisions related to your Supreme Court and to your upcoming elections. Let me say, as an aside … I find that inflated name a little humorous … Supreme?? As the Wisdom of the Universe, I chuckle every time I hear it. Be that as it may, nearly half of your urgent messages want me to intervene in one way; the other half want me to do the opposite. This is often the case in your urgent messages for my intervention into your affairs. I am sure you can see this puts me in a no-win situation. And, again, I don’t like to be boxed in as having favorites or showing partiality.
Now, let me say clearly and kindly … intervention is not my job. It is not my job to clean up the messes of your own making. You have made the messes, and you need to take the responsibility to clean them up. I am not your parent — neither your Father nor your Mother — and I am not on call to “clean up your rooms.” You are no longer children, though it was necessary once upon a time for
6. you to frame our relationship that way. Those old images are no longer helpful; let them go, along with the security blankets and stuffed animals of your childhood.
Use the Wisdom already available within Life, within you, within each other to clean up your messes; I’m including your bigger messes, too … like racial and gender inequality, unjust political systems, and wars. I don’t need to intervene as if from the outside. I am already with you, and have been from the beginning; I never left and I never will. I do all my work from the inside out, not from the outside in; working from the inside out, we can work together. But you have to do your part.
And while I am on this topic … please stop crediting me with helping you to win ballgames and other sporting events while the losers weep; stop crediting me with helping you to find a parking place at the mall or helping you find the right mate on match.com. It makes me look partial to some and not to others; and it makes you look adolescent. So please … stop sending those messages; they just fill up my in-box.
Now I am sure this raises the whole topic of prayer and what it means; if you want, I will address that in a subsequent e-mail.
In the meantime, remember that you have access to all the Wisdom — our common Wisdom — that you need to live creatively and compassionately … all the Wisdom you need to help move life along its long unfolding. I know that you keep looking for the doorway to Wisdom outside yourselves, in all kinds of places and all kinds of “isms” … like fundamentalism, literalism, rationalism, materialism, and dogmatism. Those doorways will not lead you to the Wisdom we share; they only divide and feed “god-greed” … the illusion that there is not enough of me to go around. I do not know where that “fake news” started. But please stop spreading it around. It’s not true, and it has caused too much bloodshed over the years.
The doorway to Wisdom is close at hand. It’s an inner doorway. You will locate that Wisdom deep within — underneath your fears and prejudices, and underneath your need to be right and to win at all costs. You are better than that; you are wiser than that; and you are more creative than that. You are more courageous than that; go into your fears and through them, and just on the other side is that secret passageway. Enter there and you will come to a beautiful meadow, out beyond right and wrong, beyond winning and losing, beyond red states and blue states, beyond liberalism and conservatism, and beyond all the divisions of your making. I will meet you there — in that deep inner place — and we can converse; we can decide how to go back into the outer world to create a less conflicted, less terror-filled life … together. We need to do so. We must do so. We can do so. You and I … working together.
A very important thing for you to remember is that while I am not you, neither am I other than you. Adopt the same attitude toward each other and toward the natural world … while I am not you, neither am I other than you; this attitude contains the building blocks for all theology, all religion, and all ethics.
So … carve out time and space in your crowded, busy lives; go within your beautiful, sacred selves, and locate that narrow doorway … the doorway that leads to the beautiful meadow I told you about. I am waiting for you there.

Yours truly,
Wisdom Within the Universe

10/23/2018

All I can offer is my own heart, my own transformed self. It doesn't seem like this would be enough, but it is all we have.

07/09/2018

Here are the ways I can think of to be more loving:

1. Spend time with loving people

2. Recognize the ways I’m not loving and give them time and attention (talk about them, journal, art, etc)

3. Take a training course on empathy or non violence

02/23/2018

I have to have this whole thing on my page ... Richard Rohr's meditation today, quoting Beatrice Bruteau.

Creation: Week 2

Our Work in Co-Creating
Friday, February 23, 2018

The Great Work now . . . is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner. —Thomas Berry [1]

Again, I offer insights from the late theologian Beatrice Bruteau:

In the case of the cosmos, we can say that God as Creator is incarnate as self-creating universe, including self-creating creatures within that universe. . . . Creativity itself is what is evolving in the cosmos, and we are the growing edge as the Trinitarian Life Cycle moves from Transcendent to Incarnate to Realized. We are in a position to realize ourselves as incarnate divine creativity. This has two effects.

It makes the whole thing intensely meaningful. The universe is not some blind and uncaring organization of atoms. . . . It can easily be seen as a gigantic artwork, full of whatever it is that comes out as “feeling” when it becomes incarnate. We are part of this, creative contributors to this.

And this is the other effect: we bear some responsibility. We have to take our part in the work. We, for instance, are now in a position to do something about all the suffering. . . . We are agents within the system and can have causal effects on other parts of the system. We have intelligence, we have empathy and capacity to feel for others and to care about them, we even have insight into the Ground present in every being and calling for an appropriate form of absolute respect.

What will we do? . . . What does “God want us to” do? Not a good way of putting the question, because it distances God from the world, but the answer I propose is Be! Be creative, be interactive, be agape, give being, unite, be whole, be in every possible way, be new. The self-creating world is unpredictable. It’s like a musician’s improvisation. . . . But the artwork will always resemble the artist. So the cosmos will somehow be like the Trinity, the vast Person-Community that is Agape, inter-being. . . .

Does the contemplative have some special role? I say to the contemplative: Feel at home in the universe, study it, try to understand at least some of its innumerable marvels, including ourselves who are more and more capable of this understanding—marvel at that! Rejoice in the cosmos. In spite of all its hurtful ways, look at what it has done, is doing, is capable of doing. . . . And be active in it, contribute to it, participate in the building, in the artwork, in the healing, in the understanding. This is where Reality is. You yourself are both a member of the Finite and a member of the Infinite. You are a participant in the Trinitarian Life Cycle, for you are doing the incarnating and the creating and the realizing and the rejoicing. God’s ecstasy creates the world, and the world’s ecstasy realizes God.

References:
[1] Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (Three Rivers Press: 1999), 3.

Beatrice Bruteau, God’s Ecstasy: The Creation of a Self-Creating World, (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2016, © 1997), 178, 179. Emphasis mine.

02/21/2018

To say that "the Lord your God is One" is to know that all of creation is One. To "love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength" is to love all of creation. It's finally starting to make sense. Trying to love God as a "superhuman other" has never worked for me, in terms of feeling real.

01/12/2018

“Jesus was from a "sh****le" place. Nazareth, in the first century, was a minuscule town of only 200 to 400 people, where people lived in small stone houses, and, say archaeologists, garbage was dumped in the alleyways. 1/”