Here is the second part of my talk on Jesus as the Two way Door. The first talk opened up the whole landscape of reality that the Christian message opens up – not just the ‘religious’ experience but the whole experience of how we approach life.
I went back to Maximus and his picture of how reality is framed by the mind of God, and within the treaty, now the Logos was and is the architect and indeed the template of reality. So as Christians we declare that reality is personal and indeed framed after a Person. There is a mind behind all things, and thus there is love and intention behind all things. Simple but profound truths.
In this talk I explain two stories from my consulting career where this ‘personal’ scale of thinking made a difference. As far as I know I did not intentionally try to apply to this model to the situation, it just happened naturally and was the way of wisdom. But in both cases it meant I had to swim against the tide and introduce a new way of thinking that was fragile and competing with the dry analytics that prevailed. I am reminded of TS Eliot’s memorable phrase, summarising his views of ordinary people in a bleak evening as they travelled home:
“I am moved by fancies that move around these images and cling.
The notion of an infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing.”
I knew then that Eliot was talking about the human spirit, confronted by the indifference of space and time and crowds and itineraries. But I now realise that he was also talking about the spirit of Christ, the logos upholding and suffering with all of our humanness.
The two way door to reality