We"ve placed too much emphasis on the physical, our buildings, churches, and temples. A new million dollar church is built in America while people beg for food blocks away. Billions of dollars have been spent building elaborate temples. I visited a Bahi"a community enter last week and the main focus in the entry was there massive, elaborate, and expensive temple pictures in the foyer. Why?
We"ve lost sight of the fact that the real sacred temples are US. WE!
As Richard Rohr wrote in a commentary a few days ago, "If you can learn how to receive the perfect gaze of the Other, to be mirrored by the Other, then the voices of the human crowd, even negative ones, have little power to hurt you. The eyes with which you will look back at God will be the same eyes with which God first looked at you."
We are the temple of the living God! And we need to be making more disciples of each other.
Unfortunately in our fast-paced world we don"t have time to enter in. I was reminded of that this week. I had been introduced to a person by some friends and I smiled, shook her hand, and welcomed her and then turned back to the couple that had introduced me. We chatted and I left. I had a moment there to change my future, but I missed it. A day later I was reminded of that individual and there"s nothing that I can say I remember because I really didn"t take a step inside that temple.
To live means to see within, to change as a result of interaction with others.
Every day e meet new poeple and reaquaint ourselves with familiar faces; however, they remain just that- faces in a crowd. Objects in a sea of objects. People "GO" to church while not realizing they ARE the church, the altar, the temple wherein God resides. If we could get a little further down the road on that concept, we could literally transform this world.
And it"s badly in need of transformation!