I am Becoming.
Am I a ghost?
Am I an animal?
Am I an angel?
Am I God?
-
Are you infinite?
Are you awake?
Am I okay?
I am.
-”Am I”, Gungor (One Wild Life: Soul)
Imagine you were walking along a path and you saw a strange light coming from a small group of brush by the road. You sharply step backwards to avoid the heat from this developing flame but you soon realize, it isn’t emitting any heat at all. The light flickers and flairs, it envelops the dry grass, yet somehow the small brush on the side of the road isn’t burning and there is no smoke to be seen. The air is still fresh with the morning dew.
You might think: Am I hallucinating? Did someone put something in my coffee?
Yet it remains. You wonder, “What is this? What am I seeing?” and you receive a reply: I am. (YHWH: Yahweh)
It may not be exactly what Exodus says but let’s say it’s a pretty close representation. This story, like that of Moses and the “burning bush” in the Old Testament, is an example of a time that God revealed Godself to a human in a way that was quite unexpected, to say the least. A time in which God become creation itself and revealed their identity, “I am.” (YHWH, I Am, is the name of God revealed to the Hebrews in the Bible. The name spoken was considered to be so sacred that they only wrote out YHWH, so we are not sure how it is pronounced.) As a child, I I did not understand the meaning at all. What kind of person says their name is I AM?
I’m starting to understand.
God loves things by becoming them.
These words often hang around in my head space. They rattle around my brain and come up at the least expected of times.
God loves things by becoming them.
They creep up during my meditation practice and they whisper to me as I stretch during yoga. They announce themselves to me during a walk and are voiced again and again when I watch the tree dance and sway. There they are again as the sun goes down, the sticky rose light hanging around at the very edges of twilight.
God loves things by becoming them.
I’m quite sure I’ve said those words in almost every Sunday worship service since I read them. It’s because they are so transformational to my theology that I have to keep repeating them.
God loves things by becoming them.
OK, let’s back up a little and let me explain. In Richard Rohr’s new book, “The Universal Christ,” the Franciscan contemplative theologian talks about the incarnation in a way I had never truly conceptualized before. Most people who have been raised in the church were taught that the incarnation, “God’s radical unity with humanity,” happened when Jesus was born, but Rohr makes another argument. He suggests that God’s first incarnation had nothing to do with humans at all but instead was creation (and thus evolution of creation) itself, “when God joined in unity with the physical universe and became the light inside of everything.” (13)
God’s first way of showing up in the world was creation itself: the light, the water, the earth, and the universe.
“Everything visible, without exception, is the outpouring of God (13).”
God is not only creator but creation itself. What are we then but extensions of the Divine as well?
God loves things by becoming them.
Divine One, I know that when I truly love people without condition is when I see my own Divinity. I begin to see You in your infinite wisdom and the glimpses are indescribably beautiful. Yet, why would you want to become me? You say you love things by becoming them but I was taught I was full of sin, pride, and wrongdoing. Why would you want to become human? We destroy things. We don’t love like we need to. We argue and deceive one another for power and profit. We are the center of our own universes. Why, God, would that be appealing at all?
Don’t you see, daughter, I always was you. You are just now recognizing it.
I have always been in your heart, but now you have ears to hear me.
My child,
I am.
I am what I am.
I will be what I will be.
I am creator and creation.
I am Spirit.
I am existence.
I am You.
That is how I love.
I become.
So let’s sit here awhile longer.
I have a lot of things to teach you.
I am.
and so are you.
Photo by Photo by Hassan OUAJBIR
