We Are God's Opposable Thumb

  

We are God's opposable thumb.

The savior is among us.

Without us, The Savior would not exist - not as "Lord and Savior" in any sense we humans might understand.

The Easter Exsultet rejoices that sin - and sin alone - evoked our savior, called him forth, "obliged" The Incarnation.

Felix culpa!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exsultet

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Mark 2:17 

When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%202:17&version=NLT  (New Living Translation) 

Often, the most righteous are upstanding church-goers. It was true at the time of Christ. It is true now. "Woe unto them." - http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+23&version=NIV

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Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which to look at Christ's compassion to the world, yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good, and yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now." - St. Teresa of Avila http://cacina.wordpress.com/2011/03/  ///  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_%C3%81vila

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Symeon the New Theologian

Christ’s Body

http://interruptingthesilence.com/2009/07/16/symeon-the-new-theologian-christs-body/

We awaken in Christ’s body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, He enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamless in His Godhood).

I move my foot, and at once
He appears like a flash of lightning.

Do my words seem blasphemous? — Then
open your heart to Him

and let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.

For if we genuinely love Him,
we wake up inside Christ’s body

where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him,
and He makes us, utterly, real,

and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Him transformed

and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light
he awakens as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.

– Symeon the New Theologian, (949-1022) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symeon_the_New_Theologian

Published in The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, edited by Stephen Mitchell

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Excellent summary of Eastern Orthodoxy - a special edition of Christianity Today - Christian History magazine): http://www.christianhistorymagazine.org/wp-content/wS8wVsy62N/chm54-lJbvs.pdf

A contemporary view of Eastern Orthodoxy, emphasizing the unresolvable mystery of many things, stressing the central belief that prayer - in its most sacred form - arises from "us" and not from "me" - as in, "Our Father." Prayer is centered on community not ego - http://www.bombaxo.com/blog/?p=499

A quirky excerpt: "Many things in the lives of the saints are to be admired and not imitated."

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