life in the fullness

I have been reading some of Thomas Merton's writings while on sabbatical, and I have come across often his insistence that we live in the fullness of time. We don’t have to rush after it, what we seek is already here and if we give it time it will make itself known to us. 

In contrast, Wayne Muller in Sabbath gives an accurate description of the world as I’ve experienced it up to this point. He names (in “Hurtling Toward the Eschaton”) that we, the Western world, act as if progress is our new messianic eschatology. We live as if coming to the end of progress will bring about bounty, and mastery of nature, and health & wholeness for all. There is no time to rest because we are on an important mission. ‘We never rest on our laurels, we never rest at all. Every moment is a necessary investment in the divinely ordained and completely unquestioned goal of progress. What we are building for the future is infinitely more important than whatever we have right now.’ We cannot rest because ‘the sooner we get into the good and perfect future - the only place we will ever be truly happy and at peace - the better off we will all be.’ Yet every time we reach the future, it vanishes into the present.

This theology of progress tells us that when we get to the end then, and only then, can we lie down in green pastures, and allow our soul to be restored. 

Oh my. Muller’s description of life in the West seems all too familiar. It is the lived experience of so much of my adult life. 

Yet it is Merton’s description of life that resounds and echoes within the recesses of my soul. The promised land is here, now. If I live connected to the rhythms of life, of birth and growth and death and new life, of rest and dormancy, if I live in ways that honor the sacredness of all of life and am open to seeing the Divine in the world wherever it chooses to be found, then I find that the present is more expansive than I can hope to understand. I find health and wholeness and abundant living. 

And I find that all the way to heaven is heaven, every moment full and ripe with experience of the Divine.

what do I seek

In the first chapter of my devotional reading (Sitting Still, by Patricia Hart Clifford), the author poses the question: What do you seek? ... What do I seek in the practice of centering prayer? What do I seek within myself and the world in the way I am living and moving and being? What do I seek in my relationship with God? What do I seek from the me within? What do I seek for the me within?

What do I seek? Peace within myself. ... Yet it doesn't interest me if I find peace, what I really long for is to see, to know, and to be present with what is.

What do I seek? Depth and grounding. ... Yet it doesn't interest me if I find depth and grounding, what I really long for is being a space of healing, for others and for the world.

What do I seek? Health in my body. ... Yet it doesn't interest me if I find health in my body, what I really long for is feeling strength in my body and connectedness to the Holy in it, knowing that body and spirit are truly one.

What do I seek? 

A way of being in the world,

   which brings healing, 

      reveals wholeness, 

         restores hope, 

            glimpses the Holy in all, 

               and honors the divinity within.

What is it you seek?

the air we breathe

“By breath, by blood, by body, by spirit we are all one.
 The air that is my breath is the air that you are breathing.
 And the air that is your breath is the air that I am breathing.
 …
 By breath, by blood, by body, by spirit we are all one.”
        ~ Sara Tomsen

This is the song clip that was running through my mind as I walked this morning.

we are all one … the air we breathe contains the breaths of each other … we are one

After my experiences in this place last month it’s not surprising that being here I would feel this deep sense of connectedness to the world. Truly, when I am present in the moment, which brings quiet within, I recognize it has never left me, journeyed with me wherever I am, vibrates within me to the song of the eternal. 

We are one. Not just you and I, but all of created life. We are, of course, made of the dust of stars. Yet even more I believe that in the very act of creation something of Divine essence was imparted to each rock and tree, each drop of water and ray of light, every seed and matter of humanity. Something of substance lives and flows within and between all of it. And in our moments of paying attention, being deeply aware of what is around us, we may feel a glimpse of that Essence. 

Perhaps that is why so many of us are drawn to nature, find being in nature renewing and restful. In a place where Divine essence flows naturally, our striving can cease. The masks can fall away. Like the trees, we learn to rest simply in who we are, not striving to be something else, something other, something more. When we connect to this essence around us and stop to rest in harmony with what is, we remember we were created as one. We remember, at least for a moment, that who we are is enough. We remember that we are one part of something so much larger than ourselves that it is beyond our comprehension, yet not beyond our experience. 

And all too easily we forget the truth of this. All too easily we we see only our differences and deny our oneness. All too easily we cast someone as “other”, for their behavior or actions or words or beliefs, and don’t see the divisiveness of our own behavior or actions or words or beliefs. 

Am I able to look within and admit there are times when I am so afraid I’d be willing to kill to keep the world from changing? Am I able to look within and admit the places where I dismiss others as lesser than because they don’t agree with my beliefs or because their actions hurt another? Am I able to see the moments when I wage peace as if I am at war with those with whom I disagree? Am I?

by breath, by blood, by body, by spirit … we are all one