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"You are a cruel man," said Anton. "many people in Russia see the celebration as a light on the horizon for a revival of Christianity in Russia."
"How can you revive what you never had, and were never allowed to have?" I interjected. "However, Anton, the door to establishing Christianity anywhere in the world has never been really closed. Its principles are the principles of our humanity, the principles of civilization. A diamond that has been dragged into a sea of mud remains a diamond still. In real terms Christianity isn't an organized religion. It unfolds when we begin to live as human beings instead of sewer dwellers or sewer rats. It begins when we take the diamond out of the mud. It begins when we put the Principle of Universal Love on the table. It begins with the Universal Kiss, a term that a woman named Helen pioneered whom Ushi and I had the privilege to know. I begins with her vision of a vast lateral lattice of human hearts all tied together with stands of light that are the strands of our out-flowing love. She saw the Principle of Universal Love in action. The perception came to her as vivid visual image in moments of great need when a friend was apparently in a crisis during a major surgical procedure. She is certain that a healing came from this perception. She saw a wave of strength flowing from heart to heart, contributing to the heart in need or her friend, resulting in an exceptionally remarkable recovery. That's an example of Christianity in action, and the door for that is always open and always had been open. It has no history that one might celebrate with anniversaries. It has an eternal history in the context of history. In real terms Christianity has no historic beginning. It didn't begin with Christ Jesus, who merely took a giant step forward. Christianity was already unfolding with Plato and Socrates whom some alert historians regard as the precursors of what Christ Jesus later brought more fully to light. Nor did Plato start this trend. Solon of Athens contributed to this trend in which the light of humanity is evermore coming to light. And Solon of Athens in turn stood of the shoulders of Homer, the poet that expanded the Greek language into a high level language that could express profound ideas. And that is what we still do right here, right now, in this restaurant as we face each other to explore the infinite and how we can cross the barriers that mythologies have placed in the way. Homer fought against mythologies and a brighter sense of humanity. Isn't that what we are doing here? And even like Homer did, we are still trying to build the language for this process that enables us to cut through the prevailing mythologies of our time."
"The Universal Kiss is a concept that I have never hear of," said Anton. "Now I am beginning to see what you mean with 'Come dance with me!' And maybe we should do this, but I'm not a good dancer."
"That's not possible that a human being is not a good dancer," I said to her. "You will recognize this fact when you begin to dance alone, dancing the dance of the heart, dancing its tune for the very joy of it. Fear begins when we think we must dance with another, one leading the other. That's a vertical dance then. The dance of humanity is inherently a lateral dance. We dance alone, but we dance side by side sharing the same dance floor, and we dance for one another to heighten the joy."
"Is that the new Homer speaking?" said Anton and began to grin.
"I think we are way past Homer on this one," I said and began to laugh. "But you are right. It's all part of the trend that Homer started of an unfolding Christianity in which the infinite nature and worth of the human being is coming to light."
"Maybe the term, Christianity, shouldn't be used for this," said Anton.
"We use it for the lack of a better term, but we give a new meaning to it. But ultimately it is a correct term, because the central concept of it is the Christ that has been recognized as the Spirit of our humanity. The term denotes the spiritual dimension that we discover in ourselves, in our humanity, the dimension of honor, love, beauty, joy, intelligence, creativeness. The term, Christ, denotes the qualities that make us human beings. The term emerged in the flow of that history in which our self-discovery unfolds."
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