I have been reading your books for years and have been deeply comforted and guided in my inner life and trying to take your teachings into the world. I have been involved in social justice work for even longer than finding you.
Now I feel like we are living in epic times and have turned to Walter Bruggerman’s ideas about addressing empire. Also, reading Merton, soelle, Elul, Tillich, and others to guide me in my thinking, feelings and actions. My fellow activists are mainly atheist, one an admirer of Becker. Even my progressive ucc church is not able to address in any truly deep understanding of empire and the deep risks Christians must take, in my opinion, to understand and to form action plans that use ancient prophetic vision with Jesus teachings/purpose .
My activist friends are more overwhelmed and feeling like the world is on their shoulders and making short sighted and ineffective action plans. I am one of the only ones bringing liberation theology and the prophetic imagination of Brueggeman and others to the ‘table’.
I have been obsessively searching current and past theological studies to guide me in how to work for healing and on how to assist the world in transformation in these unimaginable times we are living in—world fascism, trump and all the criminal/mobster leaders in our world who are inflicting so much suffering in our world today and destroying god’s creation with their deeply psychopathic being.
I have just read The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three again in the hopes for guidance for my thinking and actions for raising consciousness and developing ‘action plans’ with others in the activist and Christian communities I am in contact with.
I was hoping that The Law of Three would help me in this regard but in my ignorance, I can’t discern it and maybe that is not the way you are intending it?
I live in Bellingham, WA and have wanted to visit your community in Victoria when we visit our friends there. Although I am now concerned about border crossings in the world of the dark forces behind Trump. These systemic forces that are ancient and so deeply entrenched as to seem impossible to get to let alone change it.
Is there help in The Law of Three or in any deep wisdom Chistianity for guiding me and to help me to help other ‘activists’ and to be in the service of God to help birth the kingdom of God on earth?
Thank you for all the work you do in bringing healing and hope into our world today!
With deep appreciation,
Marcia Leister M.Ed Adult Education
Literacy Instructor, ABE/GED.
Marcia,
There is indeed a lot of help out there, but it begins on the other side of the “contemplative practice” threshold. Even these fine resources you cite—Bruggerman and Liberation Theology—still largely operate in the world of mental constructs. The real resolution you’re seeking (and accurately intuiting) requires the opening of the heart as an organ of spiritual perception, able to see and comprehend beyond the mental mechanism (which inevitably divides a field in its effort to perceive it.)
This heart modality, by the way, is not about AFFECTIVITY but about HOLOGRAPHIC PERCEPTION, which sees and feels beyond either/or, right/wrong, friends/enemies—and hence beyond judgment and beyond fear.
I’d say that your best starting place would be with the 20th century Quaker mystic Thomas Kelly. His classic A TESTAMENT OF DEVOTION explores this heart terrain, eloquently evoking the relationship between this Christic, heart-centered perceptivity and the capacity to move forward into the world in “holy obedience:” “speaking truth to power,” as the Quakers put it, but beyond violence and condemnation. It’s a great start.
My THE WISDOM JESUS and WISDOM WAY OF KNOWING also cover some of this same terrain, and they’re more accessible than the Law of Three, which really only begins to make sense once this other kind of perceptivity has kicked in.
And yes, do go visit those wonderful seekers in Victoria. But there’s also a lively cell of Wisdom folks in Seattle and Bainbridge Island. The Rev. Patricia Robertson at St. Barnabas, Bainbridge, can help get you networked in with folks practicing right in your own backyard. And Linda Conroy has a lot of good work underway at her Stillpoint Center right on the outskirts of Bellingham.
Blessings!
