It was in a turbulent, whitewater time of change that the beloved Meister Eckhart felt compelled to speak of the blessing that creation is. Born in 1260, Eckhart lived well into that 14th century which Barbara Tuchman describes as “calamitous.” It was a century marked with apocalyptic upheavals; a time marked by a population explosion accompanied by a contracting economy. The Little Ice Age of the early 1300s and the torrential rains of 1315 created the 14th century’s own climate change problems and reduced crop production. There was a spirit of discontent: the few rich were getting fewer and the many poor were getting many-er. There was corruption in high places and a decay of credibility in the institutions of the day. Knights, once defenders of the weak, more and more often turned on them. Violent and lawless acts were commonplace. Barbara Tuchman documents the spirit of despair, guilt and end times, and a death wish that took hold in the face of a growing sense of a vanishing future, of the world coming to an end. The Black Death would add to this hopelessness. “It was,” says Tuchman, “a violent, tormented, bewildered, suffering and disintegrating age….”
Eckhart, however, did not shy away from the world. In the midst of this very gnarly 14th century world, he continually taught that the purpose of life is not to flee the earth or turn in any way from it, but rather, to creatively return the blessing one has received by blessing other creatures and other human generations as well. Eckhart continually asked himself how he could express the creative word of God that gives birth to the blessing creation is? How could he talk about an eternal life that had already begun? What language should he use for what he called the Good News that first and foremost Christ was a reminder to us that he was a Son of God calling others to be sons and daughters of God; that like Christ, we are each to be creative Words of God. Eckhart sought in his German sermons to give birth to thinking beyond academia, images beyond what the world had to give—to give birth to the “God beyond God”, to the God beyond the ideas we have of God and thus we have his prayer, “I pray god to rid me of God.”
May we take hope from Eckhart and, as if his voice stretches across the days to this another new day of potential and creative possibility, inspire us to courage, to encourage us even in the midst of all that disintegrates and decays around us.
Teri Martin
