John Dunn

Restorer

Saturday, 9 November 2024 at 21:53

Restorer

The Passion was the turning point and continues to be so. Before the Passion, there was death of the self. After the Passion, there is new life. We are called to reject the god of this world in order that we may have new life. Away with the laws of necessity. In proclaiming the good news about choice, Jesus was the restorer of humanity, the Saviour of mankind.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

The eternal struggle

Friday, 8 November 2024 at 22:23

Saint George and the Dragon, Jacopo Tintoretto

The eternal struggle

Through Jesus, the bifurcation between good and evil became clear and exposed. The eternal struggle between good and evil surfaced at this turning point in cosmic history. The veil was rent. Jesus confronted hollow men,the living dead, people who lived their lives to the letter of the Law to get by in the world. Driven by externalities, these were people who had chosen the world, but who rejected Jesus’ message of the Father’s love. Their god was the god of this world, as it remains for idolaters today. They had suffered the death of the self. They had made a pre-existent idol of their god and the world. And their ways were revived in Spinoza’s great presupposition, the all-encompassing Substance, of which the individual is but one mode and subject to its laws of necessity. Herein lies the death of mind and the death of the self. And they rejected Jesus’ message and murdered Him - and continue to do so.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Immortal diamond

Thursday, 7 November 2024 at 22:03

Immortal diamond

Theexperience of my journey, and my encounters with all the many efforts to assert the self, has led me to an understanding that the self survives only in a dialectical process that both creates it and is created by it. All descriptions must fall short where that which will not be defined is concerned. We can only describe the process as Love, and accept the mystery. In passionate love fire meets with fire. God’s love was expressed in the heat of passion, the Passion. But we do know that out of an encounter with passion something lives on, as one sole essence, an immortal diamond, with ‘consequences for eternity’. And the fires of love must burn constantly because this dialectical process of creation is constant. God from the beginning is always ‘I am’. But we have a choice and the acceptance of Love is central to this choice.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Active choice

Wednesday, 6 November 2024 at 22:52

Caspar David Friedrich’s, Wanderer above the sea of fog. An image of man's autonomy

Active choice

What is this love to be accepted or rejected and how does it relate to the survival, or rather, the saving of the self? And how is the Father relationship to be accepted in a modern secular world? There is analogy.There is metaphor. There is no other way to explain the mystery of consciousness. The point here is that an active choice is necessary. It is our choice, now, at this moment and every moment. It is an active choice that recognises man’s apartness and individuality. By its nature,choice assumes autonomy.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Accept or reject

Tuesday, 5 November 2024 at 19:50

Accept or reject

The connectedness of metaphors in John’s Gospel is particularly important. God is love and love is God the Father. A Father’s love for his children is unconditional, whether they love him back or not. Through Jesus we are presented with the Fatherly nature of God’s love for his children. It would seem that the real experience of Love is there to be accepted or rejected.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Some are elected

Sunday, 3 November 2024 at 22:43

Dante meets with Beatrice, by Henry Holiday

Some are elected

So, to look at this negatively, a life devoid of the experience of Love is devoid of God. But we cannot just choose to love can we? Surely a real experience of Love comes through the chance encounter. As such, some are elected and others are not one might say. Yes, there is Eros certainly,the ground-shaking passion of one for another, always unconditional, often unrequited. Where else might such unconditionality be found, where there are no defining criteria, where love remains with me as an individual and a mystery?

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

The divine stratum

Saturday, 2 November 2024 at 22:00

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Beata Beatrix

The divine stratum

And it all seems to turn on the mystery of Love, which is God. This means that unless there is Love in the individual’s own life, he cannot know God. And I do not mean simply a shallow show of lurv for one another, I mean a real crushing, life-changing experience of Love. Dante for one knew that Love belongs to the divine stratum and through one we can experience the other. This was the reason for the divine status of Beatrice in the Divine Comedy.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.