PATH ONE: CREATION

The first path that we are to travel in our deepening journey into spirituality and into God is the pathway of creation. For Eckhart, creation is a revelation of God, a home for God and a temple for God. It is a grace, an overflow of the goodness and beauty that God is. For Eckhart, “being is God,” and our spiritual depth depends on our ability to grasp this truth. For while all beings are equal and are words and revelations of God, humans have a unique capacity, due to their having been created in the image and likeness of God, to relate to all of being and to return to their primordial origins, which are in God. This journey of return and renewal is a return to the truth of creation: namely, that creatures, like fish in an ocean, swim in an ocean of divine grace. Our spiritual journey is waking up to the divine sea in which we swim. The return is not a narcissistic return but a refreshing and energizing one which is meant to renew us to ourselves, carry on the holy work of creation and birthing (Path Three below) and even of the new creation which will be known as compassion (Path Four below). For one reason we should return to creation is to learn what human history has done to destroy its goodness and to detract from its divinity.

Creation for Eckhart is a blessing. Like the Yahwist theologian of the Hebrew Bible, Eckhart is firmly convinced that “life is blessing and blessing is life” and that the purpose of spiritual journeying is to reenter the blessing that all creation is about on the one hand, and to bless creation and others of the human community on the other.¹ Eckhart could make his own the promise made to Abram, the father of faith, when he was invited on a spiritual journey:

Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you;
I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you.

Abram went as the Lord directed him. (Gn. 12:1–4) ^a