And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, ‘I belong to Paul’, and another, ‘I belong to Apollos’, are you not merely human? (1Corinthians 3: 1-4)

There is one reality and one God. But this reality can be obscured. It is not easy to discern.

The contours of reality are observable from a distance. Like a range of mountains far off most of us will point to the same peaks and valleys.

But as we draw closer the mountains are covered by forests of prejudice, glaciers of hatred, clouds of wishful thinking, and vast cities of pride built along the slopes.

How do we come to see the roots of the mountains, the foundations of reality, the true face of God?

Where we look, how we observe, and what we interpret must be spirtually animated.

Paul says we must become pneumatikos: spiritually oriented and motivated. Creatures directed by the Spirit of God, not of any earthly leader.

We should be predisposed to seek the unifying foundations of reality.

Pneumatikos tonos was an element of Stoic philosophy -contemporary with Paul - asserting cosmic unity and coherence.