</sup></p>
<p>For me the best image for the interplay between the energy and the vessel is in Exodus 2, the burning bush which Moses saw, unconsumed by the flames, in which he meets God. Think for a moment of the "I AM" of God as the energy, and the bush as the container, the vessel. This "I AM" of God, God-Who-Is-Being-Itself, is not a static thing: it's a burning bush, a cauldron of creativity. Let's say the bush symbolizes that stability of God, the "unchanging-ness," the immutability, of God. But that fire in the vessel––the fire is the symbol of God's fiery creativity, the fiery creativity, the <em>creation continua</em> of I AM.</p>
<p>When Abhishiktananda writes about Jesus' experience of union with God, he centers it around Jesus' Baptism in the Jordan as recorded in the synoptic gospels. And in that moment God passes that I AM on to Jesus by saying: <em>You are!</em> Jesus knew, at least from this experience, that his identity was union with God, so much so that he could appropriate to himself the Divine Name that had been revealed to Moses in the burning bush. Hence the great "I AM" sayings in the Gospel of John––not just "<em>I am the way, the truth and the life</em>", but "<em>before Moses came to be, I am!</em>"</p>
<p>Now think of the image of Jesus at his Transfiguration in that context, a kind of parallel to the Baptism, the other time when we hear this voice over Jesus' head. Jesus climbs up a mountain with Peter, James and John and <em>he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white</em>.<sup>2</sup> Now Jesus has become the burning bush, unconsumed by the flame! His body, his very being is the burning bush unconsumed by the flames, holding the energy of "I am". By tradition this takes place on Mount Tabor, just outside of Nazareth in the Galilee, and so the light that emanates from Jesus' body is known as the Taboric light. This inner glory was permeating Jesus' very body, even his clothes! (Mark is at pains to add that little detail as well: his clothes were<em> such as no one on earth could bleach them.</em><sup>3</sup>) Matter was not being cast off; it was being affected by the power of spiritual transformation. The body itself, matter itself, was the field of transformation.</p>
<p>However, I said this is the midpoint because it doesn't end there! The Christian spiritual life and sacramental life is Jesus passing that fire of I AM on to us through the waters of Baptism and the life of self-emptying and self-donation. In his letter John tells us that <em>we shall be like him!</em> Paul says,<em> he will transfigure our lowly bodies into glorious copies of his own!</em> God is the burning bush, unconsumed by the flame. Jesus was a burning bush. We are meant to be burning bushes. The life in Christ is a life permeated by the power and energy of the Holy Spirit. Life with Jesus means being fused into a single faith with him. <em>I am the vine; you are the branches.</em><sup>4</sup> And the sap that runs through the branches is fire, the fiery I am of God.</p>
<p>And that's what I mean when I talk about the energy of monasticism. This is the energy of monasticism. One of my all-time favorite stories from the Desert monastic tradition tells of when Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, "Abba, as far as I can, I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate. I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?" Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, "If you will, you can become all flame!"</p>
<p>But there is still one more step and this is something much more worked out in Eastern Christianity. According to the biblical concept, we believe that in our Fall, in the Fall of Adam and Eve, we human beings somehow dragged nature down with us. We have articulated that rather clearly in Western theology. But what the East really underlines is that while we are working this out for ourselves, while we are bringing ourselves back into right relationship with Spirit, we are also working it out for all of creation, preparing a renewal for all of creation. So Saint John Chrysostom could teach that nature is going to be "incorruptible again for our sake." That's the true aim of the ascetical life for a Christian: not contempt for the world, but a re-embrace of it, a transfiguring of the world, enriching creation, as the priests of creation, raising creation to a higher plane, "even to the fullness of a transfigured life," as the Russian Pavel Florensky says. And not only matter; Saint Basil said that even time itself is transfigured: the aim of the spiritual life is to live in history and to "transfigure time," to grasp the eternal in the temporal.<sup>5</sup> In other words, everything is meant to be transfigured, nothing gets left behind, and <em>God will be all in all in Christ who is everything and in everything</em>. Ultimately everything is a burning bush.</p>
<p>Fr. Bede Griffiths put it this way: in Christ the world of space and time is not annihilated, nor does it disappear, but it is transfigured, and that is what Paul means when he speaks of a "new creation." The very matter of the universe is taken up into the Godhead. That is the Christian mystery. In Jesus, in the Christ event, the same matter that burst forth in the Big Bang twenty billion years ago is transfigured. In Jesus divine consciousness takes full possession of matter, and matter is spiritualized. The matter of the universe itself is made totally conscious and becomes one with God, in the Godhead.<sup>6</sup></p>
<p>I was giving a form of this teaching to some young people in Malaysia last winter and at the end of the retreat conference I asked, "Does everybody understand what I'm saying?" And my young friend Ian, who was also my host there, said to me, "<em>Hoi-yo</em>, Father! Everything's on fire!"</p>
<p>That's right, Ian. Everything's on fire. In Christ, everything's on fire.</p>
<hr />
<p><sup style="line-height: 1.3em;">1</sup><span style="line-height: 1.3em;"> The Holy Longing,14-15.<br /></span><sup>2</sup> Mt 17:1-2.<br /><sup>3</sup> Mk 8:3, see also Lk 9:28-35.<br /><sup>4</sup> Jn 15:5.<br /><sup>5</sup> Spidlik, Spirituality of the Christian East (vol. 1), 141-143.<br /><sup>6</sup> Bede Griffiths, New Vision of Reality, 167-168.</p>