Not one, not two either

You are made in the image of God which means that something of the Divine dwells within you. Yet you are not precisely one with God. That is, you are not the numerical equivalent of God. You are not God. But you’re not totally distinct from God either. You and God are not two separate unconnected entities. So, you are not precisely one, and you're not distinctly two; what we say to shoot the gap is this - you are not other than each other.

Your union with God is like this:

• You are like the flames of two candles touched together. The flames burn undeniably as one, yet pull the candles just barely apart and see their two-ness clearly.

• You are like a child in the womb of her mother. A simple ultrasound image will show you clearly that there are two human beings in one human body. They are undeniably one, and yet they are also clearly two. During the period of pregnancy mother and child are wonderfully not other than each other.  Then, once the child is born they are distinctly two, but take the mother out of the child and the child disappears. This is the child’s nothingness without her mother. They are not other than each other. The same is true with you and God.

In silent prayer we drop down into the depth of our own being where we are not other than God who is our source. Then we proceed out of the silence with eyes to see that while we are distinct from our neighbors we are also one, or put another way, we are not other than each other. Thus we can, as the baptismal promise says, Love our neighbors as ourselves.

Christmas marks the arrival of the One who is “the Word made flesh.” Jesus Christ is with you and within you. The living flame of his love burns brightly in the depth of your soul as your source.