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Primitive Christianity Revived, Again

The Case of Ineffable vs. Mot Juste

Ineffable: If it please the Court of Quaker opinion, as with the scriptural people of Ja(h)we(h), we find the experience, if not the Name, of God beyond human expression.

Mot Juste: If time would tell, dear Friends, as with the equally-scriptural children of God, we relate to an immanent parent as our Father/Mother in heaven.

Ineffable: There is no way that the individual person can hold, let alone express, the immensity of religious experience. That is why we worship in silence.

Mot Juste: We worship in silence in order to hear our celestial parent's encouragement and to respond when useful direction is given. We trust that, when we settle into the lap of our God, we are given understandable thoughts, feelings and even words to treasure and sometimes offer as true wealth.

Ineffable: It is enough for us to say how awesome and loving God is in worship as inexpressible treasure.

Mot Juste: Our celestial parent says that your transcendent God sounds like the type of parent that keeps the children outdoors, even into the dark.

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Comment by Forrest Curo on 8th mo. 1, 2013 at 10:41am: I'd say we are supposed to share & compare our various bits of contact/insight. Certainly this helps refine our hopelessly-incomplete vision... and as we are also people in God, we don't do this entirely as separate individuals, but with Daddy's help. "What do I know, as God's toe?" -- "Well, I'm God's finger and I can tell you all about it!" Seriously, when I've been in real Bible study or Torah study groups, somebody often comes out with a totally-unexpected angle and this can flip everything so completely that I do feel God has been working with us oysters to bring us this pearl!

The 'celestial parent' paradigm works to convey many true things: That God cares about us as we care about our own difficult children, even more so -- and that this love may demand that we take pity on ourselves & straighten-up, but it is not 'because we are good.' That we are made of the same 'stuff' as God. That God does not intend to let go of us.

And it explains much of the falseness between us. That we must strive, at some times, to define ourselves by 'running away from home,' achieving a sort of perverse-&-illusory independence that does help establish some personal scars and integrity.... That we see God, as we see other people, through projections of our own personality -- and that this helps or hinders true vision depending on what aspects we project...

And what else?

Comment by Clem Gerdelmann on 10th mo. 12, 2013 at 6:33am: I'm thinking of a six-letter word beginning with "D" and ending with double-"s" to succinctly describe our societal/institutional situation today.

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