Richard’s Daily Meditations

Deep time, or “the communion of saints” professed in Christian creeds, means that your goodness is not just your own, nor is your badness just your own. We are intrinsically social animals. You carry the lived and the unlived (unhealed) lives of your parents, grandparents, and great grandparents as far back as DNA and genomes can trace it—which is pretty far back. It does “take a village” to create a person. We are the very first generation to know that this is also literally and genetically true. Maybe the vast number of world religions which we dismissed as mere “ancestor worshipers” were not as naïve as we imagined. Maybe there is also healing and understanding when we honor the full cycle of life.

Living in the communion of saints means that we can take ourselves very seriously (we are part of a Great Whole) and not take ourselves too seriously at all (we are just a part of the Great Whole!) at the very same time. I hope this frees you from any unnecessary individual guilt—and more importantly frees you to be full “partners in God’s triumphant parade” through time and history (2 Corinthians 2:14). You are in on the deal and, yes, the really Big Deal. You are all a very small part of a very Big Thing!

~ Notes from Male Initiation Rites