Ἐπίκλησις

Invitation and The Father's Love

Key Phrase

Our whole being rejoices in God our Savior…our bodies and entire immaterial souls can be immersed in His goodness and strangely warmed without exhausting even an ounce of His tender mercy…like garments of light. Selah.

Be near to us God, Be ever near

We open our hands, and we take a deep breath, and we ask the Spirit to fill us. This is a common practice that calms the soul through the body and helps the whole being focus… and receive; a breath before a dive, a double breath before rest or after a good cry, a breath when we step outside in spring and smell flowers on the breeze. Our body was made to breathe in and breathe out beauty, since the first day, your presence we were made to breathe. Yet no technique summons you; in our breathing we are just…preparing…just watchful, and master you are good to open our eyes, good to oblige, faithful to reveal our call as response to your own summoning, your own asking us for a drink. Selah.

When we establish a ritual of breath control, watchfulness, and inviting the Spirit (ἐπίκλησις), or a personal liturgy of somatic cultivation, we may experience certain sensations in body. We know that these are physiological and natural things happening when we practice controlled breathing. But when one does so in the way of invitation and intimacy with God, one may occasionally feel something like water poured down upon their head and shoulders, or they may feel a weight like a blanket rest upon them, or the body may begin to feel strangely warm. However, to say that these bodily sensed things, which are indeed happening to the body, are certainly psychosomatic, or facade, is incorrect.

Imagine: you stand outside, in winter cold, and watch a father take off his sweater, which his body has warmed, and wrap his daughter in his sweater and arms, and carry her to another place inside. Now imagine you say, “isn’t that precious. Her daddy made her warm.” And another says to you, “you fool. The father did not warm her, the warmth is coming by means of the sweater alone.” “What a strange thing” we all would say, because we know that the person, the body which inhabited those clothes, and his present action to wrap her and hold her, is the reason, the only reason, why these clothes are warm, and are able to communicate warmth to the one he loves.

How much more then is this the case when the father in question, who is communicating warmth to us, who is energizing our being, and who we experience even in body, who comes to embrace us totally, is none other than the Spirit of warmth and life itself—the one who called creation forth, and made the sun to reflect His Nature, His own ‘physi-ologi’?

All of creation, in that sense, is like the sweater, which we are wrapped in, so we can truly feel the Father’s warmth—but then there is the Spirit, the Father’s hands which are not limited to the sweater’s sleeves…communing with God of God truly.

Recall the father. We know that his sweater moves to wrap his daughter in her cold. Why? Because it is the will of the father behind those clothes—his will causes his body to move towards her; and, as the clothes are wrapped around her entire being, she is warmed. In many ways friends, the spiritual life is simple.

The father intends, desires, and wills to warm his little one in her loneliness, and so he moves, and his intention is accomplished through his embrace, which he makes sure she can feel as he warms her and rubs her back and chest. Think of it. If earthly parents, who are evil (as the Lord says), can enact such small gestures of kindness and embrace, how much more can our Heavenly Father truly wrap us in His arms and presence and friction ensure that we are indeed warmed by His nearness? Oh how great a mystery.

The father wraps both his very own self and his clothes around his beloved. And what is the effect? She is warmed. In her whole being, she can feel his warmth. Notice that this sensation is happening at the rate of her own body, not his capacity—he has a big sweater, and she’s swimming in it.

It is the same with us in spiritual things - with our encounters with God our Father in Spirit. Our whole being rejoices in God our Savior…our bodies and entire immaterial souls can be immersed in His goodness and strangely warmed without exhausting even an ounce of His tender mercy…like garments of light. Selah.

What are the clothes? What is this sweater in our analogy? The clothes represent ‘what we feel’ in mind and body when God embraces us. What does this mean? The warming you may indeed feel is true warming from your Father. The cooling true cooling. The calming, true calming. The carrying, truly lifted up to higher places. The body was made to feel His nearness.

Return with me now to breathing and our ἐπίκλησις. Do not be surprised if you experience a warming physiology, or the other proper sensations which you may experience in body when in this state—they were made to be evidence of Him, evidence of His presence. Still, their lack is not evidence of His absence. These things are important to know. Nevertheless, we need a solid guide when our minds become confused by certain changes, and let this suffice: You are made in body so that you have the capacity to feel His embrace in body, and you are made as spirit so you have the capacity to feel as He embraces your spirit, in spirit. Because you are both, He embraces you in both aspects of your being, and their effects can be felt, one in the other, and influence the state, one of the other, of your entire being.

Here we focus on the body. This helps us understand what it means to say that we were made as a living soul, “a spirit uttering speech,” in His “image and likeness,” for “man has the ability to know and love his maker,” and “embrace his maker” and experience his maker through this divine embrace, indeed, in body. Your body should respond to His nearness.

It is Sunday morning, a good time to start or continue a practice. So, come now, breathe this morning, and welcome Him, enact your own ἐπίκλησις—invitation of the Spirit. Watch for Him, watch your whole being; Reach to Him out at home or in service, and certainly in worship, and with your spirit embrace Him; embrace Him back, he who holds you, and carries you from where you are to another place inside. Wrap your arms around Him, in Spirit, there is more to you that He wants to show you: you can reach out and touch Him in ways more profound than if only in body, but do not be surprised if you feel His embrace in body, because He holds you. Wesley called his experience of these things, ‘a heart strangely warm.’

He is right here. He is right here. You are embracing us God. You are warming us God. Let us reach back to you. Help us hold you God. Help us bless you. Come now my friends; let us embrace Him together, as best as we can.

Κύριε ἐλέησον
Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy on us
Your children

Jesus Christ, you are the One we experience through what we feel in mind and body.

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For my reader,
I share these things because I want the very best life for you;
the very best life in Christ.

This is my prayer
and these;
these are my Confessions.