THE ONENESS
” I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower… Abide in me as I abide in you.” (painting by Liliane Davies, Penclawdd, April 2018)
In Liliane’s painting of the mist at Mew Slade, which she painted last week after picking up the litter on the beach, the mist is like elements manifest as oneness: earth meets sea meets sky. As sea meets sky, mist rises; as sky meets earth, mist descends, rises and descends, evaporates, re-manifests… Indeed, a painting itself is elements manifesting in oneness but let’s not get caught in an endless intellectual spiral here! The point is made. In the Nag Hamadi scroll which we have come to know as The Gospel of Thomas, it is recorded that, “Jesus said, ‘It is I who am the light which is before them all. It is I who am the All. From Me did the All come forth, and unto Me did the All extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find Me there” (Saying 77). There is nowhere that Christ isn’t. Christ is in us and we are in Christ, as is all that is. It is separation that is illusion however we have been “educated” to the contrary.
Also recorded in the scroll is a question from Jesus’ disciples, “When will you be visible to us, and when shall we behold you?” Jesus replies, “When you strip naked without being ashamed, and take your garments and put them under your feet like little children and tread upon them, then you will see the child of the Living, and you will not be afraid” (Saying 37). In the Book of Genesis, it is when Adam and Eve become ashamed in their newfound awareness of their nakedness that the illusion of separation comes into the story of human being. They have sought the knowledge of the mind of God, desired to know how it all works so that they might take control of their lives, put on the robes of the learned. They have bought the illusion and found themselves to be separated from the Garden, from God, from whom they really are.
But in Christ, we can remove the robes, trample them into the dust, and come home.
Christ calls us
and Christ enables us.
Tonnau Duw ('God's waves') Fr Tim Ardouin 