By Beatrice Bruteau ..pt. 2 : The Eucharistic Planet

[Guest guest]

The resurrection of the body means that the Real Presence of the

Absolute is realized in the world in all its ordinariness. The world

of mountains and rivers, of bread and wine, of friends and enemies,

is all held and displayed in the universal monstrance, the Showing,

the phenomenalization of the Absolute. This is, as far as I can see,

what the Mysteries, in their various mythic forms and traditions, are

trying to tell us.

 

Can we recognize the presence of the Absolute in the ordinariness of

the world? Do we know what is going on when bread is broken for

supper? I want to see all our interconnectedness as .expressions of

the agape, the karuna, the hesed, the jen--of the Absolute. I want to

perceive Earth as a Eucharistic Planet, a Good Gift planet, which is

structured as mutual feeding, as intimate self-sharing. It is a great

Process, a circulation of living energies, in which the Real Presence

of the Absolute is descerned. Never holding still, continually

passing away from moment to moment, it is the shining face of the

Eternal. It is living as an integral Body, as the Glory Body of the

Real.

 

In this Risen Body, or Glory Body, or Manifestation of the Real,

compassion overflows as what Chogyam Trungpa calls " environmental

generosity. " [1] Since the Absolute, radiating itself in the myriad

things, has no need to prefer one to another, compassion is revealed

as " the ultimate attitude of wealth. " 2 Abundant life is available for

all because there is no desire to hoard. The various aspects of the

universe can give themselves freely to one another because they have

no need to preserve themselves, to save themselves for themselves.

This is eucharistic ecology, and it is the ideal of all spiritual

traditions. The Life of the Whole continues because all parties give

themselves to it by giving themselves to each other. The dynamic

interconnections in turn sustain all participants.

 

This view of the world, which I am here calling the Eucharistic

Planet, a view of the world as the Real Presence of the Divine, of

the Absolute, a view of the world as a single living Body, in which

the various members freely give themselves as food to one an-other--

this view of reality has been around a long time. It has surfaced in

almost every culture in one form or another. A number of ancient

traditions described the unity of the world as the living body of a

single divine person. Purusha in the Vedic tradition, Osiris in the

Egyptian, the 18,000-year-old god of Chinese myth whose head became

the sun and moon, his blood the rivers and seas, his hair the plants,

his limbs the mountains, his voice the thunder, his sweat the rain,

his breath the wind--and there are similar accounts in the other

ancient tales--all these deities gave their flesh to be the life of

the world. The Cosmic Theandric Person[3] is a well-nigh universal

image of the organic unity in which we all share.

 

A sense of the Eucharistic Planet, of the Real Presence of the Divine

in the world, is something we need now for the protection of the

planet. It may be that biblical religion has encouraged Western

civilization to take unfair advantage of the natural environment

under the belief that it was given to humanity by God for purposes of

human exploitation and has no rights of its own. It may be that we

need to tell ourselves a new story about how we fit into the general

scene and what it's all about. I don't dispute that. But I would like

to emphasize that on the basis of the Gospel we can say something

quite constructive and very exciting that will give us the new story

and a vision of the wholeness of the planet.

 

The core of the story, as I see it, is the communitarian life taught

by and instituted by Jesus. It is based on a vision of being that

differs from the one we usually assume. Instead of taking as the norm

of Reality those things that are outside one another, he takes as

standard and paradigm those who are in one another. His prayer, his

vision, is " that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in

me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us . . . that they may be

one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may

become perfectly one " (John 17:21-22). This is the heart of what

Jesus is about, I believe. And I don't think that we should regard it

as something on an always receding horizon, a merely guiding ideal,

something unreal to be striven for but never actually achieved. On

the contrary, I think he meant that this is how Reality is

fundamentally constructed: this is how it is, and we are to wake up

and know it, realize it.

 

This basic insight, vision, revelation, was developed in the church

in terms of two great dogmas, which, however, haven't perhaps been

sufficiently appreciated as the structural models that they are. The

two great dogmas, from which probably everything can be derived, are

the Trinity and the Incarnation. And they are encapsulated in the

single sacrament of Holy Communion, the Incarnation of the Trinity. I

mean, of course, the mutually feeding, mutually indwelling,

community, in which all members give themselves to one another as

food, for the sake of life, abundant life.

 

It only remains to be said explicitly that this community is not

limited to human beings but includes all life and the entire cosmos,

and we have a religious view that not only enables but demands an

ecological morality with regard to both the human community and the

total cosmic community. The whole universe is structured and

organized in such a way that all members depend on one another; they

are all, in fact, dynamic processes constituted precisely by their

relations to one another. It is exactly the Trinity that the universe

images, which it, in fact, incarnates, embodies, phenomenalizes,

shows forth, reveals, glorifies. The universe puts into flesh, into

matter, the Trinitarian perichoretic Life--with its differentiation

by relation, its self-sharing, its mutual indwelling--by which the

nature of God is expressed.

 

If the Godhead is correctly called Love, then both the internal

dynamism of the perichoresis and the external dynamism of the

Incarnation are vindications of it. As Thomas Merton's philosopher-

friend, Daniel Clark Walsh, told the Trappist monks of Gethsemani, in

metaphysics " choice of starting point is all important .... The thing

is to begin with St. John: God is Love. " [4] That means that God has

to be personal and communitarian (Trinity). It also means that God is

going to be externally creative and self-expressive, self-involving

(Incarnation). There is an expansiveness, a generosity, in the very

nature of Being that reveals itself as the Trinity and as the

Trinity's incarnation, the cosmos.

 

The cosmos, too, is communitarian, a single body of mutually feeding

processes-- much more like beings that are in one another than like

beings that are outside one another. It embodies, in its various

finite organizations and processes and its ever more complex growth,

the radiant expansive nature of that which it inevitably expresses.

It is a Symbiotic Cosmos, and it is the artistic self-expression of

the Trinity.

 

Hee-jin Kim, in his book Dogen Kigen, Mystical Realist, speaking of

the Hua-yen school of Buddhist philosophy, says that

 

the entire universe consists of creative processes in which the

multiplicity of things and events interact with and interpenetrate

one another without obstruction. Particularities are not obliterated

or deficient in any way, yet are unhindered in the perfect harmony of

the total.[5]

 

I think that is the right idea, the idea of the universe as the self-

expression, or incarnation, or artwork, of the Trinity. Even among

us, the work of the artist carries the reality of the artist in some

way. Even when the work is something made outside the artist (as

distinguished from, say, singing and dancing), if it is really a work

of art, there is no way that the artist can not be present in that

work. This reinforces the claim that the model for the universe is a

community of beings in one another, rather than a collection of

beings outside one another, and that it is not inappropriate to

regard the cosmos as an " incarnation " of the Trinity.

 

The cosmos has all the marks of the Trinity: it is a unity; it is

internally differentiated but interpenetrating; and it is dynamic,

giving, expanding, radiant. And, as a work of art, the cosmos has

another very important character: it does not exist for the sake of

something else, something beyond itself; it is not useful, it is not

instrumental; it is an end in itself, self-justifying, valuable in

its own right and in its very process. This, I think, is foundational

for the ecological virtue that is the moral dimension of the

Eucharistic Ecology I am proposing. As the Artwork of God, the cosmos

has value in itself, and that entitles it to certain rights.

 

 

pt.2 in toto

 

......bob