On Refusing To Objectify I AM

I will walk in the presence of I AM

in the land of the living.

- Psalm 114:9

That is all that is required; that is everything that is required.

We read this the other day as a part of our discipline as Benedictine oblates...regular daily reading through the Psalms. We do so without commenting, or dissecting, or exegeting.

Seven times a day will I praise you.

- Psalm 119:64

Okay. So we do. It amounts to an experiment. What will happen if we live that way?

But it causes us to wonder, How is it that in spite of supposedly having read scripture time and again, that Christians today have lost their way? ...because nobody walks through daily life disinterestedly aware of the immanent presence of God in all things.

This realization begs the question - What could possibly possess anyone to place someone else in their thrall by objectifying them, when we are invited to relate to others from Genesis to Revelation merely as subjects?

Objectification of course appeals strongly to people's desire to control...especially moderns. What do you want to be when you grow up?, we are asked from early childhood on.

However, the historical story of God's people is rife with cautions to not do so, both direct, and indirect. And Christ himself makes it very clear that immanence is at the very root of human life...

That they all may be one as Thou Father in me and in Thee; that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that Thou has sent me...I in them and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect as one...

- John 17

...when we do not like this we dismiss it as mystical...

...because to live that way

would mean

leaving everything else

behind.

But according to the witness of scripture, which is merely the simple record of repeatable and observable life experience over time, our Thou-ness with I AM, Others, and all Creation is both the sole indication that we prove that we genuinely know I AM in its fullest sense, and is itself the only fullness of life...the only doorway for anyone to be ushered into I AM's presence. It is how we strip away our false self and become our true self.

I AM the way...

- John 14

There is

no

other

way.