The Liturgy of the Word in Church today connected more dots of meaning and understanding to all life than I could have imagined. It has implications for all of us as many of us proclaim in our Constitutions to be One Nation under God and lose sight of the Primary Axiom of our Faith that has been revealed to us in our Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The epiphany which I had in church today was that the Primary Axiom of my Faith resonated very well without conflict and contradiction with the Primary Axiom of Life-Value which has become the cognitive engine of my life-grounded spiritual growth and development. And what I have grown to realize, from this life-grounded lens, is that the Word of God is in truth and in fact infallible, but where we fall short and become fallible is in the interpretation of this Word and its application to the embodied flowerings of all of our felt side of being, thoughts and actions as manifested in all of our life’s beings, becomings and doings.
Before elaborating some more on what I mean to say, so that I can say what I mean, I will reproduce the readings, responsorial psalm, alleluia and gospel of today, that inspired a new breath of inspiration of meaning and understanding of all that was re-cognized and re-livened.
Reading 1 Dt 6:2-6
Moses spoke to the people, saying:
“Fear the LORD, your God,
and keep, throughout the days of your lives,
all his statutes and commandments which I enjoin on you,
and thus have long life.
Hear then, Israel, and be careful to observe them,
that you may grow and prosper the more,
in keeping with the promise of the LORD, the God of your fathers,
to give you a land flowing with milk and honey.” Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!
Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God,
with all your heart,
and with all your soul,
and with all your strength.
Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today.“Responsorial Psalm Ps 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51
R. (2) I love you, Lord, my strength.
I love you, O LORD, my strength,
O LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.
My God, my rock of refuge,
my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold!
Praised be the LORD, I exclaim,
and I am safe from my enemies.
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.
The LORD lives! And blessed be my rock!
Extolled be God my savior.
You who gave great victories to your king
and showed kindness to your anointed.
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.Reading 2 Heb 7:23-28
Brothers and sisters:
The levitical priests were many
because they were prevented by death from remaining in office,
but Jesus, because he remains forever,
has a priesthood that does not pass away.
Therefore, he is always able to save those who approach God through him,
since he lives forever to make intercession for them. It was fitting that we should have such a high priest:
holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners,
higher than the heavens.
He has no need, as did the high priests,
to offer sacrifice day after day,
first for his own sins and then for those of the people;
he did that once for all when he offered himself.
For the law appoints men subject to weakness to be high priests,
but the word of the oath, which was taken after the law,
appoints a son,
who has been made perfect forever.Alleluia Jn 14:23
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord;
and my father will love him and we will come to him.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel Mk 12:28b-34
One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him,
“Which is the first of all the commandments?”
Jesus replied, “The first is this:
Hear, O Israel!
The Lord our God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength.
The second is this:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no other commandment greater than these.”
The scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher.
You are right in saying,
‘He is One and there is no other than he.’
And ‘to love him with all your heart,
with all your understanding,
with all your strength,
and to love your neighbor as yourself’
is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding,
he said to him,
“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
And no one dared to ask him any more questions.”Reproduced from: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/110418.cfm
The epiphany which I had in church today relates to what is the right interpretational meaning of “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” If our concept of a Transcendental God as “A life-coherently transcendental possibility of God – developing as the laws of the universe and the world develop but impelling more inclusive possibility beyond them” is not ruled out, and this includes the Life-Ground which is “most simply expressed, all the conditions required to take your next breath and … understood, all the life support systems required for human life to reproduce or develop”, then
1) all of our
a) heart and
b) soul,
2) all of our minds and
3) all of our strengths,
re-present and re-generate the ultimate fields of life-value of
1) the infinite felt side of being
a) within and
b) without,
2) our full range of life-enabling thoughts and
3) our full range of life-enabling actions.
Thus to love our God is basically to govern our growth and developments with The Good Will and The Truth which is none other than “impelling a more inclusive possibility beyond them” as realized in the life coherent principle.
“The Primary Axiom of All Value:
X is value if and only if, and to the extent that, x consists in or enables a more coherently inclusive range of thought/feeling/action than without it.
Conversely: x is disvalue if and only if, and to the extent that, x reduces/disables/destroys any range of thought/experience/action.
Definitions of the three ultimate fields of value:
thought = internal image and concept (T)
felt side of being = senses, desires, emotions, moods (F);
action = animate movement across species and organizations (A)
governed by
the good will = T/F/A as one to realise the Primary Axiom
the true = progressive consistency with the P-Axiom, or the life coherence principle”
It is in this light that the Greatest Commandment of my Faith has become the Primary Axiom of my Faith which has now life-grounded my spirituality to the Primary Axiom of Life-Value.
What is even more encouraging is that this gives new meaning to John 1:1 The Word Became Flesh,
“In the beginning was
1) the Word, and
2) the Word was with God, and
3) the Word was God“
which when life-grounded becomes:
In the beginning was
1) the Primary Axiom of Life-Value, and
2) the Primary Axiom of Life-Value was with an “all-inclusive Being Becoming more all-inclusive Being impelling more Inclusive Possibility”, and
3) the Primary Axiom of Life-Value “developed as the laws of the universe and the world developed impelling more inclusive possibility beyond them;”
realized now as the fully inclusive and coherent embodied fields of life-value. Hence the Primary Axiom of Life-Value Became Flesh in the thoughts, words and deeds of the founder of my Faith, Yeshua.
With regards to Yeshua, what can we decode from the Scriptures as it pertains to the range of his fields of life-value, and CAN this decoding help us to understanding the life-grounded meaning of “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”? As distilled in a previous blog article entitled “The inescapable social, political and economic implications of the Lord’s Prayer“, we at once realize that his fields of life-value provides us with the guidance on how we are to relate to others and to our selves. We should have:
1) nurturing thoughts to enable a fuller life-capacity and capabilities in others as our selves as we provision for ours and others’ universal human life necessities,
2) forgiving felt sides of being when we err in disabling or not enabling the full life-capacities and capabilities in our selves or that of others, and
3) non-violent actions to deal with and remedy conflicts when they do arise among our fields of life-value and those of others when we are tempted to take more than what we need or not provisioning as much as we should for our selves and others.
By our thoughts, felt side of being and actions becoming fully coherently inclusive within us and with those of others according to the spirit and the letter of the Primary Axiom of Life-Value, we realize The Good Will and The Truth that exists in our selves and every sentient being. This is what it means to love our neighbour as our selves, as others have their life-capacities more and more fulfilled, as we err less and less in trespassing in the realization of the life-capacities of our selves and those of others, as we become less and less compromised and conflicted and tempted to take more than we need and hurt others, and become more and more individually and collectively empowered to give back to those with unmet needs and to reconcile with those with whom we hurt by our life-negligent omissions and commissions.
It is also interesting to note in the beginning of the Lord’s prayer these words: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.” This confirms for me that my interpretation is on the right path as the Lord’s prayer is a Life-Grounded Earthly Manifesto where the Good Will of the Father can be realized as our “tripolar” fields of life-value aligning “magnetically” with the life-force now steered by the life-value compass of the Primary Axiom of Life-Value.
This also gives new meaning to the ending of the Lord’s prayer: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” If God is “undogmatically understood as all-inclusive Being Becoming more all-inclusive Being”, then God is in no longer mistakenly understood “as separate from and above the world, eternal and unchanging in nature, and unaffected by human history”. Then we will realize at once that the ultimate temptation and the source of all evil is when we become unmoored from the life-ground which is the true source of all creation itself. As a consequence, we become ungrounded, separated and alienated from this life-ground and in its place, replace our life-enabling views of the world with life-disabling world-views. It is this “kind of idolotary of man made ideas” — which is the ultimate source of all of our life-stresses and life-sufferings in this world.
It is only in this realization of
1) the unity of all life and
2) the unity of the provisioning of the universal human life necessities in terms of
3a) the means of production and distribution with
3b) the ends of access for consumption
in order to grow our life-capacities and develop our life-capabilities to the fullest,
that we would be able to create Heaven here on Earth!
In this light, my new found Life-Grounded Spirituality, as opposed to a past life-ungrounded religiosity, has moved me to pay homage to a Life-Force which is no longer the life-disabling author/architect/engineer of confusion, contradiction and conflict, but now the life-enabling Governor of Coherence, Compassion and Conciliation, as manifested in the fruits of the ultimate fields of life-value of thoughts, felt side of being and action.
And finally, it is in this sense that the Primary Axiom of Life-Value and the Greatest Commandment have become the alpha and omega of all that there was in the beginning and all that there can continue to be, IF WE SO CHOOSE, to study and interpret via the life-coherent principle, our practices, programmes and policies. And by being guided to becoming by this life-value compass to understanding and reasoning, which now no longer surpasses our life-capacities to comprehend the meaning of it all, we can confidently strive for
1) ecological integrity (that brings forth all the fruits of life),
2) social justice (that brings forth all the fruits of love) and
3) a fully-coherent (conflict-free) healthy life of ease rather than dis-ease (which brings forth all the fruits of peace).
And in so doing, we will have discovered and reaffirmed that saving Amazing Grace that knows no war anymore!!
(I would like to thank Scott Andrew of projectsanilty.com for sharing the images that are reproduced in this article and also as the header of my blog site.
Also I have to thank Prof John McMurtry for his life-vocational development of life-value onto-axiology which is his gift to all of humanity, and is the gift that keeps on giving.
“meaning of life-value onto-axiology =
– Prof John McMurtry, from personal communication).
Could God love each and everyone of us as he loves himself?
Could God love us more than he loves himself?
Could the Greatest Commandments be so great; that possibly even God could not do anything greater?
Here is a childlike and yet profound way to test the power of the greatest commandments; when looking for one single purpose for the creation of the universe and life.
Before the creation of the universe began, imagine God the Father, Son and Holy spirit looking out into the vast empty void of space. They are thinking, we have the power to create anything we want, what is the greatest good thing that we can create?
God could create all the stars and planets and be the supreme builder. He could create plants; and be the unsurpassed gardener. God could create the animal kingdom; and be the best farmer. God could create children in his own likeness, nature and image and be the greatest father. Can God create anything greater than children in his own image?
God could love each and everyone of his children as he loves himself. Could God love us more than he loves himself?
Could there be any greater purpose for God to create the universe and life?