Vision

Vision is cultivated in a context of Hope, and connects directly to Emotional Endurance [see table].

“Without a Vision is a people made naked”
Proverbs 29:18a (Young’s Literal Translation)

I had no idea that this was the literal translation! In the ancient context, nakedness meant poverty and shame; there was nothing erotically provocative about it.

In this proverb, vision obviously refers to something more than physical sight: it’s the ability to look into the future and see the prospect of joy, abundance, accomplishment, meaning…

This sort of vision has to do with attending to invisible things. I believe that every human is given something that only she/he can see; an internal treasure that needs to be externalized – the intangible made tangible. It relates to incarnation. Each of us is to champion what’s been entrusted on a spiritual level – sowing, cultivating, harvesting, distributing… to the enriching of our relational circles.


Copyright Scott Burnett 2006

Eucatastrosphere

The twin piercings of humanness are the Incarnation & Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. One interrupts human life; the other, human death.

According to J.R.R. Tolkien,
The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy.

Tolkien created the term eucatastrophe to fill a hole in the English lexicon. It’s meant to convey the notion that God has planted a seed of infinitely concentrated joy in the soil of human existence. It is a potent goodness, always becoming thinkable, visible, tangible through people saying yes to the Spirit.

The-way-things-ought-to-be exploding redemptively outward into the void of the-way-things-ought-not-to-be like a Big Bang of meaning, beauty, honor, grace...

The space created by this phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the Kingdom of God. Building upon Tolkien’s word, I've started thinking of it as the Eucatastrosphere -- a soul-scape shaped in the ripples of divine interruption...