Covenants and Rules (conclusion)

    Much like the guiding principles of the Levitical laws and the precepts of Christ Jesus’ teaching, a rule is meant to offer ethical guidelines for relating in covenantal community. As Benedict explains, these instruments of good works (Chapter 4) shape the desires of our hearts in the form of our covenantal promises with G-d and each other. Within covenantal partnerships, self-selected instruments of good work for cleaved one-ness can define a bespoke relationship rule. Ultimately, a relationship rule can offer all those within the covenantal relationship (and all those in relationship with the covenant partners) to reap the fruits of the Spirt described by Paul in his letter to the Galatian faith community - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5)
    Inspired by the Rule of St. Benedict, some examples that covenant couples may choose for their own relationship rule are forms of humility; silence and solitude together; regular times of prayer and scriptural study with each other; singing songs of praise or making music together; divisions of labor within the household and accountability for those responsibilities; predetermined procedures for forgiveness and reconciliation; financial equality and mutuality in sharing of resources; service to one another and hospitality to the other in each other; and provisions for when covenant partners are apart or away from each other. 

     Other options for a relationship rule may be based upon such avowed communal practices as Spiritual Direction (individually and as a couple); corporate worship together and group prayer opportunities as a couple; mentoring other covenant partners in faith communities; days specifically set aside to retreat, refresh, and renew together within the presence of the Holy One; and welcoming the stranger into their relationship with an ethic of homecoming and radical hospitality. 

     By modeling a relationship rule after the rules of religious communities, covenantal partnerships may benefit from an agreed upon structure for living together into covenant belovedness. As individuals chosen by each other to be cleaved together as one in love, covenant partners may, through a relationship rule, live as a flourishing community with G-d and each other.

    Through a relational rule, covenant partners may be confident that their covenantal promises will hold even when their rule may be compromised. A rule alone does not sustain a covenant relationship, but it does provide a disciplined practice for supporting the covenantal promises that couples make with each other and G-d. By the power of the Holy Spirit cleaving individuals into one, along with the dedicated work of the individuals in the relationship, a covenantal
partnership has the integrity of being whole and complete in relationship with G-d, because G-d is 100% whole and complete, even when we are not.

     Covenantal relationships with the Divine are always 100%. However, individual members aren't always able to bring 100% of themselves to their covenant relationship. Each partner never gives 100% all of the time, nor do the partners equally give 50% all of the time. There are seasons in covenantal relationships when the proportions of individual giving breaks down unevenly within a relationship. This is why the marriage liturgy asks individuals entering into covenant with one another to declare before the witnesses of their faith community that they desire to love, honor, and keep one another in sickness and in health. They covenant with each other and G-d, with the support of the faith community, to stand by each other no matter what, respecting one another as created in the image of the Divine Trinity, and desiring to understand the other’s needs while enjoying the giftedness of love until they are parted by death. This is no small task! There may be days, due to unimaginable circumstances, when neither partner is able to muster giving even 50% of themselves to the covenant relationship. These are the moments when a relationship rule can buttress covenant partners in their efforts to maintain their covenantal promises as the Spirit fulfills the relationship, making up any difference needed. Therefore, a relationship rule must be flexible enough to allow covenant relationships to pivot and adjust daily to the needs of the individual members, but strong enough to maintain the integrity of the covenant when the individuals are not strong enough on their own.
    Considering the theological nature of covenants and contracts, the spiritual gift of love described by Paul to the Corinthians, and the benefit of communal rules (such as the Benedictine Rule) in maintaining covenantal promises, intimate covenant partnerships have the potential of flourishing in relationship with G-d through the disciple of a bespoke relationship rule. Understanding covenantal relationships through a hermeneutical perspective of belovedness, a relationship rule provides the space and energy needed for couples to honor one another and their shared relationship with the Holy Spirit as chosen and cleaved together as one. A relationship rule offers covenantal partnerships perimeters, disciplines, and healthy boundaries which trellis covenantal viriditas, encouraging individual and shared giftedness to grow. Just as the Benedictine Rule is structured “in order that by observing it in our monasteries we may show ourselves to have to some degree, integrity of life…” (Chapter 73), so a covenantal relationship rule can support the fulfillment of couples’ covenant promises, empowering instruments of good works to blossom through the relationship into the fruits of the Spirit for the couple and wider community.

The Rule of Saint Benedict

(Translated into English. A Pax Book, preface by W.K. Lowther Clarke. London: S.P.C.K., 1931)

Covenants and Rules (continued)

    Paul highlights the significance of the Benedictine Rule’s charity (or love) in sustaining mutuality within the Body of Christ through his communications with the budding faith community in Corinth.

    “Love is patient; love is kind. Love isn’t envious, doesn’t boast, brag, or strut about. There’s no arrogance in love; it’s never rude, crude, or indecent—it’s not self-absorbed. Love isn’t easily upset. Love doesn’t tally wrongs or celebrate injustice; but truth—yes, truth—is love’s delight! Love puts up with anything and everything that comes along; it trusts, hopes, and endures no matter what. Love will never become obsolete. (I Corinthians 13:4-8 The Voice)
    In covenant relationships, both with G-d and each other, love is a gift of the Spirit; it is that gifted love which cleaves us together into one. Like adhesive, love marries the many members together into One Body. It is the very spiritual energy that empowers members, although different, to coalesce as One in Christ. Such a self-less commitment in covenantal relationships, as described by Paul to the Corinthians, is beyond the mere willpower of any individual member, though. The
Rule underscores this, “…reckoning that the good that is in them could not be wrought by themselves but by God, [let the Rule] magnify the Lord working in them…” (Prologue) It is only by the mysterious power of the Holy Spirit that distinct members in covenant relationship can continue to cleave as One by the magnetic power of love.

    This is the very point Paul is making. It is the Spirit that intercedes for us in covenant relationships, helping us when we can not help ourselves. (Romans
8:26) Even though we’ve made covenantal commitments, even though the Spirit cleaves us into One, even though we desire to live into our covenantal promises just as Paul describes, we do not always do it. (Romans 7:15-25). Paul and the Benedictine Rule understand this; each offers to covenant relationships an opportunity to fulfill their promises as a trellis for love to flourish with Hildegard’s viriditas. 

    Through a rule, covenant partnerships are re-membered each day. (Ezekiel 37) The freedom of space and energy within a covenant rule allows Benedictine charity to encourage each member of the relationship to prioritize their covenant promise. Cleaved covenant partners, empowered by the Holy Spirit, may then verdantly share faith, hope and love as one. “[T]hese three virtues must characterize our lives. The greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13 The Voice)
    If intimate covenantal partnerships were to establish a relationship rule to help each member fulfill their covenantal promises with each other and G-d, what would it look like? The Benedictine Rule encourages a structure that will “[c]onvince, entreat, rebuke.” (Chapter 2) What healthy boundaries or expectations could serve to convince individual covenant partners to focus each day on their most committed relationship, highlighting for them both the short-term and long-term benefits reaped by such an intentional discipline? What if the praxis of a communal rule of life were applied to covenant partners? Could this be a relationship rule? Would a relationship rule convince couples to choose each day to act on their covenantal promises instead of just the desires of their own hearts? 

    A relationship rule in practice has the potential to entreat partners to be patient and gentle with one another, allowing them to grow individually, as well as together, and to become strong, filled with wisdom, and having the favor of G-d upon them and their relationship. (Luke 2:40) A relationship rule may also serve to rebuke covenant partners when they are negligent of their covenant promises, correcting individual desires that miss the mark of covenantal fulfillment. With an agreed upon relationship rule for how to act out their covenantal promises, partners have a baseline or home base to which they can return together with G-d when promises are broken or ignored.

The Rule of Saint Benedict

(Translated into English. A Pax Book, preface by W.K. Lowther Clarke. London: S.P.C.K., 1931)

Covenants and Rules

    How can a theological understanding of covenant and rule help shape an ontological perspective of intimate covenant relationships, while also providing some kind of praxis for living into such relationships? Is it possible to translate a covenant theology beyond the faith community, even beyond an individual’s relationship with G-d, to committed covenantal partnerships? How can we understand our most committed and enduring relationships through a hermeneutical lens of covenant and communal rule to honor the Divine Lover and the beloved partners?

    A covenant, unlike a contract, is promise based. Each party promises to be and/or do something irregardless of whether the other party fulfills their own covenantal promises, such as “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” (Song of Songs 6:3). There is a sense of mutuality in this kind of agreement. I promise and you promise and we both promise to keep these promises even if the other does not.           Whereas a contract is conditionally based. Each party agrees to fulfill certain expectations based on the fulfillment of prescribed expectations of each party,
such as when Abraham paid Ephron 400 shekels of silver in exchange for property with a cave to bury his wife, Sarah. (Genesis 23) There is not a sense of equity in this kind of agreement, but one of unequal power. If you do this, then I will do this, but if you do not, then I will not either.
    Covenant theology helps to clarify our relationship with G-d, as well as shape our perspective of who G-d is, who we are, and how we are to be in relationship with each other. A covenantal theological perspective emerges from the stories found throughout scripture of G-d’s relationship with the chosen people of Israel.  G-d persistently, with suffering even, keeps the promise to be G-d to a people who struggle to keep their own promises to be G-d’s people. Nevertheless, G-d maintains the covenant, refusing to abandon the promises originally made;
those same promises G-d continues to make with each successive generation of the inherited covenant. As Hosea demonstrates, G-d reiterates again “(to [G-d’s] reclaimed bride) I’m going to marry you, and this time it’ll be forever in righteousness and justice. Our covenant will reflect a loyal love and great mercy; our marriage will be honest and truthful, and you’ll understand who I really am—the Eternal One.” (Hosea 2:19-20 The Voice)
    How do we fulfill such a covenant, though? If generations of the faith have struggled to maintain their own covenantal promises, what makes us any different in our attempts at faithfulness? Is there a means by which we may be reminded on a regular basis of our covenantal promises, a sign or a symbol encouraging us to choose again each day to live into our our promises? What disciplines and healthy boundaries can we establish to live into our covenant partnerships without making them contractual? 

    Perhaps we can use the example of a communal rule to scaffold our most intimate covenant relationships, just as they were intended to scaffold communal relationship between G-d and community members. The Benedictine rule sets out perimeters for the monastic community’s covenant relationship with each other as a way to articulate, through practice, the covenant relationship that the community has with G-d. A rule, then, could be understood as covenant theology in
action - doing covenantal relationship, not just being in covenant relationship. 

    The expressed intention of the Rule of St Benedict is “to establish nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. But if, prompted by the desire to attain to equity, anything be set forth somewhat strictly for the correction of vice and the preservation of charity….” (Prologue) Therefore, these disciplines and healthy boundaries, not meant to be overbearing in application, are meant to provide space and energy for living into mutuality with each other and G-d in our covenantal promises. Through a rule, then, we are assisted in curbing the temptation to put ourselves first, and instead, mindfully preserving love (or charity) as a priority in our covenant relationships.

The Rule of Saint Benedict

(Translated into English. A Pax Book, preface by W.K. Lowther Clarke. London: S.P.C.K., 1931)

Springing Prayer

I’m thresholding, G-d, in another season of Spring in my midlife. 

A perception of possibility buds with the welcome return of Your dogwood blossoms 

and the chorus of birds each morning, 

who in turn welcome the dawning reappearance of Your light.

Your chilly rain soaks my grounding, releasing a familiar scent,

and nurtures my deep hope for sunnier summer days of abundance.

Each day’s deepening of green reminds me 

of the cyclical nature of my own greening 

and this deepening One-ing with You.

After Lament ... On the Road to Emmaus

It is through the process of Lament that we come to the realization that all of our hopes have been stripped away and what remains is Jesus on the road to Emmaus. 

In lament, we cry out to G-d to be the redeemer of our current crisis. Through the process of lamenting, we eventually learn to relinquish our notions of being in control. After lament, all we have left is agency in how we respond to G-d and to the dis-ease of our current situation. 

And now, finally, after lamenting, we understand just how pathetic all this really is. Pathetic, as from the Greek pathos, meaning experience or condition or emotion of suffering. Pathos is the road to Emmaus. It is a situation that can not be avoided or circumnavigated, only endured as we go through it. It is walking that road with our shattered hopes until, step by step, we come to accept that this is indeed the way things are now.

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“Pathos Entered English in the 1500s. The Greek word páthos means "experience, misfortune, emotion, condition,” and comes from Greek path-, meaning “experience, undergo, suffer.” In English, pathos usually refers to the element in an experience or in an artistic work that makes us feel compassion, pity, or sympathy. The word is a member of a big family: empathy is the ability to share someone else’s feelings. Pathetic (in its gentlest uses) describes things that move us to pity. Though pathology is not literally "the study of suffering," it is "the study of diseases." Other relatives of pathos include sympathy, apathy, and antipathy.”  

(Pathos Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster from Merriam-Webster online dictionary.  https://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › pathos. Accessed Aug. 24, 2023.)

Pathos can also be understood as that quality of our experience that appeals to our emotions, evoking our internal response to suffering. It is the impetus to compassion and the beginning of empathy. In the pathetic, where we must accept our crisis for what it is, we are invited to change our perspective and relationship with suffering. It is our suffering that prevents us from recognizing Jesus on the road with us, even as the Christ listens intently to all that we had hoped for that is not, and will not, come to fruition. On our pathetic journey, we are wrestling with accepting what we thought was unacceptable. We struggle to understand how we are to respond. Do we stay and do nothing? Do you stay and fight to the point of exhausting everything, or do we shake the dust off of our feet and leave? 

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On that difficult walk to Emmaus, we are encouraged by Christ to name all that is lost, to open our eyes to what is happening, and to release our expectations of how we want things to be. Don’t we perpetuate our own suffering by refusing to accept that things are not how we want them to be? Isn’t our own suffering a denial of self-acceptance? When we are in crisis and have lamented all that is not right, begging G-d to come to the rescue, what is left for us to do while we wait for G-d to respond? At the end of our lamenting, when we are depleted and exhausted with nothing left to say, what would the Holy One have us do?

We are not G-d. We are not in control. All we really have now is just agency in how we respond to the pathetic situation we find ourselves in. Now we begin to comprehend that we do have agency in responding to that which feels so out of control. In our embodied movement with the Divine on the road to Emmaus, we have the opportunity to participate in relieving some of our own suffering by accepting what is, in fact, a pathetic condition. 

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Even though this is not what we had hoped for and this is not what we want, movement is change. Change is almost always stress-filled. It is uncomfortable, but it is a development in our situation. To ease our own suffering, we must accept that things are not in reality playing out as we had hoped or how we want it to be. We just have to keep moving through it. It sounds so simple, and yet is so hard to do.

This acceptance can’t come without empathy. The Risen Christ joins us on the road to Emmaus, present with us in the pathetic journey to acceptance. Empathy, again coming from the Greek, means to be in the pathetic. Christ is with us in the pathetic, in the suffering. Emmanuel; G-d with us. We are not alone in our suffering. G-d is with us, even if we are blinded to the Divine’s presence. 

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Perhaps, like other disciples before us, it is only after the fact that we can acknowledge that our hearts were burning as the Christ spoke to us on the journey. Didn’t it all become clear as we moved along the road together, while the Holy opened up the story of this suffering, and the significance of our pathetic part, in the ancient story of our faith? When we can finally acknowledge that we are indeed suffering, and a source of our suffering is our own repudiation of what is, that’s when compassion comes flooding in.

Compassion - with suffering. Compassion is a gift from Christ on the road to Emmaus. It is finally the Divine’s response to our laments. It is the Divine’s communication that we are not left alone to carry the burden of our pathetic situation, but, indeed, G-d is with us in our suffering. Once we can accept that, really accept it without any doubt, accept that G-d is with us, does not abandon us, and continues to love us just as we are in the pathetic place that we are ... well, that acceptance just might be the hinge of our critical circumstances. When our eyes are finally opened and we recognize who Christ is, recognize who we are in relationship with G-d, and recognize who G-d has created us to be in this pathetic world, we can finally, truly accept that we are loved, lovable, and capable of so much loving - even of ourselves in this pathetic experience.

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If we believe that we are made in the image of G-d, the Trinitarian Divine, the Holy Loving Community, then we believe that, like G-d in Community, we are loved; we are lovable; we are loving. When we accept that G-d is loved, lovable, and loving and that our identity is loved, lovable, and loving, we may finally accept that we are worthy of compassion - and not just from G-d, but from ourselves. 

Our acceptance of what is and release of what we wanted, is an invitation to tap into the aquifer of living water that never ceases. This source of living water, which is constantly refreshing and renewing our own self-compassion, is founded in Christ’s compassion for the us and the world.

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Spiritual & Sexual Covenantal Union

A covenant relationship, or marriage, can experience its own spiritual journey toward union with the Divine as one with multiple members. Understood as a covenantal three-some between the two human beloved members and G-d the Lover, covenantal partnerships may experience their own unique progression through what Janet Ruffing refers to as “love mysticism.”(1) Ruffing offers a possible process for participating in a path toward love mysticism (2) that is applicable for covenant partnerships, as well. 

First, to become adult lovers, covenant partners must overcome their separateness, developing the capacity to participate in intimate relationships, and learn to be with each other and G-d without losing themselves. As the poet Gibran reminds us, there is a delicate balance between mutuality and codependency. “Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. ...Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.”(3)

Second, covenant partners may discover entirely new identities as “I” in relationship with the Thou, or as “we” in relationship with the Trinitarian Them. By releasing any preconceived notions of western dualism and/or autonomy, covenant couples begin to perceive the Divine Lover (and one another’s belovedness) not as Other or stranger, but as One cleaved in unity and mutuality. Seeing the covenant relationship as a holy three-some, each member understands their identity by who they are together in the whole covenant relationship. This enlightened identity comprehends that I am because we are and we are because G-d is...with us.

The third stage of this process shifts from perceiving G-d as outside the covenant relationship to sensing each of the three-some’s members’ presence as a part of a whole. This shift in perception looks within while simultaneously looking outside the covenantal three-some (to all of the rest of creation) from G-d’s perspective as perceived from within the covenant relationship. The covenant relationship becomes a window for understanding everything outside the three-some from a Divine shaped perspective. Sensing that the covenant relationship is spirituality and sexually unified with the Divine (and that G-d is a mutual member of the cleaved one-ness of the covenantal three-some), the partners in the covenant relationship begin to appreciate G-d’s desires as expressed through the actual covenant relationship - both with the covenantal partners internally and with all interacting externally with the covenant relationship. This stage may be compared to the Body of Christ. Although there are many members of the Body of Christ, each member grows into understanding the interrelatedness of the Body’s connections from the point of view of the integrated Body, not just from the perspective of the hand, or foot, or ear, or eye. It is a synergistic hermeneutical perspective that appreciates all of G-d’s creation holistically from within the point of view of the Body of Christ.

Fourth, covenant couples eventually experience the Divine Lover as the source of all loving, even the source of each member’s loving for the covenantal three-some, as well as the source of all desiring and desirability within the covenantal relationship. Through intentional spiritual and sexual mutuality with each other and the developing mystical loving union with the Holy, covenant partners know that the very substance of all that they are individually, all that they are together as a couple, and all that their relationship will be comes from the Holy and returns to the Holy in mutually satisfying and pleasurable consummation spiritually and sexually. Ruffing suggests that “such unitive experiences lead to a God-human partnership with feelings of equality, reciprocity, giving to God as well as receiving, and mutual care and pleasuring.”(4) These contemplative and climactic experiences both satiate and stoke all desiring within the covenant relationship, drawing the partners into deeper and deeper intimate union with G-d and each other.

Ultimately, continued spiritually and sexually integrated connection with the Divine Lover as covenantal partners through loving mystical union leads to transformation of the covenantal relationship and its partners. Mystical loving union of the Lover and the beloveds shapes the members of the covenant relationship in such a way that it becomes apparent to those outside of the covenant relationships. The transformation of the union can be seen in the interactions that the covenant relationship (and its members) have with children, family members, neighbors, other married couples, faith communities, or when entertaining strangers encountered in the world. This loving mystical metamorphosis bears the fruits of the Spirit that Paul discusses with the Galatian believers: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.(5)

Marriage, especially covenantal marriage in the Christian tradition, is considered to be different than other relationships, set apart by authentic intimacy with, and belovedness of, all three covenant partners. Ruffing suggests that “[i]ntimacy with God, like intimacy with significant others in our lives, is characterized by being and expressing one’s self while in the presence of one who is important to us.”(6) Belovedness - to be chosen and cleaved together as one with each other and G-d - contributes to the holiness (set apart-ness) of the covenant relationship. So the covenantal three-some is recognized as a holy container for such an embodied spiritual and sexual integration in relationship with each other and the Divine.

Love mysticism is a path available for covenant couples to experience this holy ecstasy with all three of the covenant members of their union. Ecstasy (being beside one’s self or finding ourselves literally beyond our embodied or intellectual control), describes the very state of loving mystical union within the covenantal three-some. Individual partners are no longer their own, no longer dualistic autonomous others, but one -whole and complete -and part of something more than the individual members combined. Where the covenant relationship ends and G-d begins is no longer distinguishable. This integrated spiritual and sexual mystical union transforms the marriage relationship into G-d’s presence and desire for loving union with others in the world, establishing the covenant relationship as a living, moving, and sacramental be-ing.

- excerpted and adapted from Love Mysticism in Couples Spiritual Direction by Mary-Carolyn M. Allport, May 2, 2022.

Bibliographical Resources & References

1. Janet K. Ruffing, RSM, “Searching for the Beloved: Love Mysticism in Spiritual Direction,” in Spiritual Direction: Beyond the Beginnings (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 95-123.

2. Ruffing, Janet K., RSM, Spiritual Direction: Beyond the Beginnings (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 107-108..

3. Gibran, Kahlil. " On Marriage," in The Prophet (New York: Knopf, 1925), 19-20.  For additional information, see also https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/09/27/kahlil-gibran-the-prophet-love-marriage/

4. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 115. 

5. Galatians 5:22-23.

6. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 126.

RISK

    We are ambivalent about risk, aren’t we. It threatens danger and unwelcome loss while tempting us with the possibility of reward. It entails exposure to concealed consequences and requires faith that future conclusions, in the words of Julian of Norwich, will be well and that all manner of thing will work out well. Risk makes us vulnerable to the unknown while demanding our agency to respond to that which is unknown. Risk is also the spiritual disciple of taking the next right step without the assurance of favorable outcomes, but the belief that it will lead to the next right step after that. Risk is a necessary part of becoming fully human, chancing the integration of our whole body, mind, and soul in order to flourish in our own messy lives.

    The incarnation is G-d’s embodied self-revelation to us through the local vernacular that we can comprehend - flesh. Quite risqué, it is G-d with skin-on. Relationally, the incarnation is G-d putting some skin in our unpredictable game of life, making an investment in us that is worth the inherent gamble. “The word did not just become flesh and dwell among us,” Ronald Rolheiser explains, “it became flesh and continues to dwell among us. In the body of believers and in the Eucharist, God still has physical skin and can still be physically present seen, touched, smelled, heard, and tasted.”(1)
    The mystery of the incarnation then, and the embodiment of Christ through believers now, serves as G-d’s ultimate conveyance and connection in action. It is G-d’s loving desire to be in intimate, authentic relationships with us regardless of the risk. Through a neo-orthodox theological lens (2), this is the greatest act of love. “[T]he very humanity of God is seen through the outpouring of God’s love, which,” Kelly Brown Douglas points out, “is God’s reaching out to be in particular relationship with humanity.”(3) This act of loving presence on the part of G-d is a natural overflowing of G-d’s love for G-dself in community.(4) Taking on the flesh of humanity, enrobing himself in our corporal nature, Jesus the Christ exhibited for us the paramount paradigm of humanity, integrating flesh and spirit as a model for our existence. The incarnate Christ demonstrates the perfected process of becoming fully human as the embodiment of exemplary right relationship with the Divine and the goodness of creation.  Therefore, as imitators of Christ, our becoming fully human compels us to emulate G-d’s embodied, loving presence in relationship with the created order. Like Christ, to be in loving relationship with the Holy One is to also be in loving relationship with others, just as we are in our enfleshed humanity. Also like Christ, this is the greatest manifestation of love made real, but it is also our greatest manifestation of real risk. 
G-d in Community is more than sufficient for G-dself, whole and complete - by definition, perfect -lacking nothing in perfect union. Creation is a cosmic consequence of Divine love overflowing and breaching the banks of the boundless borders of G-dself. There is no inherent risk in G-d’s divine loving of G-d’s-self, only absolute authenticity and mutuality in intimate appreciation and desire. Creation, as a blessed byproduct of such sacred erotic adoration, is not inherently risk-filled either. Contrary to Elizabeth M. Edman’s argument, in order to create us, G-d did not take a risk.(5) The risk came in choosing to love G-d’s creation. The incarnation of the Word, Christ enfleshed dwelling with us, is love embodied and risk revealed. Edman’s words, though, cannot be more true, “God put God’s heart on the line for us.”(6)
    Kelly Brown Douglas responds that although the incarnation is evidence that “women and men are loved by God, it is not inevitable that they will share in the love…To do so requires that individuals freely choose to share the love of God as God freely chose to love them.”(7) Therein lies the risk. It is risky to authentically love the other who is gifted with the freewill of choosing whether to accept or deny that saving love.(8) Freewill is gifted to all humankind, even Jesus of Nazareth. By taking on our humanity and perfectly embodying the integration of the Divine and the flesh, Jesus the Christ, the Word of the Triune G-d, takes on all the complexities of humankind, both risk and reward. 
G-d’s love is more than enough to take on the risk of loving us in our embodied humanity, with no guarantee that we will chose to love G-d in return. Revealing G-dself through the incarnation enfleshes G-d’s love for us, but “revealing oneself authentically carries potential risk.”(9) The risk of authenticity is necessary if the incarnate Christ is to model for us embodied human flourishing. “In order to find a deep, intimate connection,” as Edman says, “[to] love and be loved deeply, intimately - we have to reveal ourselves.”(10)

In the incarnation, G-d demonstrates that love is worth the risk of revealing ourselves authentically for intimate “communication and communion.”(11) G-d embodied this risk through the incarnation, taking on our human form - even in the precarious weakness of a migrant, houseless infant; even in the precarious weakness of an oppressed minority; even in the precarious weakness of a body battered and sacrifice for the other - all to love us enough to risk connecting with us. G-d risks loving us because G-d has faith in us - that we are worthy of G-d’s love. Isn’t that the miracle of the incarnation? That G-d is willing to Relinquish Indelible Sacred Knowledge (RISK) that creation will choose to love G-d in return requires G-d to give humanity agency in how we respond to G-d’s love. We know love, because G-d loves us first. We risk love because G-d risks love first. For us, that means we must Realize our Incomplete Sapience of Kenosis (RISK) and have faith in G-d. Ultimately, the Reward for our Inability to Substantiate Karmic-consequences (RISK) is to believe not only that G-d has faith in us, but that G-d has faith in G-dself - that G-d is worthy of our risky love, too. 

1.Ronald Rolheiser, Holy Longing: The Search for Christian Spirituality (New York:Image, 2014), 80.

2.Carrie Allport, “A Spirituality of Crisis” (GTS AT 399: Independent Study: Crisis & Kairos, 2021), 2.

3.Kelly Brown Douglas, Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1999), 113.

4.Belden C. Lane, “Christ’s Descent into Hell, Hadewijch, and the Fierceness of Love: A Spirituality of Holy Saturday,” in Spiritus 23, no.1 (Spring 2023), 146-154.

5. Elizabeth M. Edman, “Risk,” in Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know About Life and Love and How It Can Revitalize Christianity (Boston: Beacon Press, 2016), 43-64.

6. Edman, Queer Virtue, 44.

7. Brown Douglas, Sexuality and the Black Church, 114.

8. Frederick Buechner, “The Road to Emmaus,” in The Magnificent Defeat, (HarperSan Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1966),  82-89.

9. Edman, Queer Virtue, 45.

10. Edman, Queer Virtue, 46.

11. James B. Nelson, Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1978), 18.