Heart of Matter: “Everything is Enfolded Into Everything”
March 26, 2024//
“The implicate order means everything is enfolded into everything, and the question of distinguishing what is hidden and what is apparent is a challenging one.”
Ilia Delio, The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Relational Whole
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“El orden implicado significa que todo está envuelto en todo, y la cuestión de distinguir lo que está oculto y lo que es aparente constituye un verdadero reto.”
Ilia Delio, The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Relational Whole
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To seek and we would find
To ask and you will receive
My prayer right now, O Beloved is:
PLEASE EMPTY ME(us) out so we may hear, welcome and humbly respond to your plan in today’s world. Jesus, I sense you holding out to each of us your hand and assuring us: I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIGHT. I CAME THAT YOU MAY HAVE LIFE TO THE FULL.
WITH A TRUSTING HEART I SHARE THIS COMMENT AS WE CELEBRATE THE PASCHAL MYSTERY IN 2024.
The implicate (hidden) and explicate (manifest) orders of creation are seamlessly co-present to each other at all scales. So much so as to be indistinguishable, fit snugly as the inside and outside of a glove. Annexed as a unit like hand and glove, they enfold in one another, the “parts” forming ever larger and more complex wholes that form a holarchy, as in a Chinese Box or Russia Doll. As whole-parts, or holons, each aspect of a holon claims its own personal existence and identity by itself, yet is a more subordinate part of a larger whole. For example, a whole atom is part of a whole molecule, which is part of a whole cell, which in turn is part of a whole organ, which is part of a whole organism, etc. The entire universe is a giant holarchy, systems within ever larger, more complex systems in concert with each other. Hence, spirit-soul, spirit-matter, and Christ-Jesus are holons, individual units each integrally enveloped within and intimately co-present to the other in an incarnation holarchy, otherwise known as creation. The former (implicate) is hidden in the latter (explicate), said Jesus, “like leaven in bread,” giving the latter life and form.
. . . Note, space-time itself is part of the explicate order, the realm of form, DOING to attain righteousness, Moses, the Law, the Davidic Kingdom, genealogies, the priesthood, ecclesial hierarchies, religious institutions, atonement rituals, ceremonies, and the messy conglomerate of 38,000 Christian denominations. In the ‘fullness of time’ the Jesus movement, cross, and resurrection ended all that, transitioning to spiritual awakening, identity, liminal living in the Implicate order, the realm of BEING (in Christ), and the formless. Recall, early believers only had (and needed) the basics; the apostle’s doctrine, breaking of bread (communion), prayer, and fellowship. The other weighty accretions came later, were of man, and dragged the faith back into the realm of the explicate order of things via forms, institutions, priestcraft, “explicate” roles and functions, etc. Get this, Easter, the resurrection, was meant to deliver us from the bondage and constraints of the explicate order of religion FOREVER. How many of those explicates are you still clinging to as archaic substitutes for the McCoy? Such are the main resistances toward a effective christogenic evolution/revolution along global lines. “He that is not with me (implicate) is against me, and he that does not gather with me (explicate) scatters abroad.”
It is indeed challenging to distinguish between the hidden and the apparent. I think of Jesus’s admonition to be gentle as doves and cunning as serpents, which may apply better to human relationships than to the study of the cosmos. But if scientists study the cosmos with proverbial skepticism and humility, they might temper their visionary optimism with common patience and modesty. Similarly, those who feel they must escape the bounds of common sociability and become self-exiles, or elites, might do well to consider that all humans share a common “humus” and that all of nature is created to intermingle, as Ilia writes. If the energy that binds us all is divine, it requires what some call love, whether hidden or apparent..
There is nothing in a caterpillar, George, that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly. But when it becomes a butterfly no traces of a caterpillar are to be found in it. The transition has been made, earthbound (humus) to airborne (pneuma/Spirit). Such is a major difference, not in degree, but in kind. Likewise in spiritual transformation, an altogether new phylum is created, a spiritual being is now having a human experience, not the reverse — as per Teilhard, the very definition of christogenesis. Not much humus in evidence there George. In nature, there’s no such critter as a catterfly or butterpillar (half-caterpillar/half-butterfly). The butterfly, by definition, is totally free and clear of its previous form in the chrysalis.