In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
Wisdom, Hagai Sophia, Holy wisdom.
The Wisdom Word was with God in the beginning–Wisdom dancing before Creation. Wisdom bringing forth all that is. Wisdom the inner unity of all that is. Wisdom the very life of the Godhead.
Creation is the first and primal revelation of God. The Wisdom Word brought all things into being. This is the first incarnation of God in our universe. God comes to us as Wisdom–the hidden inscape, inner meaning of all that is.
Gerard Manley Hopkins got it:
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed.
Thomas Merton understood it:
There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden whole-ness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all, Natura naturans. There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fount of action and joy. It rises up in word-less gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being, welcoming me tenderly, saluting me with indescribable humility. This is at once my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of my Creator’s Thought and Art within me, speaking as Hagia Sophia, speaking as my sister, Wisdom.
John the Mystic sees Jesus the Christ as Wisdom Word sent froth from the Godhead. The Wisdom Word calls out from “the divine fecundity.” The Wisdom Word is gentle sweetness. The Wisdom Word is the feminine side of the Godhead:
And the Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us,
and we saw his glory,
the glory as of the Father’s only-begotten Son,
full of grace and truth.
Jesus took on human flesh and the second incarnation completes the first. Jesus, the Wisdom Word of the Godhead, is bringing all things to completion. God dwells within us as our deepest reality.
However, all is not well in the divine scheme. John reminds us in his letter that the anti-Christ will arise. Forces contrary to Holy Wisdom will arise. The powers and the principalities, dividing and conquering, will attempt to destroy the primal unity and the new order promised by the Kin-dom. The powers and principalities will permeate the actions of empires and churches. The goal is simple–destroy the divine unity, the inner oneness of all that is. Divide, conquer, build walls, barriers and borders. Confine God to schemes for national security and death-dealing church dogmas.
Shalom is the inner essence of life. Shalom is health, wholeness, well-being. The forces of the anti-Christs speak violence and oppression. Patriarchy had dominated culture since the agricultural revolution. Land, violence and conquest are the cornerstones of patriarchy run rampant.
We need to recapture the Wisdom tradition and put it front and center in our institutions and churches. Jesus, the Christ (Holy Wisdom), dwelt among us so that we might dwell with God. Violence, domination, and exploitation all have no place in the Kin-dom. The inscape of all things is that we are one–one with all others, one with God, one with Creation.
Under the violence, beneath the exploitation, and beyond oppression there is an inner unity as God unfolds in creation and in history. God will bring all things to completion. The Word that was in the beginning ushering in creation with a joyful dance will usher in the fullness of the Kin-dom with ever greater dancing and joy. Jesus, Holy Wisdom, is the God of the Dance.
Aaron Copeland got is in Appalachian Spring http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sch4eqwizQU For a more vigorous rendition, try Michael Flatley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-pGzCre7Po&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Dance. Dance, Dance. Dance in the New Year and the New Creation. All is well and all will be well.