Summary
“Come on take a little walk with me baby, and tell me who do you love?” – Bo Diddley
In the 5th century BCE, Parmenides said, “What-is” is, and “what-is-not” is not. So, “What-is” cannot be divided and cannot move. And since we are divided and do move, we must be “what-is-not.”
Heraclitus said, “Stop that, Parmenides. You’re freaking us out! It is obvious that the only thing that does not change is the truth that everything changes.” He referred to this truth as “the logos” (the word). And he said it was fire.
Plato argued that there is a realm of “What-is,” but we live in the realm of shadows, that is, what is not light. (Physicists now tell us that light does not experience “time.”)
Aristotle referred to “What-is” and what is undivided and eternal as “the Unmoved Mover.” How the Unmoved Mover could move, and how “What-is” could know a “what-is-not” like me remained a mystery…at least until the 4th century BCE, when one of Aristotle’s students, Alexander, conquered the known world, including the land of the Jews.
They worshipped “I Am that I Am,” who creates and sustains all things with a Word (logos). “I Am that I Am” sounds a lot like the Unmoved Mover, except that “I Am that I Am” moves and likes to go on walks. In fact, he is quite passionate about this, it would seem.
In the beginning, he was going for a walk in the garden in the “Spirit” of the day, when he called to the man and the woman, but they were hiding. They did not know their “Helper.” And so, he cast them from the garden; but as we saw last time, he went with them. He walked with them… but they did not seem to walk with him. He was still creating them.
Seven generations later, Enoch walked with God, and God “took him.”
Three generations after that, Noah walked with God, and God saved him.
Levi, the first priest, was said to walk with God, but none of the others did, apparently.
When God in the flesh (logos in carnos) appears in 0 BCE, what does he want?
To go on walks. He finds twelve guys and says, “Come on, take a little walk with me, baby, and tell me, who do you love?”
When someone says to you, “Come on, let’s take a walk…”
#1 It’s not about where you go, but who you are with.
#2 You go for a walk not to get to a place, but to a person.
#3 The things you encounter on your walk are the raw material of relationship… especially storms and snakes.
#4 No two walks are just the same…
#5 …And yet, the One we walk with remains the same: eternal, undivided, and true.
#6 The One you walk with changes that way you walk… including whether or not you keep walking at all. (“Hell” is getting stuck in this age, our space, and our time.)
#7 It takes a walk to create a faith. (Faith is trust.)
#8 You go on a walk so that when you get to the end (which is the beginning) you will know the place for the first time, for you will know your helper as you have never known him before.
Adam (all humanity) will return to the garden and know it for the first time.
You will see what you cannot currently comprehend.
You will see that the Beginning is the End, who is also the Way and did not leave you nor forsake you even when you forsook him and tried to leave him… like, all the time.
You will see that the garden is a temple that is a city that contains an entire New Creation that is a body—the body of your helper and your own body, for you are his body and bride and the garden is in your soul.
We will know the garden for the first time, and we will know ourselves for the first time, for we will know our helper for the first time. And he will fill all things with himself, including us… the “what-is-not.” We will have watched ourselves become what we truly are: the image and likeness of “What-is,” “I Am that I Am,” “Yahweh.”
He is the Unmoved Mover that is constantly moving.
He is a Dance constantly dancing and calling us into his dance.
He is three persons and one substance; he is Love.
He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, unified in one eternal, unchanging judgment made in perfect freedom from outside of space and before time, but revealed on a Friday in a garden on a tree where we took his life, and he gave his life, Eternal Life; he is Good.
He shows this to us on our walk: When we do our worst, he does his best.
Now, “Who do you love?”
Him? Well, that is called “faith.”
It is how you are finished in the image and likeness of God, by God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You are “what-is-not,” being filled with “I Am that I Am,” “What-Is.”
Look to him. Walk with him. Talk with him.
And you are no longer stuck or lost. He is the Way.