Tag Archives: marriage

October 25, 2015 · 4:26 pm

Non-Local (Infinite) Love

One of the qualities of being human is our ability to exist simultaneously in the realm of the infinite (non-local; spiritual) and the realm of the finite (local; material; 3 dimensions + time). Western thought traditionally separates these realms and relegates mystical and supernatural events to the spiritual realm. This perspective has given rise to a culture that has a preference towards a rational and scientific approach to life. Or does it?

Fundamentally and traditionally we westerners still dream of a love that never dies and we blindly enter marriage relationships with a fantasy like expectation of a love that will last beyond our human lifetime. Even today, when gifts are exchanged as token of marriage they are forged with materials such as diamonds, gold and titanium. These materials are used because they symbolize our hope for relationships to last beyond our physical lives.

Western civilization rests its stability on the foundations of these marriages that produce families, which in turn produce communities, which in turn produce the nations of the earth. These fundamental relationships of love are expected to transcend the current generation and leave an inheritance, which is an expression of love, for the next generation. Institutions that memorialize persons who have moved into the next phase of existence provide expressions of love that transcend and strengthen the foundation for future generations.

Even though love is eternal or non-local it requires an expression in the real-time. Any husband that forgets a birthday, anniversary or valentine’s day is quickly reminded just how long-term a relationship can be. When the spark of love begins there is a hope that it will never die and there is an expectation that each love will be continually expressed to reinforce its existence. The fact that God created the universe as an act of love, or a proposal for marriage however unique or grand the gesture holds very little meaning as we proceed in time without subsequent expression.

So what happens when the chain of love is broken?

We humans create and imaginary timeline that began with the big bang and it stretches towards the infinite (non-local) future. This current moment of “Now” is where we reside. This universally agreed slice of time has no standard duration but is imagined to be moving along the timeline towards the future. For each of us there was a spark of love that created our being. The big question is what person, what culture or what religious or secular institution is responsible to express love to us as individuals?

Before I answer that question, let me inject 2 points. The first has to do with language and the way we describe the reality in which we exist. Albert Einstein documented the principles of relativity and its language continues to dominated the context of western thought. An example would be the way you would describe the relationships and interactions of pool balls on a pool table. During the cold war nations and cultures related in a paradigm of the pool table and the ball with the greatest momentum had the greatest political influence. Religious thought also operates in this paradigm. However, Einstein also discovered the principles for quantum physics providing us with another language context with term like entanglement, non-locality and de-coherence. This posting uses the term non-locality to describe love as an object in hopes that we can discover its operations outside of our dimensions of time and space.

The second point is a real-time example of a broken timeline. If you are in relationship with a person suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, you are as witness to someone who experiences non-locality. People with Alzheimer’s are unable to communicate in-synch with you and our universal concept of the timeline. Short term memory storage areas of the brain is where each human correlates space and time and when we lose access to this we become separated from others that are bound to these universal dimensional constructs. These constructs vary for every individual, every culture and every religious and secular institution.

Today we are living in inter-national global societies and regardless of where you find yourself on this planet at any moment technology is making that place a nexus of multi-cultures and institutions. It used to be that home was where our heart was, that singular place of time and space, where we left behind and sent the expressions of our love. That collapse of distance and awareness, creates an entanglement between individuals cultures that were once isolated. For many people today home no longer has a fixed location, in other words home has become non-local as it relates to time and space.

What’s love got to do with this?

So right where we stand in this moment, who or what culture or what religious or secular institution is responsible to express love to us as individuals? If “God” is not the answer to that question you have just discovered why there are problems in the world. Simply put the definition of being lost is the inability to see God and His love for us in the moment and in that space. Traditionally we humans look to people and objects to generate the forces that influence feelings of love. However, in the quantum state all things are entangled and all things are possible and all things that exist, are from God.

As disciples of Jesus we are authorized to love everyone. Yet, we live on a planet of 7.5 billion people who are looking for love in all the wrong places. The thing that is supposed to set followers of Jesus apart from the crowd is their ability to love and reveal the true source of love. God is the source and for persons that understand their connectedness to God’s love should flow easily. If I could encourage anything it would be for every person to discover that they are linked to God as either His daughter or son. Like the air we breathe His love flows through each of us. Understanding God and His love of all is a privilege and honor I hope each human experiences God’s love the local and the non-local realm of reality.

Gen 1:27, 31 (NLT)

²⁷So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

³¹Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!

John 3:16 (NLT) “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

Romans 8:31-39 (NLT)

Nothing Can Separate Us from God’s Love

³¹What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? ³²Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? ³³Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. ³⁴Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us. ³⁵Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? ³⁶(As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) ³⁷No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. ³⁸And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. ³⁹No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Without Imagination Tradition is a White Washed Tomb

If there is one thing that I have learned after thirty years of marriage, it is that if I fail to use my imagination when expressing my love towards my wife, her response to my actions will be less than enthusiastic. But if I get it right an actually touch the strings of her imagination then I get a response that I could have never imagined. That my friends, is the life engine for every kind of relationship.

1 Corinthians 2:9 But as it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”

Marriages are designed for a life-long race and the vows of the contract provide the structure and framework that enable the relationship to transcend the physical limits of each partner. However if either partner in the relationship quits using their imagination, for the relationship, the union loses one or both of it’s engine’s life giving energy cells. Bread without wine is no fun. Bread and water is the diet of prisoners and wine is the fruit most associated with Jesus who is an example for human possibility and our relationship with God.

Luke 6:40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher.

Philippians 2:5-6 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,⁶who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,

Matthew 26:39 He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”

It is funny or sad, how all relationships start with two partners dreaming of a future together. With imagination people willingly give themselves to be a prisoner of love to another. They desire to be with the other and they are willing to give up their life and will to be with the other person. In Jewish tradition, God and Jesus act out in the Garden of Gethsemane, a marriage supper, where a cup of wine is pushed back and forth across a table until the marriage contract is agreed by both families. When the Father of the Groom takes the cup passed by the bride’s father it is deal for a lifetime.

If in my marriage, I used no imagination and express the same words, make reservations at the same restaurant, and give my wife the same birthday and anniversary card, one or both of us would be serving out a life sentence instead of celebrating 30 years of happiness. There is an expectation on me to use my imagination to express the relevance of my life shared with my wife. Why, because it is alive and the definition of life is expression. If I got construction paper and glitter and made a different card every year I would still miss the point, because I am not eight years old and maturity is function of my expression to my partner in life.

There is an obvious realization that human expression during worship and devotion will transcend with each generation. Have you ever visited your grand-parents church? Have you ever visited your parent’s church? I am assuming they are different from your current church. Depending on your perspective and age you can literally smell the tradition in the pews, in the walls, in the windows and in the people. Museums work very hard to capture and express the presence of authentic reality, and with one step across the threshold, there it is, “Tradition”.

The sense of tradition reverberates to the core of our being because it is a part of who we are and there is no denying it. It is part of your parent’s being and it is part of your grand-parents being therefore it is part of who we are as humans. Tradition has a tangibility that words fail to express but it plucks the strings at the core of our being. In our materialistic world our proximity to tradition, is measured in time and space, and it either awakens or conforms the imagination of our consciousness.

As we enter a sanctuary our senses are overwhelmed by the artifacts and the order of service that scream you are in the presence of tradition and thus you must conform. Even if that tradition is in a warehouse, a 100-year-old church building, a Starbucks’ that has not opened of business that morning or an online internet teleconference. After we have sat and experienced the presence of tradition our senses remain overwhelmed with the conforming spirit of tradition until we step outside of the door of the sanctuary or disconnect from the internet conference. What a difference a simple change in proximity can make.

If that first breath upon leaving and crossing that threshold is an experience that desires imagination and possibility then thank God because we are alive. If we sensed imagination and possibility when we entered the sanctuary, thank God the tradition is alive. Truth when expressed through tradition has a way of transforming the expression of reality into its form. The love two people share becomes a child and that expression is bound by the human body.

Why is the tradition when a man asks a woman to marry her seem so over the top as compared to when I proposed 30 years ago? The answer is simply “imagination”. Hopefully my proposal was over the top as compared to my dad’s proposal to my mom 27 years prior. We live in a technical world and the guys and gals that fail to implement imagination and today’s resources may get a rejection to their proposal.

John 11:25-26 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. ²⁶And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

Bread and water represent pure existence but Jesus offers Bread and Wine to those that want to live abundantly. 50% of marriages end in divorce because things become routine and imagination moves outside of the relationship. Traditions that use imagination will have life and transcend physical limits. Traditions without imagination become as Jesus put it “white washed graves”. As humans and Children of God were not designed to live in graves but live in gardens which spiritually represent constant renewal.

Each generation is bless with the opportunity to express love according to its own imagination. The 50’s, 60’s and 70’s each produced a different expression and the American nation was transformed. However, each generation had to overcome the traditions of the preceding generation. The beauty of death is that it provides a renewal for us when we fail to use our imagination. There is nothing like a change in proximity to bring renewal. God is patient and is not bound by time and space therefore He is willing to allow a generation to continue and die off before the next generation enters into the promises of His imagination.

Numbers 32:13 So the Lord’s anger was aroused against Israel, and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the Lord was gone.

Jesus died and legally removed all obstacles that created an idea of separation in consciousness of human understanding of our relationship with God. Jesus death also awakened us to the reality that we are all children of God and therefore we are all brothers and sisters. Jesus provided a new DNA structure and a spiritual life that cannot be contained in old wine-skins, for any human willing to eat His Bread and drink His Wine. However most religious traditions attempt to put limits on who are members of God’s family.

But God remains patient and many are emerging from the current traditions unto life. It is only when we courageously step out of the doors of the old traditions do we get a fresh breath of imagination and possibility. However if religious traditions embrace imagination they can also become life for the next generation and transcend all physical limits.

Tag Archives: marriage

Non-Local (Infinite) Love

Without Imagination Tradition is a White Washed Tomb

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