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STALKING THE GAPS

Happy Ascension Sunday! “What??” Many of you are saying, “What is Ascension Sunday??” I’m going to tell you that from the Christian tradition and from Swedenborgian traditions – then provide some ways to experience the concepts in our own lives.
 

CHRISTIAN TRADITION

Ascension is a feast day in the Christian calendar; the day that Jesus bodily ascended into heaven. It is the 40th day after Easter, which is a Thursday [this year, May 13th]. However, it is often celebrated on the next Sunday.

It is not certain where this event took place. Luke says it was Bethany, whereas Acts says it was Mount Olivet [the Mount of Olives.] This spot is now called the Mount of Ascension. The Chapel of the Ascension is located here, and is considered sacred by both Christians and Muslims.


                                                                                                       "Ascension" in art

The Mount of Olives

SWEDENBORGIAN THEOLOGY

For Swedenborg, the Ascension of Jesus was the completion of the process of glorification that took place with the crucifixion and resurrection.

The Divine descended into human form on the earth, and then glorified the human. Then, at the ascension, the human reached up and glorified the divine.

"As regards the Lord's life itself, it was a continual advance of the Human to the Divine, even to absolute union."** "He ascended continuously to glorification, that is, to union."*** By the glorification, then, is meant not only the union of the Divine with the Human essence but also the full union of the Human with the Divine essence. This was the second major part of the glorification, and it is important to note that this was done by the Human essence from its own power.****
* Lord 35:8
** AC 2523
*** AC 2033
**** AC 2004

The 2nd Coming, from Swedenborg’s perspective, will be discussed further on New church Day in June.
 

MEANING FOR OUR LIVES

In the Acts version, an important point is made:

As they watched, he was taken up and disappeared in a cloud. They stood there, staring into the empty sky. Suddenly two men appeared—in white robes! They said, "You Galileans!—why do you just stand here looking up at an empty sky? This very Jesus who was taken up from among you to heaven will come as certainly—and mysteriously—as he left.

The disciples are reminded not to look at empty sky!

Swedenborg says something similar:

True Christian Religion 768
Since His ascension into heaven [the Lord] is in the glorified Human; and in this He cannot appear to any man unless He first open the eyes of his spirit. . . .It is a vain thing to believe that the Lord is to appear in the clouds of heaven in Person; but He is to appear in the Word, which is from Him, thus is Himself.

So we are not to keep looking into the clouds; but rather to open our spiritual eyes and to find the Lord in the Word. And within us and within the world.

Or as Ann Dillard wrote in "A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek":

Thomas Merton wrote, "There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues."

                                                                                                                                                                  
She goes on to say:

There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end.

It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage.

I won't have it.

The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright.

We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.

Ezekiel excoriates false prophets as those who have "not gone up into the gaps."

The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once-blind man unbound.

The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery.

Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too.

Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock -- more than a maple -- a universe. This is how you spend the afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.

Read this again:

The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once-blind man unbound.
The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery.
Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too.


The gaps. The spaces between. Quantum physics tells us that the world is not full of solid objects with discrete boundaries. There are wide spaces within everything that looks solid – the spaces where the waves of existence flow. Physicist Karl Pribram says: “We make images of objects, but at another level of analysis, quantum physics tells us that the universe is composed of wave forms that interact to form particles – or vice versa.”

George Dole tells us that influx is a wave phenomenon. Influx is God’s love, flowing into us as waves.
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Fritjof Capra said it in a colorful way:
Modern physics thus pictures matter not at all as passive and inert but as being in a continuous dancing and vibrating motion, whose rhythmic patterns are determined by the molecular, atomic, and nuclear configurations. We have come to realize that there are no static structures. There is stability, but this stability is one of dynamic balance, and the further we penetrate into matter the more we need to understand its dynamic nature to understand its patterns.


Margaret Wheatley wrote:
One of the differences between new science and Newtonianism is a focus on holism rather than parts. Systems are understood as whole systems, and attention is given to ‘relationships within those networks’. Donella Meadows, an ecologist and author, quotes an ancient Sufi teaching that captures this shift in focus:

“You think [that] because you understand 'one' you must understand 'two', because one and one makes two. But you must also understand 'and'.”





I walk into the woods, and I see trees and flowers and animals. I am a distinct entity, separate from them. But, what if I look at the gaps? What if I look at the world around me not as filled with distinct entities, but rather “continuous dancing and vibrating motion?”




[Photo by Susan Wood-Ashton]

God is in the gaps. All of the dancing, vibrating waves of existence are in the gaps. The gaps are the “and” between “one” and “one” – the energy between “me” and “you.” That place where God lives.