Thursday Blues

Genesis 2:7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Luke 3: 37 the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch,
the son of Jared, the son of Mahalalel,
the son of Kenan, 38 the son of Enosh,
the son of Seth, the son of Adam,
the son of God.

In Luke's genealogy, Adam, formed from the earth, is son of God, as well--born out of the dust of the ground and created from heaven by the Spirit of Life. The Eastern Churches particularly emphasize theosis [divinization, deification, sanctification] rather than atonement and the LDS Church emphasizes theosis in tandem with atonement--far more than either Western Protestants or Roman Catholics. Try reading You Shall Be As Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition, by Erich Fromm, and if you can find a copy, On not Leaving it to the Snake by Harvey Cox; ages ago as an undergrad I read both books, and I still recall my consternation the day I dropped Cox's book into the curbside mud as I was getting out of the car after a spring rain. In those long-past days of old, just like nowadays, I usually carried a theology book or two around with me wherever I'd go! In addition, I like this more recent [April 28, 1998] variety of American blues: Wynton Marsalis, Standard Time, Vol.5: The Midnight Blues.

Since I'm calling this blog Thursday Blues, I'd like to get it posted this evening rather than waiting a week until next Thursday! This morning, most amazingly, I actually was allowing myself an uncommonly atypical blues bout, primarily so I could blog about blue--blogging about blue so then I could blog about blue's alternative, specifically realities in our lives and world that cause us to be unblue: God's gracious, constant, unmediated presence, care and provision for us and for all creation! Besides some scripture and related expressions, I'm thinking of entheogens and sacraments: nature's substances, the material of creation, connecting us with the Divine and generating heaven within us!

To close this short blog, not only are we created in a multifaceted Imago Dei (I've listed our in-God-created likenesses somewhere in some blog and won't do it again this evening): as we journey through life, by grace and in our striving we become even more like God! In God's genealogy that makes me Leah, conceived from creation's stuff, yet daughter of heaven too!