What the "Wild Christ" means to me is Christ beyond the reductionism of organized religion, Christ as the reality of Divine Being within the Universe itself, and that this Divine Being of Christ is creatively free in the Divine nature, spontaneously expressing Love and mind-boggling beauty. This is Christ as the Creative Wisdom of the infinite Holy through which a limitless Universe has come into being; Christ as the pure power of the Love that holds all existence in form through the force of mutual attraction. This is the Divine prototype in Light of which all forms we perceive with our senses are echoes. This means Christ is in every cell of our bodies, every molecule, every atom.
In that day you will realize that I am in you and you are in me... Jesus
Jesus said he came to sow seeds. He did this in parables, little metaphoric stories that are alive because they express eternal, living realities. A seed is meant to die in the earth and then expand, develop, grow into its fullest potential, bearing fruit. I believe it takes two things to unlock the full potential of these seeds: Love and creative imagination. To me, the great failure of religion is always a failure to carry on the process of creative imagination at work through Love, taking the original seed of truth given and allowing it to grow through continual transformative renewal into its fullest potential.
The seed of Christ taking on and conquering death has been reduced to ritual by some aspects of Christianity and a dogmatic formula by others. The seed of a Love that by its own unconditional and universal nature is meant to expand its inclusive arms around all cultures, all people, even all religions was replaced by rigid religious expressions under girded by fear, the very antithesis of Love.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with preserving forms, such as the Eucharist, or accepting Christ as savior through a “sinner’s prayer”. Nor is there anything wrong with liturgies which give a basic familiar form to a person’s spiritual and communal life. The “wrongness” is in what is missing, what has been excluded: and it is this wildness, the untamed creative freedom, this Life that must grow and grow, change, expand, become more liberating, more exclusive, more healing, more beautiful through the awakened hearts and imaginations of those who are believing into the free, untamed, or “Wild” nature of the Living Christ of Life.
Of course creative freedom presents a whole new set of problems. At least in this world where so much unresolved fear and phobia becomes clothed in personal religious imagery. Perhaps that is why we need both the culturally accepted foundation of traditional religious imagery, ritual and story as well as the creative freedom that brings constant renewal. It is not that big a shift from exclusive to inclusive. It is a matter of the heart moving from fear to Love, from rigid to expansive, from death to Life. Then the circles of the heart can expand and expand with wide open, welcoming arms, embracing everyone and everything into the free, open and healing nature of real Love. Then all rituals and all stories, especially the central story of Christ’s life, death and resurrection, become means to the end of the Divine nature triumphing over fear to bring an awakened sense of unity in expansive diversity and diversity in the unity of Love. Then the Bible itself becomes the fertile ground of creative imagination spilling over in new stories, new parables, new poems, new images, new music, new celebrations, new dances... Light, love, joy, celebration, community.
Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth just as it is being done in the living Heavens of pure creative Love.
Blake Steele
Sept. 2007
