Jun 042015
 

Recently, I got very ill for a few days. I lost over 6 pounds in 3 days! I was in such pain with fever one night that I was in tears. That has happened once before in my adult life, and the previous experience actually Opnamedatum:  2011-04-29facilitated an epiphany.  In the depths of misery, I realized there are many people in this world who would willingly take some or all of that pain on themselves to give me relief. Just the knowledge that someone would be willing produced a feeling of gratitude that was immensely powerful, and relieving in its own way. I found that this willingness to give up some of one’s own comfort to relieve the suffering of others is part of how I understand the presence of Christ in the souls of all people. I know prayer for others is part of living with awareness of this presence in our own souls. Jesus was constantly uttering prayers for others, and he also knew what it was like to desperately pray to be spared from suffering. So, as I reconnected with these memories in my recent suffering, I thought of the times others have prayed for me, and my gratitude was magnified. When I hear or say, “Christ be with you,” it means, in part, that I hope you know the beauty of both giving and receiving from such willingness.

There is another connection here, which is my awareness of people’s misery in feeling distant from The One we call “God.”  I have felt that misery, and the memory of it is part of whatilluminor drives me to serve those who feel it.  My prayer is that the words I write may in some way comfort others with hope and by knowing that they aren’t alone, at the very least. But it is also my prayer that what I write helps facilitate the realization that, no matter how lost anyone feels, we are all already intimately connected with God right now, no matter what we are thinking, feeling, or doing, no matter how distant God seems.  In this sense, when I say “Christ be with you,” it is an expression of my hope that you know the mystical truth that Christ is with you.

Christ be with you.

Maranatha

Agape

Apr 102014
 

As many of you know, ChristianMystics.com was the previous host of my blog.  I’m very grateful for the start I was given there, and for the companionship we enjoyed in the social networking that was then a part of that site.  This new site preserves all my blog posts from the previous, and provides an opportunity for me to reconnect with all whom I enjoyed engaging in the depths of mystical thought and feeling, and hopefully we’ll make some new friends here as well!  I look forward to any dialogue that we might share.

While I don’t have any new essays to share at this time, I do have a few new poems I offer to welcome you to the new site.

in rapturous communion

As each clear morning’s twilightthis mockingbird sings (1)
creeps into the indigo sky,
this mockingbird leaves his nest
for a perch high in the open air,
silently ascending to be present
for the passing of the coldest hours
into the warming of a new dawn.

He turns his breast to the rising gold
and feels its rays reaching in
to caress his sonorous heart,
stirring forth the first song of the day,
a joyful fanfare for the light’s return,
and thus he once again joins
the chorus of life unleashed.

Oh, how he sings his nameless love
for the light of the Cherished One!
Not merely for reviving his heart,
but for freely beaming Her warmth
into the naked wonder of being,
illuminating all the glorious world
with which this grateful mockingbird
celebrates in rapturous communion.

 

sighs of content adoration

O Beloved Vital One,
this creature sighs in content adoration
upon remembering your unconditional charity,
the unlimited grace that is your nature,
requiring no sacrifice, penance, or petition
in exchange for your generosity.

Like the soft quiet air of an Alpine glade,
you freely wrap yourself around us all,
and enter into each as the very breath of being.
You are the bearer of morning’s cool mist
and our window to the sun, moon, and stars,
the fabric in which all birds and bees are weaving
the flowing tapestry of Nature’s polyamory,
the ever-present sylphan dancer
with whom all flowers are gladly swaying,
the moving aria all leaves honor with their applause.

Sweet Atmosphere of Life,
within the sparkling gallery of constellations
hangs your Libran sign as a reminder to all
of the selfless harmony you inspire in our souls.
In this celestial form, O Vital Spirit,
with stable stance you patiently wait,
your strong arms hinged upon a sensitive heart,
your cupped hands reaching out,
always ready to receive, to hold and support,
to carefully weigh all things in the balance
by the invisible gravity of love.

And so it is that every creature’s
blood-reddening respiration,
and every artist’s or lover’s thrilling inspiration,
is a testimony to your boundless affection,
our dear Vital One,
and why this creature gratefully
and joyfully sings your praises
with sighs of content adoration.

 

A Blessing for Kindness

May you be
strong enough to be kind
to those who call you a weakling,
wise enough to be kind
to those who call you a fool,
truthful enough to be kind
to those who call you a liar,
peaceful enough to be kind
to those who call you a threat,
and strong, wise, truthful,
and peaceful enough
to be kind to yourself
through all curses, praises,
or indifference.

Agape

 

These poems are also on my poetry site.

Oct 292013
 

Grace is the outpouring of God’s unconditional love, literally without conditions, which is to say without requirements and without limits.  Beyond welcoming and accepting it, there is nothing anyone must do or not do, or believe or not believe, or profess or not profess to receive it.  It is as universal as the sun, moon, and stars that shine on all people, as ever-present as the earth beneath us all.  And, as with the air around us all, we can hold our breath as long as we wish, but it’s still there for us when we’re ready to breathe again.

The New Testament is commonly understood as telling the story that Jesus was born to be the one and only channel of Grace into this world.  Yet, if Jesus is the one and only channel of Divine Love, even if he is considered the most necessary channel among many others, then that love would no longer be unconditional.  Instead, we can understand the New Testament to tell a story about just how powerful Grace can be, with Jesus showing us the way to let Grace flow through us to others, and thus more fully realize our very lives as Grace in action.

With these understandings, the only meaningful questions about Divine Grace are about whether or not a person welcomes, accepts, and expresses it as freely, as unconditionally, as it is given.   Of course, none of us do, but that doesn’t mean we can’t grow in that direction, if we want to do so.

Agape

Apr 112012
 

I confess that I have often been a foolishly proud mystic.  In the wizardry of my physical and intellectual prime, I believed that through my studies of psychology and philosophy, through my spiritual practices, and aided by the grace of God, I had left behind many ordinary human troubles, and so much of my own past.  I would read these words of Paul and think I knew exactly where he was coming from because I believed I had already come and gone from there too:

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.  1 Corinthians 13:11

And I must have put on a pretty convincing act!  I have received lots of praise for my seeming equanimity, wisdom, integrity, and self-confidence mixed with humility.  It’s not that there isn’t any truth to those appearances, but rather that there has certainly been more of a façade than I’ve been willing to admit to myself, let alone to others.  Even so, I’m quite sure I have often been more transparent to others than I realized, and that they knew I wasn’t as genuinely comfortable in my own skin as I wanted to seem.

Some of you, dear readers, will know what I mean when I say how very tired I am of finding myself trapped in old patterns of thought, feeling and behavior. If it hasn’t yet happened, the time may come when you know what it is like to look in the mirror and see a wounded, bewildered, incompetent, and insecure little child looking back at you through weary eyes under a furrowed and wrinkling brow.  At the relative midpoint of 50 years, I am awestruck by my own inability to be the “grown-up” I have wanted to be.  In fact, it often seems that I don’t manage life as well as I used to do, or as well as I thought I did, and so it is that these other words from Paul frequently ring in my ears:

For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.  Romans 7:18b-19

In my darkest moments it has been easy to fall into the despair and nihilism voiced by the Preacher of Ecclesiastes:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity. … And I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also was a striving after wind. For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.  Ecclesiastes 1:2, 17-18

I prefer the older translations’ use of the word “vanity” to the “meaninglessness” in some newer translations.  “Vanity” better communicates the intellectual and moral hubris that the author of Ecclesiastes perceives in himself.   This great lover of wisdom, traditionally held to be King Solomon, understands that everything he has done in the name of wisdom has delivered him to this very moment of realizing just how unwise he really is, and how much suffering he has generated in his conceit.

It can be so tempting to see this unmasking as a regression, a failing and falling back from previous excellence, or a “curse” of the mind and ego-defenses not being quite as sharp as they once were.  Yet I sense that there is more to this process than the inevitable fall of a house of cards.  It feels providential, and so the words of King Hezekiah seem fitting:

But what can I say?   He [God] has spoken to me, and he himself has done this. I will walk humbly all my years because of this anguish of my soul.  Isaiah 38:15

It is therefore not only conceit that has brought me to such moments, for I see that I have actually been asking for it in countless ways; “asking for it” in the colloquial sense of ignorantly inviting the natural consequences of my actions, but also asking for it in a very literal sense.  After all, seeking wisdom and understanding through meditation and prayer must mean that my own foolishness and ignorance will increasingly be revealed, at least to me.  Yet I don’t think it is only me that witnesses this baring of my soul, because as I become less able to keep up the old façade it more easily cracks and crumbles before others.   And so, as with King Hezekiah, the public embarrassment and private shame of my ego is a constant prodding toward a more genuine humility.

One of the interesting things about this humbling, if not humiliation, is that, despite all the fatigue, grief, and disappointment, it brings a great sense of gratitude and relief.   It is impossible for me to be completely honest with myself about my shortcomings without also seeing how fortunate I am to have not made even more suffering for myself and others.   I can’t begin to count the number of serious traumas and tragedies that have been narrowly missed, and I am so thankful for this with regard to others, especially those most dear to me. That relief is amplified by the freedom in not feeling so compelled to keep up the old façade.

While I often sense a divine grace in this good fortune, as a mystic I am also graced with having come to know that God holds none of my weakness and folly against me.   Without merit, I have been immersed in a baptism of Light and experienced communion with the One Love in which we all live and move and have our being.  To continue in the words of King Hezekiah:

Lord, by such things people live; and my spirit finds life in them too.  You restored me to health and let me live.  Surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish.  In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction; you have put all my sins behind your back. Isaiah 38:16-17

My sins may not yet be finally behind my back, but I know that the memory of them offers not only pain, but also a reminder that my own wisdom and understanding, no matter how inspired, will never be perfect as I have at times secretly fantasized.  Perhaps more importantly, such self-awareness stimulates my compassion for those who struggle in similar ways.

God, please help me proceed in humble gratitude and continue leaning on faith, hope and, above all, Love. Amen.

Agape

 

 

Jan 052011
 

To paraphrase something one of my spiritual teachers once said: “Sometimes ego and Spirit seem to point in the same direction.  Be wary of allowing your distrust of ego to prevent you from following what you believe is the guidance of Spirit.”

Sometimes we find ourselves at a crossroads and can’t clearly sort out the various motives and intentions in our desires to move in some direction.  To oversimplify, we can find ourselves uncertain as to whether or not a particular turn would be driven more by ego or by Spirit, more in selfishness or in selflessness.  When we are at such an intersection, it can be tempting to choose inaction, fearing that our motives and intentions aren’t pure enough, or that our judgment isn’t true enough to ensure that our actions are righteous, healthy, or good enough.  So it is that we become stuck in our want for clarity and confidence.  It’s as if we are waiting until we can sufficiently quantify the various factors to plug into an equation that will solve the problem, or until circumstances appear to force movement in a particular direction.  Yet discerning the urges of the ego from the call of spirit is not really a matter of mathematical calculation, and doing only what external factors drive us to do is often just a strategy to play it safe and have a ready-made excuse if things go wrong.  So we can see that to fully and joyfully engage life is a matter of wisdom that transcends ordinary logic and a matter of courage that transcends playing the odds.

Wisdom

Of all wisdom’s attributes, the awareness of how to be most loving is central.  There are various ways of attaining such wisdom in Christian practice, but for now let’s note two broad approaches:

  • psychological – examination of the self, with the aim of becoming thoroughly familiar with the various factors of the psyche and ways they interact with each other, both internally and in relationships;
  • mystical – opening to the infusion of Divine Wisdom, which is, in effect, a way of trying to remove the personal elements of the psyche from interfering with the action of God’s love in and through us.

We can then divide the methods for both of these approaches into those that are more internal or external.  Yet, at least for an incarnate human, there is no real separation between the internal and the external; these two realms are as interwoven for us as the rays of light traveling back and forth between a candle and its reflection in a mirror.  It is further suggested that the psychological and the mystical approaches to wisdom are just as interconnected, and thus both must be involved in the work of spiritual formation, illumination, sanctification, or theosis.

Please understand that I am not addressing the possibility of Divine Wisdom expressing itself through a human soul without regard to any personal disposition.  Considerations of that possibility lead beyond the scope of this post.  The present aim is instead to consider how we can most fully engage life.  To that end, Jesus taught, “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thine understanding; and thy neighbour as thyself.” (Luke 10:27)  He further said, “anything you did for even the least of my people here, you also did for me” (Matthew 25:40).  These two passages indicate that Christian life includes a responsibility to integrate every aspect of our being as fully as possible in the realization – internal and external – of love.

We can become more attuned to wisdom psychologically and mystically, and thus our ability to experience and express love, to be an instrument of the absolute within the relative is enhanced.  But attaining wisdom is not as simple as having a book of rules and answers to reference; it is a matter of hard-won experience and the grace of inspiration or infused contemplation.   Furthermore, to the extent that we find our wisdom lacking, or the risks of serving wisdom seem to mount, we discover that wisdom alone is insufficient for being as loving as we might.

Courage

Another teacher once said: “Concern yourself more with the presence of love than with the absence of sin.”

Both the attainment and the enactment of wisdom require courage, which is simply the willingness to take risks.  If we never test ourselves and knowingly take the risks of being in error, then we do risk stagnating, growing in neither wisdom nor courage.  That observation is likely to be patently obvious in the most mundane contexts, but it is also true in religious and spiritual life.  Many of us spend our lives with hidden lights, stifling our potentials and putting on a show of meekness that is really a mask over our anxious self-torment in the fear of sinning (“missing the mark”) before God or offending our fellow human beings.   This choice can also be about protecting our pride, slyly avoiding the possibility of having our ignorance, foolishness and vices laid bare, even if it is only to oneself.

This anxious state of being is tragically ironic. On the one hand it connects with a deep sense of genuine humility, while on the other it is confounded by a powerful desire to hide one’s ignorance and vulnerability.  It belies a denial of faith and hope, a refusal to trust that we can, with God’s help, make the best of our mistakes.   It is succumbing to the fear that our sins are not, will not, or cannot be forgiven; and it is being blinded with the misunderstanding that the only remaining option is to attempt minimizing the multiplication of our sins by putting our spirits to sleep and waiting for death.  In actuality, this burying of our talents compounds the irony of this state of being because it entails a willful missing of the mark set by Jesus and his Apostles, who joyfully went about acting in ways that were widely considered sinful and taking the most serious of social risks.

Joy

When we speak of joy in this context, we are not speaking of it in the sense of great personal elation or sensual pleasure, but rather an abiding sense of peace, freedom and assurance.   It bears a kind of childlike innocence and comfort that can remain with us even when we are doubtful and suffering in many ways. It is the Spirit’s lasting affection for the beauty of life, even when the personality is most disappointed with the world and its own existence.  In Christian terms, this attitude is a gift of grace to which we can awaken through the heart-centered embrace of faith and hope in the Good News, opening to the infinite love of God revealed through Christ in us.   It is not that our faith and hope bring that grace upon us, but rather that through them we recognize and welcome what was already present.   In short, joy is the sense of liberation we feel as we more fully realize the presence of God’s loving grace in our lives.

One of the greatest experiences of liberation in this joy is the letting go of fear, gaining trust that we are not doomed to damnation for our sins.  This confidence gives us more courage to take risks, to make mistakes, to accept their consequences and learn from them, and thus grow wise as serpents and harmless as doves.  By continuing this renewal of our minds and the “proving” of God’s will, the ego’s voice becomes more harmonious with the voice of the Spirit; joy is further realized, courage further overcomes fear, and love’s evolution naturally spirals wider open within us and out into the world through our lives.

A Caveat

As beautiful as this process sounds, it should be clear that greater blessings often come with greater challenges.  It is with this thought in mind that the picture of St. John Bosco was chosen to illustrate the face of joy.  His pictures always shine with his characteristic smile, and he was known for his commitment to gentleness and kindness despite the poverty, injustice and violence he personally suffered and bravely confronted in society.  Other exemplars whose great spiritual joy has been accompanied by great personal suffering are the Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., countless saints, and certainly Jesus and many of his Apostles.  So it would be foolish to presume we have, at least while here in this present world, ever evolved beyond the experience of fear and pain.  We must all pass through our own Gethsemanes and hang upon our own crosses.  And then, even if we should momentarily be lifted into some beatific transcendence of the ordinary human condition, love leads us back into our humanity through broader reaches of compassion, “feeling with” the suffering of others, calling upon us to respond with wisdom, courage and joy.

Nov 232010
 

Happy Thanksgiving!  The following post was originally written in 2008.  I’m putting a revision up on this blog because it continues to capture an important part of the Thanksgiving experience for me.  It also connects with major themes of the previous post.  I hope it connects with something in you.

During the Thanksgiving season, my attention is drawn to contemplating an intimate connection between gratitude and compassion.  I suppose I have always had some awareness that these two sentiments are related; at the very least they can both be easily recognized as aspects of Love.  Still, I don’t always take the time to actually meditate on their relationship.

The inspiration for this meditation developed out of a recurring awareness of how much I experience gratitude in my closest relationships; in my most satisfying moments of serving others’ needs; when I am attentive to the beauty of nature and art; or when my meditations, prayers, and moments of mindfulness are most saturated with awareness of the Divine Presence.  More specifically, this meditation first began with pondering how the sense of pride in feeling worthy of another person’s approval has increasingly given way to feeling grateful for sharing in mutual experiences and expressions of acceptance, admiration, affection, caring, comfort, devotion, empathy, forgiveness, trust, and all the other wonderful flavors of Love.  While I still feel pride, it naturally diminishes in the face of gratitude as I gain appreciation for how little being a participant in Love is dependent upon anything I can do to be worthy of it.

In the big picture, Love has nothing at all to do with whether or not one has earned it or deserves it in any way.  There certainly are aspects of Love that we humans understandably express in greater or lesser measure in response to different characteristics, attitudes and actions; yet Love itself remains ultimately inextinguishable. There is a common adage with which we acknowledge something of this truth: God and our friends love us despite our flaws.

In Western religious language the eternal and all-pervading presence of Love is known as Divine Grace, and many of us consider its realization to be the key to salvation, the deliverance from a life consumed with fear, shame, remorse and self-loathing.  Just as God is understood to be infinite, eternal, and unbounded, so must God’s attributes be limitless.  Love IS.  Love doesn’t depend on us to bring it into existence.  Thus, while we can know Love very directly and immediately, it isn’t something we possess, or something someone else has for us to get.  On the contrary, Love has us. It is living and breathing through us, from and to us, completely encompassing and interpenetrating us, forever without ceasing.

Knowing this, I cannot honestly assume any other position relative to Love than gratitude, and so my angst-ridden struggles to be worthy of being loved increasingly give way to a profound peace.  That peace is grounded in the faith that I think and act more lovingly as the immanence of Love further weans my consciousness from illusions of power and control.  Even so, there is something of me, call it ego if you wish, that resists this surrender to Love.  Every student of his or her own psyche knows this resistance well.

The writings of many saints and sages use words that suggest a kind of internal battle between the forces of resistance and surrender to Love.  Yet it’s somewhat paradoxical, isn’t it, to think of surrender to Love as contributing to a conflict?  In truth the only conflict must be within the part of us that maintains illusions of power and control.  In this one-sided battle we experience the last stand of such illusions in the belief that we must inflict self-derision and self-punishment for our errors and shortcomings.  In short, we mistakenly think we must be less loving with ourselves in order to become more lovable and loving for others.  We thus condemn ourselves to suffering with thoughts and feelings that leave less room for gratitude. So it is that gratitude is a measure of awakening to Love.

Each one of us knows this self-conflict, and here we can begin to discern the connections between gratitude and compassion.  When we deeply appreciate the fact that others are suffering in this same way, compassion is already blooming in our hearts.  The fullness of that compassion grows as the self-conflict of our self-pride/self-derision dissolves in the warm peaceful sea of gratitude for the immanence and transcendence of Love.  The more we know Love within ourselves, including the experience of gratitude for Love, the more freely Love flows through us as compassion for others.  We also find that to express gratitude to another, perhaps when that person feels least deserving of it, can be an act of compassion that awakens her or him to the Divine Grace of Love.  Gratitude is therefore not merely a passive response to Love, but is also realized as an active expression of Love.

It may sound a little trite, but my sincere hope for all of us is that the attitude of gratitude grows in our hearts during this Thanksgiving, and thus Love will graciously shine through us into the hearts of others.

Agape