Читать книгу Hear the Ancient Wisdom - Charles Ringma - Страница 50

February 11

Generativity

While some think that Christianity is all about doctrines,

rituals, and ceremonies, they miss the heart of the biblical story. The heartbeat is God’s creative and sustaining presence in our lives and communities.

The fourteenth-century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart sees God not as some remote and static being, but as close and dynamic. He writes: “God in things is activity, reality, and power, but in the soul he is procreative.”42

God’s Spirit—personal, creative, life-giving, healing, forward moving—is no lover of dull conformity and repetitive ceremony. Instead, the Spirit is ever animating and revitalizing. Through the Spirit the tired places are renewed, the broken places are healed, and the places of despair are filled with hope. The work of the Spirit is ever to renew.

Through inspiration and illumination, the Spirit brings not only new insight and wisdom, but also new energy and vitality. Thus, we do not only see more clearly, but we are carried forward by the breath of the Spirit. The Spirit blows us to new places. This is important. It is never simply a matter of new ideas. It is much more a matter of a new inspiration and motivation, and the will to do and the passion to move forward.

Thus the work of God in us is life-giving and generative. And this generativity is one that blesses others and seeks to cooperate with God’s renewing work in our world.

Thought

Like a mother, God brings the new into being. And in being and doing the new we are nourished.