There Is Divine Meaning in the Life of the World

There is divine meaning in the life of the world, of man, of human persons, of you and of me.

Creation happens to us, burns itself into us, recasts us in burning — we tremble and are faint, we submit. We take part in creation, meet the Creator, reach out to Him, helpers and companions.

--Martin Buber

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4 thoughts on “There Is Divine Meaning in the Life of the World”

  1. Richard, this fits into how I have come to (sort of) understand God as Trinity by imaging God totally transcendent (Father); God incarnate (The Son as well as God in Creation), and God Relational (The Spirit). I don't know how "orthodox" this is, but it works for me, at least at age 71.

    And no, Sam Zabotney is not my real name - I just use it to keep some of my orthodox associates from getting ideas about gathering firewood when I really get outrageous :-)

  2. Sam, it works for me, and I am 64. My understanding is more in the way, "Loving parent, child and guide", depending on how and with whom we experience and know God at the moment.


    Buber was a gifted mind and writer. He and Abraham J. Heschel were friends as young men and scholars. Though they disagreed in certain areas their writings are so poetic from the soul, something I wish more Christian thinkers and theologians would take note of.

  3. I have come to regard the Trinity as the Sacred triad of Male and Female and the Spirit of Love that binds them and is the regenerative energy of the Universe. I have always regretted the exclusion of the sacred Feminine from the Trinity. I think it is one of the root difficulties for women in any Abrahamic faith tradition. I now bless myself thus: " In the name of the Father Mother Daughter and Son and the Holy Spirit that makes them One"

  4. Thanks for this post, your life work, and Experimental Theology!
    I found your website after goggling some of the words contained in my
    most recent post: Found—Missing Link In Mother Nature— Structure/Affirmative
    Ideal/Divinity Loop. It is
    comforting to discover another who believes “……the image of man is the image of
    God” —Thomas Merton and “there is
    divine meaning in the life of the world, of man, of human persons, of you and
    of me”—Martin Buber. What if divinity (via
    structure) is the source of universe, life, and rationality? More specifically, what if the source of meaningful symbol creation, which, in turn,
    opened the door to the creation of language, myth, religion, art, theoretical
    knowledge, and the rest of the civilizing processes is found in the b~b~bb
    structure--the structure that builds civilizations and asks questions like: how,
    why, when, and where did human consciousness/freedom come from? The knower here in the knower-known
    relationship can never be fully known because "we" only exists in the
    "affirmative ideal", the same affirmative ideal that reflects both the
    backside of God (the time of not being) and the “face of God” (our emotional experience
    of beliefs, concerns, intentions, and deeds). Absent the “face of God”
    knowledge—language with its lexical, syntactical, and contextual designations,
    science, ethical behavior, existential meaning, and religion(s) —would not/could
    not exist. “What cannot be thought is that the universe/world is the being of
    God when God is not being deity; the universe is, in the time of not being, a
    moment in the being of God.” (Robert P. Scharlemann p. 89-90, 1982).

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