Discovering the Divine in the Ordinary Lanscape of Life
“The very attention that gazes into this vastness is itself this vastness, luminous depth gazing into luminous depth. You are the vastness into which you gaze”
M. Laird
The ache in the soul is God calling from the deep. And we must call back. We can never give up seeking the one we love, the one that roars within. Our hearts are restless until they rest in him.
Begin with crisp-water bite of sun-green cells. Swallowing the light captured in time and space
Then raise up a libation, and let the golden fields of grain flow into me. The Sun-grown grain distilled down and absorbed into my cells.
It takes teeth to tear at the flesh of things, to get to the root, the elements. To taste the life, the essence, and to know the life enfleshed, infused and passing through.
This feast is endless and fills all my senses. Each element of matter vibrating with its own voice. As I listen I am fed, as I am aware I am satisfied.
Take wood for example, with its gorgeous grains, growing, standing, sheltering, shaping, bending, breaking, dying, drying, burning,warming, falling into earth and rising again. Formed and transformed from light above.
Pine needles, blue sky, textured bark of tree. Water on rocks. Single strand of grass.
Let us finish the feast with fruit. Sweet womb of hope surrounding the seed that must die. Swallow the Juice, and the joy, foretaste of the resurrection.
Still your mind and inhale the wonder. Come to the table of awareness and feast on His presence.
The author of the Cloud of Unknowing defines humility as true self knowledge. But goes on to make a distinction between perfect and imperfect humility. To to see clearly our wounds, faults, and imperfections is a key step toward humility, but it’s imperfect humility. The author states: ” perfect humility is meeting the unfathomable love of God, who is the ground of our being”. Self-knowledge is not complete until it becomes grounded in God. Perfect humility is the realization that I am hidden in Christ, that it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. I think this great mystic and author of the cloud is saying that Perfect humility does not separate oneself from God no matter how deficient one feels. It sees Christ’s wounds and self wounds as one and he same. Perfect Humility raises the dignity of the soul to its proper place.
What is it about a dogs face that makes us laugh and loosen up?
Is it our own minds that project human personalities into them?
The other day I was taking a walk, and lost in thought, and here comes a fat little dog trying to keep up with it master. Its Tongue hanging out, breathing heavily, it wanted to stop and relate to me, but it’s owner just tugged him along. The fat face and bright eyes kept looking back at me. The dumb excited stare drew me in and lifted me right out of my thoughts and into the present moment. I laughed and I felt a joy that was so simple and yet so real
We live in a culture of distraction and over stimulation, where it becomes all to easy to just flee from our afflictive emotions but unfortunately this prolongs and deepens the agony by opening up further the wound of alienation from ourselves and others. The path to healing is through the door of presence. Being present to ourselves, to others, and to God.
In his book, Into the Silent Land, B. Laird talks about entering into silence as a way of becoming a loving witness of our pain rather than a blind victim of it. This stillness or sitting with our pain can show us how the “suffering” we fear and want to flee from is not real, but our own fictional narrative created around the pain. The narrative is not me, it’s a mental movie that we are actually free to identify with or not. In this frame of reference we can be with the actual pain and not be so frightened. Pain does not reach the level of the soul or the deepest self yet is a very real experience in the body that can cause intense mental and emotional suffering. The contemplative awareness that distinguishes between real pain and fabricated mental suffering is key.
Medical writer Steven Levine observes:
“True healing happens when we go into our pain so deeply that we see it, not just as our pain, but everyone’s pain. It is immensely moving and supportive to discover that my pain is not private to me”
I would extend this idea more theologically to say that when we face our pain within our true self, which is Christ, the illusion that we are alone and separated falls away. The pain has woken us from our sleep.
I have this image of faith as the words on a page, and doubt as the unwritten space around the words. Both live together in contrast, and the emptiness of doubt allows the word to stand out. I no longer fear doubts. They do not trouble me as they did in my younger years. How would we know the rich beauty of light without the darkness. How would we recognize the clear word without the void or space surrounding it ? How can one make an act of faith in a spiritual truth without somehow already being in love with the incomprehensible mystery that surrounds and shrouds that truth.
Ps. 139- where can a run from your presence? Even in the darkness is your light.
Earthen Waves in rolls and folds
Crusty stalks and hedge rows
Trees naked, pencil sketched
On the canvas sky
Grasses golden and glowing
In the angled and thin winter light
Tweed-coated field wrap me up
In a warm breasted embrace
The winter silence of the earth is alive in me.
A fresh presence crunches under boot.
Long shadows, muted colors, winters humble-hidden service.
Field of Love, walking in me, sing out your Pascal mystery
Brother Oak and Sister Pine
I walk through a winter scape of hard and soft woods. The Oaks and Elms are defending their place and holding space.
Barren, angular forms, tense and tight-celled inside. The old ones thick with wisdom, trunks gnarled with knots, covering past wounds.
Their presence commands respect, and deep down they go, into the ground of truth. Deciduous, discursive, defining the forest space.
And by their side, the warm green conifers with their rounded, softer shape, create beauty in the barren space, and freshen up the place.
They receive the wind, allowing it inside them and it bends them low and vulnerable. Their brown needles cling together forming a warm nest, to nurture the forest floor.
All the winter-while, the leaves of the Oaks blow far and wide scattering in winter, as do their seeds in spring.
As I walk, I feel the forest coming together in me. The light with the shadow, the hard truths with the softer mysteries, the immanent earth and the transcendent sky, and sister pine with brother oak.
In the winter of my fatherhood I learn to walk with mother nature too.
A comment on the above Poem–
The feminine and masculine are in each person, and held together in a beautiful balance. Strongly masculine men as they grow older need to discover the feminine inside them or they don’t fully mature spiritually and discover their full humanity. If they are fathers, as their kids age they are called to discover the compassionate mother within them. To become more nurturing more accepting of the frailties of humanity that are now more noticeable within themselves and also reflected in their adult children. Nature shows us both the contrast of masculine and feminine and the mature integration. In nature we witness the pastoral beauty and goodness of God the Father.
“Light exists. But light can not be seen on its own. It can only be seen when there is something else to reflect it, as if light needs a place to rest amid our lives. God is similar. We can’t see Him, we only see where he rests amidst us” J. S. Behrens OCSO
Up at 4AM for Vigils.
Still night. Cold stone church. Vaulted ceiling with columns arched in a ribbed pattern like the hull of a great ship.
The white hooded men stand at their stations, waiting for the bell to prayer. They are cloaked in solitude, a white army entrenched together in the watch of the night.
Their chant is soft like a gentle breeze. The young monks stand erect and the old lean, necks tilting humbly in reverence to time.
After prayers, I walk the church alone. The columns in gray shadow and only the light of the altar splashes on the floor.
My mind is as still and open as the space around me and a loving presence arises. I can not locate it, grasp it or conjure it, it is just present. I smile gently and nod gratefully.
A Poem written on my mid morning hike :
Enchanting Conifers
I walk among the glorious Georgia pines, standing like monks in ordered rows, chanting softly as the wind moves high up into their branches.
What is this pine-presence, this soul aching, yet fresh awaking ? I draw it in, chest expanding, feeling a warm welcome in this airy gage of roots and limbs.
The sun was upon me all morning along the open path, but here amidst the pines I can almost see light itself, resting between the poles .
Men of old built stone altars to honor such encounters. But why search for heavy rocks to construct images when I am in the airy likeness now.
No, I will gently pass through the monks land and honor these majestic pines by just breathing in and carrying this presence out into the open fields and through the hard woods ahead.