Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law, Byzantine mosaic, Chora Museum, Turkey

…but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  -2 Corinthians 12:9

It is in my weakness that God finds me and transforms me. Perhaps because in weakness I’m vulnerable enough to make room for God. Life is beautiful and exciting and interesting and I’m ambitious and curious and reckless.* But every tragedy I’ve survived (I haven’t survived them all, parts of me lie dead with grief, no resurrection stirring yet)  – every tragedy has given me a gift.

God didn’t cause my griefs. I caused most of them,  co-created them, and naively set myself up for them. Some griefs come simply with the aching beauty of life and some from genetic randomness.  God didn’t cause Peter’s mother-in-law’s illness. My guess is that she was up a bunch of nights with a passel of Peter’s sick children (HE wasn’t around to help, obviously) compromising her immune system. Or maybe something serious settled into her bones.

But something more than healing occurs when Jesus “grasps” her. The word used is the same as the word for Jesus’ resurrection – he “raises her up”. She embodies the Easter mystery of resurrection and the Pentecost mystery of apostleship – of service. Her home, 2,000 years later, is the site of documented healings. She’s a mother of the church. A deacon. A template of holiness.

Had she not been sick, she probably would have served Peter’s friends in any case. But the transformation makes her a full participant in Jesus’ ministry and ongoing mystery of the church. Her weakness becomes her strength, just as my weaknesses continue to create a meeting place for my recurringly impoverished soul and infinite, Divine Love.

* I don’t think any of my friends would call me “reckless”, exactly. But in retrospect I think some of the most “sane,” “expected,”and conventional decisions I’ve made in my life have been rather reckless, quite honestly.

The Temptation of St. Anthony, Mathias Grunewald, 1515, detail

I’ve always felt sorry for the demons in these stories. In Sunday’s Gospel, this demon realizes his danger. “Have you come to destroy us?” The demon recognizes Jesus. “I know who you are, Holy One of God.” Both these traits endear me to the demon. After all, no one else seems to recognize so clearly the danger inherent in letting Jesus, the Light, into their lives. And nobody else recognizes him as the Holy One of God.

But I couldn’t let myself fully understand why I felt sorry for the demons until I found this passage in The Divine Names by Pseudo-Dionysius.

And as for the demons, the Good is their source and the fact of their existence is itself good.  They are evil insofar as they have fallen away from the virtues proper to them.  They have changed in the domain of what was permanent in them.  A weakness has appeared in the angelic perfection suitable to them.   They too desire the Good, at least to the extent that they have a wish for existence, for life, and for understanding, and their desire for what has no being is proportionate to their lack of desire for the Good. Indeed this latter is not so much a desire as sin against real desire.

I appreciate the demons because their dilemma is so like mine. All my life I’ve been trying to desire the Good even beyond the “wish for existence, for life, and for understanding.” But I, too, have fallen from the virtues proper to me.

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I’ve spent the last few months with an altered routine to make room for meditation, yoga, rest, healing massage, and alternative medicine treatments. I suppose I’m trying to change my brain, my priorities, my ways of thinking, my very “domain.”

“A cage went in search of a bird,” wrote Franz Kafka in his diaries. It’s time for the cage to move on.

-suzanne

The Entombment of Jonah, Franco-Flemish Illumination, detail

When I was twenty-two, when The Call was new and fearsome, I felt overwhelmed by those famous and simultaneous qualities of attraction (mysterium fascinans) and repulsion (mysterium tremendum) so many people experience. I thought at the time that a threshold appeared before me, and I knew eventually I’d go through, but for now, I fought against that inevitable surrender. A cartoonish image came to mind, a Warner Brothers kind of character – except rather than Wile E. Coyote or Sylvester – it was me comically straddling the door jamb, resisting being sucked into what seemed a featureless, infinite, foggy, nothingness whirlwind beyond.

That was The Call for me – inevitable, but unknown, and, of course, beyond my control.

Finally, exhausted, somehow I took the step, or slid through, or, fell asleep and woke up on the other side.

You’d think that after forty years, faith would get easier. But I still struggle intellectually and morally and spiritually. I resist every threshold of widening consciousness, opportunities to grow and to love and to grow in love. I question, doubt, grumble, guffaw, choke on my pride, revel maniacally in distractions and exhaust myself with avoidance of Divine Presence.

Nevertheless, The Call is renewed every day, and I’ve learned to respond in some way. And all I want is the very thing I resist, that is, to surrender in love.

-Suzanne

I was complaining to a friend recently about my frustrations with a loved one, and how I can’t seem to communicate the depth of my distress, or how I feel, or what I think, or how this ongoing argument between us affects me all out of proportion to the merely slight irritation it should be.

The wise person listening to me said, “The problem is that you want to be known.”

YES ! That’s it! That’s the core of every argument, I think. Wanting not only to be heard, but understood. To be known. Especially by one you love. (You’ll notice that I’m purposely ignoring knowing and understanding the other person, but, let me just stay on one side for now.)

I think a lot now about my need and desire to be known.

On what seems to be a completely different topic, although they come together later down the page, I’ve been trying this autumn and winter to turn around the giant battle ship of my priorities away from the desk and toward taking better care of my health and body. So, I slimmed down my work and travel schedule, go to therapy to try to get “grounded,” meditate daily, and try to adhere more strictly to a diet appropriate to my allergies. (I seem to be allergic to most everything). And, I’ve begun a yoga practice at a local studio. Intrinsic to my avoidance of exercise is the life-long terror of being bored, heaven forbid. Anyway, I’m not bored at yoga class, because the instructor makes paying attention to what is happening in the body interesting. I already notice better health, energy, strength, and balance. On my way home from the studio I sometimes I hear the brittle little discs in my back singing, “O thank you thank you thank you” like children in the back seat after an adventure movie at the multiplex.

So this morning I had an insight about knowing and being known, and learning to know my body and my limitations. My prayer practice all these years has meant a deepening into the intimate unknown. But I realize my body is unknown, and observing my emotions and feelings is an unknown, knowing myself – at least the parts of my being not related to a very specific and busy part of my brain – is unknown.

Can these new practices of knowing myself lead to a better spiritual practice? Am I learning to work new muscles, so to speak, new ways of intuiting, new ways of observing that which is unknown?  Who better to practice on than myself?

Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.
-Isaiah 60:1

Advent begins the awakening of the soul. Through repentance, conversion, introspection, good deeds, through waiting and longing, the soul prepares a place, making room for the One to come. Like Mary, the soul says, “yes, let it be done to me according to Thy will.” The soul says “yes” and the seed of compassion finds “a mansion” prepared like a fertile womb.

With Christmas, that time of utter darkness, the Light mysteriously enters the soul. The fathers of the church chose the solstice purposefully to observe the Nativity. (After all, by then no one knew when Jesus was born.) But the alignment of the cosmic event to the theological one invites the overlay of mythic, primal, and sophisticated layers of meaning. How else teach the faithful to discern the truth of the Soul than by such a startling analogy? Watch the sky, say the ancient ones, as steadily as the sun in its course brings back light to the world, so steadily and inexorably does the Light come to your soul to illuminate, to heal, to transform your life.

Light dawns within in the Soul’s consciousness. And now comes the season of Illumination, continual opening to light, revelation, insight, and its tasks and challenges.

Of this season of the soul Evelyn Underhill writes, “a lifting of consciousness from a self-centered to a God-centered world, is of the essence of illumination.” (Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, p.234)

She quotes William Blake

                                        … I rest not upon my great task
To open the Eternal Worlds,  to open the immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity
Ever expanding in the Bosom of God, the Human Imagination.
O Saviour, pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness and love,
Annihilate the Selfhood in me: be thou all my life.

-William Blake
Jerusalem

Beloved! Let this Light grow, and share Light’s gifts in this holy season!
-Suzanne

Adoration of the Magi, Gentile da Fabriano

Simeon and Jesus, detail of Presentation, Fra Angelico 1433-34

see Christmas 1 (year B)
http://www.edgeofenclosure.org

When we have Christmastime at the monastery (as we did this year) I love to rise early on Christmas Day and go to the creche and hold the baby Jesus in my arms. Sometimes I dance with him, like John of the Cross did so many years ago. But yesterday I just held him, kissed him, and sang to him softly while I sat on the floor against the hay. I’m not worshiping the block of wood, of course, but Something beyond, Something behind that piece of folk art from the ’60′s. Something resonating deep within usually inaccessible places in my soul. Something responding to my love. Something loving me to which I respond in this foolish manner.  And once again, I know I have seen my salvation.

While exploring images of The Presentation I found one in which the baby leans toward Simeon’s arms rather than shrink away from them (which is the usual template). So, for your meditation, here are two paintings of intimacy in which the Holy leans toward Simeon, longing for his (our) embrace as much as he(we) long for the Holy…

The Presentation, Unknown Illustrator of Petrus Comestor's Bible Historiale, 1372

“O that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down” Isaiah 64:1

What did the shepherds see?

Shooting stars, maybe more stars than usual. No, not stars. Lights, lights pouring out of heaven. But the moon lies beyond the tear in the heavens! Whole pieces of sky breaking into daylight. No, not daylight. Light uncreated, unlike light splayed into color by the prism of creation. Living Beings of Light pouring from an unseen world just behind the created one.

What did the shepherds hear?

Sounds, unearthly sounds, not like a boy playing a flute. No, not one sound. A soundscape pouring out of heaven. But surrounding them, shimmering! Liquid sounds shimmering, settling, no, dancing upon earth. Not merely sounds, but music. Music sounding like insight or second sight. Music like intuition, deeply resonant, music of the spheres, pouring out from behind the tear in the sky.

Detail, Adoration of the Shepherds, Guilio Romano, c.1535

Platytera ton ouranon, Kiev School c. 1114, Our Lady of the Sign

She looks upon you,

She looks beyond you

She looks through your soul

and into the eternity

behind your soul.

But suddenly, she is a mirror

For you are looking at yourself

Eternity

dwelling

in your own

fragile flesh.

Brother James Dowd and I led an Advent Retreat at Holy Cross Monastery this last weekend. The following was the reading given during dinner in the refectory on Saturday.  I think Columbanus’ prayer compliments the text for this coming Sunday, (John’s testifying to the light) by asking for that very light to illumine our souls, so that we might be a lantern for others. [Columbanus (540-615) was an Irish missionary.]

Detail, Magdalene with a Smoking Flame, Georges de la Tour, c.1640

A Reading from the Instructions of Columbanus

How blessed, how fortunate, are ‘those servants whom the Lord will find watchful when he comes’. Blessed is the time of waiting when we stay awake for the Lord, the Creator of the universe, who fills all things and transcends all things.

How I wish he would awaken me, his humble servant, from the sleep of slothfulness, even though I am of little worth.  How I wish he would enkindle me with that fire of divine love.  The flames of his love burn beyond the stars; the longing for his overwhelming delights and the divine fire ever burn within me!

How I wish I might deserve to have my lantern always burning at night in the temple of my Lord, to give light to all who enter the house of my God.  Give me, I pray you, Lord, in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son and my God, that love that does not fail so that my lantern, burning within me and giving light to others, may be always lighted and never extinguished.

Jesus, our most loving Savior, be pleased to light our lanterns, that they may burn for ever in your temple, receiving eternal light from you, the eternal light, to lighten our darkness and to ward off from us the darkness of the world.

Give your light to my lantern, I beg you, my Jesus, so that by its light I may see that holy of holies which receives you as the eternal priest entering among the columns of your great temple.  May I ever see you only, look on you, long for you; may I gaze with love on you alone, and have my lantern shining and burning always in your presence.

Loving Savior, be pleased to show yourself to us who knock, so that in knowing you we may love only you, love you alone, desire you alone, contemplate only you day and night, and always think of you.  Inspire in us the depth of love that is fitting for you to receive as God.  So may your love pervade out whole being, possess us completely, and fill all our senses, that we may know no other love but love for you who are everlasting.  May our love be so great that the many waters of sky, land and sea cannot extinguish it is us: for ‘many waters cannot quench love.’

May this saying be fulfilled in us also, at least in part, by your gift, Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be glory for ever and ever.

O God, you are my God;
eagerly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my flesh faints for you,
as in a barren and dry land
where there is no water.  -Psalm 63:1

John the Baptist in the Wilderness, DomenicoVeneziano,c.1445

The desert wilderness is both a primary and recurring landscape of the soul.  A place of danger and unspeakable beauty; of demons, wild beasts, roaming spirits, and temptation, the desert also hosts ministering angels and offers an unhindered sphere for the encounter with God.

The desert evokes the love story of God and Israel. In the wilderness, the Hebrews came to know Yahweh after centuries of slavery in Egypt. Here, Elijah took refuge, David hid from his enemies, Jesus came to be tested.

In more prosperous times, the idea of the desert offered nostalgia.  Israel forgets the bitterness of her forty year sojourn but remembers that manna tasted like honey.  God forgets the golden calf and proposes to lure Israel back for a second honeymoon. Likewise, the soul forgets the privations and terror of that first plane of disorientation and only remembers opening to the Other.

The soul returns to the desert for wild beauty and wonder, perspective and unbearable intimacy.  In this liminal refuge the soul comes for renewal of the sense of longing essential to mystical life.  You come to this ambiguous sanctuary to lose self-consciousness, and to gaze at ultimate Consciousness.

John the Baptist dwells in the desert completely dependant upon what God provides for him: locusts and wild honey. Pure and holy, John is the threshold guardian. He guides the way in the wilderness preaching conversion and repentance:

“To be a spectator of Reality is not enough.  The awakened subject is not merely to perceive transcendent life, but to participate therein; and for this, a drastic and costly life-changing is required.”  (Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism)

Turn around. Repent. The Kingdom of God is at hand.