The Expanding Universe That Is Us

 When I read the following passage early Easter morning, I felt the stirring of a deepening understanding of Easter. I had no doubt that  that resurrection is ongoing. I have always believed that,  but yesterday I absorbed it at the cellular level.  We are not celebrating just an ancient story, we are celebrating the Christ who is always with us and who continually urges us to expand. I usually do not wear a robe when I preach, but for Easter I certainly do. It was a blessing to don my white robe and red stole with a white dove that the San Lorenzo church gave me a few years ago.  I felt amazingly light and light-filled. I knew only love. 

 Blessings to you this Easter Monday. May you, too, sense your freedom as you read this passage from Silence and Stillness in Every Season by John Main. The text originally appeared in his book, Moment of Christ.     

   

Our Christian life is not just a question of finding a way of getting through our lives. Every word of the New Testament suggests to us that it is of supreme importance that we live our lives in a state of continuous expansion, expansion of heart and expansion of Spirit, growing in love and becoming more firmly rooted in God. Each of us has to understand our potential, that we are an expanding universe, and so each of us possesses the potential for an energy-expansion that is not less than infinite.     

   

image:  San Leandro, April 2016    

  

We gather via Zoom every Wednesday at 4:00 p.m to meditate in the Christian tradition.  Drop me a note if you would like to join us!

    

Still Learning

 "If you want to change something in your life you have two possibilities open to you. You can try to will that change; you can try to redirect your life by acts of the will. I think most of us discover from our own experience that our wills are appallingly weak and shockingly inconsistent. There is another way: the other way of total openness of the whole person. It is not the way intention but the way of attention."  

John Main, Silence and Stillness in Every Season, March 25 entry   

    

Yesterday as the pianist and I settled into a particularly beautiful memory care home that is still new to us, I was concerned that few residents had been gathered at our appointed time.  Even after almost 15 years in this ministry, I still have moments when I think that I am failing. That somehow there is something I should be doing to reach more people. Maybe if I sang better. Maybe if I were male. Maybe if I were an extrovert. Maybe it really is time to retire. The list of maybes could go on forever. They are inexhaustible.  I, however, am not, so fortunately, I had read John Main's meditation just a few hours before, and the words had stayed with me.  I decided to try just accepting who and what was before me.  I first noticed with gratitude the work of the staff to make room for wheelchairs and gurneys.  I then noticed one resident,  a small woman in a gurney being brought to us. I felt gladness because I simply like her. She is usually silent, but her eyes reveal a knowing spirit. I went over to say hello, and she looked at me intently. I smiled, and simply waited. After some seconds, as she usually does,  she gently reached out her thin hand. I then reached out as gently as I could. She is not quick to smile, but she does smile if I have the courage to wait. 

I later noticed a staff member come and sit next to a frail resident.  As we began the Lord's prayer, I saw that the  elder was ever so quietly saying the prayer with him by her side. The movement of her lips was almost imperceptible, but I was able to match my pace with hers. Suddenly I heard all the voices, as if we were a choir. 

Afterwards, a tall thin man walked by. He walks the entire time we are there. Up until yesterday I never saw him look left or right. I assumed he incessantly walks every day, but I was told he usually stays in his room. Yesterday, as he passed through, he looked at us, nodded his head, and raised his hand and arm in what I believe was a wave.   I was sitting down then so the pianist could simply enjoy playing a piece of her choice on their beautiful piano. I was able to see him stop and stand behind  her for maybe 30 seconds or so before journeying  on.  

I later met that staff member who joined us and learned he  is the executive director of the community. I thought  how wonderful it was that he would take about 20 minutes of his day and come and worship with those he served.  He said he was not usually there on Fridays so our time together felt particularly meaningful. 

So that sacred space that at first seemed sparsely populated, now appeared to be overflowing with music, gratitude, and love. I was reminded for the umpteenth time that we are always held in Christ.   As I said my good-byes, the first resident I saw reached out her hand once more and quietly asked if we would come again. In this, there really is no maybe, unless life takes a decidedly different turn.  "Oh, yes," I replied as I reached out once more. She smiled, and I like to think she gave thanks. Even if she did not, I did. And that is enough.     

       

image:  San Leandro, March 2022. I am imagining myself to be that small white flower. 

  

Non-Searching

 "I suppose it is the completeness of the commitment that frightens us. But commit yourself but once and you will know from your own experience the love that casts out all fear. It takes many people years to come to that moment of commitment. Yet whether it takes years, months, weeks, or days is of no importance. All that is of importance is that each of us, as best we can in these earthen vessels, is as open as we can be to the essential truth of union."    

John Main, Silence and Stillness in Every Season   

image: an aging camillia blossom, January 2022   

 

The Generous Gardner

 My neighbor closed her Chinese restaurant a few years ago. When she was running the restaurant, I would generally see her when one or both of us were in our cars. Now, I often see her either on my morning walks or in her garden. The garden is a new endeavor, and she has done a lovely job. Because of this sighting yesterday, I now think  of her as a generous gardener; one who leaves a little something for the bees in January.   

May we all be so generous with the life that is all around us.    

Today is Epiphany. Let us watch for the wise ones as they pass through. If we pay attention, Wisdom will always share her gifts.   

        

"It is very difficult to try to determine what it is that makes a person want to meditate. It has puzzled me over the years. There seem to be so many reasons why people start to meditate. But I think there is only one reason that keeps people meditating. That I think we could describe as a growing commitment to reality."  

Father John Main, OSB   

     

 

  

image: San Leandro, January 2022. I had to lean over my neighbor's fence to take this picture so it is not perfectly composed. The bee would not be still, and neither would the dog.  

Experiencing Place

"Faith is the highway of the spirit. Every act of faith we make is an uncovering of the labyrinth of spirit. Belief, sundered from faith, leads to a maze of mirrors, a series of infinite regressions, the egotistical maze. Mazes lead to dead-ends and the more we get lost the more we panic. Labyrinths only ask us to follow faithfully their strange but ultimately symmetrical loops and bends in order to lead us home to the centre."  

   

Laurence Freeman, OSB, First Sight, The Experience of Faith, Continuum 2011, p. 14     

   

To cling to those ideas that we tenaciously call beliefs, leads to separation. Separation is indeed a dead-end. One thing about dead-ends though, is that we can usually turn around and go back out. Faith allows us to maneuver, sometimes with some dexterity, our way to love. In yesterday's group meditation, we discussed the November 3 entry in  John Main's book, Silence and Stillness in Every Season: "What we think of as our 'centre' is too often an illusion of the self-reflecting ego, somewhere we like to take up our stand and observe God at work in us. But this can never be the way.  The challenges that face us point to the mystery of union we are summoned to enter. But we find our way into this mystery of union with others and with God only when we reach in ourselves that place where Jesus experiences His oneness with the Father. That place where he prayed, 'I in them and Thou in me, that they may become perfectly one.'"*  

  

In other words, center (or centre) is not some private dwelling place, but rather a place of union with all.  For there Christ (or whatever sacred entity you worship) is. We are not called to ourselves but to the universal self.  We are that related. 

    

* I think Father Main threw in that word perfectly.  The translations I have seen of John 17:21 read, "That they may all be one." Even the King James version reads, "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." However, so far, I have not seen Laurence Freeman or John Main cite what translations they are referencing when quoting scripture.   

       

photograph: San Leandro (just a block from our house), November, 2021