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Heaven and Earth: Unity and Uniqueness in Aramaic Thought · Infinitely Precious

• 0:00
  Intro: Welcome to the infinitely precious podcast produced by infinitely precious LLC. Your host is James Henry. Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.
• 0:12
  James: Hello, beloved. It's me, James, and this is our Friday podcast together. The Friday podcast, I tried to lift up some specific thoughts that are oftentimes more unique. I answer questions or struggle together with you, share my thoughts about something I've been working on, something that's been part of my thinking about spirituality and the like. So, as I have been thinking recently, many of you might know who are my listeners, if you're a first time listener, you wouldn't, that I have been doing some work to learn classical Aramaic, the language of Jesus, on my own.
• 1:05
  I have some workbooks and some online materials that I use to sort of work my way through. I accompany that with the writings of Neil Douglas Klotz as well as Doctor. Lamsa who is another Aramaic scholar from the early late 1800s, early 1900s. And they talk a little bit about a different way of seeing the world through the lenses of Jesus. So much of the theology and the way we look at things like, for instance, heaven and earth, which are our topics today, come from a perspective that is more western than it is Middle Eastern or Aramaic in context.
• 1:56
  So the way we tend to think of, for instance, heaven as a place and earth as a place doesn't fully capture the essence of what Jesus may have been talking about in the first century. Certainly someone who was steeped in Aramaic cosmology, first century Palestinian cosmology, the way of looking at the universe. So I just thought I would share some thoughts about that because I found the thoughts that I found from these other scholars as well as pondering on my own to be very helpful. So in the first century understanding of heaven, shmaya, and earth, ara, we're not just talking about something located far off for the heavens and separate from earth which is either the dirt on which we stand or the planet in which we find ourselves here. It's more than that.
• 3:03
  The two of them are seen as interpenetrating realities. When we speak about heaven, Shmaya, we are talking about the connectedness, the unity, the community of all things in the universe. The fact that they're all connected to each other. That and even modern physics tells us that my atoms that make up my body are often affecting, not just often but directly affected, you know, quantum entanglement with atoms all over the universe. If they've ever been in contact before, they are connected now.
• 3:50
  We are connected to each other. So it's an invitation to see us as part of a much larger community, a unity, a sacred unity, if you will, of what the divine is still creating all around us all the time as the universe continues to expand. So when we think about heaven, we can think about this this sense of belonging to each other, of not just the human community but the entire planetary community and not just the planetary community or the solar system community or even the galaxy community but the universal community of which we are all part. And so that understanding of that divine connection that was created in the beginning and is still being created and will be created is where we draw that idea of heaven, shmaya, the interconnectedness of all things. On the other side of that, we have the earth.
• 5:07
  Now, the earth, when we speak of earth, we think of this planet, we think of the dirt, I already mentioned that, but also think of unique particularity. Think of the fact that each one of us brings a unique contribution to this unity of which we talked about when we were talking about heaven. We each have a unique specific identity, a particular identity, a particular aspect that we bring to all of this, and it's not just the human aspects, it's every rock and blade of grass and everything else that just seems to be bland repeats of each other. Everything in its uniqueness contributes to the unity but is also particular. So, every bird, every song of every bird, every plant, rock, droplet of water, you name it, not only here but everywhere contributes to the in its particularity and is unique in that way.
• 6:20
  And those two are not seen as opposites of each other, but connected to and interpenetrating each other, blending together, if you will, like a huge tapestry woven into one another. And that wovenness allows us to see our connection and live into that connection while at the same time celebrating what is unique in each one of us. So part of this journey of life is finding a way to not it's not a balance as much as a connection between our being a part of everything and our being the unique self that we are. How do we bring those together? And so an understanding of seeing these two pieces as connected to one another rather than, hey, someday I will die and I'm going to a place and that place is called heaven.
• 7:24
  Rather than seeing that, this is not a conversation necessarily about what occurs for us after the termination of this particularity that is in a body reality. But not so much as that as seeing how we are connected to each other, the blending together of things. You know, even in Colossians, it's very interesting the writing of Paul. He says, and I quote from Colossians chapter one verses sixteen and seventeen, for in him, and he's talking about Christ, the logos, the connectedness of all things perhaps or that which is in but not all things. For in him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth.
• 8:22
  He is before all things and in him all things hold together. So when we think about this, even from a very Christocentric way of looking at the universe, that Christ is holding everything together in all things, but not all things. And that connectedness having created us and binding us together, the individuality, the universality, the communion, the communal connection all together drawing us into this beautiful kind of well interconnected relationship between heaven and earth right here and now as opposed to two very separate places that offer kind of that we have approached in a very dualistic kind of way, eitheror kind of place, either on earth or in heaven kind of thing, to recognizing that connection, that interconnection of all things is also bound up in our individuality. One way that I think is very helpful to think about it, it was for me, is elementary physics as Newtonian physics as described by the author Neil Douglas Klotz in several different places. But he talks about, for instance, when we think of light as both a wave, it behaves like a wave and like particles as well.
• 10:08
  I don't remember if you remember that from high school physics or not, maybe you didn't take high school physics, but light is both a wave and particles. And those particles might be the individuality that we're talking about with earth, you know, that earth piece, and the wave, the connectedness and continuity of things being heaven, Shmaya. And seeing them as interconnected means that right here, right now, right where I am, I am being both particular and part of an infinite unity that God is in the process of continuously renewing and making and creating in every moment. I'm a part of that. And when Jesus invites us to see ourselves as a part of both, recently I even preached about this on a Sunday morning when I talked about the Lord's Prayer, the line that your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.
• 11:21
  Actually, the order in Aramaic is in heaven as in earth, in unity as in particularity. May your heart's desire be in that connectedness of the two, drawing us into kind of awareness that we're walking in both places and that this kingdom of God, this queendom of God that we are inviting can live in and through us and is, you know, that we are being both the particular, the unique, and part of this vast infinite unity at the same time invites us to appreciate this place that we're a part of. We're walking a little bit in both places at the same time and if we can draw them together, the very best of both can emerge in our self expression. That's what I hear when I hear about heaven and earth. I don't know what you think about that, but that's where I find myself.
• 12:37
  So I just thought I would share those thoughts with you today because they excite me and encourage me and help me see perhaps a little deeper implication to what Jesus, the one whom I follow, was teaching in that first century, maybe just a little aspect I had missed out on. So I hope that that was helpful. If it wasn't, certainly I encourage you to send me any questions, comments, concerns, thoughts, and particularly questions if you'd like me to address them. You may not always like the answer that I give or my thoughts about something because rarely an answer, it's thoughts about something. If you are interested in that, please email me at infinitelypreciousllcgmail dot com.
• 13:34
  Otherwise remember you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. Until the next time I join you, wish you all the best.