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effectively with the present and future, and are therefore much more potent and realistic for dealing with some kinds of psychological issues. Corbin is quite clear that imaginal processes open to us vast universes, very real universes of knowledge, experience and possibilities not apprehended through linear processes.

      William James saw a progression for a religion evolving from the mystical experience of a seer, through a codification stage which begins to develop logical constructs for the mystic’s vision, and on to a final institutional stage which is constructed for the consumption of the masses attracted by the mystic’s vision. It is the mystic’s vision which is enervating, exciting, life-giving. But his vision can not be apprehended by the rest of us. His vision must be captivated, and shaped into something translatable for the rest of us. And finally it is institutionalized into a form which, while fixed, stable, and in a sense dead, the rest of us can cling to, something we can ingest without getting indigestion. Jesus was the founding mystic whose vision so captivated the masses; and Paul was the initial codifier (though perhaps he was himself a mystic with his Damascus road experience and his ascent into the third heaven) who began the process of shaping Jesus’ vision into something the rest of us could grasp and cling to. And the bishops of the third and fourth centuries were the institutionalizers who built it all into a church that Constantine and the rest of us could live into. In essence, only the mystic, the visioner has the deeply religious experience, the face-to-face encounter with The Other, which the rest of us, in whatever insipid ways, attempt to emulate, in the light of which we warm ourselves.

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      Reciting the creed

      Every Sunday we stand up in unison and recite together the creed. The Nicene Creed of course, that ecumenical statement of what we, the whole church universal believe. That tersest, densest, briefest definition of the faith constructed by the bishops of the early church at the behest of the emperor to unify the church. That hedge which protects the church from false beliefs and divisiveness, that says, “To believe inside this hedge is safe, okay; adhere to this; but if you believe outside this, you perish, eternally.” It tells us that believing is what this religious stuff is all about, holding tight onto a linear (more or less) statement of facts (some material, some immaterial) about the construction of this metaphysic. That is what is crucial, clinging onto THIS basket of words, lined up in THIS order. Knowing God, having intercourse with God does not enter into it.

      This credo was composed in the fourth century, phrased in the metaphors and imagery of the fourth century, with all the metaphysical and physical and biological assumptions of the fourth century built into and standing behind it. The earth is flat and has four corners. There is water underneath, land and water here, and above the dome of the sky more water. Hell is a physical place somewhere down there, and heaven an equally physical place up there somewhere in which God lives. And this earth is the center of the universe, and man the most important creation in it, the apex of all God’s creation. And the male carries the seed, is the sole procreator, while woman is only the incubator, has no part in conception, is a mobile uterus to house the seed until it grows able to live outside the uterus. All of that comes along with this basket full of creedal words, some of which I cannot even pretend I understand. So, when we stand up to say the Creed together, professing that this is what we, all we, believe, can I do that without biting my tongue? Or am I allowed to cross my fingers so that I do not perjure myself?

      Marcus Borg covers himself by saying that he understands this creed to be an historic statement made by the church at a certain time and in response to certain circumstances; and he recites it along with us in that context. And in response to the question, “Is Jesus the second person of the Trinity?” he would answer both “No” and “Yes!” And I think I must nod my head in painful agreement as he speaks. You want a simple, straight-forward answer where I think there is none. I cannot even conceive of what you mean by a Trinity, which is what the Nicene Creed is supposedly about. How can one God be three? The math doesn’t work for me. (And to call it a “mystery,”i.e., not to be solved, makes it no more apprehensible or useful for me; been there, done [or tried to do] that, didn’t work, at least for me.) How can Jesus have been fully man (which necessarily entails mortality, and all the other human limitations) and fully God (which we have always understood to mean immortal and unlimited). These two things cannot be one and the same. So I covertly step across the aisle and stand alongside Borg, and mutter the words with my fingers crossed. If you intend these words to mean precisely what they say and nothing else, then I have to quietly confess, “No.” But if you might allow that they comprise a sort of window that offers (in ancient language that is almost entirely incomprehensible to the twenty-first-century Western mind and with a whole set of assumptions that I know to be quite inaccurate and inadequate for today’s world and metaphor) a sort of window that will give the merest vague and ephemeral glimpse of the Eternal which is in reality far beyond our scope of vision and power of comprehension, then I can quietly nod the slightest agreement.

      So when we stand in unison to recite the creed, I join in because I understand that the Church has always (since 325 or 381 AD or thereabouts) done this as a token of our unanimity that something beyond our imagining happened in the man Jesus whom we call the Christ, something which gave us the clearest image we’ve ever had, before or since, of what God is about; but at the same time I understand that these words are only the vaguest token of what happened, not a precise and literalist encapsulation of the Jesus event, not the be-all and end-all of faith statements. It is a token, a pretty incomprehensible token, and nothing more. The creed is not a sword to conquer the world, or to fall on. It is a token to hold onto when feeling desperate; and little more. As a statement of all that is necessary to eternal salvation, it is a farce. But I agree to join in with your recitation of it because this church is the spiritual home I have always belonged to, I want no other, and this is one thing we do; we say these words together, to affirm both to ourselves and to each other our belongingness.

      But as I have begun to explore, and search, and wander the spiritual world in which I find myself these days, this creed is no guide, and is not even a hedge to keep me safe. (Although it could hedge me in, keep me back from any useful reaching out to know God, to have intimate intercourse with whatever is the ultimate. But then that holding-back might be, historically, the real intention of a creed.)

      And what if the God I am coming to know does not fit inside this creed? What then?

      But on the other hand, all these words I have just written about the creed comprise a linear, logical, rational world view. And I’ve written them just after I tried to say a few intelligible words about the imaginal. So after I’ve mastered the creed and all that other seemingly linear, rational stuff, my hunch is that the imaginal is my only route beyond, an alternative to the linear, toward the Eternal. But I’m not much good at the imaginal, am I? So maybe at this point I should say along with Lilly Tomlin, “Oh, never mind!”and get on with it.

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      Easter V, 2008

      I made no notes to myself during the sermon on Easter morning. They would have been embarrassing. I’ve spent most of my lifetime in a ministry for which Holy Week and Easter is the very core, the defining moment, the most important moment of the Christian year. But now I am no longer sure what these moments are about (was I ever sure, or just “putting it on”? And have I lost my faith, or merely begun to wander somewhere beyond it?) So my notes would have been embarrassing. I would have admitted to myself that Easter morning is always a let-down for me, always has been, has never lived up to the hype. Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, even Holy Saturday, these I can get into. These are human events; they are about the very down-and-dirty moments and events of our lives. They are real, and I can dig my fingers and intellectual claws, my emotional claws, into them. So when I wake up on Easter morning I expect more of that, only much more intensely, excitingly. (It’s gotta be at least a little better than searching out an Easter basket full of chocolates and an opera cream Easter egg.) But it’s not! Lots of wonderful colors and sounds and smells and tastes, with pounds and pounds of frappery and gingerbread. So much preparation and promise, and then, the same old liturgy with a few kinks thrown in. The week was about real, human stuff; but this is about something way outside the human. Something ineffable, untouchable, something beyond. It’s about what cannot be said, defined,

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