1. (Taken from the Genesis):

There was an old man of ninety nine years called Abram; his wife Saray was almost as old as he, and she could not have children. Abram had a vision of God that said to him: "Sight to the sky and count the stars, if you can; that numerous it will be your descendants; no longer you will be called Abram but Abraham: "father of many", and your woman will be called Sarah: "mother of kings". Abram --now Abraham-- lay down to laugh; and when he told it to his wife –now Sarah-- she also laughed of surprise and incredulity: How were they going to have children now that were so old! But thus it was: Sarah conceived and had a boy to whom they put the name of Isaac: "God laughs". She, and also Abraham, laughed along of joy with God.

(It spent the time. Isaac grew until becoming a boy.)

And God spoke to Abraham and said to him: "take your dear son Isaac, carry him to the Moriah mount and once there, sacrifice him to me". Abraham obeyed to God; he went to that mount, he constructed a small altar there, he put on him to Isaac tied, and took the knife to immolate his son.

But God took part to prevent it. He spoke to Abraham, through his angel, and said to him: "It holds, you do not extend your hand against the boy, do not anything to him; now I know that you have a great confidence in me, since you have not denied your only son to me." Then Abraham saw a sheep in a bramble patch by the horns. He took the sheep, and sacrificed it instead of Isaac; and he called to that mount "God provides".


2. (Theological Poem)

God laughs

If we went back imaginaryly, in wings of science, at the first moment of the universe,
that in which there was only emptiness, only a nothing, perhaps potentiality,
we had thought, without a doubt, that of that nothing, nothing could be expected,
that it was more barren and sterile than a old woman of ninety years.

But, quantum emptiness fluctuates
and it produces space-time with its dimensions, and the energy-matter fields!
Our laughter of incredulity transforms into laughter of surprise and rejoicing.
And God laughs. And God saw that it was good.

Later, we laughed when seeing to emerge particles,
atoms and molecules,elements, galaxies, stars and planets.
And God saw that it was good.
And God laughed.

But when we have laughed more it is when we have seen how,
of the rock and gas vastness,of the incandescent eddy and the frozen solitudes,
a small point emerged of life.

There it appeared that inexhaustible source of wonderful complexity,
that procariot and eucariot cell,
that program of increasing organization and conscience,
those subtle organisms,
those delicate, most beautiful ones, most tender alive beings:
dear plants, dear animals, dear birds, most dear Nature.
Arisen from which it seemed inert and cold.
Cheer like jugglings that come to dissipate the boredom.

And we have seen, with God, that it was good.
And with Him we have laughed.

No longer we would have waited for another thing,
if not falling in the account of we ourselves.
Nothing more improbable and derisory that our own freedom,
in the middle of the determinism of the matter and the instinct.

Appears in the world that impossible son, that unexpected Isaac: the Man.
And, satisfied with his work, kindly, God laughs.

Then we consider how imperfect and displeased we are.
That we have been born for an existence of sufferings and injustices.
That we are guilty, least and ephemeral.
That, as individuals, we have to be sacrificed to the process.
That the process itself seems to lead to the dissolution of all existence and all value.
That this universe is indifferent to us, that will return to the emptiness.
That we have been created to be victims of a sacrifice for the sake of a cruel God.
Now, then, no longer we laugh.
Now we cry.
Like Isaac on the altar,when he saw that the knife of his father was hung over his throat.

But God does not laugh either. Also God now cries.
Everything was good because He is good.
He is not cruel.
He requests to us that we trust his intention and his power.
When everything seems lost and sad, He can make us laugh again.
Still his greater juggling is reserved.

He himself will appear, like last surprise,
in the top of the process.
He will have all the power on all things.
He will have the power to stop the sacrifice.
He cries when seeing tied Isaac, and will prevent that he perishes decollated by His own knife.
He has provided another victim for the sacrifice: His loved Son, His innocent Lamb,
thus to support with us.

He will create a new universe, more rejoicing than the old one.
He will rescue us of the nothing.
He will release us of all our fastenings
and he will invite us to a banquet table,
where we will eat with Him of His Lamb
in unspeakable love and harmony.

Then God will laugh.
And we will return to laugh.
And we will never stop to laugh.



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THREE METAPHORICAL VISIONS

First Metaphorical Vision:

An infinite space full completely of an indefinable and ineffable something, that therefore we do not try to describe, and that we denominate "Whole".
(Ain-sof, Apeiron).

The Whole "is": thus we express our initial vision, that we consider a metaphorical image of God.

But in a point or region of that infinite space, God produces a hollow, or hole, or crack, or rip, or bubble.

In that point no longer "is" the Whole. The Whole has retired of there.

Where there was "being" now there is "not-being", that is to say, nothing. There the Whole has been made nothing, has been overwhelmed. This annihilation, destruction, reduction, contraction, or evacuation, of God, is called "Tzimtzum" or "Kenosis".

The kenosis is a voluntary positive action of God. But for it, there would only be stable and immutable, infinite and eternal the Whole. But in this point no longer is the Whole, but the nothing.

Nevertheless, the nothing "is not". The nothing cannot "be". For that reason, in that point or region it cannot appear something that "is" but something that "happens": a process that tends to overwhelm the emptiness, to repair the broken thing, to recover the being. (Tikun, Anaplerosis).

But for the continued voluntary action of God, the kenosis would be erased "instantaneously"; the Whole would be recovered "immediately", since its predominance on the nothing is infinite.

But God wants that there is a mediate process of restitution, that we call "to happen". It is the process by means of which the "not-being" looks for to arrive the "being", the "chaos" looks for the "cosmos": the "cosmic process".

The power of God that creates the cosmic process is the "spirit of God". His work is first action of annihilation and after gradual restoration, impetuous anxiety by the Whole, voluntarily moderate to make possible the process. Action of "agape" and "kenosis", and then of "eros".

A moderation that implies to accept resistances and spontaneitys that prevent and delay the complete restitution of the Whole. So the spirit of God creates the space-time and admits the chance, although only to overcome it by means of his loving providence.

So, the will of God has been: first to stoop, to overwhelm itself until accepting the imperfection, the chance, the nothing, so that the finite thing could exist. But this finite one is full of the spirit of God, that incessantly pushes it towards the trascendence, towards the emergence of the Whole, that is God Himself.

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Second Metaphorical Vision:

An immense volcano in eruption, metaphor of the cosmic process of creative evolution.

Lava pushes and ascends by its interior, like the spirit of God by the interior of the Process, through numerous levels of emergence, until to erupt finally in the last level that reaches the trascendence.

The final trascendence is the Last Newness: God, whose metaphor is the eruption that appears of the peak. Thus, the volcano is the mount where God manifestes Himself.

The evolutionary process has been represented by a mount, or pyramid, or cone. Or by a tree whose branches are families and genus of species, interconnecting and interlacing according to the evolution advances and expands.

A tree that in our vision inscribes within the mountain, and whose sap is lava, the spirit of God. A fire sap, that does not consume but feeds the tree of the life. That image remembers us inevitably the ardent bramble --or ardent shrub-- where Yahveh is revealed to Moses.

From the peak of this highest mountain, from the top of the creative process, from the heights, God shows Himself and takes care of the outcry of His creatures, who appear and disappear during the Process, as least and ephemeral sparkings of lava.

And God feels sorry Himself of His creatures, and wants to make share them His trascendence, and spills of above to down His redentor Spirit until arriving at all of them. As the lava that is spilled by the slopes of the volcano.(Action of -second- agape and kenosis)

This volcano is the Moriah mount, where the human individual is sacrificed for the sake of God, in altars of the Process, when this same God goes prompt to aid him.

This volcano is the Horeb mount, where God speaks to the Man to reveal His name and to promise to him the redemption.

This volcano is the Zion mount, where God constructs His holy city and His temple, to live near the men.

This volcano is the Calvary mount, where God loves until the extreme His creatures, dying like them so that they live like Him.

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Third Metaphorical Vision:

A great incandescent crystal immersed in a solution.

The great crystal has in its center a man figure: he is the crucified/resurrected Son-of-man. His arms in cross are the axes of the crystal, and want to extend until embracing all the solution.

The solution is crystallizing. They appear myriads of very small crystals that float in it, attracted by the great central crystal.

Each little crystal also carries in its center a human little figure.

The little crystals that get to reach to the Central one, adhere to Him, are integrated in Him, and thus the great incandescent Crystal is growing.

He is done of multitude of little crystals crowded together around his Center, united closely to each other without getting to be fused, bathed all by the same incandescent fulgor. The little crystals beat and grow incessantly.

The great Crystal is not cold nor rigid. It is warm, soft and smooth, like tender living meat. It is a Body that lovingly feels and sustains to its little crystals members.

Its incandescent fulgor is the spiritual blood of that Body, that flows inexhaustible from its Center to vivify to all its members.

Its brilliance is an unspeakable harmony. The little crystals that still swim by the solution perceive the seductive call of that harmony.

They go hurried towards it; they want to adhere to it to incorporate themselves to the great Crystal and to grow in Him.

They will attain it. Surely all will attain it. The great Crystal will grow until including all the solution finally. Then it will be the Whole everywhere.

And there we will be also. We will be laughing and singing

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MEDITATION

Tzimtzum and Tikun, Kenosis and Anaplerosis

To the fundamental philosophical question of Leibniz: "Why something exists and not rather the nothing?", that is of negative kind because supposes the nothing like basic natural conception of the imagination, we oppose the positive question: Why something exists and not rather the Whole?

Starting of the Whole -infinite, eternal and perfect- like basic natural conception, we only can conceive the existence of something like annihilation or evacuation
of that Whole, to cause an emptiness, a nothing, that necessarily has to be filled, to be repaired, and to restore the Whole everywhere.

In the beginning, then, it was only the infinite Whole: (Ain-sof, Apeiron) God. He decided to overwhelm Himself. Why? -For love-agape: donation of Himself. This annihilation has been called Tzimtzum (Jewish cabalistic mysticism of Isaac Luria) or Kenosis (Christian theology inspired by Saint Paul, Urs von Balthasar and Luria, of Jürgen Moltmann and John Polkinghorne).

The restoration, that follows the annihilation of God necessarily, is called Tikun or Anaplerosis. As it is voluntarily moderate by the spirit of God, it causes a process: the Creation of the Universe, the Cosmic Process. Its goal, or Telos, is the last event or Eschaton: the restitution or restoration of the Whole everywhere, called Apokatastasis.

But, due to the benevolent love of God towards his creatures, who seem destined to the sacrifice in the interior of the Process, there is a second Kenosis, complementary of the first one that lead to the Creation, that leads -this second one- to the Redemption.

The "second Kenosis" is the incarnation of God, total and authentic, in a human being: Jesus Christ, until his cross death (as alludes San Pablo in the second chapter of his epistle to the Philippians). And the "second Anaplerosis", restitution or restoration, is the resurrection of Christ with the consequent Anakefaleosis: recapitulation and collection of all the creatures in the Mystical Body of the resurrected Christ.

It has been, like the first one, by Agape of God, by solidary love that does donation of Himself, followed of impetuous love -although voluntarily moderate- that looks for the repair: the Eros of the spirit of God. And its Telos is the same Eschaton of the first one: the Apokatastasis, since the Mystical Body of Christ, where it is incorporated the Humanity and the whole Creation, will be put under God finally so that the Whole in everything is recovered (as teaches San Pablo in his first epistle to the Corinthians).

We notice that there is a culminating moment: in the cross of Christ, in his abandonment on the part of God, the two Kenosis converge and culminate. God overwhelms Himself when incarnating Himself totally in a human being who suffers and dies, and overwhelms Himself also when abandoning that man –Himself- to his sacrifice as creature put under the hard laws of the humanity and the nature.
But, being God who is, there is necessarily a restoration, the Anaplerosis, that is also double: the resurrection of Christ, second Anaplerosis, causes the culmination of the first one: the resurrection of all the humanity and the renovation of the whole Creation, by means of the Anakefaleosis for the Apokatastasis.

Thus it has been according to the "logic" of God, that wanted to be Father, to engender his Son, to emit his Word (Logos, Verbum), "modulating it" in his breath (Ruah), his exhalation, his Spirit, to execute a Plan of benevolent love.

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CALDERÓN DE LA BARCA (Life is a dream):

SEGISMUNDO:

Miserable ay of me, and ay unhappy!

To inquire, heavens, I try,

since you treat to me thus,

what crime I committed

against you being born.

Although if I were born, I already understand

what crime I have committed;

enough cause has had

your justice and rigor,

since the greater crime

of the man is to have been born.

It is a crime to have been born? It is a sin? It is a fault?

A crime would be if it were the transgression of some law; a sin, if it were a fact in opposition to the will of God; a fault, if it were a voluntary fact mine that I recognize like opposite the divine will.

It is not none of these things, evidently, but it can be considered like a fact that abounds in the imperfection, in the great imperfection of which all the finite one consists, the limited thing, that by nature is full of badness and suffering.

But all this that exists, of which we form part when being born, has occurred spontaneously or by will of God? If it has been created by "involuntary emanation" of God, by his involuntary overabundance, then it can be considered like a "fact that is there": good by his origin, bad as soon as it separates or it moves away of its procedence, as soon as "it has fallen" from his height or supreme perfection. Then its only eagerness must be to rise until returning again into God.

But not so; we believe in a positive voluntary act of God, when creating the Universe. For that reason, all whatever exists is essentially, or potentially, good. "and God saw that it was good". We have been wanted by God, although we are imperfect. What happens is that we have not been created imperfect to remain being so, but to progress towards the perfection.

The will of God has been: first to stoop, to overwhelm itself until accepting the imperfection, the chance, the nothing, so that the finite thing could exist. But this finite one is full of the spirit of God, -in its more intimate privacy, more than flying around superficially-, that incessantly pushes it towards the trascendence, towards the emergence of God self. This is the second movement of the divine will. It is manifested in the tendencies that it causes in the different levels of emergence: in the tendencies towards more and more complex organizations in the scope of the inanimate matter, in the impulse to constitute self-organized organisms and ecosystems in the scope of the alive beings, in the improvement of the sensitive and nervous systems that lead to the conscience and the thought, and, in the human scope, in the ethical tendencies, aesthetic and cognitives.

Those tendencies represent, then, the inmanent action of the spirit of God, the accomplishment of his will. All resistance or opposition to them are a contradiction of the will of God, a sin.

For that reason, our birth is not a sin, but a fact produced according to the will of God, when following our parents the natural tendencies caused by the spirit of God. But our life has not appeared to remain quiet in itself, in its imperfection, but it must go away transforming according to its physical tendencies, biological and human, towards its perfection.

As soon as it offers resistance or separates from those tendencies, it appears the evil, the sin. What the spirit of God persecutes is the global progress of the universe towards God, of which the human phenomenon is essential part, but does not seem that it demands the particular perfection of each human individual. More still, it seems necessary that all individual is rejected after playing their infinitesimal role in the great drama. The individual death is necessarily a requisite or a consequence of the progress of the species, the ecosystem, the universe.

Against this we rebell ourselves –logically?, foolishly?- the self-conscious individuals. We want to be perfect, like God; or -more modestly- we want to live always happy.There is an anguish, a lack of understanding, an irrepressible rebellion against that divine order that therefore sacrifices us.

But, which many we do not know or do not want to believe, it is that God understands us. Although we are disturbed and foolish, he makes himself solidary with us. And he announces the Good News to us: that not only the universe, but even the individuals – we- will reach the trascendence in Him, and will be able of being happy for always as we wished. Because he loves us, and he has not doubted in implying itself personally in our redemption.

How we can then wish not to have been born? He himself wished to be born by love to us. And only of whom that rejected him and betrayed him he said: "he had more been worth not to have been born". But even to that traitor, and all of us -that we also usually betray him-, he will make us "be born again" with the grace of his Spirit. Our previous birth will be rehabilitated because we will return to be as children and we will enter laughing to frisk in the green prairies of his Kingdom.

For that reason we can feel guilty. Of to not know its love, to reject it, and even retroactively, not to have known it. The fault is a luxury of the conscience, of the human freedom. Since we have own will, we can feel guilty of not making the will of God. And his will now is: "love each other as I have loved to you". When we act against that will - that is almost always -, we sin. And if we are conscious of our sin, we are guilty. And if we consider its great love, we regret. But it is a "happy fault", because it deserves so great redemption."If your heart condemns to you, God is greater than your heart".

A trap for the conscience is to ignore its fault, to deny its freedom, to justify itself. Indeed, false faults, scrupulositys and responsibilities exist product of closed morals. But there is no possible confusion in the Gospel: the true fault consists of the done offense to God when offending to the others. Only God is the one who can justify us –not we ourselves- if we have faith and request to him that he pardons our offenses in the measurement in which "we pardon to whom they offend to us".

Therefore, we are guilty? Let us think about those who we offended, and those who we can be offending, and pardon whom that have offended us.

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THE ACTION OF GOD IN THE WORLD is made by means of His Spirit, who has two "moments": the creative Spirit - whom the Creation produces -, and the redentor Spirit - whom the Redemption produces. The creative Spirit creates the cosmic process, with an immanence, an annihilation (kenosis), that soon is developed dynamically towards the fullness, is to say towards the trascendence. (Saying schematically, from the "nothing" towards God). The Spirit guides that development "from within", giving the "indispensable tendencies" so that it progresses towards his goal, but without wanting to determine absolutely each event, since that would drown the process.

In physics of the complexity it is said that the complex systems act "in the edge of the chaos", is to say in the freedom margin that exists in the border between the chaos -total indetermination- and the absolute determination. Both ends are trivial; only what it happens in that "edge" can really have interest. For that reason, the providence of the creative Spirit wants to be only a guide, a "suggestion", so that the Universe progresses "by itself"; it admits, then, the chance; it acts like "drops of providence in a sea of chance and necessity".

But, although that providence is sufficient to reach its aim, is to say to progress towards the trascendence, inevitably must admit the imperfection, the resistance, the regressive and destructive tendencies "towards the nothing" in each event, that nevertheless is vanquishing in the whole of the process. That imperfection, seed by the human individual in the interior of the process, causes evil and suffering: a misalignment between the anxieties and the profits, that in the described picture seems inevitable, that is tragic for the individual but can be considered without importance for the global process. Has it sense that an individual demands the Spirit of God that fits his action until eliminating or diminishing his suffering? That exigency seems certainly foolish and extreme. The individual would have to accept that he must be sacrificed in altars of the process, in last term for the sake of God (like Isaac). Thus, God would have created the process by itself, not to create happy individuals.

But, if God is "good" and "almighty", could him not have fit that margin of freedom until obtaining the happiness of all the human individuals, without falling in the total determination that would drown the process? Supposing that that margin admitted several possible universes, maybe an infinity of them, God could even "have chosen" the best one (humanly speaking) of them (that is what Leibniz said); but, judging by the suffering that exists in the reality, it seems rather that he has chosen the worse one (that is what Schopenhauer said). Thus they are the reasonings of the individual, but it is clear that they are purely speculative. (Einstein said that what more had always intrigued to him was to know if God "could choose" the laws of the Universe.)

The redentor Spirit comes to aid the individual, to release him of his sacrifice in the cosmic process. But, since the human being has conscience and own will by essence, that liberation cannot be imposed, because it would destroy it. For that reason, the action of the redentor Spirit takes place respecting our personality, preserving our will, engaging in a dialog with us, calling to us, convincing to us, seducing to us smoothly, from you to you.This takes God until the extreme to become man, suffering individual, like us, to establish with us a shared in common relation. Another one -and greater- "kenosis", another annihilation of God.

It would have been trivial and destructive that the Spirit had finished impositively and at once with any physical and moral evil. Would have finished with the evil, yes, but also would have finished with process and individuals. (How can a person, who demands God to end badly miraculously, not realize of which that would imply that she herself disappeared!) That must be obtained within the process and with the collaboration of the own individuals.

But God wanted to contribute much more: he will save the individuals making them his part in the end, the trascendence. Then he will have fit that "margin of freedom" of the Universe, to make the human happiness possible; he will have made what the foolish and disturbed individual demanded to him (hybris), but it will have done it by pure benevolent love (agape), with the "love until the extreme" that took him to the cross. And the individual will finish realizing the absurdity of his exigency, and the only thing that will be able to do will be to thank for his God.
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