I've just begun to listen to a recording of St John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul. I translation seems to be alright, but the woman reading it is about as bad as the one who reads Teresa of Avila's biography. They both tend to read these great works as if they were reading a Danielle Steele novel. It is frustrating to me because I want people to take the practice on contemplation seriously. I don't want people to see it as a novelty or fad. I don't want anyone to mistake it for some branch of the popularized version of Kabbalah, which has also gotten a bad rap.
There are many ways to connect with God, as many ways as there are people. It is not a game to see who can achieve the highest contemplation or grow closest to God. It is a manner of being in which one becomes detached from things that distract one from thinking about God.
This detachment is a great thing. It is also an addictive thing. I can find no greater pleasure than just sitting with God, which seems to be most of the time these last few weeks. Each day I grow closer. Each day demands from me a new understanding of who I really am. Since I do not yet understand God's purpose for my inner cleansing, I don't know yet if it is an entirely healthy thing to do. I do know it brings eventually joy, which is good. But am I useful to God and others as a result? I don't know.
I do know this week has been exhaustive and wonderful and terrible. I have been made more aware of life and death than I had ever thought possible. Seeing those who have left the earth, so often this October, causes me to reflect on the mystery that is human life. How precious and fragile it is. How each day is a gift. How nothing should be wasted. And how foolishly we expend energy and worry on things that really don't matter.
What matters is relationship. When we reach out to someone and touch them, that is God. When we smile, it is God. When we let raindrops fall on our face, it is God. Every time we wake up to creation, it is God. No I do not mean to imply some 'stoned love' kind of thing...I'm thinking in the Christian sense in its most basic and profound way. Love one another. Loving brings into us the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit is the true giver of Love. We couldn't do it without her. But she doesn't exist unless we love one another. Sound far fetched? No, it is right here.
I keep having these strange imaginings during Mass. A day or two ago, I saw Jesus on the cross in the large host Father held up in Mass. I wept as I watched the priest break it into pieces. And yet, that is what we do with Christ. We break Him into pieces. It feels both cruel and yet necessary. I haven't sorted it out yet. We did in fact, if we buy into the story, kill our living God. He came to us and we tried to destroy Him.
No it wasn't the Jews, and it wasn't a long time ago. When I think of God, time doesn't exist. In the Mass, time does not exist. What happened 2000 years ago, happens again, right before out eyes...and long after I'm gone, it will happen in just the same way as it does today, because today is yesterday and tomorrow...in the manner of being with God. It is so hard to write about. I feel horribly inadequate.
Today in the Eucharist, I saw first a kind of dove that morphed into what I thought was the Holy Family. Just as easily as I saw in the bread the fire, and the face of Jesus and the the crucifix and now the Holy Family. I attribute it to an active imagination...but something definitely is stirring in me, perhaps it is just the birth of some poetry or maybe a good story, but it is happening to me nonetheless.
My constant prayer has gotten me so connected to absolutely everything and everyone I meet. It feels like a different level of consciousness.
I don't feel competitive anymore. I don't seem to care what happens, only that I stay present to what is happening.
Now what I think I want is a miracle to happen. But I don't know what that miracle might be. I don't know if it will be a private thing or possibly exposed, but that doesn't matter. The curious thing is that I feel the miracle I am praying for might happen and I will never know that it did. But I have faith that it will happen, even if I never realize it personally. And yet I am also aware that is has already happened. This is that time thing that seems to disappear when I am praying. I get to a place where then and now merge, what was is again. In fact, it never left. If I think I sound a bit loopy, I cannot imagine anyone who reads this understanding a single word of it.
I just know. God is present. God is thick in our lives. We just don't choose
see Him or feel Him. But when we do...heavens
I'm very tired now and will try again later. With love to God and to all,
Cindy
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Think I'll be writing here now
I told a dear friend about what I was trying to do. She laughed. I said I could do everything perhaps a nun might do, except I liked my things. She laughed again. Celibacy? She laughed more. She doesn't understand. How does one give up something that she doesn't have? But given the opportunity to "give it up," would I? I don't know. Perhaps that would be the most difficult question.
I had a priest once speak to me about love. Falling in love is inevitable. It's what you choose to do with it that matters. I think that was one of the most important things I have ever been told. I never really thought about that part of it before. Usually I would think, if God grants in you the desire to love another person, well...you should respond to it with vigor.
The trouble is, or the conflict, or the resistance is that, when you feel claimed by God, no matter how delicious a prospect might appear to be, there exists within you an internal knowing that the experience with another human being is transcendent, while the encounter with God never stops. With God, if you turn to His love, it is always present, always deep, always passionate. With a person, there is timing...the great chain around human existence, that you are either in sync with another person, or you are not.
I have been in love many times in my life, and probably 'in lust' many more. But that kind of bonding with another human being in complete trust, I have never known. Sadly, as I discuss the subject with my friends over my lifetime, I find that most of them have never known 'true love' either. They have 'settled.' The good part about that is that many of them are very content with it.
We foolish romantics seek the ideal, the perfect love...and the only place we can truly find it is in God. It is the only food that satisfies our hearts completely.
If you read all the great poetry about God, you will discover how perfect that love can be and how it manifests itself in the human person.
It allows us to love others without reservations, and of course, without expectations. Perhaps in loving God, we learn how to love others.
But the Body is always a problem. It lusts and hungers and craves immediate satisfaction. Most of our technological is geared to satisfy an immediate hunger. Waiting is not even an art anymore, it is an endangered species. We want, and we want now. The most troubling fact is that, when we get what we want, we are only satisfied for seconds...and then we want something else. I think our entire economy survives my our unsatiable desires. We literally are consumers of anything and everything...and because we seek that which becomes dust in the wind, when we look back all we have is dust and memory.
The memory then plagues us. If it is a good memory, we long for what we used to have. If it is a unpleasant memory, we ruminate over and over about how we could have, should have, done it right. Unbridled memories lead to deep depression, which is a form of living death. We become zombies to the real world, going through the motions, and waiting for what we long for to arrive joyously at our door.
But it doesn't need to be that way. God alone suffices. Those of us who are poets; we must rely on the unprovable existence of God to keep us sane. We search for the higher ground. We dream of a perfect world where people love one another and do not exploit one another and make certain every child has an abundance of love and sufficient food for each day.
I am waxing...a fictional priest in the movie "Stigmata" is asked by a pretty young woman, "Don't you miss it?" [the sex] And he replies most wisely, "Not really. I have simply traded one set of problems for another."
Whenever we make a choice, we pick something up and leave something else behind. It's part of the deal of discernment. There will always be a new set of problems. That's really quite good. It makes us grow.
To not decide, that is the only true Dark Night of the Soul, I think. Always wondering if you did the right thing, or was it the best thing...or was it selfish...what were my motives? What were their motives? Did I consider all the possibilities? Should I change my mind? To me, that is the Dark Night: to wonder if I did the right thing.
The way out, for me, is to surrender it all to God. By myself, I am left in a hell on earth, never knowing if I pulled my weight, made the world better, loved enough, worked enough...but if I can just give it ALL to God, then grace abounds and the peace given me pours like honey onto everyone else I meet.
Why would anyone want anything different?
I had a priest once speak to me about love. Falling in love is inevitable. It's what you choose to do with it that matters. I think that was one of the most important things I have ever been told. I never really thought about that part of it before. Usually I would think, if God grants in you the desire to love another person, well...you should respond to it with vigor.
The trouble is, or the conflict, or the resistance is that, when you feel claimed by God, no matter how delicious a prospect might appear to be, there exists within you an internal knowing that the experience with another human being is transcendent, while the encounter with God never stops. With God, if you turn to His love, it is always present, always deep, always passionate. With a person, there is timing...the great chain around human existence, that you are either in sync with another person, or you are not.
I have been in love many times in my life, and probably 'in lust' many more. But that kind of bonding with another human being in complete trust, I have never known. Sadly, as I discuss the subject with my friends over my lifetime, I find that most of them have never known 'true love' either. They have 'settled.' The good part about that is that many of them are very content with it.
We foolish romantics seek the ideal, the perfect love...and the only place we can truly find it is in God. It is the only food that satisfies our hearts completely.
If you read all the great poetry about God, you will discover how perfect that love can be and how it manifests itself in the human person.
It allows us to love others without reservations, and of course, without expectations. Perhaps in loving God, we learn how to love others.
But the Body is always a problem. It lusts and hungers and craves immediate satisfaction. Most of our technological is geared to satisfy an immediate hunger. Waiting is not even an art anymore, it is an endangered species. We want, and we want now. The most troubling fact is that, when we get what we want, we are only satisfied for seconds...and then we want something else. I think our entire economy survives my our unsatiable desires. We literally are consumers of anything and everything...and because we seek that which becomes dust in the wind, when we look back all we have is dust and memory.
The memory then plagues us. If it is a good memory, we long for what we used to have. If it is a unpleasant memory, we ruminate over and over about how we could have, should have, done it right. Unbridled memories lead to deep depression, which is a form of living death. We become zombies to the real world, going through the motions, and waiting for what we long for to arrive joyously at our door.
But it doesn't need to be that way. God alone suffices. Those of us who are poets; we must rely on the unprovable existence of God to keep us sane. We search for the higher ground. We dream of a perfect world where people love one another and do not exploit one another and make certain every child has an abundance of love and sufficient food for each day.
I am waxing...a fictional priest in the movie "Stigmata" is asked by a pretty young woman, "Don't you miss it?" [the sex] And he replies most wisely, "Not really. I have simply traded one set of problems for another."
Whenever we make a choice, we pick something up and leave something else behind. It's part of the deal of discernment. There will always be a new set of problems. That's really quite good. It makes us grow.
To not decide, that is the only true Dark Night of the Soul, I think. Always wondering if you did the right thing, or was it the best thing...or was it selfish...what were my motives? What were their motives? Did I consider all the possibilities? Should I change my mind? To me, that is the Dark Night: to wonder if I did the right thing.
The way out, for me, is to surrender it all to God. By myself, I am left in a hell on earth, never knowing if I pulled my weight, made the world better, loved enough, worked enough...but if I can just give it ALL to God, then grace abounds and the peace given me pours like honey onto everyone else I meet.
Why would anyone want anything different?
Friday, October 23, 2009
Nearly a Nun Chapter One
To begin with, I am writing this in response to the present urgings of God that make little or no sense to me at all. About 12 years ago, I fell on my face in the midst of a prayer that seemed to not belong entirely to me. I woke to the feeling of being deeply loved, with a sense of completion that had existed no where else at any time of my life.
Lying on the floor, I opened my eyes in blissful peace, to a rude and unsolicited thought as a response to this generous gift from God: "I am NOT going to become a nun!" What followed from there was a long litany of excuses why such a request would be impossible. I certainly did not "hear" God say "I want you to be a nun." I did seem to realize that I had been marked, claimed, taken...and there was no going back from the experience. It was the most perfect moment of my life...a perfect moment given to a very imperfect person.
As I regained a more normal level of consciousness, I began with to list all of my excuses. For what I truly felt had happened was that I had quite unexpectedly 'married' God...and just exactly what can you do after you've already said "I do?" Sounds like the beginning of a joke song: you get up one morning, after a little too much to drink, and you find out you are married. Lots of movies share that plot.
It's another thing entirely to have it really happen to you.
So I told God I was certainly not nun material. I can't do the obedience thing. I'm way too carnal, too human, too hungry. I don't want to give up my toys, my friends, the pennies I have in the bank. I don't want to be told what to do,where to go, and I sure as hell don't want to wear wool!
While I may have somehow submitted to God, I certainly was not going to submit to another human being! I was definitely not going to be a nun!
And I think I heard God laughing...
Lying on the floor, I opened my eyes in blissful peace, to a rude and unsolicited thought as a response to this generous gift from God: "I am NOT going to become a nun!" What followed from there was a long litany of excuses why such a request would be impossible. I certainly did not "hear" God say "I want you to be a nun." I did seem to realize that I had been marked, claimed, taken...and there was no going back from the experience. It was the most perfect moment of my life...a perfect moment given to a very imperfect person.
As I regained a more normal level of consciousness, I began with to list all of my excuses. For what I truly felt had happened was that I had quite unexpectedly 'married' God...and just exactly what can you do after you've already said "I do?" Sounds like the beginning of a joke song: you get up one morning, after a little too much to drink, and you find out you are married. Lots of movies share that plot.
It's another thing entirely to have it really happen to you.
So I told God I was certainly not nun material. I can't do the obedience thing. I'm way too carnal, too human, too hungry. I don't want to give up my toys, my friends, the pennies I have in the bank. I don't want to be told what to do,where to go, and I sure as hell don't want to wear wool!
While I may have somehow submitted to God, I certainly was not going to submit to another human being! I was definitely not going to be a nun!
And I think I heard God laughing...
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