THREE METAPHORICAL VISIONS
First Metaphorical Vision:
An infinite space full completely of an indefinable and ineffable something, that therefore we do not try to describe, and that we denominate "Whole".
(Ain-sof, Apeiron)
The Whole "is": thus we express our initial vision, that we consider a metaphorical image of God.
But in a point or region of that infinite space, God produces a hollow, or hole, or crack, or rip, or bubble.
In that point no longer "is" the Whole. The Whole has retired of there.
Where there was "being" now there is "not-being", that is to say, nothing. There the Whole has been made nothing, has been overwhelmed. This annihilation, destruction, reduction, contraction, or evacuation, of God, is called "Tzimtzum" or "Kenosis".
The kenosis is a voluntary positive action of God. But for it, there would only be stable and immutable, infinite and eternal the Whole. But in this point no longer is the Whole, but the nothing.
Nevertheless, the nothing "is not". The nothing cannot "be". For that reason, in that point or region it cannot appear something that "is" but something that "happens": a process that tends to overwhelm the emptiness, to repair the broken thing, to recover the being. (Tikun, Anaplerosis).
But for the continued voluntary action of God, the kenosis would be erased "instantaneously"; the Whole would be recovered "immediately", since its predominance on the nothing is infinite.
But God wants that there is a mediate process of restitution, that we call "to happen". It is the process by means of which the "not-being" looks for to arrive the "being", the "chaos" looks for the "cosmos": the "cosmic process".
The power of God that creates the cosmic process is the "spirit of God". His work is first action of annihilation and after gradual restoration, impetuous anxiety by the Whole, voluntarily moderate to make possible the process. Action of "agape" and "kenosis", and then of "eros".
A moderation that implies to accept resistances and spontaneitys that prevent and delay the complete restitution of the Whole. So the spirit of God creates the space-time and admits the chance, although only to overcome it by means of his loving providence.
So, the will of God has been: first to stoop, to overwhelm itself until accepting the imperfection, the chance, the nothing, so that the finite thing could exist. But this finite one is full of the spirit of God, that incessantly pushes it towards the trascendence, towards the emergence of the Whole, that is God Himself.
______________________________________________________________________________
Second Metaphorical Vision:
An immense volcano in eruption, metaphor of the cosmic process of creative evolution.
Lava pushes and ascends by its interior, like the spirit of God by the interior of the Process, through numerous levels of emergence, until to erupt finally in the last level that reaches the trascendence.
The final trascendence is the Last Newness: God, whose metaphor is the eruption that appears of the peak. Thus, the volcano is the mount where God manifestes Himself.
The evolutionary process has been represented by a mount, or pyramid, or cone. Or by a tree whose branches are families and genus of species, interconnecting and interlacing according to the evolution advances and expands.
A tree that in our vision inscribes within the mountain, and whose sap is lava, the spirit of God. A fire sap, that does not consume but feeds the tree of the life. That image remembers us inevitably the ardent bramble --or ardent shrub-- where Yahveh is revealed to Moses.
From the peak of this highest mountain, from the top of the creative process, from the heights, God shows Himself and takes care of the outcry of His creatures, who appear and disappear during the Process, as least and ephemeral sparkings of lava.
And God feels sorry Himself of His creatures, and wants to make share them His trascendence, and spills of above to down His redentor Spirit until arriving at all of them. As the lava that is spilled by the slopes of the volcano.(Action of -second- agape and kenosis).
This volcano is the Moriah mount, where the human individual is sacrificed for the sake of God, in altars of the Process, when this same God goes prompt to aid him.
This volcano is the Horeb mount, where God speaks to the Man to reveal His name and to promise to him the redemption.
This volcano is the Zion mount, where God constructs His holy city and His temple, to live near the men.
This volcano is the Calvary mount, where God loves until the extreme His creatures, dying like them so that they live like Him.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Third Metaphorical Vision:
A great incandescent crystal immersed in a solution.
The great crystal has in its center a man figure: he is the crucified/resurrected Son-of-man. His arms in cross are the axes of the crystal, and want to extend until embracing all the solution.
The solution is crystallizing. They appear myriads of very small crystals that float in it, attracted by the great central crystal.
Each little crystal also carries in its center a human little figure.
The little crystals that get to reach to the Central one, adhere to Him, are integrated in Him, and thus the great incandescent Crystal is growing.
He is done of multitude of little crystals crowded together around his Center, united closely to each other without getting to be fused, bathed all by the same incandescent fulgor. The little crystals beat and grow incessantly.
The great Crystal is not cold nor rigid. It is warm, soft and smooth, like tender living meat. It is a Body that lovingly feels and sustains to its little crystals members.
Its incandescent fulgor is the spiritual blood of that Body, that flows inexhaustible from its Center to vivify to all its members.
Its brilliance is an unspeakable harmony.The little crystals that still swim by the solution perceive the seductive call of that harmony.
They go hurried towards it; they want to adhere to it to incorporate themselves to the great Crystal and to grow in Him.
They will attain it. Surely all will attain it. The great Crystal will grow until including all the solution finally. Then it will be the Whole everywhere.
And there we will be also. We will be laughing and singing
____________________________________________________________________________________
MEDITATION
Tzimtzum and Tikun, Kenosis and Anaplerosis
To the fundamental philosophical question of Leibniz: "Why something exists and not rather the nothing?", that is of negative kind because supposes the nothing like basic natural conception of the imagination, we oppose the positive question: Why something exists and not rather the Whole?
Starting of the Whole -infinite, eternal and perfect- like basic natural conception, we only can conceive the existence of something like annihilation or evacuation
of that Whole, to cause an emptiness, a nothing, that necessarily has to be filled, to be repaired, and to restore the Whole everywhere.
In the beginning, then, it was only the infinite Whole: (Ain-sof, Apeiron) God. He decided to overwhelm Himself. Why? -For love-agape: donation of Himself. This annihilation has been called Tzimtzum (Jewish cabalistic mysticism of Isaac Luria) or Kenosis (Christian theology inspired by Saint Paul, Urs von Balthasar and Luria, of Jürgen Moltmann and others).
The restoration, that follows the annihilation of God necessarily, is called Tikun or Anaplerosis. As it is voluntarily moderate by the spirit of God, it causes a process: the Creation of the Universe, the Cosmic Process. Its goal, or Telos, is the last event or Eschaton: the restitution or restoration of the Whole everywhere, called Apokatastasis.
But, due to the benevolent love of God towards his creatures, who seem destined to the sacrifice in the interior of the Process, there is a second Kenosis, complementary of the first one that lead to the Creation, that leads -this second one- to the Redemption.
The "second Kenosis" is the incarnation of God, total and authentic, in a human being: Jesus Christ, until his cross death (as alludes San Pablo in the second chapter of his epistle to the Philippians). And the "second Anaplerosis", restitution or restoration, is the resurrection of Christ with the consequent Anakefaleosis: recapitulation and collection of all the creatures in the Mystical Body of the resurrected Christ.
It has been, like the first one, by Agape of God, by solidary love that does donation of Himself, followed of impetuous love -although voluntarily moderate- that looks for the repair: the Eros of the spirit of God. And its Telos is the same Eschaton of the first one: the Apokatastasis, since the Mystical Body of Christ, where it is incorporated the Humanity and the whole Creation, will be put under God finally so that the Whole in everything is recovered (as teaches San Pablo in his first epistle to the Corinthians).
We notice that there is a culminating moment: in the cross of Christ, in his abandonment on the part of God, the two Kenosis converge and culminate. God overwhelms Himself when incarnating Himself totally in a human being who suffers and dies, and overwhelms Himself also when abandoning that man –Himself- to his sacrifice as creature put under the hard laws of the humanity and the nature.
But, being God who is, there is necessarily a restoration, the Anaplerosis, that is also double: the resurrection of Christ, second Anaplerosis, causes the culmination of the first one: the resurrection of all the humanity and the renovation of the whole Creation, by means of the Anakefaleosis for the Apokatastasis.
Thus it has been according to the "logic" of God, that wanted to be Father, to engender his Son, to emit his Word (Logos, Verbum), "modulating it" in his breath (Ruah), his exhalation, his Spirit, to execute a Plan of benevolent love.
__________________________________________________________________________________
previous-blog----------------------------------------------index----------------------------------------------------------------------