I Experience Christ as a Radiant Warmth Filled with Personality

My experience of Christ whose Resurrection we celebrate this Easter is actually very simple. I know Christ as a radiant warmth - a tangible love that gently melts all creatures, both human and more-than-human, together into One. This radiant warmth is filled with personality, one that is actually the union of Two: both Logos Wisdom and Sophia Wisdom.
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Logos or masculine Wisdom is the "radiant" aspect, the spiritual enlightenment of insight that - like the sunlight - enables us to distinguish the uniqueness of each and every creature and how each is different from the others. This masculine Wisdom is embodied in Jesus. On the other hand, Sophia or feminine Wisdom is the "warmth" aspect of Christ - felt primarily in the heart - that we can feel viscerally, and which shows how all of the distinctions fit together into one multi-faceted Whole. This is the "aha!" aspect of insight that energizes and vivifies our entire body, soul and mind. This feminine wisdom is embodied in Mary Magdalene. Together, the two form the "Christ."

The presence of Christ is a reality that we experience through transmission, just as the state of mind of a Buddhist or Hindu master comes to the student through an actual in-person encounter. For me, this transmission has occurred in many ways since childhood, but a primary vehicle of this transmission was through my spiritual mentor, Thomas Keating, the Trappist monk. In his presence, I felt a love which I KNEW was the presence of Christ awakening that same presence residing deep within my own being.
The task of Easter is for EACH OF US to embody this Presence for one another. In other words, to be the vehicle of transmission for each other. Here, Christ is NOT the possession of Christians. Rather, he and she is that warm and radiant aspect of divinely personal love that indwells ALL of us.

May each of us embody Christ for one another this day, and so - together with the wisdom energy of ALL of the major figures of the world's other great wisdom traditions - bring all things together into One.

Photo: Icon of Christ of Zvenigorod, painted by Andrei Rublev in the 1420s in Russia, discovered by accident in a dilapidated woodshed in 1919.

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